HP EliteBook 2170p Ultraportable Review: Business Class, But Business Savvy?
by Dustin Sklavos on November 30, 2012 12:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Systems
- HP
- EliteBook
- Ivy Bridge
- Laptops
Conclusion: Mixing the Bag
Expectations are strange things. As reviewers we try to be unbiased, but we aren't really immune to being excited about or nervous about a product coming in for review. Consequently, a promising product that turns out to be nearly everything you hoped for can get a fairly glowing review, but a promising product that falls short of expectations can quickly turn into a diplomatic exercise. The surprisingly decent Acer Aspire V5-171 and the HP EliteBook 2170p are two notebooks in the same form factor and performance profile, but they're addressing two very different markets. One of these is better equipped to compromise than the other.
Where HP's EliteBook 2170p generally excels is in durability and flexibility. HP includes all the ports you could really need in an ultraportable, and they back it up with a reasonably solid chassis. It's not quite as firm as the other notebooks in their EliteBook lineup, but that owes to the smaller form factor and generally lighter body. The keyboard is pleasant to use, and though the surface space is limited, the touchpad at least has a comfortable feel to it. I'll almost never turn down a matte finish on a display, either.
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Unfortunately, things go awry when you get down to brass tacks. While HP's support page is actually excellent, featuring a single executable that houses all the drivers for the notebook, performance in practice is less pleasant due to the sluggish mechanical hard drive and lack of at least an SSD cache. Battery life is also stunningly poor with the 4-cell battery. And while I like the aesthetic HP is using for their enterprise notebooks right now, it's utterly ill-suited to an ultraportable like this. This is an ultrabook that's had the fat trimmed off the sides and reattached to the bottom. I'm not talking about weight, either, but actual bulk. The 2170p could and should have been thinner.
I don't think the price tag on the 2170p is that terrible provided the 25% off eCoupon is in place, but I have a hard time really recommending this notebook regardless. That's rough, because HP isn't presently offering a solid alternative to it. The Folio 13 was a pretty solid ultrabook when it was available, but their new Folio is a 14" model and half a pound heavier. What we end up with is the only 11.6" business class notebook that showed up to the party, so if you need something small for business, you're really looking at either the 2170p or going a bit bigger for Dell's XPS 13. The 2170p isn't a bad notebook and the price is reasonable, but a hungry competitor could very easily come in and snatch this market out from under HP if they're not careful.
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jonjonjonj - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
"Insert" (destroyer of worlds)i pop the insert key off of every keyboard i have ever owned and stick some folded up paper under it and pop it back on. no more word destroying for me! i also love how you slap the word business class on something and charge more for it. no wonder companies love serving enterprises.
arthur449 - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Thanks for the laugh.There's nothing like typing a few sentences while glancing at documentation to the side and realizing that Insert has been happily gobbling up your words.
This seems like a lot to pay for a laptop with good cooling.
kenyee - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
An HP Elite used to mean a nice high-res IPS screen, 4 memory slots, and a fast graphics chip :-PThis is like a jewelry laptop...pretty to look at (not even that pretty w/o a hires screen) but not useful for regular work :-)
policeman0077 - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
fit a 1600*900 panel in it....Penti - Friday, November 30, 2012 - link
Maybe it's not that bad, it's an ultraportable with two damn SO-DIMM's! In a small formfactor, that's pretty sweet in of it self. I don't like the trend with like one soldered channel plus one DIMM. Ultrabooks aren't very good here.Costs a lot customized though. Good to see business/corporate geared things though. You can even have it (with Core i5-3427U at least) vPro enabled, and it has DisplayPort, docking ports etc. I guess you could always buy if using it as a personal computer for yourself at about 1000 USD and put in another RAM-stick and change out the HDD to an SSD and get a decent machine. How would this with 8GB SO-DIMM, 250GB SSD for 1300 compete against the ultrbooks?
XnoX - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
Also, what the review can't tell you is the actual price an enterprise would pay for these (usually around 60% of listed price).Penti - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
Of course and it's about 1000 USD preconfigured with a 48Wh battery where this review model is only using a 30Wh battery (i.e. smaller than a Surface RT). Custom config for an large enterprise would obviously come down too. Simply because they want to win as a supplier. You already have a 25% rebate at HP to begin with with customized machines, so for an large corp the price isn't ridiculous and is less than 2000 with SSD, 8GB RAM and i7 cpu. A Dell or some other brand might be a better fit for many though.PR0927 - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
I'm confused why this article doesn't say what's so obvious - that this laptop is an utter PoS and isn't worth the cost, by any means.Frankly the conclusion is WAY too kind.
There is literally not a single good thing about this laptop compared to its competition. Price, screen, form factor, specs, battery life - you name it, it sucks. Hard.
ACSK - Saturday, December 1, 2012 - link
I deal with 100-1000s of notebooks on a monthly basis, and by far and away HP has the highest fail rate (has been that way since maybe 06 or 07?). I wouldn't buy this if it was netbook priced. Dell's notebook reliability is actually really good (do seem to have some power / battery issues on current models), and Lenovo's is also fairly good. But for ultra-compact notebooks, I'd recommend people look at Panasonic's J10. Fujitsu's T580 or Q702 are also pretty decent - I haven't had personal experience with them, but I've never seen high fail-rates with Fujitsu's in the past or currently.Beenthere - Sunday, December 2, 2012 - link
In the opening this line makes no sense at all:"...The essential gap that's materialized has been between the fast decaying netbook market (its death spurred on by Intel's Atom coupled with the high price of Brazos), ..."
When did Brazos become expensive? They are dirt cheap and sell by the MILLIONS as a result.
Secondly why would ANYONE buy this review PC when they could have a Trinity 17w CPU powered 11" that would embarrass this Intel powered mini and it would cost hundreds less? The only people who would buy these types of over-priced, under performing laptops are people too lazy to educate themselves.
There certainly is a market niche for 11" minis but they will be AMD powered if people do anything with them other than word processing.