Below average. Review on HP ProBook 430-G1

To begin with, Probook 430-G1 is not an everyday use personal laptop.

It is a laptop bought by companies at cheapest rates possible and that shows in the way the product delivers. The 430-G1 has more Cons and Pros.

This is my 6th official Laptop(3 of them being Dell; 1 each from Acer & Thinkpad and this HP Probook).

Using since Jan 2015. Number of Laptops ordered for our team 35 pieces. The initial 12 pieces did not come with HP bags. So we continue to use the Dell laptop bags.

Config: i5 processor, 128GB SSD, 4GB RAM, Win7(Corporate Image), 13.3" screen.

Initial impression: I was pleasantly surprised by the light weight construction and pleasing looks(Silver grey on black).

Pros:

1. Lightweight: as a business laptop, carrying one from one conference room to another is a routine. HP gets 4.5 / 5 for this.

   
   




2. Relatively less occurrence of overheating even after using heavy MS 2013 apps.

   
   




3. Good Battery life:(if it works without manufacturing defects) the battery lasts a healthy 4hrs on moderate usage.

   
   

4.  SSD(Solid State Disk): The 128GB SSD reduces the weight of laptop and aids longer battery life(theoretically - reduced power consumption)

5.  After sales support:  Quite quick to respond, even if it is to inform us that the warranty on a particular part expired, or is not covered etc., :) All said, our internal resource allocated to support HP product has good knowledge and quick to respond. May be because it is a corporate deal.

Cons:

1. Manufacturing defects: 1a.  Keyboard & touchpad: Some keys are hard to depress. e.g., backspace and down arrow in my laptop, left control button in my peer's laptop etc. The touchpad many a times remains defiant to soft to moderate inputs esp, once the processor turns hot due to program load. You either restart the laptop or let it cool to turn subservient. 1b.  Auto entry of junk values: While we are working in an application, this laptop has a habit of entering junk values at random. E.g., ';k', ';', 'p', '^' etc. Our dedicated support team checked and informed that there are no updated drivers released for this laptop and everything looks'okay'. Imagine. you are working on an important client presentation based out of some excel spreadsheet with 100s of rows of data. You prepare everything based on the data where the laptop entered some junk values and it shows up during the presentation. You are doomed. Believe you me. this has happened with one of our colleague. We use analytical apps where data gets manipulated in excel and are uploaded to refresh the app. The mobile app goes live in the client CFO's mobile phone and one of the visual is named as';k'! The guy was an solution architect in the past and understood the issue, which saved our day. 1c.  Battery: The laptop batteries in this series develop a particular defect which shows 100% the moment we plug in the charger. But the battery charging LED beside the adaptor plug shows the correct status(Amber until 90% charge and white for the last 10%). Also it shows 100% all thru, while it runs on battery power and shuts down without giving any warning. 1d. Several issues related to hardware:  One of our laptops required a motherboard replacement while another fresh piece had a defect in the screen color saturation. Another one needed a power port replacement, while my bosses laptop went into a blue screen in 2months after receipt of fresh piece. The new piece has an issue with the adaptor too!

2.  Screen quality is substandard and at best good for viewing presentations. This screen is built to a price and that shows. Video quality is subpar.

3.  SSD Capacity & Performance: 128GB is just not sufficient for a business laptop considering that we install Analytics apps, MS Office(full version with MS Project and Visio), R or SAS, Minitab, Tableau and various other essential proprietary business. Also the performance of SSD is not significantly faster than similar capacity HDD. The system is very slow if MS Outlook, Excel and Powerpoint apps are simultaneously open. Many a times the Tableau will waffle upon launch and a system restart is needed to get it going. Other than the Acer laptops which we used, we have not seen any other laptop having so many issues.

Conclusion:

Not a good personal laptop to buy with your hard earned money.