2.53GHz Intel Core i5-540M
4GB RAM
250GB hard drive
None
12.1 inches (1,280x800 native resolution)
Integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD
3.8 pounds
1.25x11.4x8.4 inches
Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
4GB RAM
250GB hard drive
None
12.1 inches (1,280x800 native resolution)
Integrated Intel GMA 4500MHD
3.8 pounds
1.25x11.4x8.4 inches
Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
More than a decade before Apple stole headlines with its iPad, HP was among the first to offer a convertible laptop that could serve as a standard notebook PC or as a tablet. Its latest progeny is the EliteBook 2740p, a fast 12.1-inch ultraportable that also happens to be a killer tablet. That's not to say it's flawless: The $1,699 price puts the EliteBook 2740p on the high end of price continuum, and we were disappointed with the battery life. But if you need a business-rugged laptop with plenty of power and features—and you genuinely need its tablet abilities—the 2740p is a strong choice.
Weighing 3.8 pounds and measuring 1.25 inches thick, the EliteBook 2740p isn’t the thinnest or lightest machine in the 12-inch class. Part of the blame falls to the screen and its digitizer overlay, as the top half of the EliteBook 2740p is noticeably thick. HP also had to accommodate the thermal needs of a full-voltage Intel Core i5 processor here; thinner notebooks get by with low-voltage or ultra-low-voltage CPUs to squeeze into a thin chassis. The EliteBook 2740p isn’t as slim as the Lenovo ThinkPad X200 Tablet Multi-TouchFujitsu LifeBook T4310, although that 12.1-inch convertible tablet comes with an optical drive (tucked in a swappable bay, no less). That's a feature the 2740p lacks. tablet, but it delivers much better performance. And it’s a quarter of an inch slimmer and half a pound lighter than the
If your design sensibilities lean toward clean and uncluttered, the EliteBook 2740p will disappoint. Since all buttons need to be accessible in either laptop or tablet mode, out of necessity the sides are chock full of ports, buttons, and toggle switches. On the front edge, you’ll find the large latch to release the screen, a latch to open the swing-out WWAN antenna (on models with that $125 option), and the sliding power switch. Move to the right side, and you’ll find buttons to launch HP QuickWeb and HP QuickLook (more on those in a minute), a headset jack, a SmartCard slot, two USB ports, and a modem jack.
Around back, HP put the LAN jack and a VGA port; for use in tablet mode, you’ll find a handy scroll toggle, an Esc button, a button to rotate the screen, and a recessed button to enact Ctrl+Alt+Del. On the left side you’ll find the pen slot, a memory-card slot, an ExpressCard/34 slot, a Wi-Fi on/off switch, a FireWire port, and another USB port. HP engineers should be applauded for making this all fit, and we suspect the designers simply gave up trying to make it look anything but functional.
You’ll likely spend most of your working time with the EliteBook 2740p in laptop mode, and you won’t be disappointed. The LED-backlit screen is very bright, and colors are rich and vibrant. The panel’s 1,280x800 native resolution delivers crisp, readable text. The EliteBook 2740p’s spill-resistant keyboard is full-size and very comfortable. The keyboard isn’t backlit, which is a feature we’ve come to expect in this price range, but you do get a handy white LED above the screen that casts just enough light on the keyboard to make it visible on a plane or in a darkened conference room.
HP has included both a pointing stick and a touch pad, but the mouse buttons for the stick steal precious real estate from the touch pad—so much so that multi-finger gestures are limited to scroll and zoom, as there’s not enough room to accommodate the rotate gesture.
In tablet mode, the EliteBook 2740p’s Wacom digitizer, as on the Fujitsu LifeBook T4310, is simply terrific. The overlay is completely unobtrusive when you’re focusing on the screen and is discernible only if you look for it. (That's not a given with touch-capable panels.) The touch screen is very accurate and supports finger input, including gestures. As a result, in addition to tapping onscreen icons and dialog-box choices to mimic a mouse click, you can use a swipe to scroll, pinch, pull, and pivot to zoom in or out, or to rotate an image. Navigating around news and video sites with your fingers is certainly preferable to using a cursor on this tablet (or any system, for that matter). Also, while you're surfing, you'll be pleased with the EliteBook 2740p's speakers, which are adequate for Web video and presenting to a small group.
For life on the road, the EliteBook 2740p sports active protection for the 250GB hard drive, which means it will protect your data by stopping the hard drive heads if it detects the system is falling. It also adheres to the Military Standard 810G specifications for vibration, shock, dust, humidity, and temperature fluctuations. And the EliteBook 2740p was designed to withstand up to 300 pounds of pressure on the lid without damage to the screen or other components. So while this isn’t a fully ruggedized machine, it does qualify as “business rugged.”
The 2.53GHz Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB of fast 1,022MHz DDR3 RAM helped the EliteBook 2740p deliver strong results on our benchmark tests. The machine scored 5,558 on the 32-bit version of PCMark Vantage, which measures overall system performance, and 6,122 on the 64-bit version of the test. To put that in perspective, the physically similar Fujitsu LifeBook T4310 convertible tablet scored 3,727 and 4,021 on those tests. Compared with the Lenovo ThinkPad X201, a traditional 12-inch ultraportable in the same price range, the EliteBook 2740p came up a little short, as the Lenovo scored over 300 points higher (6,491) on the 64-bit Vantage run. But the EliteBook 2740p trounced both of those competitors on the 64-bit version of our Cinebench 10 test, scoring an impressive 8,667, compared with 6,440 for the ThinkPad X201 and 5,061 for the LifeBook T4310.
Also in the plus column, the EliteBook 2740p outperformed both the Fujitsu and Lenovo entries on our Windows Media Encoder 9 trial (which measures the capabilities of the CPU while converting a video file), needing just 3 minutes 57 seconds to complete the task; the ThinkPad X201 finished in 4:18 and the LifeBook T4310 in 6:20. And on our iTunes encoding test, in which the test machine encodes 11 tracks from MP3 to AAC, also heavily taxing the CPU, the EliteBook 2740p more than held its own, completing the process in 3 minutes and 40 seconds, which is a little slower than the 3:23 the ThinkPad required but faster than the 4:54 for the LifeBook.
Powered by the seemingly universal (in business machines, at least) Intel GMA 4500 integrated graphics chipset, the EliteBook 2740p delivered decent results on our 3D graphics tests: The system managed a score of 2,099 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768 resolution. That’s essentially tied with the 2,090 we saw from the ThinkPad X201 and notably higher than the 1,109 posted by the LifeBook T4310. And while this performance is still not enough to play intense 3D games at high resolutions, it’s fine for low-impact, casual online gaming.
