HP Elitebook 8560w mini review

So I just received the 8560w (XU083UT) this morning and I've managed to put together a mini review. I haven't written any reviews before so bare with me. I will be installing a SSD drive, and Ive barely had a chance to use the computer yet, but this is what I have so far.

SPECS
Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-2630QM (2.00 GHz, 6 MB L3 cache)
Operating system installed: Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64
Chipset: Mobile Intel® QM67 Express
Dimensions and Weight:
Product weight
Starting at 3 kg
Dimensions (W x D x H) / 38.2 x 25.75 x 3.45 cm
Memory:8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Memory slots
2 SODIMM
Storage: 500 GB 7200 rpm SATA II
Optical drive: DVD+/-RW SuperMulti DL
Display: 15.6" diagonal LED-backlit FHD WVA anti-glare (1920 x 1080)
Graphic card: AMD FirePro M5950 with 1 GB dedicated GDDR5 video memory
Expansion features:
I/O ports
2 USB 3.0
1 USB 2.0
1 USB 2.0 charging
1 eSATA/USB combo
1 external VGA monitor
1 DisplayPort
1 1394a
1 stereo microphone in
1 stereo headphone/line-out
1 AC power
1 RJ-11
1 RJ-45
1 docking connector
1 secondary battery connector
Slots:
1 Express Card/54
1 Smart Card Reader
1 SD/MMC
Audio: SRS Premium Sound; Integrated stereo speakers; Dual-microphone array; Button for volume mute; function keys for volume up and down; Stereo headphone/line out; Stereo microphone/line in
Integrated camera: HD webcam
Keyboard: Full-sized Backlit spill-resistant keyboard with separate numeric keypad and drains
Input devices: Touchpad with on/off button, two-way scroll, gestures, three pick buttons
Pointstick with three additional pointstick buttons
Communications:
Network interface 10/100/1000 NIC
Wireless Intel Centrino 802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Power Requirements: 150W Smart AC adapter
Battery type: 8-cell (83 WHr) Li-Ion battery
Security management:
HP ProtectTools Security Manager
Central Management capable
HP Fingerprint Sensor
Integrated Smart Card Reader
Enhanced Pre-Boot Security (Multiuser / Multifactor)
HP SpareKey
One-Step Logon
TPM 1.2 Embedded Security Chip
HP Disk Sanitizer
Security lock slot
Security screw for bottom access door
Support for Intel AT



Look and feel:





The clean aesthetic is quite nice, sophisticated, but not overdone. I’m definitely a fan of the radial design on the back of the screen. The build quality seems superb, no flex anywhereor sketchy weak looking plastic.

Weight/ Size:
I’ve been carrying around 17” laptops for the past 8 years so it’s kind of hard for me to say this is heavy. It’s certainly not as light as say a Macbook Pro, but I don’t feel like its excessive in anyway. The power supply (150w) however, is a brick and a half.


It’s about 6.25 x 2.5 x 1.5 and probably weighs two pounds. Hopefully (but unlikely) I can get somewhat close to the 6 hour battery life that HP is claiming so I won’t always have to carry it.

Ports:
Yup, its got them. No, seriously though, Its nice having two USB’s on each side, but I am unable to test the 3.0 because I do not have any 3.0 devices. No eSata devices either. I will need to buy a converter for the displayport for my Wacom tablet so I will be able to test that out soon enough. One thing missing is the purported CFast card. There still is a SD card reader which is fine with me. Probably not too important to most people but there is also a secure card reader on the right side which might be convenient at some point.

Keyboard:
So far I love it. It’s not overly stiff, but still has a solid feel. I haven’t typed much on it as I just received it, but I feel like there shouldn’t be any issues with prolonged use. From the picture you might be able to notice the slight concaved keys which feel very comfortable. The quality is also very high, no flex or weird quarks. The backlit keyboard looks good ( as shown), no complaints at the moment.




Sound:
As pshiffrin mentioned in his 8460w review, the speakers really aren't anything to write home about. If you're looking to wow people with a high def video and audio, you best find an audience in their late 80’s who have limited hearing abilities. While I did not buy this computer to be a multimedia center I would have still have liked better sound. Admittedly I was able to improve it a tad with the srs program by bypassing the audio enhancements, but still, its nothing special. Also there is a noticeable lack of bass which is quite annoying. I actually took the panel on the back off just to make sure both speakers were working. Interestingly the speaker is in the middle and to the right.




