HP EliteBook 850 G1

The G1 HP EliteBook 850 ($ 1,614, as tested) is a well-designed, business ultrabook future-proofed. Its easy upgradability makes it more attractive choice for IT professionals looking to buy a laptop for their company, especially if they have an IT staff that handles repairs and upgrading in-house. Some issues, such as the mediocre battery life and lack of a touch screen, to keep it from achieving a higher score, but on the whole, it will keep you happy for many business users.

Design and Features
850 G1 looks great when it sits open in front of you, but if you close the system and look at it from the side, it presents an attractive thin profile. HP has eliminated the built-in seen in the previous model's DVD drive and chassis manufactured from magnesium and aluminum, so the system meaures a little over 0.8 inches thick. At £ 4.31, probably lighter than laptop models from a few years back, but it is noticeably heavier than current rivals, such as 15-inch Toshiba Tecra Z50-A1503 (£ 3.71) and the Dell Latitude E7440 Touch (£ 3.85), our Editors Choice 'for Ultrabooks business. It features plenty of ports, including a DisplayPort, an Ethernet port, an SD Card slot, a SmartCard reader, four USB 3.0 ports, and a VGA port. It is lacking an HDMI port.

The backlit, chiclet-style keyboard is comfortable to use, and the multitouch trackpad and integrated pointing stick fast response. The trackpad supports dual-finger gestures like scrolling and right-click. The aluminum keyboard deck is wide and comfortable to use, although the rubber bumpers placed under the Windows key and the Menu key can get in the way as you prepare to type.

Keyboard with drainage channels built to deal with inadvertent spills, which helps your laptop survive the daily grind. According to HP, the 850 G1 is designed to conform to the standard spec MIL-STD-810 for durability. It is a set of standards governing the temperature resistance (both cold and heat), drop testing, and moisture intrusion. It is not as rugged as a system with port cover and a fully sealed construction, but it is likely to remain survive a busy day better than a laptop with no protective features still work.

The 15.6-inch, LED-backlit screen has a 1920-by-1, 080 resolution and an anti-glare coating. Makes the system well suitable for tasks that require a lot of real estate of your screen, such as working with spreadsheets. That said, the relatively limited viewing angle means that you need to find a comfortable position where you can look at the screen head-on. The display on the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (2013) has a higher resolution (2880 by 1880) and a wider viewing angle, making the laptop a better choice for critical visual tasks such as editing video and photos. Lacking a touch screen system, which is fine for the Windows 7 operating system is running, but it makes it potentially more useful if you upgrade to Windows 8 later through the process of recovery of the system ( Windows 8 Pro under the same license for free).

850 soldiers have some features that are very important for your IT people. First, it is Intel vPro certified and can be outfitted with a plethora of services and support options. Second, and more importantly, the bottom panel comes off system without requiring any tools, a rare thing to find in any laptop. Our review unit has one SO-DIMM slot free for more memory (up to 16GB from 8GB included). There is also a space for n M.2 solid-state drive (SSD), which may increase the installed 180GB 2.5-inch SATA SSD. M.2 is physically smaller than the old SSD MiniCard form factor and with better throughput than SSDs with mSATA interface.

You can use the laptop with the HP 2013 Ultraslim docking station, which lets you connect to a monitor, input peripherals, and other USB devices. Another great feature for IT colleagues Sure Start HP, which is a BIOS feature that protects against malware attacks. Sure Start your BIOS checks for corruption every reboot, and replace it with an IT-approved copy if there is something wrong. This feature works independently on your Windows-based security utilities.

The removable battery is not as convenient as older laptops, because the battery is under lock base, but at least it is not completely sealed like other Ultrabooks. The system has a three-year standard warranty with HP Elite support.