- Business laptops are typically boring
but over the last few years we've seen
a change and a head towards a premium design.
Today we're gonna take a look at the HP Elite Book 840 G5
which is their mid range entry and well,
it's a pretty solid 14 inch laptop.
Today I'll tell you what's important
and what you need to know.
Stay tuned.
(upbeat music)
Alright let's get some context here.
The Elite Book 800 series is the mid range for Elite Books
and I'm actually a huge fan of the Elite Book series,
well specifically the Thousand line.
So that's like the Elite Book 1040
which is a very premium one.
Now this is meant for the average worker
so this is where and IT department
will distribute 20 or 30 of these to their workforce.
They're meant to be repairable out on the road and all
that kinda stuff and that's exactly what the 840 is.
It's the 14 inch version so there
are a couple other in the 800 range.
It has just been refreshed for 2018.
It's meant to kinda compete with
the Latitude 7000 series if you're familiar with that.
Alright take a look at the design here.
It is very reminiscent of the Elite Book 1000 series
in fact they're pretty much pretty hard
to tell a difference between these.
It's a little bit thicker, slightly heavier,
but it is all metal.
You get the antenna line on top for very good reception.
This has as you can tell 86265 chip set in there.
You can also get it with a 4G LTE modem
which you can get pre built in there
or you can add it later on if you want to do that as well.
You have a few microphone holes here as well.
After all this is used in the business world.
But there is no outward facing camera.
Just one for business calls and web cam.
Turn to the left hand side you have a smart card reader.
If you're a consumer that means nothing to you
but super important for enterprise.
Single USB 3.8 type A port.
The large ventilation port here on the side
which is pretty good considering most users
are right handed if you're gonna use a mouse with this,
this is on the left hand side so it won't blow on your hand.
You also have a Kensington lock.
Turn to the right hand side.
This is where action is.
You do have a standard barrel connector
for the charger which isn't too bad in size.
You also have a little LED but don't worry.
You have a USB type C port full thunder bolt three.
And yes you can use that for charging of course as well.
So if you don't wanna use that,
you always have a back up.
And it's becoming increasingly more important
to enterprise who are relying on type C
to standardize across the line.
So, you can always use that here.
You also have a connector port for HP's doc
which is proprietary design.
And check this out.
Look at that.
And RJ45.
Becoming increasingly rare but super important
for enterprise again.
This little expansion ability there.
Very cool to have.
HDMI 1.4 B.
Another USB 3.0 port as well as headphone jack
and a sim slot in case you want
to get one with an LTE modem.
Opening up the display here and as you can see
we have rather large bezels at the top and bottom.
But that's okay.
At least they're evenly sized.
HP usually does the bigger on the bottom
and smaller on top but these are nice and parallel.
And part of that's because we
have Windows Hello Facial Recognition.
You can see we have dual IR cameras up here
which is pretty nice and a couple of microphone holes
and you have the web cam which is a decent webcam.
Not the best out there but, you do get this privacy shutter
which is the rage in 2018 for enterprise laptops.
Evidently a lot of people are putting Post It Notes
over their web cameras so this solves that.
It's a really nice one.
It's actually a lot better than the Lenovo's
which is funny 'cause I don't know
how you can screw this up but this actually works very well.
Now it doesn't block the microphones, just the camera.
So keep that in mind.
Now when it comes to the display
you have a bunch of options depending
on your IT departments budget.
This is the lowest end.
This is the full HD version.
So it's 14 inch full HD.
Map display non touch.
You only get 220 minutes of brightness.
That's very very low
so you don't really wanna use this outside
although that anti glare will help out.
So it's a nice display and I don't mind using it
but if you want something brighter
they do make one that goes up to 400 minutes
of brightness with the same specs so you could do that.
You can also go to 4K which is a huge jump.
There's no in between unfortunately.
You get 4K with touch or you can also go with
their sure view privacy screen.
So, we've covered that before in another video.
You hit f2 and then this will basically mask over
and it also gives you 120 hurt refresh screen
which is really kinda cool.
It will zap your battery about 20%
but still if you're into privacy and security
you'll definitely want to check that out.
That's available on 4K or full HD so,
the choice is yours.
Now turning to the speakers.
Check this out.
We have Bing and Olson.
Now that's not too unusual for HP but
you do get upward firing speakers up here
in this grill area and they sound really nice.
Considering this is sort of the budget mid-range
business laptop this is really good audio.
It kinda kills Lenovo to be honest
and so if you're looking for really
good audio quality HP delivers with this.
In fact it's better audio than your Elite 1000 series
of the same one for the 14 inch.
So this is continuing their change that they're doing
in 2018 with putting the speakers on
the top and I really really like it.
If you've watched this channel before
I gush a lot about HP's keyboard and that carries over here.
This is a really nice keyboard.
Very good response.
Very good travel.
