The Hp EliteBook 8460p is an elegant business notebook that greatly delivers good performance. Its strong battery life makes one of the best choice for business people. It is most suitable for use in an office environment as it performs well, last longer and promotes privacy. It is amazing that it combines second-generation Core i5 power and AMD graphics with enough battery life to get you through those marathon meetings. Add in top-notch security tools and you have a notebook that lives up to its name.

 

Let me take you through the review of this elegantly crafted business system.

 

Hp EliteBook 8460p Review: Features.

Design and Durability

The EliteBook 8460p comes with the revamped DuraCase design. Decked out in a cool platinum color, this business laptop features a bead-blasted aluminum lid (which minimizes smudges and fingerprints) and a brushed aluminum deck. We also appreciate the large button on the front of the notebook for easily unlocking the lid, and subtle touches such as the engraved EliteBook logo to the left of the touchpad. Overall, the 8460p has a sleeker, more modern aesthetic than the latest Dell Latitudes and Lenovo ThinkPads.

 

The 8460p's durability continues with cast titanium-alloy hinges, as well as a new DisplaySafe frame that has a ring of rubber around the entire bezel to protect the screen. HP used magnesium for the base, which features an easily removable panel for upgrading components. To prevent damage from liquids, the laptop features both a spill-resistant keyboard and a bottom-case drain for spills. Like Dell's Latitude E6420, HP says the 8460p is tough enough to meet the MIL-STD 810G standards for drops, vibration, dust, temperature, and shock.

 

The trade-off for this robustness is that the EliteBook 8460p is thicker and heavier than its predecessor. This machine weighs 5.4 pounds and measures 13 x 9.1 x 1.3 inches, while the 8440 weighed 5.2 pounds and was 1.2 inches thick.

 

Keyboard/ Touchpad

Typing on the EliteBook 8460p is a pleasure, thanks to a spacious isolated-style layout with keys that provide strong tactile feedback. The keys also have a slightly gritty texture and a subtle curvature that made the experience comfortable. Our only complaint is that the Enter key is a bit small, as are the Up and Down arrows. While the keyboard isn't backlit, you can press a button above the screen to pop out a small LED that partly illuminates the deck.

 

A narrow and recessed power button sits above the keyboard on the left, and to the right you'll find three quick-access buttons for toggling the Wi-Fi connection, launching Internet Explorer, and muting the audio. When the EliteBook 8460p is off, the second button launches QuickWeb for getting online without booting Windows.

 

HP makes a big deal about the fact that the EliteBook 8460p features a chemically strengthened glass touchpad. (Apple also uses glass for its MacBook line.) We could easily glide the cursor across the wide--but not very tall--4 x 1.9-inch surface. Pinching to zoom worked fairly well, despite a bit of lag, as did the rotate and two-finger scroll gestures. We also easily three-finger-flicked through photos

 

Display and Audio

The EliteBook 8460p features a 200-nit, 14-inch display. The matte panel looks fairly bright, but we had to push the lid back further than we'd like to prevent images from washing out. While we could make out plenty of detail in an episode of Glee played on Hulu, horizontal viewing angles were narrow.

 

For a business laptop, the EliteBook 8460p pumps out a fair amount of volume. The two speakers on the left side of the system--one on the front lip and one on the bottom--got fairly loud when we played "Ready to Start" from Arcade Fire and "Pyro" from Kings of Leon on Slacker. The SRS Premium Sound control panel lets you easily enhance the audio for music, voice, or movies.

 

Ports and HD Webcam

The left side of the EliteBook 8460p houses the DVD drive, ExpressCard slot, SD Card slot, two USB 3.0 ports, FireWire (though we don't know who still uses that), and a power jack. A headphone, microphone, USB 2.0/eSATA port, and another USB 2.0 port that can charge gadgets line the right side of the laptop, along with a DisplayPort and lock slot. The bottom of the 8460p has a docking connector.

 

The EliteBook 8460p features an HD webcam that record footage up to 720p. Using the HP webcam software, the footage we recorded exhibited good color accuracy but we noticed a fair amount of pixelation at full screen. Video chats in a smaller window over Skype looked better.

 

Performance

EliteBook 8460p packs a 2.5-GHz Intel Core i5-2520M processor, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB 7,200-rpm hard drive, and a 1GB AMD Radeon HD 6470M graphics card. In PCMark Vantage, which measures overall system performance, the notebook scored 6,449. 

 

In everyday use the EliteBook 8460p proved to be a snappy performer. The laptop had no problem jumping between several open Internet Explorer windows or streaming HD video. You can also edit video quickly on this machine. The 8460p transcoded a 114 MB MPEG-4 video to the AVI format in just 42 seconds. That's much faster than the category average of more than 2 minutes but within a second or two of competing business notebooks such as the Tecra R840, LifeBook S751, and Dell Latitude E6420.

