HP ProBook 450 G6 review – fixing the flaws of the last generation

We are starting to fill our agenda with 2019 ProBook 400 devices. After we tested the 14-inch version not while ago, now we have the ProBook 450 G6 in our office. It is not a very drastic change comparing it to the older Gen. 5 devices. In this case, it is not necessarily a bad thing, of course.

Naturally, it features the latest and greatest from Intel’s ULV series. In fact, you can choose (probably depending on the region you live in) from a pretty wide Whiskey Lake spectrum – a Celeron, a Pentium, Core iX devices CPUs but more on that later.

Interestingly HP has left the 768p TN panel option available, although we doubt that anyone is going for this version of the laptop, especially given the fact that the 1080p IPS version is not all that more expensive at all. This is one of the main changes, however, on the other side, some things remain unchanged – for example – the keyboard. Without further ado let’s get to the review, shall we?

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-probook-450-g6/

Contents


Specs Sheet

HP ProBook 450 G6 Tabella delle specifiche tecniche

Acer
Not available
Visualizza
15.6”, Full HD (1920 x 1080), IPS
HDD/SSD
256GB SSD
Slot M.2
1x 2280 M.2 NVMe slot Vedi foto
RAM
8GB DDR4, 2400 MHz
Dimensioni
365 x 257 x 19 mm (14.37" x 10.12" x 0.75")
Peso
2.00 kg (4.4 lbs)
Materiale del corpo
Plastic / Polycarbonate, Aluminum
Porte e connettività
  • 1x USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), DisplayPort, HDMI
  • 3x USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI 1.4b
  • Lettore di schede SD, SDHC, SDXC
  • Ethernet LAN Gigabit Ethernet
  • Wi-Fi 802.11ac (2x2)
  • Bluetooth
  • Jack audio 3.5mm audio jack
Caratteristiche
  • Lettore di impronte digitali
  • Telecamera web HD 720p
  • Tastiera retroilluminata
  • Microfono Single digital microphone
  • Unità ottica
  • HP Premium Spill-resistant Keyboard

What’s in the box?

In our case, we got the laptop paired with a regular barrel plug-styled adapter with a rated power output of 65W. However, we heard that this laptop is offered with Type-C charging as well, so props for that, HP.


Design and construction

Once again, there is an aluminum and plastic combo in the construction materials. However, we see a more modern looking device, now that they decided to paint the base of the device in the same color as the outside. Additionally, it weighs 2 kilos (4.4 lbs) and has a 19 mm profile – all in all, a slim and relatively light 15-inch business device.

Its lid is effortless to open with a single hand, and there is not too much of a bend when a torsion pressure is applied. Here, HP offers the option of IR face recognition system, which (if it is the same as the one on EliteBook 1050 G1) should be very fast.

As we mentioned, the keyboard is exactly the same as the one on the ProBook 450 G5, meaning no backlight whatsoever, shallow keystroke, but clicky feedback. Slightly below it, there is an averagely sized touchpad, which is accurate and very responsive – quite the contrary to the firmware mess of yesteryear. Moreover, as it is often to be seen these days, there is a fingerprint reader on the right side of the base.

HP has continued placing the speakers above the keyboard. This is always better since it’s a lot more difficult to cover them when the device is on your lap or on the bedsheets.

Once again, the breathing spot is simplistic in the middle of the bottom plate, while the hot air blows on the left side of the laptop – tough luck left-handers.

Ports

The aforesaid exhaust grill is flanked by a USB Type-A 2.0 connector and an SSD card reader on the left, while the right houses the charging plug, USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) connector with Power delivery and DisplayPort connection (no Thunderbolt), an RJ-45 connector, HDMI 1.4b port, two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports and headphone jack.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

If you’ve read our HP ProBook 440 G6 review, you should expect exactly the same procedure of getting inside this device. There are no more than seven Phillips head screws and pretty tight clips around it. Keep in mind that the easiest way to get inside this laptop is from the back.

After we open the laptop we see a lot of free space. In fact, it is so much, that HP needed to put a passthrough PCB in order to connect the battery to the motherboard. Otherwise said – exactly the same design as the ProBook 440 G6. Well… perhaps just beside the cooling, as there are two (instead of one) heat pipes, running directly from the CPU towards the heatsink. We should note that the heat pipes are extremely long running almost through 70% of the length of the laptop, and then making a sharp 90-degree turn.

