HP‘s newest mobile workstation, the HP EliteBook 8560w ($1,579 direct), proves that there’s just no replacement for a fully featured workstation laptop. Plenty of professionals can get by with a standard business laptop, but engineers, architects, and digital artists quickly find that run-of-the-mill just doesn’t cut it. Sometimes you need better, more powerful tools. The HP EliteBook 8560w is packed to the gills with powerful components like a quad-core processor, ISV-certified graphics, and everything you need to keep a system safe and secure, and it takes the top spot among mobile workstations as our new Editors’ Choice.
Design
The EliteBook 8560w has HP‘s DuraCase, a durable aluminum skin covering a magnesium alloy chassis, and featuring a smudge-resistant finish. The chiseled good looks of the gunmetal grey belie the fact that this system is built tough, meeting MIL-STD 810G standards for shock, vibration, temperature, and altitude—the only laptops with more durability are fully rugged systems like the Dell Latitude E6420 XFR ($5,612 direct, 3.5 stars). The EliteBook 8560w is also spill-resistant, complete with a drain in the bottom of the chassis to remove any potentially damaging liquids.
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The laptop measures 1.5 by 15 by 10.2 inches (HWD) and weighs 7.1 pounds—significantly thicker and heavier than a top-of-the-line consumer laptop like the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (Late 2011 Refresh) ($1,799 direct, 4 stars), which weighs only 5.2 pounds and is 0.94 inch thick. Compared with other mobile workstations, however, it’s a featherweight—the Editors’ Choice Lenovo ThinkPad W700 ($4240 direct, 4.5 stars) tipped the scales at nine pounds.
The lid is covered with aluminum, with a hairline brushed finish radiating out in concentric circles from the blue-white glowing HP logo in the center of the lid. The lid is attached with a beefy-looking metal hinge that runs most of the laptop’s length. The hinge holds the screen steady, with little to no flexing even when pressure is put on the lid. Just above the screen, HP includes a 720p webcam. The 15.6-inch widescreen display is no joke either, with 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, LED backlighting, and a matte finish. The backlighting could be just a bit brighter, but it still offered lively colors, deep blacks, and crisp details. The accompanying SRS Premium Sound produces passable audio, but when I turned up the speakers to enjoy some Jimi Hendrix, the sound thinned out at high volume.
The EliteBook 8560w has a full-sized keyboard, with black tile keys and a full numeric pad. The whole thing is backlit, with bright white LEDs and very little light leakage. In the center of the keyboard is a bright orange pointing stick, similar to that seen on the Lenovo W700, but with a bumpy concave surface instead of a textured, rounded nub. Made of a harder rubber, the stick tended to be rather stiff and didn’t adequately grip my fingertip during use, making it one of the few details that fell flat. The touchpad, on the other hand, is a pleasure to use. The glass-surfaced touchpad is 4.25 inches wide. There are three buttons (right, left and a center scrolling button), with a set below the touchpad and above for use with the pointing stick.
Features
The EliteBook 8560w bristles with ports and connectors, with connections for USB 3.0, USB 2.0, eSATA/USB 2.0, and FireWire 400, along with jacks for headphones and microphone and a media-card slot on the front. Connecting to an external monitor or projector is simple with the inclusion of both VGA and a full-sized DisplayPort, and with AMD’s Eyefinity technology, you can connect and run up to five displays at once. You’ll also find an ExpressCard/54 slot for expanding your hardware capabilities and a case-lock slot that lets you lock the whole thing down when needed.
On the right of the laptop you’ll find a dual-layer DVD+-RW optical drive. On the back of the laptop, in addition to Gigabit Ethernet, you’ll find a modem connection. The 56Kbps modem might be a bit of a throwback, but the built-in 802.11n WLAN worked just fine in our tests, and Bluetooth 3.0 lets you sync your wireless peripherals with ease.
Internally, you’ll find a 500GB 7,200-rpm hard drive, along with an embedded TPM security chip, a smart card reader, and HP ProtectTools. The last is a suite of tools designed to provide IT-friendly security, with everything from drive encryption and credential management to facial recognition and remote lock-down tools should a laptop be lost or stolen. Intel vPro provides remote IT assistance, even over corporate wireless networks or outside corporate firewalls through a wired LAN connection. It allows everything from maintenance and management to security (such as wiping a drive full of sensitive information) remotely.
HP provides plenty of other tools as well, from HP Power Assistant, which lets you manage your power usage, to HP DayStarter, which displays your calendar and battery level during boot-up, and HP QuickWeb, which gives you near-instant Web access without having to wait for the system to boot up. Other bundled software includes Microsoft Office Starter 2010, Roxio MyDVD, PDF Complete, and a 60-day trial subscription to Norton Internet Security. HP covers the EliteBook 8560w with a three-year warranty that offers not only parts and labor coverage, but three years of labor on-site.