*HP Elitebook 800 Series Owners Lounge*

Just so you're aware, only the 1920x1080 screen is IPS / wide viewing angle. All other resolutions are standard TN screens (the kind that invert when you go too far off-centre). If gaming is your concern, I'd think running the 1920x1080 screen at 1366x768 (or whatever) would give an overall better experience.

 

well there was only one model 640 with 8750m graphics and that came with i7 4600m and im sure it was 1080p. not sure of the panel but I believe it was ips. although I doubt I could game on it at that resolution im sure it be adequate. only thing is that it would sting my pocket abit coming from south korea since the uk is so crap at custom models and base models at that as it is no existent. so all in all I will prob end with the t430 for £550 with all the trimmings at the moment since it be cheaper to hold off to see if can get a hp 640 g1 as it would cost me just over £1000 for 50% graphics increase even tho it is aesthetically a nicer laptop.
With im sure I can get my money back on the t430 as I think its a quite a bargain just no original box. what I will do is see when gta5 is out what kind of graphics will get me satisfactory rates. 35-40+ on medium or high on notebook check and I will look back if shelling out be worthwhile because I KNOW the NVS 5400m is low to medium for next gen visuals. so thanks guys. I hope its not harsh so I could prob consider the zbook 14 or 840 g1

 

With the Firepro M4100 I was getting about 30-40FPS on medium in Guild Wars 2 at 1920x1080. Dropping to 1024x768 put the FPS to 60+ so hence the 1366x768 recommendation. The T430 has Expresscard so you could always try doing an eGPU setup. Even a mid grade desktop graphics card would be a night and day difference.

I think HP has really dropped the ball on how they are advertising and selling these machines. It does no good if they make a superior product if they don't advertise them or make them available for people to buy. My Zbook was drop shipped from Shanghai, China (the ODM that built it was Inventec in case anyone is curious) and I sincerely doubt it would cost them much extra for their web developers to i18n the CTO system and train sales/support to deal with an additional CTO model along with all of the prebuilt ones. I also live about 30 minutes from the division in HP that designs their workstation machines and yet none of my technology friends have even heard of HP's Z series ("Wow they make business notebooks too?"). Granted people around here tend to mindlessly flock to Apple thanks to the high amount of college towns and tech startups but still I would expect a little more.

 

My fan almost never runs. My battery is about 4-6 hours depending on usage and screen brightness.

 

That's quite different than mine, whose fan almost never stops. It's barely audible under most circumstances and keeps the laptop really cool at low loads, but I find it weird that it never stops. But battery life is similar to what you report.

I would happily trade a few C higher cpu temp for a totally quiet laptop... I'm gonna replace the HDD with an SSD tonight, I'm curious if this is going to make any difference..

Update:

feeling quite foolish right now... The noise that I was certain was coming from fan, was actually a constant whining by the hdd!!!

With SSD the laptop is completely silent, and much much faster!

OS and data migration worked almost perfectly with Samsung Migration tool. Only recovery partition is not working, getting some "bootmgr missing" error when I attempt recovery..

 

cool stuff on the fan noise. how loud is it on load with a 8750m or m4100? I know the machines are pretty much silent. to be honest latest laptops do tend to be. its when its at load each laptop completely differs. and I think the thinkpads and asus are kings at running silent machine at load. (under 40db)

the key things for me in a laptop is 1) the trackstick/pointing stick mouse with no excessive clicking mouse buttons lol preferably with buttons unlike the new thinkpads, 2) form factor so dimensions of the laptops (32.5cm was in my e320 and I loved its size but my w230st is 33.3cm but willing to take 34cm compromise in these hps because Lenovo don't appear to be making another 13.3 edge model. 3) the graphics has to be reasonable (no low end but mid or uppoer mid like the 8750m or 730m/740m) 4) fan noise at load.

This is not in order but to me makes a great laptop. the rest like aesthetics is a bonus and ideally not low powered cpu unless they phase them out in these sizes for thinness and I can compleyl be sure that quad wont improve performance in games like they do for eg bf4.

might be a bit picky but this is kind of a blend of how they made laptops in recent years and now I don't want to go back. lol mouse buttons clicks fundamental because my wife is really bad with clicking of the clunky clicky clicks. and these business laptops solved that out. just wasn't sure of how the nw hp lines where since my last hp was 8530w and sold a yea later in 2009 so not sure what they like since but yea that's my rant.

