HP launched three Chromebooks for the enterprise sector in May, as COVID-19 restrictions were beginning to bite. The Chromebook Pro c640 was hailed as the world’s thinnest 14-inch Chromebook, and offered military-grade ruggedness, a sliding shutter on its webcam and an optional fingerprint sensor as key enterprise features, along with Wi-Fi6, a good set of physical connections and, on some models, Chrome Enterprise. The MIL-STD 810H aluminum chassis of the Chromebook Pro c640 is solid, making it a device designed for professionals. The spill-resistant keyboard is also welcome, while the dimensions are compact considering the chassis houses a 14-inch display, measuring 32.5 cm wide by 20.5 cm deep and 1.65 cm thick. It’s not particularly light (1.5 kg), but if you work mainly from home, portability may not be your most pressing concern. you can read our article on HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review.
HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review: Design
The HP Pro C640 has a polished and sophisticated silver design that will look good on anyone’s desk. Employees can see themselves with the reflective HP logo in the center of the chassis. In the top left corner of the lid you’ll find the words “Chromebook” in muted gray lettering. Opening the easy-to-lift aluminum lid reveals an all-silver cover: even the keys, fingerprint reader and touchpad are silver. The backlit island-shaped keyboard is flanked by two speaker grilles. Below the space bar is a large touchpad framed in reflective silver trim. Below the arrow keys is a square fingerprint reader. Opening the easy-to-lift aluminum cover reveals an all-silver cover: even the keys, fingerprint reader and touchpad are silver. The backlit island-shaped keyboard is flanked by two speaker grilles. Below the space bar is a large touchpad framed by a reflective silver trim. Below the arrow keys is a square fingerprint reader. Weighing in at 3.3 pounds, the Pro C640 is heavier than its Chrome OS competitors – the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (2.3 pounds) and the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (3 pounds). In terms of thickness, the Galaxy Chromebook (0.4 inches thick) is thinner than the Pro C640 (0.65 inches), but the HP Chromebook is thinner than the Chromebook Spin 713 (0.7 inches).
Keyboard and touchpad
Undoubtedly, the best thing about this device is its backlit, waterproof keyboard, composed of well-spaced, comfortable chiclet keys that are as smooth as they are nimble, making word processing a delight. The keyboard on the c640 is one of the best HP has installed on its machines, as it benefits from a full-size Enter key, as well as left and right arrow keys that aren’t crammed together next to the PgUp and PgDn functions. This not only makes using the keyboard a pleasure, but eliminates the possibility of inadvertently pressing the wrong key. This is something we have had to adapt to with many of HP’s conventional laptop keyboards. True, the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left side are comically too large, but it’s not a problem that disrupts the everyday typing experience. When using the smooth glass-covered touchpad, meanwhile, it can sometimes feel like the cursor skids and slips subtly because the surface is too slippery. Using a single finger to move the cursor is fine, for the most part, but the real problems arise with clicking and dragging, and with multi-touch functions such as pinch-to-zoom and Mac-style two-finger right-clicking. Using the touchpad is far from easy due to a combination of a slight slack in the hardware component and the fact that clicking requires a bit more force than you might expect. also you will learn our article on HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review.
Display
This is where things began to fall apart for us with this gizmo that costs a cool $10,000 and then some. Don’t get us wrong, the display isn’t bad. When we’re talking about a Chromebook of this class, such qualities shouldn’t even be in dispute. The colors are rather sharp and the viewing angles are good. The brightness of this device is where it fails. On the C640, HP provides four distinct screens. Two are non-touch and two are touchscreens. You have the option of a Full HD 1920 x 1080 display or an HD 1366 x 768 panel. In our humble opinion, the former shouldn’t even be an option for a tablet that starts at $555. Although the Full HD displays are excellent, the brightness barely manages to reach a pitiful 250 nits. That’s just unacceptable in today’s premium Chromebook market. On a “flagship” Chromebook, 300 nits should be the absolute least, and even that is too dim to function outside in direct sunshine. This screen will quickly turn into a headache for the mobile professional, and an expensive one at that. One other thing to note is that HP elected not to make this gadget USI compliant and we feel like that’s a fail. we don’t use the touchscreen on a clamshell smartphone very much but we can see that business types could profit from this adaptable and economical technology.
HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review: Audio
We listened to Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later” on Spotify at full volume, with loud surround sound coming from the overhead speakers of my HP Chromebook, which my neighbors must have heard. Drake’s vocals sounded smooth, but there was a faint distortion and fuzziness as the bass dropped. At a moderate volume, however, the dual Bang & Olufsen speakers brought the bass back to crisp sound; the good news is that the Pro C640 is hardly quiet and provides ample room for talking, but the bad news is that the clean, resonant sound is lost when the volume is turned up to its maximum. The Pro 640 speakers are good for Spotify sessions, but not exceptional.
Performance
Still, there’s nothing to quibble with in terms of performance. We tested the Core i7 10610U model with 16GB of RAM, and in almost every test it was either the fastest Chromebook we’ve tested or was neck and neck with the equally powerful Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise. Given that the latter has the advantage of an NVMe SSD instead of the HP’s slower 128GB eMMC drive, that’s not a bad result. The Core i7 clearly handles most of the heavy lifting, achieving the fastest single-core score we’ve seen for a Chromebook in Geekbench 5 – 1,104 – and near the top in multicore at 3,122. To be honest, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a web-based application that HP’s Chromebook can’t chew up. Unless you’re working with custom Linux applications, this spec is practically overkill.
Battery life
The HP Pro c640 features a long battery life of up to 12 hours before you have to think about plugging it back in to charge. The C640’s battery life was better than we expected. When you have a fanned out device, we never anticipated it to last all day, but we were able to regularly get 8-9 hours under a normal workload with screen brightness around 80%. That’s not quite the 12 hours HP advertises, but we all know those figures are usually given under very conservative conditions. As far as professional-grade devices go, this one gets two thumbs up in battery life. That’s more than enough power for most work days, and plenty of time for long commutes. also you can check our article on HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review.
HP Pro C640 Chrome Enterprise review: Heat
After we streamed 15 minutes of HD video on the Pro C640, the laptop didn’t burn a hole through our trousers; instead, it kept its cool. The Pro C640’s touchpad (79 degrees), keyboard (89 degrees), and bottom (94 degrees) all fell below our comfort criterion of 95 degrees. The hottest location on the Pro C640, the centre of the Chromebook’s underside, reached only 94 degrees.
Configuration options
The entry-level model costs roughly £600, while the Core i7 variant that we tested costs between £1,100 and £1,200. There have been other corporate Chromebooks before, and there will be more. The base model of the Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise, which includes an Intel Core i3 10110U CPU, starts at £862. With a 2-in-1 design that bridges the corporate and consumer industries, Lenovo’s Yoga Chromebook has a starting price of £1,100.
Conclusion
The HP Pro c640 has an excellent battery life and a keyboard that is quite comfortable, making it actually delightful to use for daily chores like word processing. However, there are a few red flags, namely in the shape of a subpar display and a difficult trackpad. An external display and mouse can be used to alleviate these problems but considering how much this device costs, you should unquestionably be expecting better. In a similar vein, although overall performance levels aren’t poor, multi-threaded performance fell short of the standards set by a number of comparable devices. Although this Chromebook has its uses, its price makes it difficult for us to recommend it.
