My Investment is in TROUBLE - HP repairable laptops

you would think being an investor in framework that I wouldn't be down to accept hp's sponsorship to show off the repairability of their elitebook 845 G9 but the truth is that this repairable laptop has a lot going for it that my framework doesn't for one thing hp's sales and distribution Network means that it's available wherever you might need it and for another it's got an AMD ryzen CPU and that's on top of it being highly user repairable with parts and detailed guides available to help you through the replacement of everything from the touchpad to the headphone jack to the entire display assembly all right then HP you want to sync my investment or what I'll play ball let's see what you got [Music] full disclosure that wasn't just a bit I am indeed personally invested in framework laptops to the tune of 225 000 US Dollars and it was a little over a year ago that I ended my original review of the framework laptop by saying the only reason other companies can't do this and framework proved it is because they don't care that's a problem checking a device in the E-Waste bin because of one small flaw should be something that we try to avoid at all costs because everything about the design of this AMD ryzen power delete book 845 G9 really does seem to be rooted in Long service life and sustainable choices the first sign that HP is really listening comes before we even make it to the device itself the box is sustainably sourced and once we open it up the elitebook 45g9s lightweight but durable chassis uses recycled aluminum throughout and they're using post-consumer recycled Plastics in the bezel and the keycaps speaking of that aluminum chassis it's time for us to crack it open and find out exactly how repairable these things are I'm going in pretty much completely blind here so um I guess we're gonna learn together just how easy this laptop is to work on and we've got one of literally every single part that they offer on their online store to replace back by the way another aspect of this whole serviceability angle that HP is taking is that if I wanted to cheat and research how to swap everything beforehand their YouTube channel has proper guides for everything that I'm about to do for this and actually tons of their other devices by the way right out of the gate I love this it's something that we've seen on the past few generations of HP laptops just five captive screws is all it takes to get inside and as small as it is this decision means a lot every extra screw or rubber foot that's in the way of someone opening up a laptop is another potential point to give up and not choose repair or if you're a service tech who's working with a big deployment to these every screw is 15 more seconds maybe dozens of times a day costing you hours of your precious actual life so bottom line I really like this no-nonsense approach to getting inside we're off to a good start now that we're in here under this heat pipe is the star of the show this laptop is powered by an AMD 6850u which is an 8 core 16 thread Zen three plus chip fresh out of tsmc's advanced six nanometer Fab this thing boosts up to 4.7 gigahertz and a laptop this thin it wasn't that long ago that AMD laptops were dismissed for their poor performance poor battery life and subpar connectivity particularly their lack of Thunderbolt support but all of that has changed now ryzen 6000 is tremendously efficient and this model from HP implements amd's new support for USB 4 which can do up to 40 gigabits per second of throughput and tunnels a pcie signal meaning that you should be able to plug in previously Intel exclusive Thunderbolt peripherals like external GPU enclosures super fast external game drives or single cable laptop docks weirdly enough we actually have Microsoft to thank for this level of pcie support they are mandating that any laptop that can come with Windows 11 must have advanced pcie support on all exposed usb4 ports so thanks Microsoft I guess this nvme drive is a Gen 4 unit from Samsung ours is 512 gig but that's user configurable and this little Wi-Fi 6E card here is from Qualcomm how cool is that the ram Shield has a little tab adorable look two 16 gig cats have also Samsung memory running at 4 800 Mega transfers per second interestingly HP is actually offering an unusual level of customization in their Builder and they're charging sensible prices for upgrades 32 gigs of ram cost the same whether you prefer a single stick for future expansion or two for better performance in dual Channel very sensible over on the sides we'll find a couple of 2 watt 4 ohm speakers not terribly fancy although they are tuned by bang Olufsen and can actually get surprisingly loud these don't really need to come out but they make it easier to get at the most commonly replaced component this 51.3 watt hour battery screws on one side clips on the other and I haven't even had to change my screwdriver bit yet all number one Phillips up until now see how long we can keep that gravy train rolling out of the box HP boosts they can go from zero to fifty percent charge in only 30 minutes and rates this bad boy at up to 19 hours of use that's solid but as you guys know batteries wear out over time and I'm pleased as punched that this one could be swapped out in under 10 minutes by even a novice user if you're not into replacing batteries I would suggest employing hp's battery life manager software it automatically maintains an optimal charge level which is especially useful if you leave your machine plugged in or unplugged for long periods of time this is the point in the disassembly process that even if you've taken apart a bunch of different models of laptops from a variety of Manufacturers you can start to feel a little bit lost or uncertain but kudos to HP I can still clearly see all of the screws that I need to access in order to remove the rest of the components on this laptop and it's these little touches that prove that repairability and serviceability was a high priority during its design oh interesting fan is not actually even taped no adhesive even between the fan and the heatsink so these pieces can and should then be replaced independently cool