HP EliteBook 2570p
Although chunky, the impressive performance and flexibility of this 12.5-inch laptop would make the hardened business road warrior happy.
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| The Good |
Fully featured business laptop Screen can be flipped to lie flat, parallel with body 3G capability Good battery life |
|---|---|
| The Bad |
Features necessitate a chunky design |
"Chunky!" was the first thought that entered our brains upon sighting the 2570p. Looking more like Panasonic's Toughbooks than the recent rash of ultrathins, the newest EliteBook's height got us momentarily excited that there might be decent graphics in there. Sadly, no; we still only have the standard HD Graphics 4000.
Connectivity
- USB 3.0: 2
- USB 2.0: 1
- Optical: DVD±RW
- Video: DisplayPort, VGA
- Ethernet: Gigabit
- Wireless: Dual-channel 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, WWAN
The reason for the height is simply the business target market, as a mix of legacy and new connectivity dots the sides. Despite wielding the very strange screen size of 12.5 inches, it's packing heat: a full-sized tray-loading DVD drive, gigabit Ethernet, 56k modem, secure card slot and thumb scanner, a docking connector, a combined USB 3.0/eSATA slot, stand-alone USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, VGA and DisplayPort connectors, an SD card reader, a headset jack and an ExpressCard 34 slot. There's even a SIM slot under the battery, and Bluetooth 4.0 is along for the ride, as well as 2.4 and 5GHz 802.11n.
Specs aren't at the extreme high end, but the 2570p is no slouch, either. A Core i7 3520M @ 2.9GHz sits inside, with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD supplied by Micron.
As tends to be the case with old-school business laptops, there are buttons both above and below the Synaptics touch pad, with a track stick in the middle of the keyboard.
The 1366x768 matte screen is passable, although its ability to lie parallel with the body of the laptop makes finding a comfortable viewing angle significantly easier than usual.
Application performance
Choose a benchmark: Handbrake | iTunes | Photoshop | Multimedia
It's hard to pick out competitors to match the EliteBook in terms of both size and power, as we simply haven't reviewed anything like it. In an attempt to frame the performance, we've pulled out a mid-level ultrabook, Sony's 11.6-inch T series, and Asus' top-specced ultrabook, the UX31A.
Despite featuring a dual-core processor like the others, having a non-ULV part makes a world of difference, with the EliteBook taking pole position each time.
Battery life
HP continues to show that it does well in the battery stakes as a brand.
Conclusion
The EliteBook 2570p may be chunky, but with good reason — the business market it's aimed at requires all the ports it can get, and a certain level of ruggedness. Add to this the impressive performance of the 12.5-inch laptop, and you have a laptop that would make the hardened business road warrior happy.
Latest comments (Add your comment)
We haven't really reviewed much in the same market segment as the EliteBook except for a ToughBook from last year, so picking comparison items is harder than usual.
Here we focused on similar screen size rather than cost, and while we have quite a few things that we have tested, nothing within the history of our new benchmarks quite matches the EliteBook's niche.
I guess if/when the Vaio S13P turns up you'll have this to compare it to.
Elitebook goes up against the Thinkpad, Latitude, Protege/Tecra(?), Travelmate, Some Lifebooks and anythng else with a business platform in it.
At 12.5 obviously its meant as a X230 competitor.
Lenovo have removed eSATA from some new 2012 Thinkpads
Sony adding a "TPM, a fingerprint reader and a hard drive accelerometer." does not automatically make it fleet/enterprise ready, it just makes it more BYOD/IT friendly. There are enthusiast ands entry level desktop motherboards tha even have TPM sockets or even the module onboard
Traditionally the pro spec list has gone
rugged casing with spill protection
Trackpoint
gigabit ethernet
additional USB
TPM/Finger/Smartcard
Expansion IO eg expresscard
Hardware wifi switch
Dual band wifi wih WWAN option
high res screens with camera being optional
optional GPUs for ISV certfication
biz grade video output eg VGA with screw holes and more recently displayport , no HDMI
Professional edition OS
standardised chargers
dock options
chassis largely field serviceble and replaceable
and more recently a managed chipset which in the case of 3rd gen is 'cheif river'
In my on experience sony units always have some qurks wether its on the hardware side such as card readers or software such as requiring OEM drivers. I had a 2007 C2D Vaio that didnt even have a native SD Card slot. It had a native Memorystick IIRC and the multi card adapter was a propertiary cardbus or expresscard thing which was missing.
Sony has tried to accomodate business eg the old VGN and the Z series that replaced it but even those do have a consumer element to them which Lenovo only now is recogising.
HP have never had this crossover issue and have kept their lines seperate for years and not upsetting their segments.