HP EliteBook 8440w: On-the-Go Workstation

HP 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.