Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the HP EliteBook 850 G8

The EliteBook series from HP has been a big success for the brand, and they are pretty proud of it. The premium business notebook niche is full of rich consumers, who value stability and security, two things that HP focuses on adamantly.

The EliteBook 850 G8 brings the best of Intel’s ULV series, better known as the Tiger Lake U-series, with the Core i7-1185G7, which supports vPro, being the top choice that you can get. You also get many security features, such as a face recognition sensor and a Patch Assistant, which makes keeping your notebook up to date an effortless procedure.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the HP EliteBook 850 G8.

HP EliteBook 850 G8: Full Specs / In-depth Review


4 reasons to BUY the HP EliteBook 850 G8

1. Design and build quality

The laptop uses premium materials all around, with both the lid and body being made entirely of magnesium and aluminum. The lid and base feel really sturdy, which is expected from a laptop this expensive. It is also quite lightweight, thanks to the all-metal construction, while allows for thinner sheets of material, minimizing the weight and thickness of the laptop. The weight and height stand at 1.68 kg and 19.2 mm, respectively.

In terms of comfort, the lid opens easily with a single hand, which shows the smoothness of the hinges. Opening the lid reveals slim bezels along with an HD webcam with a face recognition sensor and a Privacy Shutter.


2. Battery life

 


3. Upgradeability

We are happy to report that both the RAM and the storage are upgradeable on this notebook. There are two SODIMM RAM slots, which can house up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM running in dual-channel mode, in total, which you can access by removing the metal bracket. For the storage, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot for future SSD upgrades.

Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows exactly how to safely access both the SODIMM and SSD slots.


4. Input Devices

The keyboard and touchpad combo here is on a very good level. First of all, the base is super sturdy and while there is some deck flex, it’s not something that you should worry about. The keyboard has long key travel and clicky feedback, which ensures a pleasant typing experience. You can also see that the keyboard has a fully-fledged Numpad and a Track point. The touchpad has two physical buttons, which seem to be endangered species nowadays. It also gets a glass cover, which allows for smooth gliding and accurate tracking. The top grill houses a set of Bang & Olufsen speakers.


1 reason NOT to buy the HP EliteBook 850 G8

1. Display quality

The laptop offers two 15.6-inch IPS panels, the first of which comes in a Full HD resolution, while the second one bumps that up to 4K. Our laptop came with the 4K display, which excited us a lot. The screen had comfortable viewing angles, a max brightness of 423 nits in the middle of the screen, 389 nits as an average across the entire area of the display, and a maximum deviation of 12%. The contrast ratio is very high, sitting at 1700:1. However, the panel performed poorly in a uniformity perspective, having uneven brightness, making it difficult to recommend when it comes to color-sensitive work. Furthermore, the panel covers 93% of the sRGB color gamut.

The color accuracy on the display improved significantly once we applied our Design and Gaming profile, reaching a dE value of 1.1, which is right within the standard. Here are the results of our color accuracy test with both the factory settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile applied (right).


Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for HP EliteBook 850 G8 configurations with 15.6″ UHD IPS AUO AUO9890.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


All HP EliteBook 850 G8 configurations:

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