It starts with a lid latch. Where other business laptops offer a small, groundless fasten or, worse, make we scrawl with your fingernails during a nonexistent one, a HP EliteBook 8460p ($1,239 direct) has a big, varnished symbol that unlocks a firmly latched lid. It’s a initial of your daily exposures to a 8460p’s plain construction and grand design.

We don’t contend “solid construction” lightly—like other EliteBooks, a 8460p is a business-rugged system, built to withstand troops tests for shock, vibration, dust, and heat. It’s not as inaccessible as entirely imperishable systems such as a Panasonic Toughbook CF-31 ($4,843 street, 3.5 stars) or Dell Latitude E6420 XFR ($5,612 direct, 3.5 stars), yet it’s built to shrug off a scuffs and bumps of travel—along with unconsidered glass spills, interjection to a spill-resistant keyboard and empty hole in a bottom.

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Against that, a stout construction creates a 8460p a bit bulkier and heavier than other 14-inch laptops such as a Lenovo IdeaPad U400 ($899.99 direct, 4 stars) and Dell XPS 14z ($1,299 direct, 4 stars), and it lacks a integrate of present facilities such as Intel Wireless Display (WiDi). But it’s still a handsome, useful business companion.

Design

Compared to a simple black of, say, Lenovo ThinkPads, a EliteBook 8460p is a stylish platinum-silver chunk measuring 1.3 by 13.3 by 9.1 inches (HWD) and weighing 5.4 pounds, with an aluminum lid, palm rest, and surrounding support that contains a ports on a black magnesium amalgamate base. A DisplaySafe rubber support protects a screen, that has a small LED subsequent to a webcam to irradiate a non-backlit keyboard (well, partial of a keyboard) in murky situations.

The matte-finish 14.0-inch arrangement offers 1,366 by 768 resolution. Though not a brightest or tip in contrariety that we’ve seen, it delivered good fact and color. Audio from a HP’s twin speakers—both mounted left of center, one on a front corner and one on a bottom—was shrill adequate to fill a discussion room, yet sounded flat.

The somewhat concave, island-style keys of a 8460p’s keyboard yield a easily organisation typing feel. Except for HP’s weird keyboard trademark—small adult and down arrows sandwiched between full-sized left and right arrows—the blueprint is fine, with dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys and 3 buttons during tip right that toggle Wi-Fi, audio mute, and browser launch. The last, when a mechanism is switched off, opens HP QuickWeb, that satisfies desirous surfers and e-mail checkers by bringing adult a Web browser and widgets such as continue and news headlines yet booting Windows.

The glass-topped touchpad is first-rate, with well-spoken cursor motion, tapping, and gesticulate control and not-too-stiff, not-too-noisy rodent buttons below—and above, with a latter span of buttons belonging to a indicating hang located during a intersection of a G, H, and B keys. The concave indicating hang isn’t utterly as successful as a touchpad (or Lenovo’s TrackPoints), yet should greatfully users who wish a choice of indicating devices.

Features

An old-school 56Kbps modem, along with VGA and Ethernet ports, decorates a EliteBook’s behind edge. On a right side of a framework are microphone and headphone jacks, dual USB 2.0 ports—one an eSATA/USB combo port, a other means to assign handheld devices—and a DisplayPort and Smart Card slot. On a left are dual USB 3.0 ports, a FireWire port, SD/MMC and ExpressCard slots, and a DVD±RW drive.

A advancing connector on a bottom completes a hardware connectivity roster, that lacks usually HDMI. Similarly, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth check dual of 3 boxes on a wireless selling list, with Wireless Display, as mentioned, absent. With conjunction HDMI nor WiDi available, business travelers formulation a vast display with a 8460p had improved rest on a VGA projector rather than an HDTV set.

IT managers will like a 8460p’s Core i5 vPro processor and TPM confidence chip, yet small and middle as good as vast enterprises can advantage from a best partial of a 320GB (7,200 rpm) tough drive’s program preload: HP ProtectTools, a apartment of utilities that drive we by confidence functions trimming from handling passwords to encrypting information and sanitizing (securely deleting) files. Other program found alongside Windows 7 Professional includes HP Power Assistant for handling energy profiles, Microsoft Office 2010 Starter, and a 60-day Norton Internet Security trial. HP stands behind a EliteBook with a three-year singular tools and labor warranty.

Performance

The EliteBook 8460p facilities a 2.5GHz Core i5-2520M processor and 4GB of RAM. The multiple won’t set any speed records, yet creates a HP a eager performer for a capability work for that it’s designed.

Its PCMark 7 measure of 2,065 is 200 to 300 points bashful of slugging it out with a likes of a Lenovo U400 and Gateway ID47H07u, yet a Handbrake video encoding and Photoshop CS5 picture modifying times of 1 notation 46 seconds and 3:56, respectively, are intensely rival with other Core i5-based, 14-inch laptops, yet they route a Core i7-equipped Dell XPS 14z (1:37 and 3:27, respectively).

And yet we’d be a final to advise that a bustling business traveler rubbish her time personification games, we contingency note that a Radeon HD 6470M graphics powered a HP to playable support rates during 1,024 by 768 fortitude in Crysis (38.3 fps) and Lost Planet 2 (31.3 fps). Our biggest beating in benchmark contrast was that a 8460p balked during a MobileMark 2007 battery outline test, good us to tumble behind on a DVD make-believe exam of looping a two-hour MP4 video from a system’s tough disk. The HP’s removable 62Wh battery lasted 5 hours and 1 notation with shade liughtness set during 50 percent.

Compared with a Editors’ Choice span of a Acer TravelMate 8481T-6440A and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5), a HP EliteBook 8460p is a small complicated and brief on battery life. But even with a additional weight of a semi-rugged construction and a miss of those laptops’ HDMI and WiDi, a EliteBook 8460p is a first-class business laptop. It’s attractive, with a good typing and touchpadding experience, and built with confidence in mind.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

Check out a exam scores for a HP EliteBook 8460p.

COMPARISON TABLE:
Compare a HP EliteBook 8460p with several other laptops side by side.

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