HP Advantages

Hi,

My Dell Precision 5520 goes to a kid, and I was wondering about comparable ZBook or an Elite. I love my Z workstations, but never had any experience with HP business notebooks. Of course, I hear left and right how crappy HP laptops are, etc. My usage is simple: mostly office apps and quite a bit of Excel. Occasional Python coding and occasional light Lightroom use.

Could you kindly enlighten me what is the main attraction of HP business class laptops for you? I am looking for anything good and stable: from either outlet or refurbished or ebay, 2 year old models are fine.

What I liked very much about my Precision is a very nice, high-contrast screen - very easy on my eyes with Excel. And very good battery life as well.

TIA

 

Dell's Precision line compares to HP's ZBook line. (HP formerly called its ZBook line the EliteBook Mobile Workstations.) The rest of the comparisons go like this:
Dell - HP
Latitude 7000/900 - EliteBook 700/800
Latitude 5000 - ProBook 600
Latitude 3000 - ProBook 400

There are many Precision and ZBook models; if you compare specs, the equivalents should be fairly obvious. Both lines offer heavy-hitting 15"/17" models with Intel H-class chips and top-of-the-line graphics cards, plus thinner models that split the difference, on down to budget models like the Precision 3000 and the ZBook Power. I would only go for one of these if you need dedicated graphics or ISV certifications since they are more expensive than the Latitudes and EliteBooks/ProBooks.

I'll give you a narrow comparison. I use both an HP EliteBook 840 G6 and a Dell Latitude 7400 for work; both have 14" screens and Intel U-class processors. They debuted in 2018 but have much in common with the current EliteBook 840 G8 and Latitude 7420. I prefer the HP for these reasons.
--Better keyboard feedback. The Dell's feels like plastic squares. The keys on the HP provide more detailed feedback.
--Better keyboard layout. Dell made strange choices with its Home/End/Pg Up/Pg Dn key placement; HP conveniently put them in row down the right edge. Also, Dell's Fn Lock feature is counter intuitive. On the HP, I leave Fn Lock off (thus allowing F1-F12 to be used as their secondary functions such as screen brightness up/down, volume up/down, etc. without using the Fn key), yet it still interprets Alt + Function row keys as their normal functions i.e. I can press Alt + F4 to close a window. On Dell, if I leave Fn Lock off, I have to press Alt + Fn + F4 to get that to work. So, HP is a little more thoughtful here.
--Better touchpad. The two-button setup on the Dell is quite usable, but I think HP did a wonderful job with the buttonless touchpad (press the surface to click) that I find it more intuitive.
--Superior cooling. It's not great in either, but the Dell throttles heavily under CPU load. It inefficiently tries to send the cooling exhaust out the back against the display hinge. I don't know why they thought this was a good idea. The Dell's fan is also louder.
--Better speakers. The Bang and Olufsen setup on the HP is quite good for a laptop. The Dell gets loud but is not as refined.

The Dell's advantage over the HP is its smaller size, but the newer EliteBook 840 G7/G8 models eliminated that.

Charles