I don't know how that performance of guild wars stackup to 730m740m on same settings but I guess each game either favours NVidia or not. only thing that scares m with amd drivers is the support....not enough of it. or least from the manufacturer. had amd 6630m with intel. they just stopped releasing them. had to vouch them off new models like the 7670m from thinkpad and that WASNT regular either. where as NVidia I can download right from the site. (well at least I can with w230st)

 

I don't think the fan noise is particularly bad. It is audible but not as loud as larger more powerful gaming notebooks. I put a short video of it running Guild Wars 2 up on YouTube.

I think driver support is a bit better for the Firepro than the Radeon. If you go to AMD's website you can see they list models back as far as the Dell M6500 which is quite old, with current drivers still available. The Zbook 14 is listed there too. Gaming performance seems just fine, but honestly I am far more happy that the drivers support OpenCL in Adobe products now.

My guess is that the 8750m/M4100 is probably going to do better than the 730M because of the greater memory bandwidth even with worse optimized drivers. 128bit GDDR5 is about 4x the performance of 64bit GDDR3 that the 730M uses. Battlefield 4 performance might get better if Mantle support is added to the drivers here in a month as well.

 

Alright. Now my HP Elite 840 G1 is on order (H5G26EA) i opted for this one for the CPU, Screen and GPU. I am going to swap the harddrive for a 500gb Samsung EVO SSD since i gave up on finding a M.2 NGFF SSD for that special slot. Hopefully 500gb will make do.

 

I finally found a professional review of the HP 840 g1. Unfortunately it is in polish but google translate does the job. Here is the link to the polish review:

HP EliteBook 840 - uniwersalny biznesowy notebook mobilny


Some stats from the review people might find interesting:

sRGB: 97%, NTSC: 69%, AdobeRGB: 74%
Luminance: 277 cd/m2, Contrast: 770:1, Black: 0.36 cd/m2

Volume of cooling system: 32db - 42db

Small load: 32C, Large load: 43C

More inside the review.

Everything looks good, but not too thrilled about the temperature. It is higher than my current laptop and my current laptop makes me feel a bit on the hot side. Does anyone know if zbook 14 is cooler than the 840 g1? And anyone know of any professional reviews of the zbook 14?

 

I don't know why it would be. It's got a discrete GPU to cool too.

 

Yes, but no two GPU are the same.

 

Ok, how about this. If you disable the M4100 or the AMD 8750 and use the built in Intel HD4400, is it significantly cooler?

 

This is a special hybrid system... you don't actually "use" the dedicated graphics unless necessary - ie. it switches seamlessly back and forth program-by-program. I will say that if I'm not doing anything that requires 3D, the ZB14 is silent and doesn't feel even warm.

 

Is there a way to manually control that? Would kind of prefer to decide myself when to use it, for example would use of WebGL or 3d in flash trigger the GPU use? Or if I open up photoshop?

If it is possible to turn off the GPU, have you tried turning it off and doing intensive stuff like 3d to see if it gets warm?

Also based on the 840 g1, it gets hotter on the bottom than on the top. And since I often keep the laptop on myself, that is what concerns me the most.

Last thing, do you know how much the zbook 14 weights with an SSD? (manufacturers often quote weights for a specific config but interested in the weight with ssd)

 

If you look on the site with the review they also have a review of the Elitebook 850 G1 which doesn't have a dedicated graphics card. Looks like temps max out at 36C on that one so maybe its a good choice if you want something that runs cool?

I personally don't think my Zbook 14 is hot either, but its really just an opinion so it is something you would have to decide for yourself once you use it. I don't do intensive stuff on battery on my lap so it barely gets over room temperature. Either way if you get the larger machine its bound to be cooler than the smaller one.

Oh, and my Zbook weighs about 4.2lbs not including the AC Adapter.

