The case, largely made out of high-quality aluminium, is one of the highlights of the laptop along with the internal hardware. It is specially designed for the business customer who travels a lot and is particularly demanding when it comes to outdoor use. The choice of materials makes the notebook very sturdy. The lid that houses the 15.6-inch display does not flex in any direction, and nor does the top of the keyboard. Even under heavy pressure, the material does not give way in the least.

The workmanship is exemplary and makes the Elitebook 8560p LQ589AW extremely robust. As it’s a business notebook, HP has done without any further visual gimmicks; they just aren’t needed for this model. According to the manufacturer, the notebook will survive even heavy jolting, having been developed in line with military standards (MIL-STD 810G). We decided to refrain from a drop test of our own, since the laptop is on loan to us from Comtech.

The compact case and the aluminium surfaces are also very resistant to fingerprints, as well as environmental factors such as dust, heat or moisture. The integrated keyboard is protected against spills.

The notebook’s dimensions of 374 x 34 x 251 mm are normal for a 15.6-inch screen. The weight of 2.7 kg is a little more than usual. Added to that is 500 g for the 90 W mains adaptor.

The 15.6-inch display of the HP Elitebook 8560p LQ589AW has a maximum resolution of 1600 x 900 pixels, with an aspect ratio of 16:9.

The resolution is optimal for this size screen diagonal. Higher resolutions are possible only with an external monitor.

Our review model is fitted with a Core i5-2540M(codename Sandy Bridge) with a speed of 2.6 GHz. The Intel CPU has 3072 kB of level 3 cache, and is dual core with four threads. The processor was made using 32 nm technology. It supports Turbo Boost 2.0, meaning that it can automatically overclock to up to 3.30 GHz.

The maximum clock speed also remains stable during heavy use, as this CPU does not suffer from throttling. In our simulated stress test, which ran for 180 minutes, the processor speed remained constant at 3.30 GHz.

The dual-core CPU also contains a graphics card which is not called upon to work in this notebook. Instead of the integrated Intel HD Graphics, HP rely on an AMD Radeon HD 6470M. This has a core speed of 750 MHz and 1024 MB of its own DDR3 video memory.

The dedicated AMD graphics card can be classed as a basic mid-range card. It is based on the Seymore XT chip and contains the UVD 3 video processor and Eyefinity+. The hardworking AMD graphics card also supports DirectX 11, Shader Model 5.0, OpenGL 4.1 / Open CL and DirectCompute 11.

You can read more about the graphics chip by clicking here.

System noise

The Elitebook has a good system for quickly moving the waste heat away from the CPU and graphics card: it consists of a heat pipe, which transfers the heat towards a fan which runs constantly. The fan is clearly audible, especially in a quiet environment. However, it always remains an unobtrusive background noise; we did not find it distracting at any point during our testing.

Our noise measuring device gave a reading of 33 dB(A) in idle mode. The volume increased only slightly during DVD playback, reaching 35.6 dB(A). It was a different story when the notebook was under stress. The noise from the fan got noticeably louder during our stress test (100% CPU and GPU usage with Prime95 and Furmark amongst others), hitting 41.5 dB(A).

Speakers

The Elitebook’s loudspeaker system consists of two speakers positioned on the underside of the case. The sound during DVD playback was very stereophonic. At times we had the feeling that there were more than two speakers, but we couldn’t find any others.

The sound quality from the speakers is acceptable for their size. However, the mini-speakers do sound very tinny at times. There are two 3.5 mm stereo ports on the side of the notebook for a headset, or headphone and microphone. You will not find an optical output port or HDMI port on the HP notebook, however.

Windows 7 Professional (64-bit version) is pre-installed as the operating system. But the notebook can also run with an alternative user interface called QuickWeb.

With this interface, which can be selected after switching on the computer, the click of a mouse gives you quick and easy access to the internet, your emails and contacts, and many calendar functions.

The interface loads within 10 seconds and so you can access the web more quickly than with Windows 7. QuickWeb gives you access to the internet if it is set up. Contact details from Outlook can be loaded and edited via QuickWeb.

QuickWeb also includes a Skype client. The battery life when running QuickWeb is substantially longer than under Windows. We measured 12 hours of run time.

This business notebook, the HP Elitebook 8560p LQ589AW, is convincing in every respect. It has a very smart, high-end appearance with its platinum-look aluminium case. Nor has HP taken any shortcuts with the workmanship. The display lid opens easily without lifting the rest of the notebook along with it.

You can tell upon closer inspection of the case that HP have followed military standards (MIL-STD 810G) in making this notebook. The case is very robust, and optimized to withstand jolts, drops, dust, moisture and high temperatures.

Working is actually fun on the HP Elitebook 8560p LQ589AW. This is also down to the internal hardware: a fast dual-core Core i5 CPU with 2.6 GHz and lots of potential for overclocking, 4 GB of RAM and dedicated AMD graphics. The matt 15.6-inch display is the icing on the cake. It doesn’t pick up reflections or act like a mirror.

System noise and temperature build-up are not really issues with the HP Elitebook 8560p LQ589AW. The fan could be a little quieter, but that really would be the cherry on top of the icing on the cake.

Because of the graphics card, the notebook is limited to home and office use, perhaps with some light gaming aspirations.

The price is the only thing that doesn’t sound good. In this hardware configuration, the notebook costs around €1200. Enough to make you think twice about that cake.