HP 9470m Laptop Review

HP 9470m Laptop Review

May 5, 2014 0 By Eric Shanks

I recently purchased the HP 9470m EliteBook and wanted to give it a quick review.

The Good

The laptop has a pretty slim design as you would expect from an EliteBook.  Be aware however that this is not as slim as a Macbook Air, or the Samsung Series 9 laptops.  The good news though is that you don’t need to use a dongle just to plug in an Ethernet cable.  The same goes for having a VGA output which I often use for presentations.  It can be a pain to hunt down a dongle to connect to a wired network, or a projector so I give this Elitebook points for that.

Side View

I also find it useful that even though this is a thin laptop, it can be used in conjunction with a docking station.  What a pain to plug cables in every time you get to your office!  What are we, Animals?

The version I purchased also has a 256 GB LiteOn SSD Drive.  This drive coupled with 16GBs of memory and a Core i7 processor makes this laptop very capable, performance wise.  The performance factors were the main reason I purchased this laptop.

There is a fingerprint reader as well as an HD Camera (720p) built into the EliteBook which are a couple of nice features, as well as having three USB 3 ports and built-in Bluetooth.  It’s nice to be able to take a pair of Bluetooth headphones or a mouse and connect them right to the laptop without having to have a dongle around.

One of the things I liked best was the lid and bottom of the laptop are covered in soft-touch paint.  This makes the laptop easy to grip, and reminds me of the silicon cases used for cell phones.  It will make the laptop easier to hold than brushed aluminum which is the face of the keyboard.

The Bad

Unfortunately, this EliteBook does have quite a few drawbacks.

HP9470m-resolution  The first and most troubling is the screen resolution.  The laptop I purchased only has a 1366 X 768 maximum resolution which I didn’t think would be a big deal, but I was wrong.  There isn’t much real estate available with this screen resolution.  You can purchase a version of this EliteBook with 1600 X 900 but good luck getting one that is 1080p.

 

The laptop isn’t exactly loud, but it certainly isn’t quiet either.  I guess with some horse power, also comes some fan requirements.  You may notice the fan running quite a bit

 

There are no HDMI outputs on the device.  I’m not sure why this is, due to how common these ports are now, and the fact that it is a pretty small connection.  If there was room for a VGA output, one would think there would be room for an HDMI output.

Lastly, this laptop just doesn’t look as sexy as a Samsung Series 9 or a MacBook Pro.  This laptop doesn’t look bad or anything, but it’s just not going to wow anyone from the appearances alone.  It seems very much business like which is fairly typical for an HP laptop.

 

Other

I won’t say this is good or bad, but this model doesn’t come with a touchscreen.  In my opinion a touchscreen is a waste of time for a laptop anyway.  I’d rather use a keyboard and mouse with my laptop and will leave the touchscreen for my tablet.  This is my own opinion, others may disagree with me but I’ll put it out there.

Even though this laptop is thicker than a Macbook Pro, there is still no optical drive.  Again, this may not be a big deal in this day and age.  Try to remember the last time you used your DVD-Rom on your laptop and make the decision for yourself.

 

HollowPoints

HP9470m-pointsresolutionAll in all, this is a pretty good laptop if you can get past the resolution handcuffs and don’t need a totally silent machine.  I think that the screen resolution is going to be a deal breaker for most people.

Overall I’d give this laptop 3.5 stars out of 5.