HP ProBook 4425s Review

HP Smart Buy ProBook 4425s AMD Athlon II DC P320 2.1GHz/2GB/320GB/DVDSMLS/bgn/GNIC/WC/14" HD/W7P-XPP

Review Summary:

The HP ProBook 4425s offers a ton of cool features on paper but in practice it fell short in performance and battery life.

Pros

• Good design and great build quality
• Comfortable keyboard

Cons

• Lacking performance against Intel versions
• Mediocre battery life

HP ProBook 4425s Full Review

 

The ProBook 4425s is the AMD-variant of the popular small and medium business notebook from HP. Designed as a near carbon copy of its Intel-based siblings, the 4425s features a quad-core Phenom II processor with integrated ATI Radeon 4250 graphics. In this review we find out how well the AMD offering stacks up against its Intel competition.

Our HP ProBook 4425s Specifications:

• AMD Phenom II P920 Quad Core (up to 1.6GHz, 2MB L2 cache)
• Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (32-bit)
• 14.0-inch LED-backlit anti-glare HD display (1366 x 768)
• Integrated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250
• 4GB DDR3 1066MHz RAM
• 500GB 7200RPM HDD
• LightScribe DVD+/-RW Optical Drive
• Broadcom 4313 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, 1Gb LAN
• 6-Cell 47WHr Battery
• Limited 1-year standard parts and labor warranty
• Dimensions: 13.23 x 9.15 x 1.07-inches
• Weight: 5.05lbs with 6-cell battery
• Price as configured: $1,208

Build and Design
The HP ProBook 4425s has a very neat and professional look with brushed metal covers over a plastic body. The panels on this current generation of ProBook are dark copper or bronze in color and can be found on all sizes, including AMD and Intel models. Compared to the first generation models with only plastic showing on the exterior, the newer design looks great and adds strength to the notebook. The brushed metal finish is used throughout the notebook, including the screen cover, palmrest, and speaker grill. To compliment the finish, the surfaces not covered in metal are glossy black plastic, adding another touch of class to this stylish small business notebook.

Build quality is very good and a step up from the older model. The brushed metal lid gives the 4425s some much needed strength and screen protection that the plastic lid on the previous-generation ProBooks lacked. The palmrest and speaker grill show little to no flex under strong pressure, perhaps feeling stronger than the 15-inch or 17-inch siblings. The keyboard tray has some minor flex under pressure which wouldn't be a problem on the more expensive HP EliteBook models. The chassis looks and feels much nicer than the first revision ProBook series, but is just slightly behind business notebooks that use alloy as a primary component.

Users looking to quickly swap out components will be in for a bit of a shock. To access the processor, hard drive, or even the system memory, you need to fully dismantle the ProBook 4425s. On this small and medium business notebook HP opted for centralized support and maintenance, with very little work being done by the end user. In terms of looks this gives the bottom a clean appearance without any access panels, but in terms of difficultly, it adds a lot of work to swap out components. To open the system, you remove four screws underneath the battery, pop off the speaker bezel, remove four additional screws that hold the keyboard in place, slide the keyboard up. This gives you access to the system memory. To get at the hard drive, you remove three more screws that hold the palmrest in place, slide it carefully to the right to release it from its clips. Once that is removed you simply take out three more screws that hold the hard drive in place, and take it out (with four more screws holding it into its cage). To say upgrades on the ProBook are difficult or confusing is putting it lightly.

Ports and Features
Port selection on the ProBook 4425s is very nice for a small and medium business notebook, featuring three USB 2.0 ports, one eSATA/USB combo port, VGA and HDMI-out, LAN, modem, and headphone/mic jacks. The notebook also features a SDHC-card slot and ExpressCard/34 for future expansion.

Front: HDD activity light, SDHC-card slot, headphone/mic jacks

Rear: Battery

Left: Kensington Lock slot, DC-power input, VGA-out, Ethernet, HDMI-out, eSATA/USB combo port, one USB 2.0 port, ExpressCard/34 slot

Right: Two USB 2.0 ports, modem, optical drive

Screen and Speakers
The HP ProBook 4425s features a 14-inch WXGA (1366x768) resolution panel with a matte texture. The screen is LED backlit, with average color and contrast. In our test lab we measured an average contrast ratio of 149:1, with a max screen brightness of 166 nit measured at the center of the screen. Black levels were average for a business notebook and didn't show any signs of backlight bleed around the edges. We also found no dead pixels on our review unit. Color saturation was average for other business notebooks, but fell short compared to some of the newer consumer notebooks with glossy panels. In some ways you have a trade-off between nicer appearing color and contrast, and glare or reflections when comparing glossy versus matte displays. Vertical viewing angles were average, with colors starting to invert when the screen was tilted 10-15 degrees forward or back. Horizontal viewing angles were better, with colors staying true to about 50-60 degrees before the screen started to appear dark.

