HP ProBook 4510s has simple design. Actually someone would even say that it has “vintage” design somewhat similar to old IBM notebooks. Chassis is made of black plastic and has flat surfaces and “sharp” edges. Rigidness is average which doesn’t come as surprise since this is, after all, “s” model that cannot be compared to, much pricier, “b” and “p” series. Cover is made out of black piano finish plastics that will collect all traces of fingers that ever touched it. Display frame and area close to keyboard are made out of same plastic. Luckily, palmrest is made out of matte plastic so reaching for maintenance cloth will not be that frequent job. Another color variant called “Merlot Red” (dark red) is announced, and judging by the pictures it will be much more attractive than this, black one.

Keyboard is better segment of this notebook. It follows, these days very popular, MacBook design characterized by large gap between keys. Alpha numeric part of keyboard is good and without significant bending although num pad does suffer from significant bending especially along right edge. HP is noticed about this problem, and we got information that in final retail version it will be corrected. Cursor keys are nicely distinct so finding them will not be a problem. This is nice feature since a lot of newer notebooks that we reviewed had cursor keys that are “blended” with num pad. Touch pad is moved to the left side, centered with “space” key, which is good position. Touch pad keys are separated and operate similar to piano keys: only bottom part reacts at pressure. We also liked the fact that touch pad keys are almost silent, as they should be on an business notebook.

Amount and connectors layout are very good. Two USB ports are on the left and two on the right side, so there will be no trouble with mouse cords. Little surprise came in form of Express Card/34 slot instead of usual Express Card/54. Modem/phone jack is only protected connector and because of this you may overlook its position.

As we already mentioned, HP ProBook 4510s has 15.6 inch display with 16:9 ratio. Display has energy efficient LED backlight and solid picture. Our model had glare display but good news are that there are models with non-glare (matte) display. Speakers are located above keyboard and hidden behind grill. Those speakers have adequate sound for an business notebook. Webcam on the other hand is very good. Picture is sharp and with good framerate (in 640x480 mode).

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU and X4500 graphic card are usual combination when it comes to business notebooks. Because of this combination performance levels are clearly defined and expected. On the other hand when it comes to autonomy we were really impressed. In Power Saving mode HP ProBook 4510s power consumption was very low (similar to consumption of an optimized netbook) especially if we take into account 15.6 display. Thanks to these features autonomy was over 6 hours. Warming up was minimal, although cooling system did get a bit noisier under full load. If you plan to upgrade memory, we suggest you to do it right away, since access to memory slots is from the top side and it can be tricky to do it by yourself.

We should also mention that HP ProBook 4510s also features HP 3D Drive Guard system for hard drive protection in case of drop or similar accident. Business users will also like HP Quick Look 2. This is “mini operating system” that allows access to Outlook data without loading Windows OS. Of course you have to install Outlook and use it on the daily basis. On HP site Windows XP and Vista drivers in 32bit and 64bit versions can be found. If you plan to upgrade memory to more than 3GB 64bit Windows and drivers are recommended solution.