HP EliteBook x360 is a stunning, practical laptop for work: review
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(HP EliteBook x360, Credit: Hewlett-Packard)
Hewlett-Packard has built an amazing laptop that any business can bank on.
HP has been making laptops for businesses for a long time and it shows. The 2017 EliteBook x360 nails all the essentials including design, construction, keyboard, battery life, performance, portability, and security.
I’ve been using the 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 for the last month or so. Here’s my brief review.
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Design strikes a key balance
The all-metal design strikes the best balance of thinness (under 0.6 inches thick) weight (2.8 pounds), size, and sturdiness in any 13-inch laptop I’ve used to date.
In short, it’s lightweight but built for MIL-STD-810G certification, which means it can survive hard knocks, drops and extreme temperatures.
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Keyboard provides a great experience
In my experience, HP has always built great keyboards and this is one of the best typing experiences yet with deep, comfortable clicks despite the laptop’s thin design.
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The one downside for me has been figuring out common, older key combinations for functions like “insert” or “print screen” on the modern 2017 HP keyboard, but that’s a minor gripe.
Battery life
The EliteBook x360 has a ton of battery life, even besting MacBooks I’ve owned with good battery life. Your mileage will vary but I can use the laptop pretty much all day -- up to 10 hours of use -- with the display dimmed a bit and with an average workload (Web, light multimedia, Microsoft Office).
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HP rates the battery at “up to 16 hours and 30 minutes.”
Performance
Part of the delicate balancing act is finding a happy medium between performance and battery life.
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The Intel 7th Generation Core i7 processor in my model is plenty fast, making it one of the snappiest laptops I’ve ever used.
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Security
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The EliteBook x360 is packed with security features to make it as bullet-proof as possible for business. Features that stood out to me is the ability to sign in using either facial recognition (a very fast process) or a fingerprint scanner.
Display
The touch display has a 360-degree hinge, meaning you can configure it as a tablet or prop it up for a presentation in “tent mode.”
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The display is bright and offers good-enough resolution (1,920-by-1,080) for a business laptop. On a premium laptop, however, I would like to see a higher-resolution display as standard. A very-high-resolution display is also available as an option.
Ports
A good selection of connectors, including one USB Type-C (the tiny USB connector that comes on most new laptops), two traditional (old-style) USB ports, one HDMI connector for use with an external display, and a micro SIM slot.
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Price: Good doesn’t come cheap. That said, at a starting price on HP’s website of $1,319, it’s close to the price of the newest low-end 13-inch MacBook Pro.