HP EliteBook 2170p Ultraportable Review: Business Class, But Business Savvy?

Display Quality

As is customary with these smaller notebooks (and notebooks in general these days), it should come as no surprise that the display on the HP EliteBook 2170p is pretty terrible. HP at least enjoys a matte finish on their display, but at the 11.6" form factor we're actually very close to tablet territory. A higher quality option on the 2170p would at least have been appreciated.

The display on the ASUS ZenBook Prime UX21A is pretty much how a small form factor display should be done. HP's is poor quality by almost any standard, with dismal gamut, accuracy, and contrast. The panel is actually worse than the already poor one from AU Optronics in the Acer Aspire V5-171, albeit not by much.

Battery Life

Unfortunately, while the poor battery life was more excusable on the Acer, the HP EliteBook 2170p suffers badly from its chintzy 4-cell, 30Wh stock battery. HP also offers a 6-cell, 48Wh battery, but you'll see efficiency in the 2170p really could be a lot better.

Normalized battery efficiency is very iffy, but raw running time with just the 4-cell battery is unacceptable. For web surfing, you get roughly three hours of productive use at 100 nits. That means you'll need the 6-cell battery if you want to use the 2170p off the mains for any period of time, as it just doesn't have the juice to keep going.

Heat and Noise

Thankfully, the one place where the HP EliteBook 2170p seems to really excel is in heat and noise management. The thick chassis may be a bit unwieldy for an ultraportable, but it does allow the notebook enough real estate to handle its thermals without getting too loud or too hot.

The i7 never goes above 75C on a core, which is frankly just fantastic for any notebook. Fan noise is also minimal, if constant, but it makes me wonder if HP couldn't have possibly tuned the fan to run a bit slower and coax at least a little more juice out of the battery. Like I said, the fan is never particularly audible, but it's obvious they have some thermal headroom to work with.