In addition to that, there are two RAM DIMMs, covered by a plastic protective sleeve. Again, the type of memory is DDR4 with a maximum speed of 2667 MHz and topping at 32 GB.

Its storage options include an M.2 slot with NVMe support and a SATA connector, just on the left to the battery.

Speaking of the battery, in place is the exact RE03XL packing 45Wh worth of electrons. We expect the longevity on battery power to take a hit, compared to the 14-inch version, since the screen real estate is quite a lot bigger.


Display quality

HP ProBook 450 G6 is equipped with a Full HD IPS panel with a model number AUO AUO23ED. Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 142 ppi, and a pitch of 0.18 х 0.18 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 60cm (24″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

ProBook 450 G6 has comfortable viewing angles. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

We measured a maximum brightness of 274 nits in the middle of the screen and 258 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6600K – almost matching the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is even warmer – 6440K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color sensitive work. The contrast ratio is great – 1360:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows HP ProBook 450 G6’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers only 53% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of HP ProBook 450 G6 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 32 ms.


PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Thankfully, HP ProBook 450 G6’s display is free of the harmful PWM across all brightness levels, making it comfortable for your eyes in extended periods of use.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Conclusion

This display has an IPS panel, which ensures a high contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles. In addition to that, the maximum brightness is not too bad and it doesn’t flicker at any brightness level. As a disadvantage can be considered the pretty modest color coverage.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for HP ProBook 450 G6 configurations with 15.6″ FHD IPS AUO AUO23ED.

*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.

Oltre a ricevere profili efficienti e rispettosi della salute, comprando i prodotti di LaptopMedia sostenete anche lo sviluppo dei nostri laboratori, dove testiamo i dispositivi per produrre le recensioni più obiettive possibili.

Lavoro in ufficio

Lavoro in ufficio dovrebbe essere usato soprattutto dagli utenti che passano la maggior parte del tempo a guardare pezzi di testo, tabelle o semplicemente a navigare. Questo profilo mira a fornire una migliore distinzione e chiarezza mantenendo una curva gamma piatta (2.20), una temperatura di colore nativa e colori percettivamente accurati.

Design e gioco

Questo profilo è rivolto ai designer che lavorano professionalmente con i colori, e anche per giochi e film. Design and Gaming porta i pannelli di visualizzazione ai loro limiti, rendendoli il più accurati possibile nello standard sRGB IEC61966-2-1 per Web e HDTV, al punto di bianco D65.

Salute-Guardia

Salute-Guardia elimina la nociva Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) e riduce la luce blu negativa che colpisce i nostri occhi e il nostro corpo. Essendo personalizzato per ogni pannello, riesce a mantenere i colori percettivamente accurati. Salute-Guardia simula la carta, quindi la pressione sugli occhi è notevolmente ridotta.

Ottenete tutti e 3 i profili con il 33% di sconto


Sound

HP ProBook 450 G6 produces a good quality sound. It’s low and mid-range frequencies have some deviations in the clarity, while the highs see a surge, which results in a realively loud volume.


Drivers

You can get full access to all of the drivers and utilities for the HP ProBook 450 G6 here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-probook-450-g6-notebook-pc/23201167

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. Here we have basically the same 45Wh battery pack as the 14-inch device.

Web surfing times were around 8 hours and 10 minutes, while the video playback is slightly more – 8 hours and a half. As for the gaming, the UHD 620 was able to get around two hours and a half on battery power.


CPU options

HP ProBook 450 G6 comes with a huge range of Whiskey Lake processors. Starting from the slowest dual-core Celeron 4205U, dual-core/quad-thread Pentium Gold 5405U, again dual-core/quad-thread Core i3-8145U and the more powerful, quad-core/octa-thread Core i5-8265U and Core i7-8565U.


GPU options

As far as the graphics is concerned, if you need a dedicated GPU, there are the GeForce MX250 (just an updated MX150) and the GeForce MX130 (itself an updated MX940).

HP ProBook 450 G6 Varianti GPU

Qui potete vedere un confronto approssimativo tra le GPU che si trovano nei modelli [serie] sul mercato. In questo modo potrete decidere da soli quale sia il modello della [serie] con il miglior rapporto qualità/prezzo.

Nota: il grafico mostra le diverse configurazioni di GPU più economiche, pertanto è necessario verificare le altre specifiche di questi portatili facendo clic sul nome del portatile / GPU.

