HP EliteBook 840 G6 is part of the latest generation of EliteBook 800 laptops. Traditionally, the EliteBook brand has been known for its extreme reliability and longevity in terms of degradation and moral ageing.
Interestingly, this laptop doesn’t differ a lot from its predecessor from the fifth generation 800 devices. While it retains the aluminum chassis, it now embodies the Whiskey Lake processors from Intel. Security-wise there are the HP Secure Start and Secure Click (not very creative from HP, we know), and furthermore, you can pick from several vPro-labeled CPUs.
Display-wise there is a 4K IPS option, which is probably not going to be the most popular one, as it will significantly increase the cost of the EliteBook 840 G6. Nevertheless, we did manage to get our hands on a 1080p IPS version, which has better support through apps’ UI.
What’s in the box?
Inside of the package, we unsurprisingly found an HP EliteBook 840 G6. Paying company to the laptop, there are several manuals and guides, as well as a 45W charging brick (the Radeon 550X version should come with a 65W one).
Design and construction
This device’s design has taken inspiration from both the ultrabook and the industrial family of laptops. its body is built entirely out of aluminum, which gives it the premium cold touch when you first make contact with the surface. As you can see from the images, the lid has lost the plastic stripe, meant for the LTE antenna.
Honestly, with the latest update of the ProBook series, the visual differences between the two have decreased greatly. In addition to looking stunning, the EliteBook has a profile of only 17.9mm and weighs 1.48 kg. So yes, it is very easy to handle around, without any strains in your arms.
Opening its lid with a single hand is possible and in terms of resistance to flex, this one is a champ. Well, certainly, there is some flex when you bend it, but it is ever so subtle, and you end up moving the entire device, rather than flexing the lid itself.
Right above the display, you are going to see two circular cut-outs that are hiding the IR sensors for face recognition. However, this is not the only biometric sensor on this laptop.
The other one is located on the bottom right corner of the base and it is the fingerprint reader. Above it, you can see a spill-resistant keyboard that has a nice key travel and decent tactile feedback. Moreover, it is backlit and features a nipple – just above the “B” key. Its buttons are placed above the glass-fitted touchpad, which itself feels fast and accurate.
Then, at the bottom plate, there is only one, though a rather big grill, which is clearly meant for ventilation. While the hot air escapes from the left side to the annoyance of left-handed people, the speakers are nowhere to be found on the bottom. This is because, they have their place at the base – just above the keyboard. Plus, they have Bang & Olufsen branding, which means they are tuned from the Audio company.
Ports
Since it is a typical business machine, the EliteBook 840 G6 is loaded with I/O. On the left, you will find a USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port with a charging function, as well as the optional Smart Card reader. Looking on the right, there is a charging plug and a Thunderbolt port, either of which can be used for charging (depending on the charger, of course). Then, there is a docking connector, as well as an RJ-45 and HDMI connectors, followed by another USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) port, an audio jack, and an optional SIM card tray.
This device has only 8 Phillips-head screws that hold its bottom panel in place. Moreover, these 8 screws don’t detach from it, when you unscrew them, meaning you will have a hard time losing them.
In terms of cooling, the laptop features a single heat pipe design, which is very common in this type of laptops.
Thankfully, the notebook features two RAM DIMMs that support up to 32GB of DDR4 memory. Additionally, there is an M.2 PCIe x4 slot on their left.
Finally, on the bottom-most portion of the insides, you can see the 50Wh battery pack, used in this device.
Display quality
HP EliteBook 840 G6 has a Full HD IPS display, model number Chi Mei CMN14E0. Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 56 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).
It has excellent viewing angles. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.
The maximum measured brightness is 444 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 417 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6900K (average) – colder than the 6500K optimum for sRGB. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6900K, as well.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective.
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1330:1 (1230:1 after profiling).
To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.
Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.
The yellow dotted line shows HP EliteBook 840 G6’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers 94% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.
Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.
Below you can compare the scores of HP EliteBook 840 G6 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).
The next figure shows how well the display can reproduce dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.
The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 21 ms
Health impact – PWM / Blue Light
PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.
HP EliteBook 840 G6’s display backlight uses PWM to adjust the level of its brightness up until 118 nits. Additionally, the frequency of the flickers is high enough, so that it doesn’t have a harmful effect on your eyes in this aspect.
Blue light emissions
Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.
Conclusions
HP EliteBook 840 G6 has a Full HD IPS panel with good contrast, comfortable viewing angles, great maximum brightness, and wide color coverage.
So far it is one of the best laptop I purchased after talking to customer support guys number shown on the laptopbazzar.com website.
I use it for all day mix task and this laptop deal every task while being cool all the time. just like me lol
Good laptop in this price. and I definitely give a thumbs for type c ports.