HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation Review

HP EliteBook 8540w

Review Summary:

The HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation gives you everything you need to handle demanding projects away from your desktop.

Pros

• Great build quality
• Stylish and functional design
• Solid performance

Cons

• Custom configurations skyrocket in price
• Still no backlit keyboard option

HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation Full Review

 

The business notebook market has two types of systems; notebooks and mobile workstations. The workstation-class systems offer faster processors, better graphics options, and sometimes additional features over the regular business systems. In this review we take a look at the HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation and see how it compares to other systems we've reviewed.

Our HP EliteBook 8540w Specifications:

• Intel Core i7-620M (2.66GHz, 4MB L2 cache)
• Microsoft Genuine Windows 7 Professional (32-bit)
• 15.6-inch LED-backlit HD+ anti-glare (1600 x 900)
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M graphics 1 GB DDR3 video memory
• 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM (3GB Usable with 32-bit OS)
• 320GB Seagate 7200.4 HDD
• Intel Ultimate-N 6300 AGN WiFi, 1Gb Ethernet, Modem, and Bluetooth Connectivity
• 8-Cell 73WHr Battery (14.4V)
• Dimensions: 14.7" x 9.90" x 1.28"
• Weight: 6lbs 7.2oz
• Price as configured: $1,679 with 3-year onsite warranty

Build and Design
The HP EliteBook Mobile Workstations are very similar to their standard EliteBook counterparts. Besides the name tag, the only external feature that changes is the color of the brushed metal finish... in this case from bright silver on the standard EliteBook to gunmetal-grey on the Mobile Workstation. EliteBooks have a very stylish brushed-metal exterior that adds a splash of sophistication to what is usually a dull or boring business notebook. The metal cladding gives the notebook a bright eye-catching design, helps to hide fingerprints, and really pulls together the look that the notebook could stand up to the rigors of daily abuse. HP even went as far as putting matching trim pieces around the screen hinges, showing no design element is too small. The brushed-metal finish really flows well with the black chassis and black inlays around the keyboard and touchpad.

The EliteBook feels as hard as a rock when you first pick it up. The alloy chassis and brushed metal body panels have very little give under a strong grip. The screen cover has some mild flex but nothing we haven't seen in other business notebooks. Even with its small about of flex the screen cover does an excellent job of looking good and protecting the display housed within. The brushed metal finish resists scratching and fingerprints, keeping a pristine appearance long after most painted notebooks might be looking a bit worse for wear. Screen protection is excellent with no distortion of the LCD-panel even with strong pressure applied to the back of the cover.

When you open the notebook and start squeezing on the palmrest and surrounding panels the first thing you notice is how strong the entire chassis feels. The thin brushed-metal panels have excellent support underneath, with absolutely no flex at all under a strong grip. The keyboard has minimal flex if you squeeze it hard, showing maybe 1-2mm of movement before it stops dead like you were pressing it into a rock.

On most notebooks the strength of the lower chassis is usually overlooked, especially around the optical drive which is the widest open bay. Pressing on the edge of the opening it flexes slightly until it makes contact with the bezel of the DVD-recorder. As you move away from the edge it feels like you are trying to squeeze a wood board.

Users looking to upgrade the HP EliteBook 8540w will find it relatively easy to access some user-replaceable components. One memory slot, the hard drive, CMOS battery, and WWAN card slot are all accessible through individual compartments on the bottom of the notebook. In certain configurations the 8540w can be configured with up to 16GB of RAM using four memory slots. This only applies to systems with that amount of RAM configured from the factory, otherwise you get a system without those slots soldered to the board. In our configuration we only had two memory slots total; one located on the bottom of the chassis and under underneath the keyboard. Both slots were occupied.






Screen and Speakers
The 15.6" HD+ panel on the 8540w Mobile Workstation looks very nice compared to most of the business displays that have come through our doors. If you happen to be a graphics designer or someone who just wants a really magnificent screen, HP does over a DreamColor panel option on the 8540w. Colors saturation is excellent, better than your average TN panel. Some 8540w spec sheets even mention that this is a WVA panel, which wouldn't surprise us given how nice it looks.