I risultati provengono dal benchmark 3DMark: Time Spy (Graphics) (più alto è il punteggio, migliore è il risultato).

I risultati provengono dal benchmark 3DMark: Fire Strike (Grafica) (più alto è il punteggio, meglio è)

I risultati provengono dal benchmark Unigine Superposition (più alto è il punteggio, migliore è il risultato)


Gaming tests

Even though we didn’t expect any heroic performances from the UHD 620, this laptop performed extremely poor in our gaming tests.

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS36 fps24 fps– fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS57 fps28 fps– fps

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)HD 768p, Normal (Check settings)HD 768p, High (Check settings)HD 768p, Very High (Check settings)
Average FPS28 fps– fps– fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core temperature (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

Intel Core i5-8265U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
HP ProBook 450 G62.69 GHz (B+59%)@ 64°C2.53 GHz (B+60%)@ 68°C2.09 GHz (B+31%)@ 71°C
HP ProBook 440 G62.55 GHz (B+59%)@ 59°C2.56 GHz (B+60%)@ 67°C2.09 GHz (B+31%)@ 67°C
ASUS VivoBook S15 S5302.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 77°C2.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 87°C2.29 GHz (B+62%) @ 71°C
Acer Swift 3 (SF314-56G)2.67 GHz (B+67%)@ 93°C2.16 GHz (B+35%)@ 86°C1.66 GHz (B+4%)@ 71°C

Comparing the temperatures and clock speeds between the ProBook 450 G6 and the smaller ProBook 440 G6, we see a negligible difference of a couple of degrees consistently during the test. While the clock speeds are just slightly higher (with around 140 MHz) at the beginning in favor of the 15-incher, while throughout the rest of the torture test, they remain on par. However, it is still a lot better than what Acer Swift 3 (SF314-56) had for us.

Gaming comfort

Despite the similarity in the chip temperatures, the outside temperature situation looks quite a bit different. We measured the hottest point to be 38.5C just above the square bracket key. At this temperature, you are barely going to notice the heat, and moreover, the palm rest area is even cold to the touch. Additionally, the device remained almost inaudibly quiet throughout the entire test, which makes it perfect for a work environment.


Verdict

An unpretentious laptop, worth every penny. This is everything we can say about the ProBook 450 G6. Thank you guys, have a great… okay okay. We are messing around. We were extremely happy with the way ProBook 450 G6 held in our hands. I mean, it has an IPS Full HD display, sounds loud enough and provides you the option of full upgradability (of course no CPU and GPU replacement, though).

Obviously, at this price point, nothing is perfect. Our major concern is the keyboard – it is shallow and lacks a backlight, although it definitely compensates with clickiness. We are also a little disappointed by HP’s decision to just take the internals of the ProBook 440 G6 and put it inside a bigger body. This practically resulted in a lot of unused space, which is particularly frustrating, given the fact that they used the same battery for a significantly bigger screen. However, the laptop still offers around 8 hours – 8 hours and a half of battery life – a full work day only on battery power is always good.

Additionally, the screen is a regular IPS panel (AUO AUO23ED), which doesn’t impress with a wide color coverage. It is also not super bright, but it has a very good contrast ratio, adequate colors, and especially white balance temperature. Moreover, it doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness.

Last but not least, we should note super quiet cooling, which doesn’t impend the performance at all and at the same time it provides cool enough outside of the device even at extreme workloads. Well, you can choose the VivoBook S15 S530 if you want a similarly priced device, that has an MX150 on board, but it doesn’t look nearly as classic as the ProBook 450 G6.

Pros

  • Well priced office device
  • Lacks aggressive PWM adjustment of the brightness (AUO AUO23ED)
  • Very cool internal and external temperatures
  • The fans are barely audible
  • Upgradability on point
  • Powerful speakers


Cons

  • Shallow keyboard, which lacks a backlight
  • Covers just 53% of sRGB (AUO AUO23ED)
  • There is a lot of unused space inside this laptop

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-probook-450-g6/

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Henk Poley
Henk Poley
3 anni fa

Real battery life is more like 3h38m according to powercfg /batteryreport on my 450 G6.

Andrew
Andrew
3 anni fa
Rispondi a  Henk Poley

I second this. That’s more accurate. However mine does have a nvidia card which I am sure drains it faster.