Gadgetory

hi I'm Scott sign and this is the HP EliteBook folio 9470 M now we're an interesting time for laptops because especially with Windows 8 you've got a lot of these touch convertible jobbies all over the place do you get on board with that or you go with the traditional laptop well HP is laptop which debuted at the end of last year really tries to take the conservative approach this is a ultra book but it's a large bone one that's thicker than maybe you would expect compared to a MacBook Air but it's got a lot of security features and ports and connections and it's meant for businesses so it's got v pro and all that stuff I mean it's really business laptop and you can tell because instead of HDMI there's DisplayPort on here and that's one of the main port differentiators when you talk about business versus a consumer laptop it's also expensive this is 1349 for the configuration that we reviewed that fits in with other laptops in this category now the ThinkPad carbon x1 now that which was reviewed in both a touch and non touch configuration is about that same price range and maybe you think about something like the thinner 13 inch Retina Display MacBook Pro that gets you up to an even higher level a lot of the things that these have in common that MacBook Pro has a full voltage processor but these have Ultrabook level core i5 and i7 CPUs four gigs of ram in this one and 180 gigabyte SSD you can also get a standard hard drive in this or go the SSD route which costs a little bit more now one thing you'll notice that's not on here Hey no touch that's right there's a touch free laptop and that's not so great if you want to deal with effortless navigating because hey you're free not to use touch and I admit sometimes it feels like a bit of a gimmick but then you better make your trackpad really really good like MacBook Air level good because those are great track pads and the one that this HP folio has is okay it's not great it's a glass trackpad the weight interfaces with Windows 8 software is alright but at least the four buttons above and below don't cramp the space much and for those who love your little rubber nubbin touch point thing whatever you want to call them there's one in here situated amid the backlit keyboard between the G H and B keys and it works pretty well this is only 1366 by 768 resolution display and it is matte but the general image quality doesn't look all that great especially compared to a lot of higher resolution screens so that's a knock against it although the construction quality feels great lightweight magnesium and aluminum 3.6 pounds which is kind of similar to that ThinkPad x1 carbon but you know it feels a little thicker and larger than your average super thin although probably weight wise feels like it's right in that territory so there you go that's a mouthful I mean I reviewed the HP folio 13 last year and this is kind of like the bigger brother to that at the time I thought that was a great ultrabook really really stood out because of its reliability and its ports but a lot of times gone by I mean what this has going for it is again extra ports Ethernet and the fact that say 7 hour battery life so there you go that's a pretty big honking battery life on an ultrabook you like that maybe you want to consider this but I would say we're in a bit of a transitional period you might want to wait and see comes down the pike including the HP EliteBook revolve which is a cool swivel screen touch one that I looked at at CES that's a look at the HP EliteBook folio 9470 am a business laptop which you can use to