Mouse and Buttons:
The mouse pad itself has a great texture to is. Its smooth and feels like a matte version (if that makes sense) of a gorilla glass screen. As I mentioned before, my former laptop is 4 years old so I have not had one with gestures and whatnot so I'm not quite used to that , but it seemed fine to me. The buttons on the mouse have a tad bit of a rubber consistency but it is in no way annoying. I quickly used the stick which seems fine, but I have only used them a few times so I really cannot give any input on it.
The buttons on the top corner follow the theme of the computer and are solid and make a click noise when pressed.

Performance:
The overall WEI score was 5.9 due to the hard drive .



As you can see, the graphics score was 6.9 as was the gaming graphics. Compared to my desktop which has the 1gb gtx460 which scored 7.5, that’s not too bad. I should add that I will be putting in an intel 160gb SSD drive in which I have in my old laptop so the scores and performances will definitely be going up. I also ran 3DMark06 with the following results:



Screen:
As I mentioned earlier, I have Wacom cintiq so it seemed quite redundant to get the dreamcolor. My previous laptop (dv9000) had the ultra brightview screen which was terrible with color reproduction. Clearly screens have come a long way, and the 8560w’s screen is quite nice. The colors appeared very accurate. The screen brightness is quite high and I had to turn it down. I turned on the ambient lighting option but I've never been a fan of that so I can’t say too much about it.

Battery Life:
Your guess is as good as mine. I really haven’t had it long enough to test out the battery and test it in my normal conditions.

Final thoughts:
Despite the shortcomings in sound, so far I am very happy. The only concern I have is the power adapter cord.

As you can see from the picture, the power adapter does not appear to plug in completely straight and comes out too easily. I feel like this is a build error but it does not seem to be affecting it yet. I’ll be curious to hear from others as to how theirs connects.


After running the 3d benchmarking, temperatures were cool everywhere except the left side which was far from unbearable. Overall the quality is quite high and I think it will meet peoples expectations.

 

Thanks, I been waiting a long time to see this. What are the specs? Looks like a very solid computer, I hope to see more shipped soon.

 

Nice review. It's great to finally hear someone's 1st hand opinions on it.

 

When you get a better feel for it if you could update us with the battery life that would be great. Do you intend to play games on it? I'm interested in knowing the performance of it. Also if you play Minecraft or use any other OpenGL application I would be interested in hearing how these run as well. Thanks for all your work thus far by the way.

 

The suspense is killing me....when did you place your order? There is an entire thread devoted to those despairing in the queue.

 

Battery Life??? Do let us know the numbers when you have had time to test it.
+ 1 for the review. Do let us know where did you order it from Cost Central or some place else??
Also could you do a pic of the sides to show us how thick the laptops is exactly.

 

Unfortunately I really haven't had a chance to test the battery life. In all honesty I havent done much with it yet because I have to format it and install the SSD and ive been working all day. I will probably play some games on it so I might try Crysis 2 and COD and see how they do.

I feel your pain, hopefully the little review and pictures have helped.

I did order the laptop from Cost Central. I ordered it early last week when it was still backordered hoping that as soon as it was available that send it out. Thankfully I still kept checking to see if it was in stock. When it became available friday, I called them immediately just to make sure and they had it out in a few hours.

Here are two pictures of the width. The first is a front view with the top closed.


The second is also from the front and is with the lid open.

 

Nice, what about fan noise in idle ?

 

What is screen's HW ID...

 

Thanks for the review. Please say more as you discover new things!

 

Thanks for the shout-out re: speakers. After a few weeks, i've gotten used to it. I've also gotten used to the screen (8460w) !!

 

So I did a little DVD test last night and managed to keep a movie going for 2 hours and 10 minutes. I really dont believe this thing has a chance of getting even remotely close to 6 hours let alone 4 I was hoping for. Using HPs Power assistant it was showing up to 2 hours and 40 minutes on balanced setting and when not doing anything at all it went up to a little over 4 hours, a lot of good that'll do me.

Ive brought the battery down to zero and recharged it and need to do that again, so either HP is lying through their teeth or I have a shady battery. Still need to run some more tests with regular use.

Also, the fan speed/heat/noise seems to be pretty good. While running the dvd the fan was running but it sounds far from a jet engine. The bottom and sides were hot, but by no means to a level of actually burning someone.

It appears to be AUO13ED

Yea, I figure I'll get used to it too. Fortunately I like the screen so that shouldn't be a problem.

 

I doubt your battery is defective. Companies typically over-estimate their battery life by a large amount. I'm guessing they put their laptops under unrealistic conditions to get as many hours as possible.

 

Plus, I'm sure the battery life estimates were done with the slowest dual-core CPU they sell in this model, not a quad-core.

 

yea, I really doubt its defective. Maybe someday ill have a computer with great battery life. Either way, I am still very happy with it.

