- You would think, being an investor in Framework,
that I wouldn't be down to accept HP's sponsorship
to show off the repairability of their Elitebook 845 G9.
But the truth is that this repairable laptop
has a lot going for it that my Framework doesn't.
For one thing, HP's sales and distribution network
mean that it's available wherever you might need it,
and for another, it's got an AMD Ryzen CPU,
and that's on top of it being highly user repairable,
with parts and detailed guides available
to help you through the replacement of everything
from the touch pad to the headphone jack
to the entire display assembly.
All right then, HP, you wanna sink my investment or what?
Okay, I'll play ball.
Let's see what you got.
(upbeat music)
Full disclosure, that wasn't just a bit.
I am indeed personally invested in Framework laptops
to the tune of 225,000 US dollars,
and it was a little over a year ago
that I ended my original review of the Framework laptop
by saying, the only reason other companies can't do this,
and Framework proved it, is because they don't care.
That's a problem.
Chucking a device in the e-waste bin
because of one small flaw should be something
that we try to avoid at all costs,
because everything about the design
of this AMD Ryzen powered Elitebook 845 G9
really does seem to be rooted in long service life
and sustainable choices.
The first sign that HP is really listening
comes before we even make it to the device itself.
The box is sustainably sourced.
And once we open it up,
the Elitebook 845 G9's lightweight but durable chassis
uses recycled aluminum throughout,
and they're using post consumer recycled plastics
in the bezel and the keycaps.
Speaking of that aluminum chassis,
it's time for us to crack it open
and find out exactly how repairable these things are.
I'm going in pretty much completely blind here,
so I guess we're gonna learn together
just how easy this laptop is to work on,
and we've got one of literally every single part
that they offer on their online store to replace.
By the way,
another aspect of this whole serviceability angle
that HP is taking is that if I wanted to cheat
and research how to swap everything beforehand,
their YouTube channel has proper guides
for everything that I'm about to do,
for this and actually tons of their other devices.
By the way, right out of the gate, I love this.
It's something that we've seen
on the past few generations of HP laptops.
Just five captive screws is all it takes to get inside,
and as small as it is, this decision means a lot.
Every extra screw or rubber foot that's in the way
of someone opening up a laptop
is another potential point to give up and not choose repair,
or if you're a service tech
who's working with a big deployment of these,
every screw is 15 more seconds, maybe dozens of times a day,
costing you hours of your precious actual life.
So bottom line, I really like this no-nonsense approach
to getting inside.
We're off to a good start.
Now that we're in here,
under this heat pipe is the star of the show.
This laptop is powered by an AMD 6850U,
which is an eight core 16 thread Zen 3+ chip
fresh out of TSMC's advanced six nanometer fab.
This thing boosts up to 4.7 gigahertz in a laptop this thin.
It wasn't that long ago that AMD laptops were dismissed
for their poor performance, poor battery life
and subpar connectivity,
particularly their lack of Thunderbolt support.
But all of that has changed now.
Ryzen 6000 is tremendously efficient, and this model from HP
implements AMD's new support for USB4,
which can do up to 40 gigabits per second of throughput
and tunnels a PCIe signal,
meaning that you should be able to plug in
previously Intel exclusive Thunderbolt peripherals,
like external GPU enclosures,
super fast external game drives,
or single cable laptop docks.
Weirdly enough, we actually have Microsoft to thank
for this level of PCIe support.
They are mandating that any laptop
that can come with Windows 11
must have advanced PCIe support on all exposed USB4 ports.
So thanks, Microsoft, I guess.
This NVMe drive is a Gen four unit from Samsung.
Ours is 512 gig, but that's user configurable.
And this little Wifi 6E card here is from Qualcomm.
How cool is that?
The RAM shield has a little tab.
Adorable.
(Linus grunting)
Woo!
216 gig kits, also Samsung memory,
running at 4800 mega transfers per second.
Interestingly, HP is actually offering
an unusual level of customization in their builder,
and they're charging sensible prices for upgrades.
32 gigs of RAM costs the same,
whether you prefer a single stick for future expansion
or two for better performance and dual channel.
Very sensible.
Over on the sides,
we'll find a couple of two-watt 4Ohm speakers.
Not terribly fancy,
although they are tuned by Bang and Olufsen
and can actually get surprisingly loud.
(dance music plays)
These don't really need to come out, but they make it easier
to get at the most commonly replaced component,
this 51.3 watt hour battery.
Screws on one side, clips on the other,
and I haven't even had to change my screwdriver bit yet.
All number one Phillips up until now.
Let's see how long we can keep that gravy train rolling.
Out of the box, HP boasts that it can go
from zero to 50% charge in only 30 minutes,
and rates this bad boy at up to 19 hours of use.
That's solid.
But as you guys know, batteries wear out over time,
and I'm pleased as punch that this one could be swapped out
in under 10 minutes by even a novice user.
If you're not into replacing batteries,
I would suggest employing
HP's battery life manager software.
It automatically maintains an optimal charge level,
which is especially useful
if you leave your machine plugged in
or unplugged for long periods of time.
This is the point in the disassembly process
that even if you've taken apart
a bunch of different models of laptops
from a variety of manufacturers,
you can start to feel a little bit lost or uncertain.
But kudos to HP, I can still clearly see
all of the screws that I need to access
in order to remove the rest of the components on this laptop
and it's these little touches that prove
that repairability and serviceability
was a high priority during its design.
Oh, interesting.
