We have already tried some of HP’s best business laptops that feature a thin form factor with great performance and long battery life. With the release of AMD’s latest Ryzen 5000 series mobile chipsets, we get to try out the new HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 laptop.
Design
The HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 features a stylish silver metal chassis and the weight of the laptop is just 0.99 kg. HP mentions that the weight can vary depending on the configuration and the chassis features a dimension of 30.76 x 20.45 x 1.79 cm. The laptop has a very familiar design language that we have seen on many other HP models. Even though the laptop is hardly less than a kilogram, it does feel a bit front-heavy while holding the laptop with the palm rest portion.
The display features a 13.3-inch IPS panel with an anti-glare coating to reduce the reflections and the screen resolution is 1920 x 1080 with 45% of NTSC coverage. However, the brightness maxes out to only 220 nits, which could be an issue when you use the laptop during outdoor situations under the sun. We also noticed that the color temperature of the display has a bit of a red tint. While IPS panels are supposed to offer great viewing angles, the display on this laptop didn’t exactly meet my expectations. It’s interesting that I’ve seen the same with the HP Spectre x360 Convertible Laptop (Model: 14-ea0003ne) that we reviewed recently.
Now don’t get me wrong here. The concept of viewing angles differs from person to person. When looking head-on, you will be able to see the content with no loss of visibility. However, the visuals start to fall when you look from the sides or from the top angle. And I haven’t even activated the HP Sure View feature that helps to reduce the visibility to avoid users from watching what you do. Perhaps it was HP’s intention all along to focus on the privacy that keeps others from seeing your screen and am sure many users would prefer that. And to add more features for privacy, the 720p HD IR front-facing camera comes with a camera shutter so you don’t have to worry about the camera being misused.
The hinge that bridges the display and the base of the laptop has a distinctive diamond-cut design. Moving on to the keyboard portion, the keys are backlit to help you type better in dim situations. The keyboard provides a good typing experience and it’s easy to get used to the keyboard layout. HP also mentions that the keyboard is spill-resistant so you don’t need to worry about accidentally spilling your coffee or cold drinks.
The trackpad features a smooth surface and has enough space to move your fingers. Unlike other HP models, the HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 features two front-facing stereo speakers on either side of the keyboard. The speakers are quite loud and the front-facing design ensures nothing blocks the speaker grills for maximum volume. There is also a fingerprint scanner located on the right-sided palm rest portion of the keyboard.
The HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 also sports a number of connectivity options starting with two SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps ports, and a headphone jack on the left side, along with a USB Type-C port, a full-sized HDMI 2.0 port, and an AC power connector on the right side. Users will be able to use the Type-C port for power delivery, data transfers, and also a connection to Display Port 1.4.
The laptop also has its air vents located under the laptop and also on the rear side. The lid of the laptop comes with a reflective HP insignia and has the same silver color treatment as the rest of the chassis.
Specifications
Over the years, the majority of the laptops on the market come powered with Intel chips, and it’s good to see a change in flavor. AMD has been dominating the desktop space with its Ryzen processors, and now the company brings its high-performance and power-efficient Ryzen 5000 series APU chips to the laptop sector. The HP ProBook 635 Aero G8 comes powered by the AMD Ryzen 7 5850U SoC, an 8-core processor that is based on the Zen 3 microarchitecture. The APU is capable of speeds up to 4.4GHz and the processor also features up to 16 threads for faster multitasking operations. While the Zen 3 CPU cores are the latest in the market, AMD still uses the old Vega GPU architecture for its visuals for this chip.
The integrated GPU is the Radeon RX Vega 8 with a total of 8 CU’s. There is a total of 16GB DDR4 RAM that is sufficient for most office-based multi-tasking jobs on the go. The performance is further backed with a 512GB WD SN530 SSD with Windows 10 Pro installed. The laptop performed well most of the time when we used it for both office work and entertainment, thanks to the fast SSD drive, the Zen 3 based processor, and 16GB of RAM. The laptop also features the Realtek RTL8822CE 802.11ac WiFi module for fast internet connectivity.
We ran a series of benchmarks that include the PC Mark 10 Extended, 3D Mark gaming tests, GeekBench 5 CPU and GPU tests, Cinebench R23 for the CPU, and CrystakDiskMark for the SSD. Check out the scores below.
Benchmarks
Battery
The AMD-powered HP laptop houses a 3-cell, 53 Wh Li-ion battery that is estimated to offer up to 20 hours of battery life, depending upon the type of usage. We had conducted the PC Mark 10 Extended battery test that feature a series of workloads, and the laptop ran for about 11 hours and 24 minutes until the battery ran out. We also tried the laptop with real use cases such as editorial work, worksheets, internet browsing, watching videos, etc, and the laptop was able to last for about 10 hours. And as we mentioned before, the laptop can be charged via the USB Type-C port.
Verdict
Business users right now tend to look for stylish laptops that feature good performance and long-lasting battery life. The ProBook 635 Aero G8 is certainly one of the best HP business laptops we have reviewed. The 13.3-inch IPS panel comes with an anti-glare coating so you don’t have to worry about reflections, and while the viewing angles are a bit low, this actually benefits those who are worried about privacy. Then comes the HP Sure View mode that reduces the visibility of the display further when looked at from the sides. The laptop also features a 720p HD IR front-facing camera with a camera shutter so you don’t need to be concerned about hackers or rogue apps that could misuse the camera.
The device also has multiple USB-A ports, along with USB-C and an HDMI port. The keyboard is also fun to type on, and the trackpad is spacious enough to scroll through with its smooth glass surface. There is also a fingerprint scanner to further secure your laptop. The laptop also packs the latest Ryzen 5000 series mobile APUs from AMD, along with a fast SSD, and sufficient memory that can keep up with the computing needs of business users. The laptop also delivers decent battery life so users can do their important work on the go throughout the day.