The ProBook 4425s features stereo speakers mounted above the keyboard, located to the left and right of the power button. For business notebook speakers they ranked slightly above average, with clear high notes and some midrange. Low-frequency tones were not present at all, but on most notebooks without a subwoofer this is common. For users wanting a slightly enhanced audio experience, the notebook features a headphone jack and digital audio out through the HDMI-out port.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The full-size keyboard on the HP ProBook 4425s is easy to type on and very comfortable for long typing sessions. Each key is relatively flat with a nice matte texture and the keys sit above a glossy black support frame. The frame surrounding the keys is quite firm thanks to the design of the chassis, which adds additional support for the keyboard. The individual key presses are quiet without loud clicking sounds as you type. The depth of each key press is excellent, though some people may dislike the flat, chicklet-style keys. Overall the spacing and layout HP chose for the 4425s is very nice for a 14-inch notebook, without feeling cramped from too many keys.

The touchpad on the newer ProBook models is a button-less Synaptics ClickPad. In our testing the touchpad worked pretty well, with great sensitivity out of the box. We did run into a few quirks if you rested your finger on the button of the touchpad where the left and right button area is defined. While the finger was resting in this area, cursor movement would be inconsistent and jittery. If you lifted your finger off the touchpad, this abnormal movement ceased and it worked fine. During normal operation the touchpad worked fine for multitouch gestures as long as you didn't hover over the bottom border of the touchpad.

Performance and Benchmarks
This AMD-powered HP ProBook 4425s comes equipped with a quad-core Phenom II P920 processor clocked at 1.6GHz. This configuration is used to match, or at least come close the performance of the Core i3 and i5 equipped ProBook models. In terms of overall system performance we were slightly let down, expecting much higher scores than what we recorded. In normal daily use the system performed pretty well once the majority of the HP-included software was uninstalled. The HP "bloatware" caused some performance lag out of the box. Windows boot times and application load times were helped by the speedy 7200RPM hard drive which comes standard.

Compared to ProBooks with Intel processors and Intel integrated graphics, the AMD Phenom II quad-core with its integrated ATI 4250 graphics fell behind in all of our synthetic performance benchmarks. Compared to the ProBook 4520s, which is very similarly configured, it had slower PCMark05, 3DMark06, and wPrime scores. We also noticed it drew more power during each test compared to the larger Intel systems. Even when stacking an AMD quad-core processor against the current generation dual-core Intel processors, it still had trouble keeping up.

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):

CrystalDiskMark storage drive performance test:

Heat and Noise
Thermal performance of the HP ProBook 4425s was pretty good under normal operating conditions. The bottom of the case and palmrest stayed cool under light operating loads, with the fan staying off or occasionally kicking on to bring fresh air through the system. Under stress we did find a few hot spots that formed, most notably where the hard drive was located, as the entire bottom is completely sealed without any cooling vents. Unless you were continuously stressing the system though, temperatures stayed well within comfortable levels.

Battery Life
The HP ProBook 4425s comes standard with a 47Wh 6-cell battery, which is the same size the 15-inch and 17-inch ProBook models are equipped with. In our past reviews the 17-inch ProBook scored 4 hours and 48 minutes and the 15-inch 4520s got 4 hours and 18 minutes. With the 4425s being a smaller 14-inch model we were expecting similar battery times, but were fairly disappointed by what we found in our tests. With the screen brightness reduced to 70%, wireless active and refreshing a webpage ever 60 seconds, and Windows set to the Balanced profile the ProBook 4425s stayed on for a mere 2 hours and 25 minutes. With similar hard drive speeds and RAM amounts, the primary difference is Intel versus AMD between these systems. If you add in higher levels of stress, or try to watch a movie the battery life drops even more. For a 14-inch notebook the battery life time on the 4425s was unacceptable with the 6-cell battery.

Conclusion
It's always nice to see more competition in the notebook market, since Intel is generally the primary game in town. The AMD-equipped HP ProBook 4425s looks great on paper with its quad-core Phenom II processor, but in testing falls behind compared to the Intel-based ProBooks. In all of our benchmarks the Phenom II fell behind, especially when it came to power consumption, with the power-hungry processor. We recorded a battery life of less than two and a half hours, which was well below the times on the Intel-based 15-inch or 17-inch ProBook models that score above four hours. Another issue is the higher price of this AMD system compared to the Intel models. Considering the drop in performance compared to the Intel systems, there is really no discount or incentive for choosing this particular AMD-based system.

In terms of design and quality, the ProBook 4425s looked and felt great. The system has a stylish appearance with its brushed metal screen lid and palmrest, and is built very well. The keyboard was comfortably to type on and looked very modern with its Chiclet design. The button-less touchpad was above average, but did have some issues if you rested a finger on the touchpad surface while navigating. Overall the ProBook 4425s would have fared much better if the performance was a bit better and the battery life was much improved.

Pros:

• Good design and great build quality
• Comfortable keyboard

Cons:

• Lacking performance against Intel versions
• Mediocre battery life

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

* Ratings averaged to produce final score