A great premium laptop

You don’t have to spend a huge amount on a laptop, to get something decent, that will more than likely serve you well for most business tasks. The budget to mid-range market is saturated with plenty of choices.

The question, for this article at least, is if you were to pay that little bit more and enter the premium laptop market, what would you get and is it worth it?

Paying more for a laptop should give you better build quality, and a higher specification and give you that X factor (other talent shows are avaliable) if you’re parting with over £700 for the privilege.

This is where we move to the grand reveal, and what is the inspiration for this article, the HP EliteBook 840 G8. Having recently taken delivery of a few of these, and having unboxed the first one – straight away I was impressed.

The build quality, compared to an average laptop that would cost you around £550, is far superior. It looks solid, and it feels solid. The design has the wow factor (at least to me it does, that is of course a matter of opinion), with it being very clear immediately that this is a premium laptop.

The version we went for (you can configure them based on your own requirements in terms of processor, RAM and storage), came with an Intel i5 Processor, 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD Storage. In plain English, it’s a really good specification that will churn through most tasks without a problem. The laptop sports a 14” screen, making it a highly portable laptop, with the quality and brightness of the screen being great. A further note on this, and all 14” laptops for that matter, because it makes the laptop smaller, there is no number pad on the right-hand side of the keyboard. If you’re a number cruncher who relies on the number pad daily, this isn’t the laptop for you, nor is any 14” laptop. 

Another advantage of purchasing a premium laptop is that you might get a longer warranty as well. Most laptops will come with the standard twelve-month warranty, but this laptop comes with three years warranty. Having that kind of warranty, particularly for businesses, is a head-turner when you factor that into the purchase cost of the laptop.

The question for me is always, would I use this laptop myself on a daily basis? Yes, yes I would. And I’d be very happy with using it. This is a great laptop is a great example of what paying that bit more brings to the table.

At the time of purchasing this laptop and writing this article, this laptop with the specification I’ve outlined above, was around £700. 

Is that £700 well spent? I think it is.

Gavin Moorhouse is the owner of Lucid Computer Solutions. Based in Redditch, they provide much more than just IT Support. Whilst he wrote this article on a £200 laptop, the HP EliteBook laptop in this article is on his wish list.