HP ProBook 4720s

Can't seem to find any users of the Probook 4720s yet, it got a nice review over at: HP ProBook 4720s Review - A Review of the HP ProBook 4720s - the viewing angles looks amazing from those pics, but I wonder if it's a trick? Any comments?

 

I saw the 4720s in person at Staples, and I was not impressed. The case was rather thick and the screen was murky and dim. I don't think it was a defect in the display model as the 4430s next to it looked the same. Viewing angles were mediocre. Hope this helps.

 

I wouldn't use those pictures to judge the viewing angles. Laptopmag is notorious for photoshopping their photos.

 

I will get a 4720s for testing in a few days, I will post a little review then.

 

Ok, I've spent a few days with the 4720s, and it's a very nice laptop, the matte screen which 17.3" is good, 1600x900 is a perfect resolution for me, viewing angles and brightness are ok, it needs a color calibration (like most laptops), but that's not a problem (I use Spyder3 Elite). For anyone interested, the fan noise is quite low most of the time, when in idle or just doing light work, the fan is bairly audible, I only got to speed up when stressing the laptop. Keyboard (chiclet type) is nice and there's no flex, I'm not too glad about the glossy around the keyboard, but as long as the screen is not glossy, I'm ok. I have no problem with the touchpad at all.

Any questions, just ask, also let me know if you need pictures.

 

Now that a week has gone by, are you still liking it? Did yours come with 32 bit Win 7 Pro installed, with OS and driver disks for XP, and a 64 bit Win 7 Pro disk? The last time I checked, HP had 64 bit Win 7 drivers for everything except the sound drivers, only 32 bit available. For a pro PC, I'm surprised it didn't come with the 64 bit Win Pro version installed. I looked at a 4720s in Staples, but the screen looked washed out and cheap. The new 17" HP DV7-4xxx series Pavilions seem to have better screens, although somewhat glossy. The vertical viewing angle is better on the Pavilions.

 

Yeah, still good, mine came with Windows 7 32bit, but I had to reinstall it with Windows XP for work, everything works. The screen is ok for office use, I would choose a matte screen anytime over a glossy.

 

You've got to give it to HP, in that they do support their business class machines. Not too many 2010 laptops come with a full XP disk, along with a disk with a full set of XP drivers. HP realizes that XP is still the enterprise OS of choice.

 

Yeah, but on this machine Windows 7 actually runs even better, don't know exactly why, I installed all the XP drivers, but sometime it lacks, which it really shouldn't.

 

I'll be deciding on whether to get a 4720s this week. I want to double check on some other models in London but the fact is 99% of them will be glossies so. . .

As a nc6320 owner I'm somewhat used to a slightly washed out screen, sadly there's little chance of finding a 4720s in a store to compare.

 

The display is ok, needs a calibration as most laptops, but it's fine for normal use.

 

I'm currently looking for a new laptop and this one has my attention, mainly because of the good battery life and anti-glare screen. I have a couple of questions I was hoping you could answer.

1) What kind of battery life do you get when surfing the web while listening to music? Please mention what kind of settings you use. (brightness etc.)

2) How noisy is the DVD/Blu-Ray drive? Can it be heard in a quiet room? What about the hard drive?
I would be using the laptop for watching films at night and my current (desktop) pc is beyond loud. A friend of mine has a MacBook Pro, which is dead silent to me, but I'm not willing to spend that much.
Samsung produces very silent laptops according to notebookcheck, but they have a glossy screen and weaker battery life.

 

1. About 3 hours at max settings.

2. Not that noisy, quite ok, of course it can be heard in a quiet room, the harddrive is silent.

 

Battery life seems perfect for me, especially considering it's a 17" notebook.
I've been doing some research and apparently a lot of i5 laptops have a problem with a whining noise and/or fan speed constantly changing during use. I'm referring to the Sony Vaio F11/F12 specifically.
I'm not sure if you are someone who notices these things easily, but my hearing is very good so I'm quite picky about noise.

Thanks for your answers!

 

I'm picky about noise too! Interesting to hear that about the F12 as that's the other unit I've got under consideration.

My current nc6320 is pretty quiet when idle or browsing. The HDD is noisier than the fan (I swapped out the stock Hitachi for a Samsung). The fan does ramp up quite a bit under load but it's by and large ok.

