HP EliteBook 8760w: Color, So Dreamy

Conclusion: But You'll Pay for the Privilege

So now that you've seen what a monster the HP EliteBook 8760w is, you get to experience the sad knowledge that you'll probably never afford one like the one we tested unless your job buys it for you. It's an incredibly attractive piece of kit, but $6,500 is a heck of a lot to pay for a notebook. So let's see if we can't break that down somewhat, shall we?

First of all, the major upgrades that bury the needle on the price are the NVIDIA Quadro 5010M, the DreamColor display, and the SSD. The Quadro 5010M costs a punishing $700, while the DreamColor is $650 and the SSD is $500. If you just want a solid workstation notebook, the 8760w preconfigured model at $3,499 seems a heck of a lot more reasonable, giving you a decent workstation GPU and the benefits of the DreamColor display. You sacrifice 8GB of RAM, the i7-2820QM, the SSD, the blu-ray drive, and the Quadro 5010M, but the RAM and SSD at least can be made up for down the road (though it's worth mentioning the upgrade cost on the SSD at least isn't unreasonable). The problem is Dell will sell you a Precision M6600 with roughly the same specs and performance as HP's $3,499 EliteBook 8760w for $2,624, and that's a massive difference. When you look at it that way, the premium on the DreamColor display goes up to nearly a grand.

There's another wrinkle, too. If you're willing to put up with a bit more noise, a lot more weight, and a non-IPS glossy screen, Clevo's X7201 actually supports the Quadro 5010M and some boutique vendors like AVADirect offer it (for an impressive $2,000 upgrade cost). If performance is the only metric you're interested in, the Clevo X7201 is nigh unbeatable, since you can get the Quadro 5010M and an i7-990X hex-core desktop processor.

So why buy the EliteBook 8760w? If build quality and aesthetics aren't a concern for you and you have no need for HP's helpful Performance Advisor software, it's going to come down to exclusives. HP can sell you the DreamColor IPS display and NVIDIA Quadro 5010M with 4GB of GDDR5; the best Dell can match on the screen is a high-quality TN panel (or even a touchscreen if that's what you're into), and they only go up to the Quadro 4000M at present (though we'll almost certainly see 5000M/5010M at some point).

When you're dealing with notebooks that cost as much as cars, it's a little difficult to make recommendations. That's doubly true as you start having to make compromises and trade-offs. What's most important? Battery life? Mobility? GPU performance? CPU performance? Build quality? Display quality? The HP EliteBook 8760w undoubtedly finds a niche here, offering the best mobile workstation GPU performance alongside very fast processors and a fantastic IPS display that the other vendors can't touch. Build quality is also frankly stellar, and it's not too heavy given the high performance components inside.

Oh, you'll pay for the privilege. Then again, if you need a mobile workstation and you happen to use one of those >$20K software packages these are certified to run, what's another six grand?