I was thinking about that this morning, I'm sure the i5 gets close to that amount. Oh well, I needed the power so I guess I cant say too much. Ill probably end up getting the larger battery at some point

 

So about how long is the battery life just web browsing? I know you said what power assistant was estimating but have you had a chance to see for yourself?

 

Don't know yet, the laptop came when everything was really busy so I haven't spent more than a couple hours on it yet. Ill post my findings once I have some info though.

 

When did you place your order again? I placed mine on the same model on 6/20 and I still haven't received any form of shipping confirmation or anything.

 

I had that exact same laptop on order from CostCentral and canceled it. I ended up keeping the dv6t I had on the 21-day HP return policy.

CostCentral assured me that their pre-built (not custom) 8560W does not have a backlit keyboard. Well, clearly yours does. I might have continued with the order if I had known that. That was one thing that I would have liked but they said that it didn't have a backlit keyboard so I didn't see the point in paying more than the dv6t I had (which also does not have a backlit keyboard).

The screen on my dv6t is the same AUO13ED. That is also the same screen they used for the 8540w.

Thank you for sharing the info and the review. I'm disappointed that the laptop ended up having a backlit keyboard, but it's too late now to do anything about it since I can't return the dv6t now. I suppose I can live without the backlit keyboard.

One other thing, are you sure it only has two memory slots? I thought that the 8560w quad-core was going to have slots for four memory modules, even though only two were installed.

 

I think that is what he meant. If you look at the picture under "Sound" it looks like there are two empty SODIMM slots near the top of the picture (one facing right, one left).

 

Hi mulaka13,

thank you very much for the review. I'm also very interested in battery run time when surfing and fan noise!

Tom

 

This is auo b156hw01 v.3 screen. It is worse version, best is v.4 middle range is v.0 and v.1...

 

I have a dv6t 6100 quad with an i7-2720qm. It has the 6770m. My 3dMark scores are not as good as yours. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the switchable graphics issues or not (if these are not OpenGL games then it's something else).

I'd be curious to see how your 3dmark Vantage or 3dmark 11 scores are.

Here are the 3dmark06 scores:

3DMark Score 10013 3DMarks
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SM2.0 Score 3452
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HDR/SM3.0 Score 4167
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU Score 5650
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 26 FPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

GT2 - Firefly Forest 31 FPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU1 - Red Valley 1 FPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

CPU2 - Red Valley 2 FPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HDR1 - Canyon Flight 38 FPS
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HDR2 - Deep Freeze 44 FPS

 

I too have 3dmark scores nowhere near what some people are getting. My first and only 3dmark vantage test yielded 6000 roughly. I am currently updating drivers and will try it again.

 

There are 4 dimm slots but only two are accessible by just opening the top.

So far with some casual usage, a little internet and such it seems like I'm going to get probably about 2-2.5 hours of battery life. Sounds similar to the M4600 if you ask me. The fan and heat have been very good so far, but I haven't been in the quietest environments so its hard to completely gauge.

As for how the computer is, I still haven't been able to log much time on it, but I will when i get back to work Monday ill start to get a better handle on things. I'm still not used to this screen with such a high resolution. Ive had a 1440x900 for 8 years so everything's just a tad smaller. Nonetheless I'm still very happy.

Ill answer some more of the benchmark questions tomorrow evening as I am away now and have a terrible internet connection.

 

My 3dmark vantage score was 6169. But, the score quoted in the review and in my post are 3dmark06 scores. Your result sounds normal.

 

Thanks for letting us know about battery life. By the way the screen is matte, right?

 

I Ran 3dmark vantage and my score was 6706. The fan was definitely pumping away and it got very hot, but its cooling down fairly quickly.

Yup, the screen is matte.

 

Thanks for doing that. Clearly, I made the wrong choice in keeping the dv6t and cancelling the 8560w. I have an i7-2720qm which is just a bit faster, but otherwise the same system with the non-business drivers and I scored lower than you.

I regret that CostCentral didn't know that the keyboard was backlit. Oh well. This at least shows that the business drivers do not slow down the system at all for games. And, the new switching muxless video card may in fact slow things down for the Pavilion systems.

You've got a great machine there. You made a good choice and thank you for the detailed review and information.

 

Can you comment on the keyboard? I'm used to Thinkpads, which I still feel are the best all-around keyboards I've used on any laptop.

I banged around on an 8560 p at a shop last week and felt the board was very uncomfortable: little travel, stiff, sharp edges, *seems* the keys are far apart on their separate "islands", the touchpad buttons were stiff and rubbery. Does this sound anything like the keyboard on your 8560w??


