HP ProBook 4530s

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If there's any company that gets that business notebooks should look as good as they perform, it's HP. Just look at the ProBook 4530s, which sports a brushed-aluminum design that's clean and cool but also tougher than your typical consumer laptop. Priced at an affordable $729, this 15-inch machine has plenty of power, too, thanks to a 2.3-GHz Intel Core i5-2410M processor and a fast 500GB 7,200-rpm hard drive. To protect your data, HP includes a fingerprint reader and face-recognition technology. Add in the redesigned QuickWeb for getting online without Windows, and you have one of the most well-rounded business notebooks available.

Design

Equally at home in the conference room, living room, and the coffee shop, the HP ProBook 4530s is the most attractive notebook in its class. Its sturdy lid and interior are crafted from brushed aluminium with metallic gray accents, which HP calls "deeply anodized." The screen is framed by dark-black plastic and swings open (and down) on silver "drop" hinges. A long perforated metal speaker grille runs across the deck above the notebook's black keyboard. The underside of the laptop is made from simple black-hued plastic. Overall it's an elegant look.
The ProBook 4530s lacks some of the advanced durability enhancements of its corporate sibling, the HP EliteBook 8460p, such as a rubber ring around the screen and a magnesium base. It does, however, feature a similar spill-resistant keyboard and number pad.
With a wide rectangular frame that sits high on rubber nubs, the ProBook 4530s weighs 5.6 pounds and measures 14.8 x 10.1 x 1.1 inches. Slightly heavier than the Toshiba Tecra R850 (5.4 pounds), it isn't easy to carry on long trips, but transporting it from room to room won't prove difficult.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Thanks to its wide-body design, the ProBook 4530s boasts a vast keyboard complete with a number pad on the right side. Its black chiclet-style keys are slightly concave, click softly, offer deep travel, and provide comfortable feedback. The arrow keys right next to the number pad often caused us to press "0" instead of the right arrow button, though.

The large, 3.6 x 2.1-inch touchpad on the ProBook 4530s provides a nice balance of friction and glide. Made by Synaptics, the pad is correctly placed below the G and H keys and supports multitouch gestures such as three-finger swiping, pinch-to-zoom, and object rotation, all of which worked well. That said, two-finger scrolling through documents felt jumpy at times, and you can't adjust this feature's sensitivity. We do like the two discrete left and right mouse buttons, which clicked with authority without feeling stiff.

Display and Audio

The HP ProBook 4530s' LED-backlit 15.6-inch screen (1366 x 768 pixels) is rated at 200 nits and sports a matte treatment, so you don't have to worry about reflections. As with other laptops such as the Toshiba Tecra R850, moving off angle horizontally degrades picture quality (of both brightness and color fidelity). We would have liked to see more contrast and deeper blacks. For example, space scenes in the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey were not as dark as they should be.
The ProBook 4530's speakers above the keyboard belt out a sizable amount of sound, enough to easily fill a mid-size room. Audio is also improved by SRS Labs Premium Sound processing, with preset equalizer settings for movies and music. Even so, bass was lacking from booming tracks such as "Kids" by Sleigh Bells. However, "Keep Tryin'" from J-Pop star Utada Hikaru sounded well balanced.

Ports and Webcam

The HP ProBook 4530s comes with four USB ports, two each on the left and right sides. One of the USB ports on the left is a high-speed USB 3.0 connection. Also on the left side are Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, power, a smart card adapter, and a Kensington lock slot. On the front sits a 6-in-1 memory card reader plus headphone and microphone jacks. Lastly, on the right is a DVD SuperMulti Drive.


Video callers will appreciate the HD webcam on the ProBook 4530s, which is capable of 720p video. Though it's not Skype HD-certified--video maxed out at 640 x 480--callers said we looked sharp on their end. We also recorded 720p video using the ArcSoft Webcam Companion software, and it looked crisp and smooth during playback.

Heat

Under stress, the ProBook 4530s kept its cool. After playing a Hulu video for 15 minutes, we recorded temperatures of 91 degrees at the touchpad, 86 degrees at the keyboard center, and 82 degrees underneath the laptop. These readings never reached what we consider too hot to handle (95 degrees) and were below the typical mainstream notebook's temperatures.