I'd fully expect a 17" unit to be noisier by design, so I'm factoring that in to any decision.

 

Oh, I'm picky about noise too, I actually had the Sony VAIO F for a few weeks, but returned it because it was too noisy, I now have a VAIO S which is silent in idle and light office work, the 4720s is also silent for the most part, so don't worry about that.

 

I think that's pretty much decided it for me. The F12 is a lovely looking machine but it is more than I need in terms of spec, a good few hundred £s more pricewise and seemingly not overly quiet.

Furthermore I will use the £150 HP promotional trade-in offer that runs until tomorrow. The nc6320 might just scrape that on eBay but that's frankly not worth the hassle. I don't intend to keep it as my Samsung NC10 is more than capable as backup.

I did manage to see a 4710 when in London the other day. It was on special offer, the display seemed reasonable if unspectacular. I presume the 4720s will be similar.

The only real downside I see is the placing of the headphone socket on the front meaning it will be blocked by my Kensington Easy Riser stand. I do use the jack to output to speakers. The workarounds are buy a new stand, buy one of those USB audio cards with a mini line out, or use my M-Audio Transit interface (I normally save that for special occasions ) I was mildly disappointed by the lack of firewire, then I thought when was the last time I actually used it? . . errrrmmmmm

I'll be buying this model. . .

Buy HP ProBook 4720s Notebook PC Intel Core i5-430 2.26GHz 4096MB 500GB 17.3 inch LED Backlit Anti-Glare DVD±RW SM DL (LS) WLAN Webcam BT Windows 7 Pro (ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330) WK356EA#ABU £788.98 - Oyyy.co.uk

 

Why can't we ever get such good deals? I'm still in doubt. €900 for a Samsung R780 with i5 430M and GT330M or €1074 for an HP Probook 4720s with i3 350M and 4330? €200 seems a lot for the anti-glare screen and better battery life.
Of course, if I choose the Probook I could get 3 years on site warranty for €85 ...

 

It's funny, in the UK we always think we're getting a bad deal! Especially so when we see the prices in the US and Canada!

Notebook decisions are always a tricky call and subject to the occasional buyer's remorse. If Dell didn't have a rep for trouble(s) with audio and some build quality issues then I would have gone for a Vostro 3700. Although my nc6320 has always had this intermittent freezing issue, I still felt sufficiently confident to go HP again.

Weighing up cost over spec is never easy. Heck if I had another £1000 to play with I would have gone for a 17" MacBookPro with a matte screen without a doubt.

I have to get a good few years usage out of a machine so I'd say if the screen and battery life are more important to you over the course of the machine's lifetime then go for that. If cost is dealbreaker then it's a different decision.

 

21% taxes ftw

 

Well VAT is going up here to 20% come next year. So we're all in the same boat!

 

The 4720s are among the cheapest 17" laptops with a matte screen in my country.

 

Turned up today, initial impressions are as follows. . .

Beautiful to look at, sturdy construction, total fingerprint magnet. Came with Windows 7 Pro DVD and XP3 DVD, plus some very brief documentation.

Screen is ok, brightness is fine, without doubt the blacks could be much better, but that's the price you pay for matte. Lighting is reasonably even however it suffers at some angles. I'm somewhat disappointed that the screen can only be tilted back to a certain degree. I think they could have been a little more generous with the hinge, however I think I can live with that. I'll probably adjust my regular Kensington stand or buy something new.

Colours are fine, sharpness could be a tad improved but that might be my peepers for you. I find the glossy surround midly gaze catching, sure that I'll get used to it.

Noise wise, yes it is louder that what I've had before and yes it's slightly more and at a higher pitch than I'd prefer. However it is a reasonably constant sound and as yet doesn't appear to suffer from annoying on and off cycles that I've seen people complain about with other makes and models. After I've optimized things I'll see if there's anything I can do to quieten it down a bit.

I'll get into the nitty gritty down the line. So far I'd say I'm cautiously pleased.

 

So here's some more considered thoughts just before I get into doing a clean install with an SSD this week.

I still think this is one of the best looking machines I've seen from any manufacturer. Smart and sexy but suitably understated.

In terms of overall performance, it's excellent, very smooth and responsive, with enough power to satisfy. I can see a good solid few years of use out of it. I'm looking forward to the added boost of an SSD. I'm getting used to Win 7 from XP. Still prefer the latter right now but it's less painful than expected, particularly application wise.