 

There's an AMD utility that allows you to set which GPU to use, automatically, on an application-by-application basis. Options are to always use the "Power Saving" processor (Intel) or "Performance" (AMD) or to choose based on power source (Intel on battery, AMD plugged in)... or "not assigned" which I suppose means Intel.

Internet Explorer, for example, is pre-configured to use Power Saving, which I guess means it'll use the Intel GPU no matter what content pops up - I doubt it's capable of switching a program that's already running. Switching is entirely seamless since the AMD processor feeds its output through the Intel - you can't actually tell which GPU is being used just by starting up a program. It's all a bit mysterious! Also, there does not seem to be any master system-wide on/off override.

According to a digital kitchen scale, my top-config Zbook 14 with SSD weighs 1825 grams, which is 4.02 lbs.

 

It is not like I am looking for a laptop without a graphics card, If I can get a graphics card I'll take it. I do graphics design and stuff sometimes. But most of the time I'd keep it off to save power and heat. Also, the 850 G1 is 15.6", way too big. And my current laptop weights 2.5lb (Though it is 13.3"), so the 850 G1 is way too heavy. I mean even the zbook 14's weight is pushing it.

Though how is your 4.2lb? HP advertises it as 3.57 lb : /, does yours have a disk drive instead of ssd? or is the gfx card making it 0.6lb heavier?

And as I mentioned before, it is possible that the zbook 14 has less heat than the 840 g1, without an professional review it is hard to say. It is also possible that with the gfx card off, it is much cooler.

 

I imagine the "starting at 3.57 lbs" weight is calculated using the minimum number of components, such as a NGFF SSD and the optional 24 WHr battery instead of the 2.5" SSD and 50 WHr it comes with. In fact, here's some official configuration weights from HP documents:

Non-touch panel: Equipped with 3-cell (24 Whr) battery, UMA graphics, one memory module, WLAN module, and solid-state drive: 1.62 kg / 3.57 lbs
Non-touch panel: Equipped with 3-cell (50 Whr) battery, UIMA graphics, one memory module, WLAN module, and solid-state drive: 1.74 kg 3.83 lbs
Touch panel: Equipped with 3-cell (50 Whr) battery, UIMA graphics, one memory module, WLAN module, and solid-state drive 1.87 kg 4.12 lbs

Other documents show the 1080p screen adds 0.04lbs over the 768p screen, and that a 180gb 2.5" SSD adds 0.13 lbs over a NGFF SSD. So if we take 3.83 lbs, add 0.13 and 0.04, we're up to 4.0 lbs. Then add on another memory module, a bit more weight for a 240gb SSD, and I'm sure we've hit my 4.02 lbs.

 

The Zbook has the same cooling system as the Elitebook, down to the same part number. The only reason that the Elitebook would run warmer than the Zbook is if the Radeon chip has AMD's Powertune technology enabled that automatically overclocks the chip if its within the TDP limit. All indication so far seems to be that it isn't, but if any owners of the Elitebook want to chime in it might help.

Anyways, I think that the Zbook does a great job at staying cool. It has a very large heatpipe for its weight and size. From what I can tell from reviews, the Elitebook stays cooler than the Yoga 2 Pro even with a dedicated graphics chip and a faster clocked i7. Of course it will run much cooler than z830, with two generations of improvements from Intel. It really is top notch. The only problem with it is price. If that is not a barrier for you then there simply is nothing better out there that you buy currently in its class.

 

If the 840 or zbook 14 was full core CPU I'd buy one already. To the guy that wanted to know the difference between them. Physically nothing. Exactly the same shell exempt one is graphite vs silver and graphics is 8750m vs m4100 which is the same card.

But in regards to the gpu. The gddr5 8750m is very close in performance as the 730/740m despite it being 64bit ddr3 looking at reviews measuring 3d mark 11 gpu scoring. These all average 1800.
You would think that being gddr5 would result in greater performance but it don't. Only in overclocking does the main boost come vs a ddr3 but I don't wanna overclock.
The 730/740m still gets better results than the 8750m in a lot of games even tho equal.
I just wonder how effective mantle will be because one if the main games for me is bf4. And I will see how it differs on gta 5 as well.

