Review HP EliteBook 8560w Laptop and Battery Life Test

Published on February 12 2012 by batteries-company.com

The Hp 484170-001 battery EliteBook 8560W is a workstation laptop with powerful tools and components and if a recent review is anything to go by it will be a hard laptop of its kind to beat. It offers top-notch specs, great performance and the power to cope with high demands of business and should prove a bit hit with many who require something above the average mobile workstation.

Key specs and features include an Intel Core i7-2630QM 2GHz quad-core processor, 8GB of DDR3 memory, ISV-certified AMD FirePro M5950 graphics and 500GB 7,200 rpm hard drive. The EliteBook 8560W also has a 15.6-inch LED backlit display with matte finish and resolution of 1920×1280, a 720p webcam, backlit keyboard and much more besides. This PCMag review (also showing benchmark tests) gives this laptop a rating of 4 from 5 stars and plus points were noted for its robust construction, large 4.25-inch touchpad and multiple connection options. The price begins at around $1,350 and goes up to over $2,100.

For starters the design has a durable aluminum smudge-resistant finish over magnesium alloy casing and although it’s not a full rugged system it comes up to scratch with MIL-STD 810G standards for altitude, temperature, shock and vibration and is also spill-resistant. It weighs a sturdy 7.1 pounds so this is no lightweight when compared to say the Apple MacBook Pro (due to get even lighter and slimmer). However for mobile workstations the weight is not too bad at all. Dimensions are 1.5 h x 15 w by 10.2 d inches.

Backlighting on the display was noted as not being quite bright enough but was still crisp and showing vivid colors. The EliteBook 8560W keyboard has a full numeric keypad but the bright orange pointing stick in the center was said to feel stiff and without enough grip and was one of the only downsides. About the only other drawback was below-par audio. There are plenty of ports and connectors though such as USB 3.0, USB 2.0, eSATA/USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 plus audio and microphone jacks and also a media card slot. It’s easy to connect to external displays via VGA and DisplayPort and up to 5 displays can be connected and run at the same time thanks to AMD Eyefinity technology.

As well as Gigabit Ethernet you’ll also see a modem connection on the back and there’s built in 802.11n WLAN and Bluetooth 3.0 as well as a dual-layer DVD+/-RW optical drive on the right side. Hp 484784-001 battery ProtectTools also features as well as Hp 485041-003 battery Power Assistant, Hp 500 battery DayStarter, HP QuickWeb and some of the bundled software includes Microsoft Office Starter 2010 and PDF Complete. As for battery life you might not be surprised to hear that a test showed only 3 hours 30 minutes of use but then such a labor-intensive laptop was never going to go easy on the juice. In fact when compared to the battery life of other mobile workstation laptops it still did better than many. You can see a helpful comparison table of the EliteBook 8560W against other laptops in its class here.

There’s certainly a lot to impress then with the Hp 532496-541 battery EliteBook 8560W, which runs on Windows 7 Professional, and in fact PCMag’s review rounds off by saying that for the mobile workstation category this piece of kit is “clearly the laptop to choose.” For a closer look you may want to check out a video preview below this story. You’ll certainly go a long way to find a better mobile workstation laptop by the sounds of it so will you be purchasing the Hp 537626-001 battery EliteBook 8560W?