We measured an average contrast ratio of 734:1, which is above average for most notebook. Peak brightness was 213nit at the center of the display, falling off to 196nit at the sides. Black levels were very good, measuring 0.32 to 0.25 nit, with no brightspots at the corners or any other backlight leakage. This screen would be perfect for anything ranging from editing photos to watching the latest HD movies. Backlight brightness is more than adequate for viewing the screen in bright office conditions but still falls short when trying to use the notebook outdoors on a sunny day. Finding shade from a tree or getting a screen hood would probably do wonders though since the panel offers an anti-reflective coating to minimize glare.

Viewing angles are above average but still fall short compared to some of the PVA or IPS panels we have seen in the past. Vertical viewing angles have a broad sweet spot of 15-20 degrees before colors start to significantly invert. Horizontal viewing angles are much better, staying true even while viewing from the far edge of the screen. Right now the only other screen that ranks higher in a similarly priced notebook is the high color gamut FHD 1080P panel found on the Lenovo ThinkPad W510 and T510.

The onboard speakers fall short when compared to most consumer notebooks of the same size but when compared to other business notebooks they are par for the course. For listening to streaming music or an online video the speakers are more than adequate, but if you want to enjoy a movie while traveling a nice set of headphones is a good investment. Users looking to connect the system to a HDTV or home stereo will be disappointed by the DisplayPort digital-video connection. On this particular notebook no digital audio device appears in the control panel, meaning that even though some DisplayPort connections can pass audio, this one won't. Another problem you will run into is the lack of DisplayPort compatibility on most consumer televisions. It is becoming more common on some computer monitors, but for the home theater your options are very limited without expensive adapters.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The HP EliteBook keyboard is designed to feel like a Chiclet-style keyboard but offer the look of a traditional keyboard. The key tops are flat with a sharp edge which drops off to reveal a surrounding border that acts as a spacer between all the keys on the keyboard. Coming from a traditional keyboard that has cupped keys the flat tops can feel off-putting at first, but it has the same learning curve as a Chiclet-style keyboard. After a few days you adapt and you produce fewer typing errors. The keyboard design is very good with a strong support-structure that resists any significant flex. Under strong pressure you can slightly bend the tray directly underneath the specific key you are pressing, but it stops once you compress it against the chassis.

The color scheme is high contrast, with bright white lettering and the solid black plastic keys as the background. Nighttime viewing is made possible through a keyboard light located on top of the display, that clicks on and off. Individual key action is smooth with mild pressure required to trigger each key. Noise is minimal at worst, making this keyboard great for typing in areas where people might not want to hear you clacking away on a term paper or report.

The EliteBook 8540w offers a moderately sized Synaptics touchpad that is easy to use and has no noticeable lag. The touchpad responds quickly to inputs and has a fast enough refresh rate where it never experiences any "cursor-trails" when quickly drawing or moving towards objects. The touchpad surface is a mildly-textured surface with a fine-matte finish that is easy to glide across even with a damp finger. The EliteBook also offers a pointing-stick interface if you chose to use that style of input. The pointing-stick interface was quick to respond to movement and didn't have any problem with movement when not in use.

One cool feature that I love about the EliteBook 8540w is the addition of a middle mouse button for the touchpad and pointing-stick. Most notebooks only include a left and right mouse button, which can be annoying if you frequently use a tab-interface. The middle mouse button when properly set in the control panel can be used as a middle-click button that lets you open links as new tabs or quickly close opened tabs without activating a context menu. The Dell Precision M4500 also includes three buttons for the touchpad and trackpoint, while the Lenovo ThinkPads keep two buttons for the touchpad and three for the trackpoint.

Ports and Features
The HP EliteBook offers a wide range of ports, including a few we have not seen on any other notebooks in for review. The 8540w offers two USB 3.0 ports which are perfect for connecting high-speed storage devices without needing a second cable to connect to an eSATA or FireWire port. In addition to the USB 3.0 ports the notebook also offers three traditional USB 2.0 ports, FireWire 400, eSATA, DisplayPort, VGA-out, and audio connections. This machine easily packs more ports into the design than we have seen on any other notebook in its category. Expansion and security features include a smart-card reader, an ExpressCard/54 slot, and a SDHC-card slot.