Got me a t430 with a nvs 5400m for now so it's got me used to the dimensions of these laptops but I dunno. By the time gta arrives maxwell will be implemented in laptops and it makes me wonder how a low end one example 830m or 840m in a laptop like the 840 g2 would gain if it was. And that's what's making me wanna hold out pArtly. But it's the CPU that's partly the deciding factor because I do want to swap the CPU in the notebook for quad if it's not optional by default. (It's a new thing I been doing successfully and like the boost).

However really tempted to get a 840. Seen one with 16gb and i7 1080p 8750m 240gb ssd for $1600 dollars. Only the 1yr warranty holding me off vs the 3 it should of had. I don't know if I want to pay to extend it lol. Depends on price

 

Toshiba Tecra Z40 can be CTO with a 730m here in the US. You can think of it as a T440s except with dGPU and physical trackpad buttons.

 

The 4.02lb is understandable (The number quoted to me was 4.20lb), the battery is replaceable right? So I can get a spare lighter battery and use it when I don't need battery life much.

Aren't workstation GPUs usually clocked lower than consumer GPU? I actually owned a Yoga 2 Pro for a month. Returned it, it wasn't that bad overall as far as heat is concerned (not perfect) though the material was less conductive of heat. My z830 as far as heat goes is not too bad overall, just the back side gets a bit hot. (I compared the heat ratings of the z830 and the 840g1 and my z830 is actually cooler, but what might be offsetting the results is that the GPU is in use during the 840 g1 test. It is possible without the GPU in use the 840g1 might be cooler, hard to say).

As far as price goes, I like to look at things from perspective. While I personally prefer to pay around 1.3k for a notebook (which is what I usually pay). If the a notebook can meet all my needs, I am willing to fork over 2k for a notebook. My 2 biggest concerns is the weight and the heat. I would also like to know the data on the screen. Looking at the data on the 840 g1, that screen has pretty good parameters, and I would think the screen on the zbook 14 is better, but would like to know how much better ; )

I am thinking along the lines of taking that Newegg 30 day trial which has free returns and no restocking fees. Buying a zbook 14 and trying it out, if not returning it : /, cause i can't find any professional reviews on it. Only on the 840 g1. And it is hard to quantify.

Personally, I prefer AMD gpu vs Nvidia. After the whole Nvidia defective laptop GPUs and the class action, it left a bad taste.

 

Yea fully aware of this bout a month ago. Whilst I'm still looking out for it apparently oy available with 730m via customisable model. And I've had a look myself to see if there was a default model to no avail. Which is lame but very nice laptop. I remember toshiba was my very 1st laptop. That's where my love for the tack stick cAme from. In fact there was no touch pad on it. I remember when I wanted to order my second one. The base pic showed it as I wanted. The actual was just a touchpad. I returned it lol. Till now I can't get use to touch pad primarily. I use it every now and then when wrist is dying from constant use of track stick.
Oh and this 730m in the z40 only appears to be in USA atm :-(

Thanks tho

 

Whats the paint work like on this. I seen other hp with the same design where the silver paint edges have rubbed off. is the design the same with the 840? I asked the same question on the zbook 14 as they are pretty much the same laptop.

 

I am using 840 G1 with touch screen but with Windows 7. I cannot say it's really useful on Windows 7 (maybe played couple of times in the first day or so).
The bigger problem for me is that..

- The screen is 1600 * 900 (which is OK) with TV panel (Disappointing). TN panel plus glossy display surface makes the screen less visible when you have a light source on your back.
- Add some thickness (around 2 mm)

Overall, I don't like touch panel option.

 

Just wanted to ask if anyone have gotten the M.2 Ngff slot work as a second drive rather than a cache?

Thanks

 

Hi,

Can someone confirm what is the brightness of the Elitebook 850 G1 1920x1080 screen (nits)?
Also is the screen IPS? I've read different things, HP seems to be pretty weak in documentation in this regard.

Thx!