here's another really nice touch have you ever had something get stuck in your headphone jack I mean it's obviously more common with phones with you know pocket lint and all that but they can still wear out from regular use and the fact that this daughter board is so easily replaceable means that you will never be stuck without audio again this part costs 26 dollars reasonable well also on the daughter board is a five gigabit per second USB type a port and space for an optional SIM card slot that we don't have on our model if we did there would also be a mobile data card for us to remove from here just below the fan moving over to the other side there's also an optional smart card reader which we do have installed a couple of those fancy 40 gigabit per second usb4 type c ports I mentioned earlier both with power delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 along with another 5 gigabit per second type a port and a full-sized HDMI 2.0 B it's starting to look kind of empty in here and we can take it even further the fingerprint sensor ah yes here you are comes out don't break please don't break you just pull out okay oh there's your fingerprint sensor the real-time clock battery uses no screws at all and the touchpad has just seven screws around the perimeter we finally had to change the bit in the screwdriver that's okay I understand why these are very very tiny little screws so we're going to use a Philips zero this little boy comes out but is a little bit tricky because this cable right here is actually adhered to it so we just got a oh boy oh yeah okay oh that's not that bad that's not like permanent adhesive or anything and then we also need to pull out uh this boy easy peasy the battery is super easy to remove too but we're not going to take that out because it makes life more difficult we'll have to go back into the BIOS and adjust a whole bunch of settings and I don't feel like it now that the touchpad's out we can take a closer look at it it's got a glass surface and it's massive a big part of that is actually because of the screen so I'll explain in a moment let me take these final hinge screws out and we can talk about the screen LTV store they're finally shipping oh I'm just going to give it a little one of those and a little it's fine and there's the display assembly that's right the reason the touch pad is able to be so big is the aspect ratio of the display the excellent 16x10 that I and that guy hey Alex 16 by 10 yay or nay yes good exactly you get a little more height compared to 16x9 which means whether you're gaming or browsing or video editing you get that extra 120 pixels of vertical space that can be an absolute godsend for your toolbars or your extra video tracks or whatever it is you need behind the display assembly is hp's 5 megapixel webcam complete with auto framing infrared for Windows hello and a physical camera shutter as well as the hubboard that powers both it and hp's dynamic noise leveling microphone array to hp's credit while this does use clips and adhesive the replacement parts are available individually even for different variants of the screen so if you actually wanted to change out the screen you could and with that we've actually run out of parts to remove from this thing as they say in the automotive World reassembly is the reverse of disassembly which means it's time for us to undo everything [Music] oh yeah uh script says success it still boots looks like we got ahead of ourselves a little bit there we don't don't actually know that for certain here we go yes okay good that was pretty impressive it wasn't that long ago that this level of user serviceability was mutually exclusive with having a device this thin and with such a nice design language HP hasn't compromised on any of those things here which leads us to our conclusion the benefits of a device that is repairable and upgradable like this one cannot be overstated when deployed at scale in a commercial setting with dozens hundreds or even thousands of users the texts that actually have to work on them will be infinitely thankful to have someone at HP in their Corner fighting for Simplicity and design and maintenance there are other benefits for commercial users as well such as HP wolf security and HP sureview screen privacy which isn't to say that you can't pick up one of these for home use if you wanted to the socketed Ram Wi-Fi and SSD are all wins and while hp's parts store appears to show that everything is out of stock they told us that this is a bug and replacement parts are in fact available to both companies and to individuals to order so hopefully whatever that is going on right now will be sorted out by the time this video comes out uh while you're at it by the way HP pictures please service manuals as I mentioned before are readily available in the product support portal you don't even have to create an account or do anything like that so kudos to that and you can cross-reference those to find the right part numbers for replacement pieces but it's nice to have peace of mind especially as an end user by being able to compare the thing that's in your hand to an actual photo on the website so sponsors or not if you want this level of performance coupled with a dash of genuine serviceability your short list is well incredibly short HP hasn't committed to you know future motherboard upgrades or anything like that but it is absolutely easy to maintain we're going to have a link in the description if you guys want to play around with their configuration tool and they even offer free dos as an OS option so bottom line for two thousand dollars if HP keeps this up Niche laptop makers May struggle to catch up and other big manufacturers may need to step up and follow suit if you guys enjoyed this video you might also enjoy the video where oh I don't know we water cool the Mac Studio there that was fun not really very much like this video but definitely fun

Channel: Linus Tech Tips

Views: 1,715,987

Keywords: HP 845, HP, Hewlett Packard, Laptop, AMD, AMD CPU, Repairability, Sustainability, Thin and Light, AMD Laptop, HP Laptop, Linus Tech Tips, LTT, Gaming

Id: m8lsUvil_S8

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 01 2022