HP EliteBook 8440w: On-the-Go Workstation
by Vivek Gowri on August 13, 2010 10:10 PM ESTHP EliteBook 8440w—Conclusion
In the mobile workstation class, there are only really three major players: Dell, Lenovo, and HP. And maybe Apple as well, if you want to consider the artistic/design side of things. In that group, the EliteBook 8440w ends up being a fairly unique product—it's the only real workstation class 14" notebook on the market.
In the sub-17" group, there are five workstation models: the 8440w, the 15.6" 8540w, the ThinkPad W510, the Precision M4500 (also a 15.6"), and the MacBook Pro 15 (if you want make a case for it as a creative workstation). The 15" models, at minimum, have GPUs based on the GT 330M—in the MBP's case, it has the GT 330M itself, while the others all have the equivalent Quadro FX 880M. The M4500 and 8540w also have the GT 335M-based Quadro FX 1800M available as an option. The W510 has a quad-core i7 standard, the M4500 has it as an option.
And it's not like the 8440w is any cheaper—as I mentioned earlier, the base W510 slightly undercuts our 8440w SKU, while the M4500 starts at $1250 and goes up from there (it's about the same price as the W510 when optioned equivalently.) The 8540w matches the 8440w spec for spec at the same price, except that it has a more powerful graphics card. There's just a lot more power under the hood of the 15" workstations for about the same money, and the 8440w's value proposition can't hold up.
The 8440w does score points for being more portable than the rest and having tons of battery life. However, with that said, it's not that much lighter. The 8440w is listed at 4.9lbs with a 6-cell battery, but with the 9-cell as reviewed, it's closer to 5.3 or 5.4lbs (no exact figure quoted by HP). The ThinkPad W510 comes in at 5.89lbs, the M4500 at 6.0, and the 8540w at 6.5lbs (all with 6-cell batteries). For both the W510 and M4500, the high capacity battery isn't as large as the 8440w's, so the weight difference with a 9-cell is less than with the 8440w. Overall, between the 8440w and the W510/M4500, you're looking at less than a 1lb difference in carrying weight. Which, when you think about it, isn't a lot to sacrifice given the amount of additional CPU and GPU horsepower you get out of the bargain, though that will all make itself felt in the battery life figures.
So really, that's what it comes down to. If absolute portability and battery life is your biggest concern in a mobile workstation, the 8440w is your only choice. And it is a fine one at that, with a great chassis and fantastic build quality. But speaking as an engineer, I can't honestly recommend it over the equally well-built and far more powerful 15" equivalents—the performance benefits outweigh the 15-20% increase in carrying weight and the reduced battery life. For a mobile user doing a lot of CAD work or engineering simulation (finite element analysis, computational fluid dynamics, thermal analysis, etc), it's important to get as much computing power as possible, and the 8440w simply doesn't have it.
Lest this feel like an overly negative conclusion, let me just say that I really enjoyed my time with the 8440w. The build quality is superlative, and after going through a bunch of consumer portables, it felt great to use such an out and out business class system. However, the specs and performance simply can't justify the $1649 pricetag when the same money can get so much more power in other notebooks. If you like the 8440w but want more potency, the shift to the 8540w comes as an easy recommendation.
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fire400 - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
I don't like it though. It doesn't seem to compare to the older HP Compaq generation of notebooks. Business class LCD's should have the best displays of any laptops available, in my opinion. You're already paying a premium, you should get premium quality on one of the most important things you're looking at most of the time... the LCD?saifikhan - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
It is sad to see that there is not even one AMD processor based Elitebook.JarredWalton - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
Sad maybe, but hardly surprising. EliteBook is a mobile workstation product, and mobile workstations tend to focus more on performance. My testing of an AMD Phenom II P920 shows it to be about on par with an i3-330M in terms of performance in heavily threaded scenarios (i.e. video encoding and 3D rendering), and in less multi-core friendly tests it's not even close (like 50% advantage to the i3-330M). In other words, a 1.6GHz quad-core AMD chip using their latest mobile architecture matches Intel's slowest dual-core + Hyper-Threading mobile part.The fastest AMD mobile quad-core is the X920 BE clocked at 2.3GHz. Going by the same figures I see with the P920, it would probably win some tests against the dual-core i7-620M, but overall it would be at best a wash. And then you can throw in the quad-core Intel chips and it's not even close anymore.
Now, AMD does provide better power figures if you compare their quad-core to Intel's mobile quad-core, but that's hardly the primary consideration in a mobile workstation. In fact, our biggest complaint with the 8440w is precisely that it doesn't offer more power, specifically in the graphics department where the 16 core FX 380M lets it down. There are some interesting AMD-based laptops coming out now, particularly with Nile and Danube platforms, but for mobile workstations the current stuff can't make a good case.
We've got a couple reviews coming soon--yes, I know I've said that before. The P920 Toshiba system review got delayed for two faulty laptops, but it was pre-production hardware. I should have a final production sample next week so I can post the full write-up. The other is perhaps the best AMD-based laptop I've ever used, a Toshiba T235D. Packing a 1.5GHz Turion II K625 and a 61Wh battery, I've actually managed to get into the 6+ battery life range. Performance is respectable as well, and the HD 4200 is still better than any current Intel IGP. It's 13.3" and costs $600, but it's the first AMD "ultraportable" (thin and light) that I can really recommend. It's a viable alternative to the old CULV, and even holds its own against Arrandale ULV.
sapiens74 - Sunday, August 15, 2010 - link
Its sturdy and made for work.Not nearly as quick as my MAC, takes almost 3 times to boot Windows 7 Ultimate, but for a Windows machine it does the job
seanleeforever - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
so.. your definition of 'quick' is booting OS.you can vastly improve that by using ssd. booting speed has almost nothing to do with CPU/GPU. my T7400 with SSD can boot up windows 7 ult in less than 20 seconds.
jaydee - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
AT has a CAD junkie on staff?!?! Can we please get a CAD workstation videocard roundup? Pretty please?
jea508 - Monday, August 16, 2010 - link
Anandtech is amazingoshogg - Tuesday, August 17, 2010 - link
I have been using business class notebooks for over 10 years - first 7 years, I was using IBM Thinkpad lines of notebooks and the last 3 "HP Compaq" and EliteBook. Both lines are fairly comparable and each one has its unique advantages over the other. One key disadvantage of HP that I find is lack of bay battery. With IBM thinkpads, the bay battery was a god-send. I could easily go over 5 hours with real heavy workload with 2 batteries. With the 3-year newer technology of HP's business notebooks, 2.5 to 3 hours is a max.I wonder why more business-class notebooks do not come with a bay battery option. I hardly ever need a CD/DVD Rom drive in my work. In fact, I can count on one hand how many times I have used the CD/DVD drive in last 2 years.
Osho
kenyee - Wednesday, August 18, 2010 - link
HP has ridiculous sized ones compared to thinkpads. I also don't think the keyboards are as good as the older T series thinkpads.And I'm looking forward to your Envy 14/15 comparison. This seems like it's a business version of the Envy. Too bad the screen is crap :-P
I just want a relatively light 14-15" laptop I can stick 8GB or more into to run VMs :-P
kfjg - Sunday, August 22, 2010 - link
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