HP EliteBook 8440p review

HP's latest 14in business laptop has an attractive metal design, but is it all style and no substance? Kat Orphanides reveals all in our review.

The HP EliteBook 8440p

The laptop comes with a range of extra security features, most of which are available from the BIOS. These include TPM DriveLock password protected encryption for your hard disk's contents and the ability to disable USB and other ports to prevent users for taking information off a laptop on an external disk.

Verdict

The EliteBook 8440p is beautifully made, performed brilliantly in our benchmark tests and even had a decent four hour, 43 minute battery life under light usage. However, despite its many strengths, at this price we were disappointed to find only 2GB of memory and a meagre 250GB hard disk. The lengthy three-year return to base warranty goes a long way to making up for this, though, and touchstick users, who aren't widely catered for beyond Lenovo's ThinkPad range, will find the 8440p to be one of their better options. Most of the features the laptop is missing – more memory and a larger hard disk, for instance – are relatively cheap and easy to upgrade, but this only makes their absence more surprising. If you're paying £950 for a laptop, we don't think you should have to upgrade just to get a large amount of hard disk space. Nonetheless, if you can put up with these omissions, the EliteBook 8440p is a good general-purpose laptop.

Processor: Intel Core i5 520M, 2.4GHz Memory: 2GB 1,333MHz DDR3 RAM Graphics: Intel HD Graphics Hard disk: 250GB hard disk Display: 14in 1,366 x 768 pixels, LED-backlit screen Features: microphone, stereo speakers Connectivity: 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR Ports: 3 x USB2, 1 x USB2/eSATA combo, 1 x FireWire 400, DisplayPort and VGA video outputs, 3.5mm headphone and microphone audio outputs Dimensions: 336x236x31mm (WxDxH) Weight: 2.4kg Warranty: 3yr C&R warranty OS: Windows 7 Professional 32-bit Part code: WJ681ET#ABU BENCHMARKS IMAGE 112 VIDEO 99 MULTIPLE APPLICATIONS 75 OVERALL 93 BATTERY LIFE Light usage 4h43m Heavy usage 1h33m POWER CONSUMPTION Sleep 0.3W Idle 17W Active 49W PART CODE WJ681ET#ABU

K.G. Orphanides

K.G. is a journalist, technical writer, developer and software preservationist. Alongside the accumulated experience of over 20 years spent working with Linux and other free/libre/open source software, their areas of special interest include IT security, anti-malware and antivirus, VPNs, identity and password management, SaaS infrastructure and its alternatives.

You can get in touch with K.G. via email at reviews@kgorphanides.com.