The screen has grown on me in some ways and disappointed me in others. I still like the brightness and I've been tweaking the colours, certainly vibrant enough. The lack of sharpness/detail and a touch of grain are evident in movie playback. It's a shame that a machine such as my Samsung NC10 netbook has a better screen than this. I guess when you are in the (limited) market for a 17" matte screen unless you've got the double the budget I had then compromises have to be made.

Sound and speakers are ok for a business machine. I've tried Cool Edit Pro on it and since that still works I'm happy! I've yet to hook it up to the various options I've got or use my M-Audio USB card, so we'll see what the drivers and latency are like.

I'm getting used to the fan, it's at a decent pitch and once the mechanical drive has gone I think I'll be pretty happy with it. It's certainly no wind machine. Not found any discernable heat issues, I haven't pushed it yet but I can't see any probs.

The port layout could be tweaked a little, it's not bad but for a desktop replacement I'd like to see the power at the back and the ethernet at the top of the left hand side. That's me being picky, it may well suit others that way.

The keyboard is good, first time for a full size one so again there's a slight learning curve, especially with the spacings. I'm a two to four fingered typist, so I'll fine my own rhythm/speed.

I'm aware the touchpad has a bad rep and I can't say I'm surprised. I tend to stick to a mouse rather than dabble in high end finger gymnastics, so it's less important to me. However if you are a slave to the pad then I can understand people's frustrations with it. It's certainly large and in the main responsive but the buttons are just plain awkward as they tend to shift the cursor around unless you're precise in your pressing. It appears style won over functionality here.

Prior to fitting the SSD I wanted to see how easy it was to access the components, this is where the machine lets itself down. HP in their ultimate wisdom have made it as troublesome as possible to get at the HDD (and memory). I won't linger on this as I've already detailed it in the main review thread. Suffice to say if you like a good screw then you're in for one helluva time!

I'll come back with some sort of update once the SSD is fitted and I've got all my main apps loaded on and fully up to speed.

 

I know most of you will use this machine for business purposes, but do any of you play games on this? I'm interested in playing Mafia II and would like to know of it's playable.
If any of you have the time, could you test the demo to see how following settings work
800*600 medium details
1280*720 everything low/off
I really should decide to buy a laptop one of these days. I've been thinking about this long enough.

 

Still happy with the 4720s, very quiet, good keyboard and ok screen (after calibration), and the price has gone further done here in Denmark.

 

Well this sucks
I was considering getting this (I'm a fan of business machines) but blacks really do need to be blacks for me.
The pixelation in the blacks also bother me...


How sturdy is the lid? I gather it has a metal lid? Is that the only place where it has metal?

How does the build quality compare to the DV8t?

 

If you calibrate the screen as I did using Spyder3 Elite, you get good blacks and an overall nice screen for most people.

The lid is sturdy, and so is the rest, it's not quite as solid as the Elitebooks, but you get what you pay for.

I haven't seen the DV8 in person, so can't comment on that...

 

IMO the screen in terms of blacks is not as good as my previous NC6320, however there isn't any major bleed thanks to the LED lighting. I would also say the blacks are not as good as the average monitor or LCD TV either. They aren't terrible but they could be better and I'm not sure any sort of calibration could alter that.

I agree the lid is sturdy, there is a bit of bend if you push the back, but it should be strong enough if you are out and about with a suitable bag.

 

The calibration does a lot to the contrast, and therefore black looks more black than before the calibration.

 

hey wii could you take a pic of the default screen and then with calibration profile to see the difference.

thanks

 

Sorry, I don't have access to one right now, as I launched them for our users, but next time I get one, I will take a pic of the calibrated screen.

 

thanks Wii.

do you know if your calibration works also for the 4520s screen?

when you watch a video is it still kinda pixelated ?

colors have good contrast and color? blacks are deeper?

thanks

 

hey, i have a little noobish problem.

i got this laptop for collage, and it came with linux. so i deleted linux and put my windows 7 and it seems i can't find a program to activate the web camera.

 

Wii,

would you mind to provide the ICC profile you made made using Spider?
Looks like HP doesn't care at all to provide ICC profiles with thier notebooks ...

Thanks!

regards
Dieter