HP ProBook 4530s Review (1)

HP ProBook 4530s Review (1)

Jul 11

An attractive business notebook launched by HP last year is the ProBook 4530s which came out for just $729. It is a 15-inch laptop that benefits from face-recognition technology and also comes with a fingerprint reader for improved security. Also on board is QuickWeb so you’ll be able to get online without having to boot Windows.

We like that it comes with a sturdy lid and along with the interior these two are made from brushed aluminum with a bunch of attractive metallic gray accents. Its screen is surrounded by a dark black plastic bezel and it swings open on its silver hinges.  Across the deck running above the black keyboard is the long perforated metal speaker grille, while the laptop’s underside is manufactured from a black plastic. We should also mention that the keyboard along with the number pad are spill-resistant, just like in the more expensive EliteBook notebooks from HP.

The HP ProBook 4530s measures 14.8 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches and tips the scales at 5.6 pounds which isn’t light enough to carry it around on short trips but it’s compact enough to move it from one room to the other. We appreciate that it has a spacious keyboard which consists of chiclet-style keys that have a black finish and are a little bit concave. These keys have a deep travel and click softly, providing a more than comfortable feedback.

Underneath this great keyboard is the touchpad from Synaptics which measures 3.6 x 2.1 inches and has been installed below the G and H keys. As you would expect, it supports a wide array of multitouch gestures, including pinch-to-zoom, three-finger swiping and two-finger scrolling, just to name a few. It comes with two discrete left and right mouse buttons that provide a good feedback, without being too stiff.

HP has fitted the ProBook 4530s with a 15.6-inch LED-backlit screen that has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels (720p) and it wears a matte coating so you will not have to think about reflections, making it a laptop suitable to use in a bright office. The viewing angles are quite limited but this is understandable given the laptop’s price tag.

Those speakers sitting above the keyboard that we’ve mentioned earlier can provide enough oomph to fill a medium-sized room. The audio is enhanced by the SRS Labs Premium Sound processing which comes with preset equalizer settings for music and movies. Obviously, since we’re talking about a laptop, the bass is barely noticeable.

Tomorrow we’ll have a look at the ports and features of the HP ProBook 4530s, along with talking about the hardware components, webcam and the battery department where we find the 6-cell battery (9-cell battery optional, costs $59).

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