HP’s EliteBook 2530p is part of a small group of elite ultraportable notebooks aimed at high-demand users who want a full-featured notebook at a minimal weight. Systems like the 2530p, and the ThinkPad X200 (or the X301), Panasonic Toughbook W8, and a few others cater to the road warrior segment that needs all the features and solid performance and are willing to pay for it. The 2530p manages to separate itself from the even this select crowd in two ways: its rugged EliteBook build and the inclusion of an optical drive.
HP’s EliteBooks are high-end business notebooks gunning directly for Lenovo’s ThinkPads. Ruggedness is very important for these systems but HP also makes sure to keep performance and battery life up to par as well. The 2530p is the most portable of the bunch, featuring a 12.1-inch display and a starting weight of 3.2lbs. The next model in the line is the 6930p, a 14-inch notebook that has the 2530p beat in battery life but not mobility. With a starting price of about $1500 the 2530p is competitive in it’s class, but the legions of people being drawn over to consumer ultraportables won’t necessarily be drawn to towards it. That noted, if you are looking for a small system with enough power to multitask, mobile broadband, lots of security/enterprise features, an optical drive, and the battery life to get you through the day, it’s one of just a handful of options currently available.
The 2530p is a highly configurable laptop, which means there is a lot of variance as concerning the components a system will ship with as well as the final price. Our test system featured an Intel Core 2 Duo L9400 1.86GHz low-voltage processor, 3GB of RAM, an 80GB Intel SSD, a DVD burner, and Windows XP SP3. It’s not the cheapest build, but it’s a very solid one, especially considering the use of the SSD. The system could have also shipped with a standard hard drive (for example, a 120GB, 2.5-inch model), Windows Vista, and the big change would have been the use of an ultra low-voltage SSD instead of a low-voltage model.
The laptop may be small, but it has a full selection of external features including: ExpressCard, SD card reader, Firewire, mic/headphone, two USB ports (one is powered), a docking station connector, VGA-out, ethernet, modem, and a DVD burner. There is also a webcam and a pop-out light above to the display which is very much reminiscent of the same feature on a ThinkPad.
Given the fact that the 2530p has been on the market for some time now, rather than get bogged down with details, let’s jump right into using the system. The verdict is that the 2530p is a highly usable ultraportable and one of the best in its class. HP clearly put a lot of work into doing the fundamentals well–both the keyboard and touchpad are solid–and then tweaking the experience with extras, like a a touch-sensitive strip above the keyboard (which also functions well) for volume as well as other often used frequently used controls.
While the EliteBook 2530p could be lighter is it built extremely well and every component, from the brushed aluminum LCD lid to the bottom of the chassis feels like the system was built with the road warrior in mind. It’s worth noting that the excess weight of the system comes largely from the fact that the test unit was running an extended battery. A bit of extra bulk and having the rear of the notebook propped up a bit were the downsides of this selection, but the upside was a fantastic battery life. The 9-cell (83 WHr) battery means that the 2530p won’t see it’s minimum weight (3.2 pounds) but it can do incredible things–like stand up to a cross-country flight, using WiFi, watching occasional video, with time to spare. Expect to see run times close to 8 hours with the 9-cell battery. Most people seem to be reporting times around 6 hours for the 6-cell battery.
What’s worth knowing about the HP EliteBook 2530p is that HP set out to design a system that they could put head-to-head with the ThinkPad X200. Of course, this might not have been their explicit goal, but they effectively wanted a industry-leading enterprise-ready ultraportable with more than enough power, an all-day battery life, and a sturdy build. Then, for good measure, they threw in an optical drive, and in the case of our test model, an 80GB Intel SSD, to really set it apart. And, as you’ve probably ascertained, they were very successful–the EliteBook 2530p is best business ultraportable on the market right now. This is not to say that it is light years ahead of fine products like the X200 or the Toughbook W8 but right now a 2530p, properly outfitted to an individual user’s needs is almost impossible to beat.
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