HP EliteBook 8740w Review Discussion

The HP EliteBook 8740w has been on the market for a while now, but it is still the largest and most powerful workstation in HP's current lineup of business notebooks. This massive workhorse features Intel processors, your choice of Nvidia or ATI workstation graphics and is available with HP's exclusive 17-inch "DreamColor" display. It's been a long time coming, but we finally took a closer look at this desktop replacement to see if it really is a graphic artist's best friend.

Read the full content of this Article: HP EliteBook 8740w Review

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Great review Jerry.

The 8740w comes with an HP Mobile Display Assistant, which lets you switch between gamut profiles. If you switch to the sRGB mode, this will produce 100% accurate colors and they will not be oversaturated. By default it ships with "Full" color mode enabled, which is pointless as you say since the colors are hopelessly oversaturated (fun to use sometimes though).

The backlit keyboard is known for flex. Mine came with it even tough I specifically didn't order it; I had HP replace it with the standard keyboard which is of better quality and doesn't flex.

I wonder if yours has different speakers than mine. My 8740w has positively awful speakers, I don't even use them for listening to youtube videos.

The Dreamcolor 2 panel is actually 10-bit, BTW, and supports 1 billion colors. You can enable 10-bit mode through the ATI control panel. Support for 10-bit is questionable, though.

 

Charles, thanks for catching the 8-bit/10-bit error. I was looking at the old DreamColor tech specs for the color range.

Yes, the non-backlit keyboard on the old 8730w was rock-solid so I had every reason to believe the backlit keyboard was a factor with the horrible flex/bounce in the keyboard on the 8740w.

 

@Jerry -- small typo under cons -- should say "Thick and heavy" not "Think"...

 

Not that I think any of us have bothered getting one yet, but HP does offer what amounts to an external "slice" battery (that plugs into the external battery port you mentioned). Added weight and all, naturally, but if you _really_ need more battery life while unplugged...

 

One of things I am curious about actually. Since if I did use one at work, I would like to know what the max battery life is with the Ultra slice. I am assuming it would stretch to 4 hours+ since it is a 12 cell.

What I am most curious about also is what the life would be with gaming and slice being used. I travel a alot so it would be appealing just to have one high end rig that doubles as a work laptop.

Smart to wait for the SB update but it still would be nice to know since most the 8760w won't be around till 3Q.

 

I don't have experience with HP laptops. Does anyone know if using the slice battery is hot swappable in some fashion with either a second slice or with the existing battery? Net out would be uninterrupted continuous usage via swapping batteries when needed, for as long as one wanted.

 

Very fair review, but personally I'd rate the notebook significantly higher than you did.

The 8740w is actually lighter (listed starting weight, as far as you believe that, 7.8lbs) than other directly comparible workstations (the Dell M6500, 8.4lbs or the Lenovo W701, 9.0lbs). Its only slightly thicker than the Dell (1.44" at front vs 1.35") and thinner than the Lenovo (1.60"). If there's a similarly capable mobile workstation that's thinner and lighter than the 8740w, I'd like to know about it. So while it is large and pretty heavy, I use my 8740w on my lap all the time, and I'd say that for this kind of notebook its weight and size are a pro not a con.

As far as the backlit keyboard goes, seems like HP had a lot of trouble designing it to meet ruggedness standards (it was delayed for quite a while before it finally became available) and unfortunately they did not get it right.

 

Great review!

two comments:

1) 3Dmark Vantage score seems very low to me. Mine has the similar specs (840QM instead of 820QM) and scores over 8k

2) "Thick and Heavy" is true compared to a netbook but it's actually slimmer and lighter than the direct competitors (M6500 and W70xx).

 

Didn't HP send you guys an 8530w or 8730w right before they refreshed to 8x40w? What gives? Anyway, thanks for the review. I just wish HP would give you guys a little better treatment in regards to the workstations.

For anyone who can't wait for the 8760w or really wants WUXGA, you can find all kinds of benchmarks here. There should be results for most configuration options.

Back when I had a similar config to what was reviewed (820qm+M7820, minus Dreamcolor), here is what I got.

 

I agree --- I went back and checked my scores (I have the same config as the one reviewed i7 820 cpu and M7820 gpu, but with an SSD).

My total 3DMark Vantage score was 8,250 and my 3DMark06 score was 13,154. These don't seem consistent with the ones in the review (4,763 and 8,178 respectively) unless something other than the overall score is being reported. My wprime score is pretty much identical though, so the cpu part seems fine.

 

A very good review. I of course would rate it higher, but a decent un-biased look at it.

Charles touched on everything I'd say/add/critique. However having bought this for the purpose of post processing digital photographs, I'd put more emphasis on omission of mention of the HP MDA [Mobile Display Assistant] and the critically important role it plays in managing the color gamuts of the display. All aspects of the screen (color, vividness, contrast, viewing angle, accuracy) play a leading role in ownership and use of a DC2 equipped 8740w, so complete omission of the tool provided by the manufacturer to control the screen so that it can be in compliance with the major color space standards is somewhat 'glaring' to me. I blame that tho on the reviewer being just that, a part-time owner strictly for the reason of reviewing it, thus not fully vested in what they had and all the capabilities and control of it, as an owner is much more likely to be.

I re-read the article to see if any mention of the MDA to control the screen was added, and critique of any laser-like native colors is only if one doesn't switch to one of the many pre-defined standardized color spaces ; it wasn't added but I wish it would be.

 

Totally agree with you, M8o! DC2 without MDA is similar to a high-end GPU without drivers.

 

Well, I would be sort of interested to know what's up with the gpu benchmarks in this review since they don't seem to be accurate...

 

Does HP offer this Dreamcolor panel on a rig set up for gaming?

If not, which gaming notebook has an equally comparable or better panel? Is it the Alienware/Dell RGB panel? I heard this one is better.

As if it's not already obvious, I really want a panel like this on a notebook designed for gaming.

 

See the second post in this thread to compare Dreamcolor with Dell RGB LED.

Dreamcolor is only offered on 8740w and 8540w, both of which are workstations. You can get wide gamut screens from Dell/AW and Sager/Cleveo resellers. However, these screens lack the incredible viewing angles of an IPS panel and I do not think they come with any color space management which means colors will be over saturated.

That said, the M7820 gpu offered on the 8740w games just about as well as HD5870.

 

THX ... Shiba?!
I'm a fan of the Shiba if it isn't obvious btw. Dogs Life | m8o

 

And, says the man who will have an 8540w with DC2 (see sig) to sell, soon, or not soon, but 6th delay says next week...and it has the Firepro M5800, which games about as well as, er, the HD 5770. Don't know if this would work for you, but it doesn't for me (long, long story) so it will be sold, sealed new in the box, to the highest bidder w/in 24 hrs. of when I receive it. PM welcomed.