The fan is not actually even taped.
No adhesive even between the fan and the heat sink.
So these pieces can and should then be, ooh,
replaced independently.
Cool.
Here's another really nice touch.
Have you ever had something get stuck
in your headphone jack?
I mean, it's obviously more common with phones
with pocket lint and all that.
But they can still wear out from regular use,
and the fact that this daughterboard
is so easily replaceable
means that you will never be stuck without audio again.
This part costs $26.
Reasonable.
Also on the daughterboard is a five gigabit per second
USB Type-A port, and space for an optional SIM card slot
that we don't have on our model.
If we did, there would also be a mobile data card
for us to remove from here, just below the fan.
Moving over to the other side,
there's also an optional SmartCard reader,
which we do have installed,
a couple of those fancy 40 gigabit per second
USB4 Type-C ports I mentioned earlier,
both with power delivery and display port 1.4,
along with another five gigabit per second
Type-A port and a full sized HDMI 2.0b.
It's starting to look kinda empty in here,
and we can take it even further.
The fingerprint sensor, ah yes, here you are, comes out.
Don't break, please.
Please don't break.
You just pull out, okay.
Well, there's your fingerprint sensor.
The realtime clock battery uses no screws at all,
and the touch pad
has just seven screws around the perimeter.
(Linus gasps)
We finally had to change the bit in the screwdriver.
That's okay, I understand why.
These are very very tiny little screws,
so we're gonna use a Phillips zero.
This little boy comes out, but is a little bit tricky
because this cable right here is actually adhered to it,
so we just gotta, oh boy.
Oh, oh okay, oh that's not that bad.
That's not permanent adhesive or anything.
And then we also need to pull out this boy.
Easy peasy.
The battery is super easy to remove too,
but we're not going to take that out
because it makes life more difficult.
We'll have to go back into the bios
and adjust a whole bunch of settings
and I don't feel like it.
Now that the touch pad's out,
we can take a closer look at it.
It's got a glass surface and it's massive.
A big part of that is actually because of the screen,
so I'll explain in a moment.
Let me take these final hinge screws out
and we can talk about the screen.
Boop.
Lttstore.com, they're finally shipping.
(Linus gasps)
I'm just gonna give it a little one of those
and a little (Linus groans).
It's fine.
And there's the display assembly.
That's right, the reason the touch pad is able to be so big
is the aspect ratio of the display.
The excellent 16:10 that I and that guy,
hey Alex, 16:10, yay or nay?
- Yes, good.
- Exactly.
You get a little more height compared to 16:9,
which means whether you're gaming
or browsing or video editing,
you get that extra 120 pixels of vertical space
that can be an absolute godsend for your toolbars,
for your extra video tracks or whatever it is you need.
Behind the display assembly is HP's five megapixel webcam,
complete with auto framing, infrared for Windows Glow
and a physical camera shutter, as well as the hub board
that powers both it
and HP's dynamic noise leveling microphone array.
To HP's credit, while this does use clips and adhesive,
the replacement parts are available individually,
even for different variants of the screen.
So if you actually wanted to change out the screen,
you could.
And with that, we've actually run out of parts
to remove from this thing.
As they say in the automotive world,
reassembly is the reverse of disassembly,
which means it's time for us to undo everything.
(funky upbeat music)
Oh yeah.
Script says, "Success, it still boots."
Looks like we got ahead of ourselves a little bit there,
we don't actually know that for certain.
Here we go.
Yes!
Okay, good.
That was pretty impressive.
It wasn't that long ago
that this level of user serviceability
was mutually exclusive with having a device this thin
and with such a nice design language.
HP hasn't compromised on any of those things here,
which leads us to our conclusion.
The benefits of a device that is reparable
and upgradeable like this one cannot be overstated.
When deployed at scale in a commercial settings
with dozens, hundreds or even thousands of users,
the techs that actually have to work on them
will be infinitely thankful
to have someone at HP in their corner,
fighting for simplicity in design and maintenance.
There are other benefits for commercial users as well,
such as HP Wolf security and HP Sure View Screen Privacy,
which isn't to say that you can't pick up one of these
for home use if you wanted to.
The socketed RAM, Wifi and SSD are all wins,
and while HP's parts store appears to show
that everything is out of stock,
they told us that this is a bug
and replacement parts are in fact available
to both companies and to individuals to order,
so hopefully whatever that is going on right now
will be sorted out by the time this video comes out.
While you're at it, by the way, HP, pictures please.
Service manuals, as I mentioned before,
are readily available in the product support portal.
You don't even have to create an account
or do anything like that, so kudos to that.
And you can cross reference those
to find the right part numbers for replacement pieces,
but it's nice to have peace of mind,
especially as an end user, by being able to compare
the thing that's in your hand
to an actual photo on the website.
So, sponsored or not, if you want this level of performance
coupled with a dash of genuine serviceability,
your shortlist is, well, incredibly short.
HP hasn't committed to future motherboard upgrades
or anything like that,
but it is absolutely easy to maintain.
We're gonna have a link in the description
if you guys wanna play around with their configuration tool,
and they even offer FreeDOS as an OS option.
So, bottom line, for $2000, if HP keeps this up,
niche laptop makers may struggle to catch up
and other big manufacturers may need to step up
and follow suit.
If you guys enjoyed this video,
you might also enjoy the video where, oh I don't know,
we water cooled a Mac Studio.
Yeah, that was fun.
Not really very much like this video, but definitely fun.