Performance and Benchmarks
The HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation comes equipped with a Intel Core i7-620M dual-core processor, a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M graphics, and 4GB of system memory. Some of the RAM was left unused with the 32-bit Windows 7 Professional installed instead of 64-bit, but it didn't cause a significant drop in performance as a result. We would still recommend a 64-bit operating system though if you configure your notebook with 4GB of RAM or above though.

Compared to the EliteBook 8540p with the NVIDIA NVS 5100m graphics card, the Quadro FX 880M was able to perform certain 3D duties with higher speeds. Its 3D gaming performance was also higher, but only slightly. The Quadro cards are generally tweaked more for CAD or rendering applications instead of gaming, although they can still perform fairly well in less than "productive" activities. Using SPECviewperf 10 to measure its CAD and rendering performance we measured scores in line with other workstation-class systems.

wPrime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

PCMark Vantage measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

Specviewperf 10 measures the overall CPU and graphics performance in multiple applications used for video editing, animation, and CAD manipulation (higher scores mean better prerformance):

CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test:

Heat and Noise
The HP EliteBook 8540w does a good job of handling the thermal output of its fast processor and graphics card, but compared to other notebooks we have reviewed it does run a bit loud. At a distance of 6-inches from the exhaust vent we measured the fan noise at upwards of 50dB during our stress test. Under normal daily activities fan noise isn't as loud, cycling between off and silent and roughly the same noise output as a whisper. We measured higher levels of heat output from the 8540w compared to the 8540p, but that was expected given its faster and more power hungry components. The metal cladded palmrest and keyboard sections still stayed within reasonable levels though. This is very important since the metal cladding can sometimes act as a heatsink on some notebooks and transmit more heat into your legs or wrists.

Battery Life
The HP EliteBook 8540w performed quite well running off its battery, even with its Intel Core i7 processor and NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M graphics. During our battery test with the screen brightness set to 70%, wireless active and refreshing a webpage every 60 seconds, and Windows 7 on the Balanced profile, the system consumed between 15 and 17-watts of power. The total time running off battery was 3 hours and 6 minutes, compared to 5 hours and 5 minutes on the slightly lower configured EliteBook 8540p. While this time isn't anywhere near the insane 10+ hour mark of newer ultraportable notebooks, it is still plenty of time to get through most meetings or a handful of classes in a given day.

Software
HP Power Assistant helps users realize the impact of the notebook running in various power configurations. Not only do you get the standard power profiles, time remaining figures, and power usage in watts, but you can also have it graph out what that works out to in cost per day, week, and year. You input your local cost per kWh and it estimates the costs based on current power usage. Another cool feature is you can work out how much that translates into CO2 output to estimate your carbon footprint. This looks like a fantastic tool for IT managers who need to provide total system costs to company accountants ... or for bosses who need to explain why it's important for employees to shut down their computers at the end of the day.

Conclusion
The HP EliteBook 8540w Mobile Workstation had very solid performance in our tests, combined with excellent looks and build quality, topped off with an equally impressive sub-$2,000 price-point. Right now the MSRP of $1,679 is the current going rate with sales few and far between. Compared to the standard EliteBook 8540p with a very similar configuration and performance, it's roughly $300 and change more. With the recent drop in SSDs and hybrid hard drives we were surprised to see no higher performing drives trickle down into the pre-configured models. A slightly more affordable 8540w is also offered with a Core i5 processor and ATI FirePro M5800 for $1,469 for users on a tighter budget. Overall if you are in the market for a Workstation-class notebook, the HP EliteBook series is highly recommended.

Pros:

• Great build quality
• Stylish and functional design
• Solid performance

Cons:

• Custom configurations skyrocket in price
• Still no backlit keyboard option

Individual Ratings: *
Software & Support 
Upgrade Capabilities 
Usability 
Design 
Performance 
Features 
Price/Value Rating 

* Ratings averaged to produce final score