HP Elitebook X360 G2 Review: Pricey But Definitely Worth It

Thanks for checking out my HP Elitebook X360 G2 review!

Typically speaking, business laptops are kind of boring but that’s all changing lately.

Take, for instance, the HP EliteBook x360, which is already being complicated with its name alone.

As the name implies, it borrows a lot from the Spectre line, and even though I’m non-Enterprise, I like it a lot.

Here’s why.

When it comes to technology, the EliteBook x360 is a premium machine.

In fact, it’s one of the nicest laptops I have used.

It is very similar to the Spectre line, but make no mistake, there are some core differences here with this laptop, and to be honest, a lot of them are really nice changes that I wouldn’t mind seeing in the Spectre line.

The display is a 13 inch full HD also it has a really nice panel and it has a thin bezel on the side, but definitely not the thinnest ones.

The Spectres are actually slightly thinner.

There are also bezels on the top and bottom.

Now, that’s not a big deal here on top, because you do get a 720p web camera.

It’s not a great web camera, but it does the job.

You also get dual IR lenses up there for Windows Hello and bioauthentication, which is always a nice touch.

The thicker bezels actually help when using this as a tablet.

And perhaps the killer feature of the EliteBook is going to be the HP SureView.

Have you ever been in a coffee store or on an airplane looking at a sensitive document or your bank account? Worry about onlookers? No worries.

With the full HD version there is an option for SureView, and what it does is allows you to hit the F2 button and it’s gonna partially obscure your display so that onlookers can’t do what’s called visual hacking.

They just don’t see anything. It looks white and washed out. But to you, you can, of course, continue your work.

And when it comes to the CPU, this is running an Intel Core I7 7600U.

That’s actually really interesting because the Spectre line has a 7500U.

All that means is this processor is actually clocked slightly higher both for its base frequency and turbo.

That’s actually really nice. You also get some VPro technology in there.

That’s for Intel and specifically businesses and remote management, really important stuff.

It has a really good processor, dual-core KBLA.

You get 16 gigs of RAM, 512 gigs of storage, really good performance for all of those.

You can get a SATA three drive, which will save you some money, but don’t forget the performance is not nearly as good as the PCI-E version.

Being a business laptop, they did change some of the top keys here, which is really interesting.

So you do get hang up keys for video conferencing.

Now that only works with Skype Business, and not the Skype UDP app, but still kind of interesting.

You can also mute your microphone with one touch, which is pretty helpful, but not very consumer-facing features, obviously.

This is built for the mobile office and they work very well.

The keys are also backlit, and being that these are black keys the backlighting shows very well with it.

So you get a really good contrast. If you notice on the silver Spectre, they use silver keys, and you have that issue with the backlight.

There’s also a fingerprint scanner on board as well.

Now you can use that in conjunction with the IR camera as they both work together. The fingerprint scanner’s pretty good at Synaptics.

The size is a little small, but I do like the design a lot. It looks great, but you can also feel it without having to look for it.

I found the accuracy not as good as I would prefer.

It’s kind of hit and miss, but it’s nice to have it there, and it also works with some of the HP security software.

Design

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Let’s talk about the overall design here.

It is very beautiful with an all CNC machined aluminum unibody design which is very solid with no creaks, and I have no complaints whatsoever.

You get some mirroring on the edges which looks really good.

The hinges are basically the same as the Spectre, they just look slightly different. For ports, on the left side, we have a USB type A.

That’s a 3.1 so you get power on there as well. You do have the power button which blinks on occasion as the device is in standby or charging.

You have of course the volume rockers on the side, because this does turn into a full tablet, so you’ll want to use those.

On the right side, we have of course a Micro SD card reader, a full USB type C Thunderbolt port, and I can say this does work with an EGPU.

And you have your lock slide, HDMI 1.4, so it’s not 2.0, which I wish it would use, but 1.4 will give you 4K output on there, which is really nice, and you have your second USB type-A port, also 3.1.

Security

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All right, one of the things that make this device so special of course is all the security software that’s involved, and there’s a ton of it.

HP does a lot of stuff for things like bios which secures it.

You can even use a fingerprint reader to access the bios, or even to get passed by for logins, which is really impressive stuff.

That is all done here through the HP Client Security App, which is pretty robust.

You can do things like managing your Bluetooth to turn it off or even manage your virtual card.

There’s an HP Spare Key which is another way to log into the system.

You can even override Windows Hello if you don’t prefer to use it, but even HP says Windows Hello is good enough for Enterprise and business, and they recommend using it.

Now while Enterprise security and management stuff may be kind of boring, this app is actually really interesting.

It is called HP WorkWise. It’s available on iOS, Android, and yes it will be coming to Windows 10 Mobile later.

What it does is it connects up using Bluetooth to the EliteBook and what it does is it gives you all sorts of neat security things, like for instance, if someone is tampering with your laptop, and this thing is so sensitive that it will tell you if someone is opening your laptop, powering it in, putting a USB stick into it, or even just moving the laptop.

More than that though, you can go to PC dashboard. You can look at your battery life, the core temperature of the device, how much memory is in use, and you can even go to my PC and see the full specifications of your device.

Power and Performance

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In terms of power and performance, this laptop does very well. Now, it does have a dual-core Core I7.

It’s one of the fastest on the market. The RAM is also very fast at 2133 megahertz, so that’s impressive.

It does have a Toshiba NVMESSD which is not the fastest on the market, but it gets the job done.

Now for battery, it is very good and this easily gets nine to 10 hours of usage.

Though HP quotes 16 hours, that is with video playback which is never realistic, it has a very good battery.

I do not need to bring the charger with me, and it just lasts forever. Now if you do go for the 4K option, of course, you’re going to take about a 30% hit on that battery, so keep that in mind.

The HP EliteBook is a fantastic laptop.

HP’s goal here was to make it so employees who wanted to take this home and use it as their main laptop all the time. I think they succeeded.

It’s got a great touchpad, has an awesome active pen. It’s a two in one tablet.

It weighs under three pounds and you also get very good battery life and exceptional performance.

There’s nothing not to like here, folks. It’s also Mil-spec tested for endurance and durability.

Just really awesome stuff.

I think Enterprise and business users though will be very happy with this.

You can find this laptop on Amazon.com for $1748.57, which was the cheapest place I was able to find.

 

See the Elitebook X360 Here!