Living With an HP EliteBook 865 G9 - PCMag

While astir concern customers person gravitated to smaller notebooks—those with 14-inch oregon smaller screens, typically weighing nether 4 pounds—there proceed to beryllium those who privation bigger displays, which tin beryllium easier connected the eyes. This year's mentation of HP's EliteBook 865 (G9) offers a 16-inch display, a full-size keyboard implicit with a abstracted fig pad, and the latest AMD Ryzen 7 processor, which offers precise bully performance.

Measuring 0.76 by 14.1 by 9.9 inches (HWD) and weighing 4.22 pounds successful my trial configuration (5.16 pounds with the included 110-watt charger), the EliteBook is overmuch larger than astir of the enforcement notebooks I test, but rather tenable for a 16-inch laptop. The machine, which is chiefly aluminum with a magnesium cover, seems rather solid, and the metallic colour looks fine, though it's not astir arsenic flashy arsenic thing similar HP's Elite Dragonfly.

Left broadside of the HP EliteBook 865 G9 (Credit: Molly Flores)

One happening astir having a larger instrumentality is that it has much country for ports. On the near side, you'll find an HDMI port, a powered USB-A port, and 2 USB-C ports (which look to enactment good with Thunderbolt devices), arsenic good arsenic a astute paper slot. On the right, there's a mic/headphone jack, different USB-A port, a fastener slot, and a abstraction for a nano SIM paper (if you person a 4G cellular-enabled model). That's a bully enactment of ports, though I would find it much convenient if determination was a USB-C larboard connected each side, truthful you tin complaint much easily.

I've tried the instrumentality with a fig of USB-C and Thunderbolt docking stations, including HP's newest Thunderbolt G4 dock, which supports HDMI, 2 Display Ports, and Thunderbolt displays and includes much endeavor absorption features including vPro support. 

Right broadside of the HP EliteBook 865 G9 (Credit: Molly Flores)

The EliteBook 865 has a decent keyboard with a fig pad, on with a ample and responsive solid touchpad that's notably bigger than the 1 connected past year's model. I thought the keyboard was bully if not great, though I privation the powerfulness fastener was a spot much prominent—it's sixth successful from the close connected the apical (function key) row. It has a fingerprint scholar located beneath the keyboard, and it besides supports Windows Hello via the webcam.

The portion I utilized had a 1,920-by-1,200 show with the 16:10 ratio that has go much communal this year, rated astatine 400 nits of brightness. Other options see a touch-screen version, and 1 with HP's SureView privateness screen. Given the size, a higher-resolution surface enactment would person been nice, arsenic you could person enactment successful much item connected things similar large spreadsheets, but HP doesn't connection it. Still, the regular show I tested looked fine.

For videoconferencing, it offers a 5MP camera that seemed precise akin to the Elite Dragonfly G3 I tested recently. I thought it looked rather good, and bundle controls successful the included myHP app had options for quality filtering, lighting adjustment, and an auto-framing feature. As usual, I didn't usage these much, but they each seemed to work. There's a carnal power for a webcam cover. It has 2 front-facing mics, and 2 bottommost broadside speakers with Bang & Olufsen sound. My trial portion came with an Intel XMM 7560R+ 4G/LTE WWAN modem, but there's nary 5G option.

The mentation of the EliteBook 865 portion I tested had a Ryzen 7 Pro 6850U processor, which features 8 CPU cores (with 16 threads), a basal timepiece of 2.7GHz and maximum boost timepiece of 4.7GHz, and Radeon 680M graphics with 12 graphics cores astatine 2200MHz. The portion I had came with 16GB of representation and a 512GB Samsung SSD.

In my tests, it seemed rather comparable to the ThinkPad Z13 I tested recently, with the aforesaid processor. As such, the show numbers I got ranged from precise bully to excellent, doing notably amended than Intel-based machines connected astir multitasking and graphics tests. (But to beryllium clear, if nonrecreational visualization is your superior concern, you'd beryllium amended disconnected looking astatine a workstation-class instrumentality with dedicated graphics.) Of course, basal tests similar regular web browsing oregon connection processing enactment large connected each modern laptops. 

For my much demanding tests, I saw immoderate existent differences with the Ryzen-based machines versus Core i7 ones. Converting a ample video successful Handbrake took 1 hour, 16 minutes connected the EliteBook 865, the fastest clip I've seen connected a instrumentality with integrated graphics. For comparison, this trial took 1 hour, 31 minutes connected the ThinkPad Z13 and 1 hour, 57 minutes connected the Intel-based Elite Dragonfly G3. This shows a wide pb for the Ryzen-based machines.

On the different hand, moving a ample portfolio simulation successful MatLab took 35 minutes, 50 seconds, overmuch amended than the 39 minutes, 59 seconds connected the Elite Dragonfly, but not arsenic bully arsenic the 34 minutes, 37 seconds connected the ThinkPad Z13 oregon the even-better 33 minutes, 12 seconds connected the Intel-based ThinkPad X1 Nano.  

And it took the EliteBook 47 minutes to execute a precise ample spreadsheet model, compared to 48 minutes for the Z13 and 36 minutes for the Elite Dragonfly. This is an country wherever the Intel machines consistently did better, and I speculate it’s due to the fact that Excel doesn't truly instrumentality vantage of much than a mates of cores.

Battery beingness was terrific. My model, with a 76-watt-hour battery, got 17 hours and 42 minutes connected PC Mark's Modern Office artillery test, the champion I've yet seen. (Of course, it does person a bigger battery, which adds size and weight; HP offers models with a 51-watt-hour battery, which would people connection shorter artillery life.)

Like astir of the EliteBook line, the 865 comes with HP's Wolf security, which includes a self-healing BIOS and a basal of trust. It besides comes with SureClick, a private browser that runs web pages wrong isolated virtual machines to support your instrumentality from malware.  

The portion I tested, with a Ryzen 7 6850U, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, a 76-watt-hour battery, and a WWAN module, has a database terms of $2,189. As I constitute this, I tin configure a akin exemplary but without the WWAN enactment connected HP.com for $1,376, with different models for less, including 1 with a Ryzen 5-6600U processor, 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD, 51-watt-hour battery, and nary WWAN for $1,100. Those prices look rather reasonable.

Overall, portion the EliteBook 865 doesn't basal out, it's a coagulated notebook with a large screen, tons of bully extras (including that webcam and bully information features); and beardown show successful astir applications.  It's a precise susceptible 16-inch endeavor machine.