EDIT: Sorry, you already *did* mention the keyboard in your first post. (I'm getting a little dizzy jumping around reading so many threads. It was late when I posted this, etc.) Thanks again for your write-up. Good first impression. ... Now, what shall I do?? 8560w or w520?????)

 

Hi, mulaka13. Can you compare quality and view angle of your screen and screen from this page (HP and DELL).

Can you get some display photos?

Thanks!

 

He doesn't have the Dreamcolor panel, so such a comparison is not fair.

 

Hi folks,

I received my 8560w yesterday (2Ghz quad, Nvidia 1000M, SSD, FHD Display - not dreamcolor).
Building quality is perfect perfect perfect.
But one thing is absolutely annoying, it's the fan noise. The sounds like being on max. rep. all the time (it's at least the sound of max. rep. on my former hp nx8220) an I'm not even surfing internet. Unit is cool, the air blown out of the unit is cool (not even a little bit warm), so there is no reason for the fan to act like this... I really assume it's broken somehow.
I updated BIOS and anything, but no change.
I'll test it with manually disconnecting the fan.

Seems very important for some guys: Keyboard (mine is not illuminated) is perfect, rock solid, very good to type on and I had a Thinkpads, Dell, hp and it's on the level with the best keyboards (the Dell was crap by the way).

I keep you updated!


Tom

 

Before disconnecting the fan -- risky business, even if the Sandy Bridge is a lower heat generator -- why don't you thoroughly check the BIOS set-up and other Power management features HP may have installed? I wouldn't go disconnecting the fan on my brand new machine without at least doing a complete check of all other options. Heck, I'd even call HP support and see what they suggested before I'd monkey with shutting off the fan.

Dos centavos.

 

You should post it here, so HP can do something about it:

HP Support Forum - HP Support Forum

I will soon receive mine which is not Quad Core, and see it the fan behaves better....

 

Thanks for good review.
Could you give me a favor?
Could you try to use headphones to check that you could get bass part of sound too?
I am planning to do some recordings using microphones and wondering if fan noise will be audible. Audio Application is not hungry for CPU or any Video loads.
I hope the fan noise will not be audible in this case.
What do you think?
If you are just browsing Internet, do you have any fan noise?
Thanks in advance.

 

Hi, Sorry for the delay, I've been out of town.

The headphone audio is very good and the sound seems to have ample bass.

I'm really not sure whether I can effectively answer your questions about the recording noise. I would think it would depend on the sensitivity and the proximity of the microphone.

Right now I have multiple tabs open in both firefox and chrome, two web and image editing programs, and two word documents open. The fan is going but by no means sounds like it is at full speed. Hope that helps.

 

Hi .. nice 8560w mini review

1. did you change to SSD ? .. and what about "Performance:
The overall WEI score was 5.9 due to the hard drive "

2. does the backlit keyboard flex ?

3. does it have the option of sandy bridge video (for lower power consumpion) ?

 

Hi mulaka, does your lcd function normally during booting up to win 7? .
Mine has some problem with lcd backlight bleeding issue since a oval shape backlight suddenly shows up right at the center of the lcd.
That's weird since as far as i know, backlight bleeding normally shows up at 4 corner or along 4 edges of lcd frame, not in the middle like this .

 

what really annoys me with my 856w is that you see fingerprints again on the metal.

was way better with my 8530p, where you didn´t see any smudges.
and the 8530p was quite a lot lighter and "easier to carry around" when going from meeting room to meeting room.

ah well - but my 8560w is a powerhorse

 

How do you know it's a b156hw01 v.3 panel? Is it possible to upgrade the panel to a v.4 or v.7?

 

Yes, both works. I had v4 first, now v7. V7 is much better for me- color, brightness angles. With v4 I have not any problem, for v7 I need monitor driver to control brightess.

 

Did you ever find the monitor driver for the v7? Also does it require any additional cables or is it simple as unplug the old panel and swap in the v7?

I plan to order the panel from here:

B156HW01 V.7 replacement Laptop LCD Screen from $79.99 Brand-new screens (never used).

What's confusing is they show the v.7 in both matte and glossy. I thought the v.7 was glossy only. Maybe the matte version is actually the v.4


Thanks for any advice!

 

No, V4 is always mate, V7 always glossy...
You must find reliable place to buy from...
You not need any cable 100% it works...
I will find solution for driver in windows, for example ubuntu 11.10 sees panel ID and Fn+ brightness up/down works...

 

Hi,

what is about the sd-slot speed?
In the test of the 8540w at notebookcheck, the sd-slot speed was very slow!?

Could anyone test the speed of the sd-card slot with hwtest or something else, and can say something about it?

Thx.