HP Announces New EliteBook Business Notebooks PCs with AMD PRO A-Series APUs
by Brett Howse on September 29, 2015 11:00 PM EST
HP’s Elite lineup is targeted towards business and professional users, and today HP is announcing a big refresh of the lineup. One interesting twist is that HP has partnered with AMD on these devices, and will be utilizing AMD PRO A-Series processors in both their desktops and notebooks. In addition to the other features of Carrizo such as HEVC decoding, the PRO lineup is AMD’s take on Intel’s vPro technology and should fit in well with HP’s goals with these machines.
There are three new notebook models with 12.5-inch, 14-inch, and 15-inch display sizes. The MIL-Spec tested notebooks will be offered with a wide range of options, but will be powered by the AMD A12, A10, or A8 APU models and 16 GB of memory. HP will be offering accessories like fingerprint readers and LTE as well. They also offer HP’s Sure Start BIOS which will automatically correct the BIOS if it finds there is an issue – whether malicious or not. HP will also be offering a choice of operating system from Windows 10 to Windows 7, and FreeDOS 2.0 as well. The displays are all SVA panels, with (unfortunately) 1366x768 as the base option on all three laptops, with 1920x1080 optional, or the 14-inch model can also be had with 2560x1440. On the networking side, HP has gone with Broadcom for Wi-Fi, and Qualcomm’s X5 LTE model is optional.
| HP EliteBook | |||
| EliteBook 725 G3 | EliteBook 745 G3 | EliteBook 755 G3 | |
| APU | AMD PRO A12-8800B 2.1-3.4 GHz quad-core R7 GPU AMD PRO A10-8700B 1.8-3.2 GHz quad-core R6 GPU AMD PRO A8-8600B 1.6-3.0 GHz quad-core R6 GPU |
||
| Memory | 16GB DDR3L | ||
| Display | 12.5" 1366-768 SVA 1920x1080 optional Touch optional on 1080p |
14.0" 1366-768 SVA 1920x1080 and 2560x1440 optional Touch optional on 1080p |
15.6" 1366-768 SVA 1920x1080 optional Touch optional on 1080p |
| Storage | 180-240 GB M.2 SSD 500GB-1TB SATA HDD |
128-512 GB M.2 SSD up to 256 GB M.2 PCIe SSD 500GB-1TB SATA HDD |
128-512 GB M.2 SSD up to 256 GB M.2 PCIe SSD 500GB-1TB SATA HDD |
| I/O | 1 x USB Type-C 1 x DisplayPort 1 x VGA 2 x USB 3.0 SDXC RJ-45 Docking Connector |
||
| Dimensions | (mm) : 311 x 219 x 18.9 (inches) : 12.2 x 8.6 x 0.74 |
(mm) : 338 x 237 x 18.9 (inches) : 13.3 x 9.3 x 0.74 |
(mm) : 383 x 258 x 19.4 (inches) : 15.1 x 10.1 x 0.76 |
| Weight | 1.26 kg / 2.78 lbs | 1.54 kg / 3.41 lbs | 1.88 kg / 4.15 lbs |
| Battery | 44 Wh | 46 Wh | 46 Wh |
| Price | $749+ | ||
The notebooks have a nice magnesium chassis with a bit more flash than your traditional business PC. HP also includes spill-resistant keyboards, docking connectors, and RJ-45 on all models, and yes, even a VGA port which seems like it can’t ever go away.
The new models should be available in September starting at $749.
Source: HP
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
47 Comments
View All Comments
Indrek - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Considering that SVA, WVA and UWVA (Ultra-Wide Viewing Angle) have been used by HP for years to describe viewing angles, it's not much of a "jump" to conclude they mean the same thing with the latest models as well. But hey, if you want to speculate that maybe this time SVA refers to some obscure, proprietary Samsung technology, feel free.Samus - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
SVA is simple a mobile variant (power optimized) PVA technology. This makes sense for a business application since PVA inherently has very poor refresh rate, sometimes as high as 30ms. IPS has most of the benefits of PVA while reducing refresh latency to ~10ms.All of these technologies have better viewing angles and color reproduction than TN. TN is the cheapest, PVA used to be expensive but the process has matured so much its cheaper to produce than IPS, hence HP's decision to order millions of PVA panels from Samsung, who calls them SVA, probably because Samsung likes to put an S in the name of everything they make. S-Voice, SAMOLED, Galaxy "S" and so on...I'm kind of joking but not kind of joking here. Who knows, maybe Samsung renaped PVA technology just to make old look new again.
The touch panels are undoubtedly IPS, as are the 1080P panels.
http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/panel_technol...
sorter - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
http://i.imgur.com/uNMCGsY.pngOxford Guy - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
"PS has most of the benefits of PVA"Just not the better contrast. VA panels basically are never less than double or 2.5x an IPS panel in terms of contrast ratio. But, who knows if this is true for their oddball panel type.
Amandtec - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
VGA port is actually something I still need. Who would have thunk it?HW_mee - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Lots and lots of companies still have VGA only projectors.silverblue - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
DisplayPort, hmm? Not a bad looking machine; would have to try and get work to fork out for the 745 with the A12 and at least the 1080p display. :) The specs sheet appear to hint at some panels being TN with the others are listed as IPS/FFS/VA; I think 768p and 1080p are TN.http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04688021...
If HP has dumped Intel out in favour of AMD for this particular range, then AMD must be doing something right, but please, PLEASE, don't lock the CPUs to 12/15W TDP. I couldn't see any information on this.
hrrmph - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Sounds like they cheaped out going with AMD. I'm guessing these will run either hot or slow or noisy... or maybe all three.Glad to see them keeping telephony SIM card slots, and even more glad to see them going with LTE.
But, where is the 17" 4K screen model so I can finally retire my circa 2006 17" 1200P machine?
medi03 - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
You should probably check an article about carrizo:http://www.anandtech.com/show/9319/amd-launches-ca...
DanNeely - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
AMD's mobile chips make more sense as a budget gaming platform. 99% of office workers are CPU bound and 99% of the time mass market software is bound by single threaded performance; Intel crushes AMD there. (Hopefully Zen will change things in a year.)