HP 250 G6 15
A well-balanced spec and solid build quality means there’s much here to appeal to business buyers
SCORE★★★★☆ PRICE £475 (£570 inc VAT) from cclonline.com
HP loves to showcase the stylish premium laptops of its EliteBook and Spectre lines, but it’s still a major player in the corporate and small business markets – and that’s where you’ll find the catchily named HP 250 G6 14.
With its glossy silver casing and faux-aluminium keyboard surround, a little of the style of HP’s slimline models seems to have trickled down, but this is an all-plastic unit designed around practicality rather than dashing looks. This isn’t necessarily a criticism. While there’s a little too much flex in the lid, the 250 G6 feels impressively robust, with a beefy hinge that should stand many years of use. Just shy of 2kg, it’s a little too weighty to work as a take-anywhere, do-anything device, but as a tool for primarily deskbound workers, it has a lot in its favour.
That starts with the screen. It’s a 15.6in, matte finish display, but unlike the Dell Vostro, it has a Full HD 1,920 x 1,080 resolution. This makes an enormous difference if you spend a lot of time working in Excel spreadsheets or pulling information from multiple sources, and simply makes the 250 G6 more comfortable to use.
It’s not a great screen across the board: the limited maximum brightness of 234cd/m2 restricts visibility if you’re sitting near a sunny window, while both colour and contrast look subdued. As coverage of the sRGB gamut is just 53.4%, this would be a rubbish choice for creative professionals. Yet, for mainstream business use or an after-hours Netflix binge, it’s perfectly fine. Audio isn’t bad either – it may be a little low on bass and harsh in the mid-range, but it’s still clear enough for Skype calls and videoconferencing.
Another advantage of the larger form factor is that it allows for such a comfortable, expansive keyboard. While the function keys are small, there’s little to fault the layout, with no signs of the undersized Shift keys or spacebar that you’ll find on some smaller laptops. What’s more, you get a full numeric pad. And while the touchpad is smaller than on some more compact models, that’s partly because it incorporates physical buttons. It’s also sensitive without being over-sensitive, so you don’t really notice the loss of area.
Elsewhere, there’s a sense that HP is catering for users with legacy tech to support. With two USB 3.1 ports and one USB 2, you’re well-equipped to connect mice, printers and external storage, but how many businesses need a VGA output when there’s HDMI onboard? Isn’t a DVD writer surplus to most users’ requirements, while adding to the cost and weight?
Still, it’s good to see a Gigabit Ethernet port for a physical internet connection, plus 802.11ac wireless support – albeit for a base-level 1x1 configuration with a maximum speed of 433Mbits/sec. Again, given the kinds of uses and applications that apply, that’s not a serious complaint.
The 250 G6 can be found with a bewildering variety of specs, but the
“The HP is too weighty to work as a take-anywhere, do-anything device, but it’s a great choice for primarily deskbound workers”
one we tested featured a seventhgeneration Core i5-7200U, 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD. That’s an effective balance for a work PC, giving you performance to run demanding applications, speedy boot times and enough storage space to hold media files and plenty of business data. While laptops featuring the newer eighth-generation Core i5 CPUs outperform the HP, it’s hardly left in the dust, and it’s comfortably faster than the lower-end Core i3 laptops on test.
15.6in laptops aren’t known for great battery life, but the 250 G6 surprised us by surviving nearly seven hours of video playback before conking out. A full working day of lighter use isn’t out of the question. Better still, the battery is removable and available to order.
A laptop such as this is always going to struggle with the “wow factor”, but the 250 G6 is the kind of practical, durable laptop that small businesses should invest in, offering great value thanks to its performance, usability, battery life and Full HD screen. Let other laptops steal the glory; this one’s got some work to do.