 

Despite having a 7,200-rpm hard drive, the EliteBook 8460p didn't boot very fast into Windows. It took the notebook 1 minute and 10 seconds to give us full control of the desktop, which is slower than the average thin-and-light notebook (64 seconds). However, resuming from sleep was almost instantaneous after pressing the power button. The drive duplicated a 4.97 GB folder with a relatively speed rate of 26.6 MBps, which is faster than the Tecra R480 but slower than the Fujitsu S751 (31.4 MBps) and Dell E6420 (34.6 MBps).

 

Graphics Performance

Although you can configure the EliteBook 8460p with integrated Intel HD 3000 graphics, our unit had an AMD Radeon HD 6470M card with 1GB of dedicated video memory. This GPU notched a 3DMark06 score of 5,032, which tops the category average by a wide margin (3,328). The Tecra R840 with AMD 6540M graphics (4,369) and LifeBook S751 with Intel graphics (4,809) also fell short of the EliteBook.

 

If you want to play mainstream games on the side, the EliteBook 8460p is up to the challenge. The laptop racked up 52 frames per second on World of Warcraft at 1366 x 768 with the settings on Good. That rate dropped to a still-decent 27 fps at the max settings. The Tecra R840 scored a lower 42 fps and 22 fps, respectively. We could even play Far Cry 2 at a fast 62 fps clip, albeit at 1024 x 768 resolution. The rate fell to an unplayable 21 fps at native resolution.

 

Software and Security

Like most business notebooks, the 8460p supports TPM and smart cards, and it comes with a fingerprint reader. But ProtectTools is our favorite security suite among business notebooks. It helps you easily set up and manage passwords and walks you through setting up a Windows password, fingerprint scan, and smart card for logging into Windows or websites. The ProtectTools dashboard on the EliteBook 8460p also includes a link to Computrace for theft protection, as well as quick access to Drive Encryption and File Santizer for shredding files. If you want to add an extra layer of security, you can even use facial recognition in combination with your Bluetooth phone to log into the EliteBook itself or web pages.

 

Another standout utility from HP is the redesigned QuickWeb, which let us boot up sans Windows in just 16 seconds--once we went through the setup process. QuickWeb has a new slick interface that includes multiple widgets, from weather and CNN news headlines to stock quotes and even a Twitter feed box. You can also delete and add widgets.

 

Other HP tools include Power Assistant, which helps you conserve battery life and monitor power consumption, Recovery Manager, and Support Assistant. A copy of Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, Norton Internet Security, Roxio MyDVD, and Skype also come pre-loaded.

 

 

Battery Life and Wireless

The EliteBook 8460p has plenty of juice to get workers through most of the day. On our test the six-cell battery lasted 6 hours and 1 minute, which is about an hour longer than the category average. This runtime also beats the LifeBook S751 (4:57) but trails the Tecra R840 (6:34). The Dell Latitude's nine-cell battery lasted 8:59, but you can always equip the 8460p with a nine-cell as well. In fact, you can combine an optional nine-cell battery ($99) with another nine-cell slice--called the Ultra Extended Life Notebook Battery--for a claimed 32 hours of endurance. However, that's with wireless turned off.

 

Hp EliteBook 8460p Review: Specifications.

 

CPU	2.5-GHz Intel Core i5-2520M
Operating System	MS Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
RAM	4GB
RAM Upgradable to	16GB
Hard Drive Size	320GB
Hard Drive Speed	7,200rpm
Hard Drive Type	SATA Hard Drive
Display Size	14
Native Resolution	1366x768
Optical Drive	DVD SuperMultiDrive
Optical Drive Speed	8X
Graphics Card	AMD Radeon HD 6470M
Video Memory	1GB
Wi-Fi	802.11a/g/n
Wi-Fi Model	Intel Centrino Advanced N 6205
Bluetooth	Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Mobile Broadband
Touchpad Size	4 x 1.9
Ports (excluding USB)	Ethernet
Ports (excluding USB)	VGA
Ports (excluding USB)	eSATA/USB
Ports (excluding USB)	USB 3.0
Ports (excluding USB)	Docking Connector
Ports (excluding USB)	Microphone
Ports (excluding USB)	DisplayPort
Ports (excluding USB)	Headphone
Ports (excluding USB)	Firewire 400
Ports (excluding USB)	ExpressCard/54
USB Ports	3
Card Slots	2-1 card reader
Warranty/Support	Three-years, 24/7 toll-free phone support
Size	13 x 9.1 x 1.3 inches
Weight	5.4
Company Website	http://www.hp.com

 

Price

The Hp Elitebook 8460p goes for #65,000 only in our store

 

Final Verdict

The EliteBook 8460p is sleek and durable. It perform well and last long. Our overall take is that it is a compelling business laptop