HP EliteBook 850 Review

This premium 15.6-inch business-oriented notebook incorporates state-of-the-art technology into an 0.8-inch thin chassis with very little not to like - here's our take.

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Wow, that price is crazy. Of course the pre-config prices are a bit better. Their top end pre-config on the US site is better equipped for almost $400 less. Sadly, it still seems pricy at $1900.

 

Agreed; this notebook has a high price premium. I'd try to convince almost anyone interested in this notebook to go with a standard 15.6" business desktop replacement notebook with the same or better feature set and more power for a fraction of the price - all for being a little thicker and heavier.

 

And if you lose them on thickness they might as well go for the x1 Carbon.

Flown in by carrier pigeon.

 

To my eyes this looks like the first usable notebook since the Lenovo T420. Let's see:

1. less than 2kg
2. User replacable battery
3. User replacable HDD and mSATA support both
4. User replacable DIMM, two slots -- up to 16GB
5. TrackPoint (the cap can be replaced with a Lenovo cap)
6. Usable keyboard (like PgUp and PgDn are above each other and not besides. )
7. Decent CPU speed (still slower than my i5-2520M but not horribly slow)
8. Durable.
9. Full HD *at least* (yes, the T420 failed this too. Full HD is the bare minimum acceptable these days)

The X1 Carbon fails 2 (partially), 3, 4, 6, 7 (somewhat), 8.

Edit: aaaand I am wrong! The ZBook 14 also ticks all of these? Wow!

 

Yes the ZBook 14 is one great-looking product ...I'd like to get my hands on one for sure.

And you're right about the EliteBook 850 checking all the right boxes. It would be darn near flawless if it had a more colorful display.