HP ProBook 445 G8 [445G8 43A28EA]

Affordable business ultrabook from HP

The HP ProBook 445 G8 is an affordable business-class ultrabook that sits right between the old-fashioned HP 2xx series office models and the premium EliteBook ultrabooks in the company's lineup. This device is designed for people who are looking for a powerful, well-built and well-equipped laptop, but do not want to overpay for a 2K display, fancy acoustics or ultra-thin body, which EliteBook models are famous for.

Built on a 12-thread Ryzen 5 chip

Let's start with the hardware. The laptop is powered by a 12-thread Ryzen 5 5600U hybrid chip from the AMD Cezanne family. It is complemented by 16 GB of overclocked RAM, a fast 512 GB NVMe SSD and a Vega 7 graphics card. By ultrabook standards, this is a very serious bundle that knocks out a decent 15681 points in the popular PassMark synthetic test. And on the built-in graphics card, it is quite possible to drive online in Valorant, Titanfall 2 or the latest FIFA. For a never gaming machine, this is a good bonus.

shockproof housing

The laptop uses a 14-inch IPS display with classic Full HD resolution for this class. And here is the main problem with it. The display is in perfect order with brightness, contrast and viewing angles, but the colour reproduction could be better. Just 45% coverage of the NTSC triangle is not particularly impressive by the standards of today's ultrabooks. The same can be said about the appearance of the model, which is inspired more by the low-cost laptops of the 2xx series than by the elegant EliteBook ultrabooks. If you're not a long-time fan of the brand, it's easy to mistake the ProBook for HP's other inexpensive office laptop. Maybe it's the added strength. After all, not every laptop passes the MIL-STD-810 military-industrial standards test. And the HP ProBook 445 G8 passed.

No savings on matches

Well, on the other fronts, there are at least signs of savings: the battery is able to power the laptop for 14-15 hours of continuous operation (fast charging comes to the rescue), a card reader and a USB-C port are hidden on the side faces, to which you can connect an external monitor, and communication modules support Bluetooth 5 and Wi-Fi 6 standards. For additional protection, the laptop is equipped with a TPM security module, a Kensington lock and a fingerprint scanner, and the webcam is equipped with a shutter.