Recently I upgraded from a Lenovo T560 to the HP 450 G7.
While the T560 was a terrific machine, it lacked USB-C so I couldn’t integrate it
to my USB-C Dock, it was a big heavy laptop and had an i5 processor. It was
time for an upgrade, so I got onto this HP 450 G7. Here’s the link to one very
similar on the HP website: https://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=9UR34PA&opt=&sel=NTB
There are a bunch of quite technical reviews on this laptop
and I’ll leave that to the experts to discuss – my focus is on the usability of
this device in a business environment, and how I’ve felt it’s performed. Now, I’ve
had this device for about 2 months and during that period I’ve been intensively
involved in working to ISO27001 Information Management Systems accreditation.
It’s quite a complex standard and capturing the aspects of our business where
we meet the standard, and write up the plans and procedures to meet other parts
of the standard has been quite intense. I’ve probably written around 25,000
words and fully half of them on the HP. So, let’s get into the use of this
thing and what I’ve found so far.
The price on the HP website is pretty much what I spent on mine,
so for $1950 I had some pretty high expectations. They have been met. It’s
fast, it’s light (for a 15.6” laptop) and I really like both the screen and
keyboard. I’ve really been spoilt on keyboard side of things having access to
Lenovo keyboards and my preferred keyboard the Microsoft Sculpt natural
keyboard. I’ve also gone from a Lenovo X1 to a MacBook Pro (which I hate the
keyboard on), side by side with the T560 and now onto the HP 450. It’s great –
nicely tactile, good feedback and easy on the fingers. It’s a pretty standard
layout and the keys are nicely spaced. I’ve probably made more use of the
numeric keypad than ever before too and it’s been great. Sticking with the physical
aspects of the laptop let’s talk mouse and screen.
On the T560 I like the little Lenovo mouse thing built into
the keyboard and the HP doesn’t have that. I do find though that the larger
mouse pad on the HP has a nice feel to it and a nice touch using multiple
fingers (not that I do this often). It’s precise and the feedback from it is
good. On to the monitor and I didn’t realise I purchased the touch screen
model. I’ve had touchscreens before and never really used it – generally I’ve found
them a bit gimmicky, however with the HP I’ve used it quite a lot – particularly
scrolling on the screen while I jump around on the ISO 27001 documents and the
standard itself. I actually really love this screen – I’m not sure if it’s the anti-glare
or the type of LED, but I find it easy on the eyes, particularly after a 10 hour
day, it’s nice and clear and quite big – 15.6” which is perfect. The laptop
only weighs a bit over 2KG so it’s not like the big screen makes the thing
unwieldy or unpleasant to use. In fact, I think the screen is one of my
favourite things about this laptop.
From a performance perspective this laptop packs an i7, 16GB
of RAM and a 512GB SSD. The battery lasted about 6 hours with a heap of web
browser windows open and me jumping around all over the place. I use Power BI
for some business functions and analyse some quite large datasets. The HP has been
excellent for this – although that was my expectation of a 10th
Generation i7 processor. Nonetheless it’s been very good for these larger
datasets and that’s pretty much all I’ve used it for from a heavy processing
perspective. While the HP 450 has a discrete graphics card in this
configuration, I haven’t really used it for much gaming or 3D work, so I can’t
really comment on it. It’s an NVIDIA GeForce MX130 for those of you interested.
It’s been great for watching HD videos.
Final thoughts – this was quite an expensive laptop for me
to purchase and my expectations were quite high based on the specifications of
the device. I am pleased to report that this laptop has lived up to those expectations.
From an ergonomic perspective I really enjoy using it, from a performance viewpoint
all my requirements have definitely been met. It’s reasonably portable for a
15.6” laptop and it’s been a valuable addition to the office for the work I’ve
been doing. I’ll seriously look at rolling these out for staff requiring a more
powerful laptop over the standard Lenovo L15 we’re now deploying.