Not as much as some of their other devices
but I have zero complaints about this keyboard.
It's back lit it feels good.
As someone who writes a lot I really like this.
Now it does have their pointer stick here
just like Lenovo's (laughs) and it's kind of unusual.
I actually kind of like this better than Lenovo's
and I'm not really a huge fan of the pointer sticks
but if you do use that it comes here
and it works really well.
You also get an optional fingerprint reader here
at the bottom it works well with Windows Hello.
You can use it with the Facial Recognition system
or independent of the choice is yours.
I have no complaints about it though.
Works very well.
Turn to the track pad and as you show
with the Elite Book series Hp is using precision drivers
and this is a very smooth glass track pad.
Very nice click.
Quiet.
And you also have the buttons here for the pointer stick.
Just an excellent track pad.
No complaints at all.
HP continues to knock it out of the park in this area.
Alright let's talk a little bit about configuration
options besides that display.
So this does come with eight gigs of ram.
You can get it with 16 gigs of ram.
It has two dim slots.
It's DDR 4.
But you can go to 32 gigs of ram with that
which is pretty option for you power users out there.
When it comes to the processors
you're using eighth generation intel's.
Those are Core i5's and Core i7's.
With have the 8650 U here which
is definitely on the high end.
It's a 15 watt chip.
That's going to give you very good performance.
There is no discreet graphic.
So no Nvidia on board here.
This is a business laptop after all
but the performance is very good
and it's party backed up by the SSD so,
this one comes with 512 gigabytes of storage on there
and this is actually shipping with a PM981 Samsung drive.
That gives your 3000, 2000 read write speeds which,
well that's super blazing fast.
That is of course swappable so you change it yourself.
You also get 256 gigs or up to one terabyte.
And you'll probably squeeze in two terabytes as well.
Pricing for this device starts around $800.
That's for the Core i5 version.
The one we have in front of us here is around $1700.
That's 16 gigs, five 12 to storage in
that Core i7 and a full HD display.
When it comes to heat and battery life
over all this is a pretty solid device.
The fan does come on when plugged in.
You set to performance mode.
Nothing unusual there.
This is running the Core i7 after all.
If you got the Core i5 though
you could save a little bit there on thermals.
Now when it comes to battery life
it's a pretty good performer.
Around eight hours.
It's nothing crazy.
That's because it only has a 50 watt hour battery.
And you're gonna run at a core i7,
16 gigs of ram well you could
probably tax that pretty heavily.
But you can charge this through a fast charge
and overall you get about 30 minutes.
It'll give you about 50% battery life back.
So, it's no too bad but it's not
the best on the market for this series.
Now when it comes to pricing you're talking around,
starts at $800 for that Core i5
with the 256 gigs of storage.
The one we have in front of us is about $1700.
That's five, 12, 16 gigs of ram in a Core i7.
That's only the full HD display.
I would actually try to go for something
a little bit higher end on this.
But overall the pricing is pretty fair
especially it is all metal.
I should also point out that HP
has made this device very serviceable
which is very important for IT departments.
So there's a couple of screws on the bottom.
They pop right off and are magnetic.
You can then swap out ram, SSD, the wifi card
and even add an LTE modem.
Apparently the antenna is already built
in for this device and all set up.
So, it's really important for a lot of IT groups.
I'm glad to see it here.
It's a pretty good device to work on.
Alright let's bring it all in.
So, I really like this device.
And we always get into this right?
There's a super premium stuff out there.
Like there's 1000 series which is really really nice.
It has a 45 watt processor in it.
But this is for your average worker in the field
and to be honest I could totally
use this laptop and be happy with it.
Its got a great keyboard.
The audio is good.
The display is really nice on it.
The track pad is good.
It has a really nice port selection.
It doesn't have an SD card slot which,
may be important to some but you do
have some expansion ports there to manage it
so there are work arounds.
But I wouldn't mind seeing an SD card slot as well.
It's also a pretty light laptop at 3.27 pounds
or one and a half kilograms so, it's easy to carry around.
I love the build quality of it and it looks really sharp.
So, if you're in business or schools and enterprise
and you're looking for a device, even if you're a consumer,
don't forget HP does an outstanding job
in my opinion when it comes to security.
Go and get that bios protection on there.
It comes with a suite of HP apps on here
for keeping it upgraded and keeping everything secured.
There's a lot of choices here for IT.
So, I think HP's doing a really nice job.
The Elite Book series is definitely on their premium end
but yeah even as a consumer you may
want to check this out if you're into school and just need
a really rugged device to take around with you.
Overall a pretty solid device.
So there's a quick look at the HP Elite Book 840G5.
Now if you're interested in this device
we'll have a link in the description below.
Let me know in comments too what you think about it.
Otherwise if you liked this video
give us a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe.
Thanks for watching.
Take care everybody.