HP Elitebook Revolve 810 Review

Perhaps one of the most annoying aspects of many convertible laptops is their size and weight, so the Revolve 810 from HP, with its slim form factor, is a refreshing laptop to use. It’s definitely true that there are some issues with the Elitebook Revolve 810 such as a below average battery life, but when it comes to design and performance, the 810 is one of the best convertible laptops on the market.

Despite being light in comparison to other convertibles (2.98 lbs) it is still heavy-duty and built to last, with a Gorilla Glass touchscreen. While not in the same league as a Macbook Air or ultrabook, the Revolve 810’s weight is still far superior to that of the Lenovo Thinkpad Helix which comes in at 3.8 lbs.

For those of you that love high-quality displays, the 810 probably won’t suit your needs as its 11.6-inch touch screen runs at a resolution of 1366 x 768. This is a pretty common resolution and while watching videos and writing, it was not annoying to use a non-1080p screen, the resolution may be sub-par for certain users. If you are coming from a retina display (or similar high-quality screen), it will definitely be a noticeable difference in resolution.

Windows 8 gestures are amazing on the Revolve 810 and with 10-finger multitouch, you can carry out all of the OS’ supported gestures without any issues.

When it comes to battery life, the Revolve 810 is still light-years better than the Surface, but after few days of use at around 30% brightness, the laptop only lasted 6 hours on a charge. This is fine for most people as long as it is possible to plug-in the laptop, but if you are trying to use the computer all day without plugging it in, you may run into some issues.

For such a thin device, it was a nice surprise to see that the Revolve 810 had an Ethernet port. Even though WiFi is more convenient in a lot of situations, I find myself using Ethernet on a consistent basis whenever I am able to.

The base model of the Revolve 810 comes with just 60GB of free space (on a 128GB SSD), this means that it will be beneficial to have some form of external storage available. The laptop does come with a MicroSD card slot which is great for documents or media storage.

Intel vPro is included on the laptop allowing business to control computers on a remote network. This is great for companies trying to find a laptop to supply to its employees but will not matter to the average user.

Don’t expect to play Crysis 3 (or Minecraft, for that matter) on the Elitebook Revolve 810, but the system is more than adequate for business-level applications as well as any sort of media programs necessary for the average user.

In a lot of ways, the laptop is designed with businesses in mind but it will appeal to regular customers as well. Despite HP’s decision to include some business applications on the laptop, it is simply a competitor to other high-end convertible laptops, including the Lenovo Thinkpad Helix.

Score: 8/10

Price: $1,449.00