FYI I am evaluating this to the:
- Dell XPS (15.6" 3200x1800px IPS 300 nits) [4.15 lb] $1,899
- Samsung Book 9 (3rd gen) (15.6" 1600x900px 400 nits non-IPS) [3.64 lb]
- Samsung Book 9 (4th gen) (15.6" 1920x1080px 300nits IPS?) [4.1 lb]
- Toshiba Tecra Z50 (15.6" 1920x1080px nits? IPS?) [3.96 lb]
- Lenovo does not have a T540S or 15" X1 Carbon, so nothing to compete yet.

Basically a reliable 15" 4 pound laptop for programming, which may sometimes be used outdoors (hence brightness).

Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

According to the service manual, these are the specs for the 850's 1080p screen:

Contrast ratio 400:1 (typical)
Brightness 300 nits (typical)
Refresh Rate 60 Hz
Surface Treatment Anti-glare
Format HD (1920 x 1080)
Configuration RGB stripe
LCD Mode TN
PPI 142 PPI
Interface eDP 1.2 (1 lane)
Viewing angle SVA 45/45/25/35 (Left/Right/Down/Up)

So, 300 nits and a standard TN panel.

The 14" 840's 1080p screen is IPS. Well, to be specific, an AUO AHVA panel, which is IPS-like. Of note, my Zbook 14 actually did come with a different LG panel that is true IPS, so I don't know if it's just luck of the draw or they're actually using different panels in the two models.

 

Thank you for that information Sunfox.

The 850 not being IPS is really disappointing! Especially as the 840 is IPS.

The search continues...

 

Get the UL787E warranty. Its like $180 but has next day on site repairs, accidental damage included, and Computrace LoJack. 3 years for all.

 

I ordered my zbook 14 with a HDD and replace it with a SSD. I was also surprised the noise from the hard drive really really sounded like a fan noise. And the heat it generated on the right palm rest only bothered me. Wow what a difference in noise with the SSD it's silent and when the fan kicks on it's quiet. I did hear the zbook 15 had a noiser fan but don't know how accurate that report was.

 

So I did a real lot of research -- and what's the point of the Elitebook 850 compared to the 840?? It's the exact same machine, there are no additional ports internal or external, the keyboard does not use the larger physical size, even the battery is the same and there's no slice. The screen is slightly bigger but a lot worse in quality.

 

The 850 really is just a slightly larger 840 - they even share the same service manual. I guess someone at HP thought they could fill a hole in their product lineup.

But if you note, the Zbook 15 is not at all related to the 850, while the Zbook 14 is very much related to the 840..

 

delete....

 

Anything doing any intensive processing work on this machine, CPU, disk or both? Passed on the ThinkPad T440s (max RAM only 12GB) and the T440p (too heavy) last fall and went with a Gigabyte P34G. The P34G has a lot of grunt for its size, but with the Core i7-4700HQ on a 11.1V, 47.73Wh battery the best I can do with normal usage when off power is about 2.5-3 hrs. Now I know the i7-4600U has 68% less power consumption and fewer cores, will get me much more battery time, but I'm wondering how it will do running a couple of 4GB virtual machines with things like Oracle 10g, 11g and WebSphere in them.

Have a lot of cross-continental travel coming up and with the latest round of research I'm down to this unit or the upcoming v2 of the P34G where I can sacrifice the 2.5" bay for a larger 14.8V, 63.64Wh battery which I think would get me another hour or two. My criteria are < 4 lbs., FHD LCD (preferably IPS or at least wide angle), 16GB RAM and 5-6 hours normal usage (if not more, without sacrificing too much on power scheme or screen brightness) on battery.

Thanks, B

 

I find that on mine 6 hours is the best you can get, with light usage and no more than 50% brightness. I do have an SSD, so don't know if this increases battery life.

I reckon 4 hours are what you'll get if you do some "normal" work with brightness at 50+%...

But you can always get the slice battery that more than doubles battery life

 

Got one NIB on eBay with the slice battery for $1,610 which is a pretty good number for the build. I'll be upgrading the 240GB SSD to a 1TB Samsung 840 EVO SSD that I have all my data on and doing a clean Win 8.1 install from a USB stick. Looking at the drivers page these things have a lot of bloatware on them. Any recommendations from anyone for the utilties, drivers they do run, have kept?

 

I actually bidded on the same laptop but the bidding got out of control early on a bit suspiciously with just 2 bidders as I assume one shill bidding so I decided not to continue bidding but otherwise I did want it before it was listed for auction. good price though. I was on the look out for a local one since it was much to close to one over here with 3 years warranty and of course uk keyboard. but of course no 16gbs and ssd. but the customs fee would of bumped it up much more for me to say no especially since I got 2 laptops right now (I actually had 3 at the time of watching "Your" laptop lol) anyway hope you like it. im a hold out for a good price one or wait for refresh. ill continue to follow here all the same.

 

Nice find! I would suggest going on ahead and installing all drivers for the devices. I can't say for sure but the extra devices might consume more battery power if the driver isn't installed. As far as the optional software goes, you can skip most of it. I never installed the Fingerprint software or things like the PDF reader software they included.

 

Yeah, I saw those two going at it the first two days and then it leveled off to an acceptable lull for the last 3-4 days of the auction. Attribute it mostly to their low ratings and not knowing better, but I've been buying laptops up there for fifteen years. This is only my second HP unit in 22 years of laptops, but it's easily my 30th (lost count) notebook. Comparing the fit and finish on this unit to my Gigabyte P34G the word that sums it up best is "solid." It just feels like a much more solid build than the P34G. Will miss the grunt on the P34G, but very much like the quietness and touch of the keyboard on the 840 G1 vs. the P34g and love being back to a trackpad with buttons.

Machine is upgraded from Win 7 Pro x64 to Win 8.1 Pro x64 on my Samsung EVO 1 TB SSD. Without belaboring my failed machinations with Windows backup, EaseUS Partition Manager, EaseUS To Do Backup and Macrium Reflect (the mechanics, order always change from one machine to the next, depending upon what I want to do), here's the chronology I used for this upgrade:

1. EaseUS To Do system backup of the Intel 1500 SSD that came with the machine.
2. EaseUS To Do Backup of the 337GB data on my EVO 1 TB SSD.
3. In-place upgrade of the Intel SSD to Windows 8.0, then an in-place upgrade to 8.1 via the Store. Had to change the BIOS to "RAID" from "AHCI" first before starting the Win8 upgrade.
4. Deleted the partitions on the 1TB EVO and converted the drive from GPT to MBR, then cloned the partitions, including the RESTORE and TOOLS ones, from the Intel to the Samsung.
5. Swapped drives, restored data, started re-installing apps from there (MS Office, VMware Workstation, etc.)

Should also note that I needed to run 104 Windoze updates totaling about 1.23 TB before I could get to, see the Win 8.1 upgrade in the store after the Win 8.0 upgrade.

Only disappointing thing so far is my Kensington Travel Adapter doesn't work with this unit. I'm using the N19 adapter tip, which fits, but it keeps coming back on plug-in saying "The Smart AC Adapter is not functioning correctly." If anyone knows if that's not the right adapter or uses a different travel one I'd appreciate it.

 

I hope I can get a question responded to in this thread. Is the 1600 x 900 resolution display acceptable for everyday (part of the day) use? As in color accuracy, decent brightness & viewing angles, etc.

Everyday use in my case means Office, email, programming, as well as occasional online videos, software/web UI design but not regular photo editing or visual design. Thanks

 

Five days' usage and from the right angle I can already see how the oil from my finger has "smoothed" about three quarters of the touchpad. Any recommendations for what to clean it with.

 

Got an ED495AA 90 Watt Smart AC Adapter on eBay for $11.99 with free shipping ($79 from HP themselves), a custom skin from A Best Store for $23.99 with shipping. Now looking for a good (protection), thin sleeve, any recommendations?

 

really was interested in the p34g around before the w230st was released. then eventually it got a review and it was very loud apparently and the touchpad click was very loud. that doesn't keep the harmony with my wife.

also what 3d 11 score and graphic score do you achieve with the 8750m with latest drivers. in the end I bought a dell e6440 with 8690m graphics. but Im curious what im missing because 8690m is 64bit vs 8750m 128bit. but my score scored higher than 8750m scores on notebook check so im assuming they had stock drivers because my stock drivers was P1784 and updated P1944. that's higher than a NVidia 740m. but deep down I would of preferred the hp 840 (not so much now since im quite happy with the e6440) but the hp probook 640 with 8750m was my preferred choice because it had full haswell chips that I could put a quad core in and be happy with it but only asia and Australia got those configs

 

Not too impressive. Then again, I flipped to this from the Gigabyte P34G for the battery and the ULV processor.

 

Hi, there has been lots written about the 850 not having 1080p wide viewing angle screen.

Here in Norway I see quite a few models with WVA screen spec. Is this just typos or does this configuration actually exist?

http://www8.hp.com/no/no/products/laptops/product-detail.html?oid=5405368#!tab=models

I really need the 15.6" at least because of ageing eyesight so the 840 is not an option and neither is TN screens.

Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk

 

Those models will likely have the Chimei TN panel that was in the review units. I have an 850 G1 as well and it has the same screen. It isn't a horrible screen, you can still get work done on it, but it isn't as nice as the IPS display's that come in the Zbook 15 or Elitebook 840.

Now, there are a couple of higher end Elitebook 850's here in the US that ARE advertised as having a UWVA display (which in HP speak means IPS). Nobody here has reported back with one yet, and I haven't seen any reviews of those particular models either. I will also say that the Chimei display uses eDP and an IPS display made by LG has the exact same mounting bracket and connector locations so it might be a swappable replacement. The raw panel costs about $130 on ebay but I may try it in a few months with mine.

 

OK, thank you for the input. I'm going to contact our local distributer and let them check it out. If it says WVA in the specs on their official site and is TN they better fix it ASAP.

Anyway, after testing a QHD+ I have concluded that changing down the resolution to 1600x900 actually works out fine for me. Even FHD resolution is acceptable. That way I can do that when win8 scaling isn't working properly.

So, I'm holding of for a 15 inch QHD+ version if and when it is made.

Sent from my LG-D802 using Tapatalk

 

That is a picture of the Chimei display that is in my Elitebook 850 G1. Its part number is N156HGE-EA1, which from this description on Panelook, is not particularly good viewing angles. However, the LG LP156WF4-SPB1 (description here) looks like its the same mounting bracket and eDP connector location. The Chimei is a 2-lane panel, as well as the LG, so signal wise they should both be compatible. The Sharp QHD+ panels are 4-lane eDP so they will probably not work. My only concern is the height of the panel. The chimei is ~3mm high (very thin!), and all I can tell from specs online is the LG is 3.4mm. I am very tempted to go ahead and order one and try! I guess I will have to sell it at a little bit of a loss if it doesn't work, but still worth it to try in my opinion!

Edit: I spent a little bit of time researching these panels today and ended up purchasing an AUO B156HAN01.2 from ebay. Specs are here on panelook. It is technically AHVA, but it should be a very nice panel. I had looked at a Samsung ATIV Book 8 in Best Buy before which uses the same panel (with a touchscreen digitizer on top) and it had great color and viewing angles. I went with the AUO because it is closest to the Chimei panel specification wise. 3.2mm height, almost exactly the same power usage (in case HP designed the eDP to shut off if too much is drawn, which could be likely) same dimensions, and I am hoping the bios will detect it and allow brightness control as it is basically the 15" version of the AUO panel that is in the Elitebook 840/Zbook 14. I will report back once it arrives and I have swapped it in.

If it works I am just going to laugh at HP because it is an otherwise excellent business notebook. If they can get these for the Elitebook 840/Zbook 15 then it is stupid that they don't offer it on the 850.

 

Hi Win32asmguy,

After looking at many reviews I'm seriously considering the Elitebook 850 G1, probably this model: HP's Small & Medium Business Online Store , which seems to have the UWVA display. Is that different from the display that came with your 850? It looks like a fantastic notebook all around, with the best combination of features that I've found--fairly light, more upgradable than most, and very easy access to memory and hard drive. I'm planning to install debian testing on it, and would probably wipe windows from the hard drive. Did you have any problems installing Ubuntu?