Although with laptops there is often a lot of focus on size, weight, and screen resolution, there is another factor often overlooked by manufacturers: noise. The output of the impellers that are often solely responsible for the system’s temperature can be surprisingly high, but surprisingly noisy too. With that in mind, it’s nice to see companies like HP taking the issue seriously, by stripping out all fans for its new Elite x2 1012 convertible tablet.
Thanks to the entirely passive cooling solution and the use of solid state storage, there are no moving parts inside the system at all, making it entirely silent — something that will be a boon to some workers.
There was not even any need to be underpowered in order to achieve this silent status. The CPU is a Core M3 Skylake model, or as powerful as an M7 if needed, as well as 4GB (optionally upgradeable to 8GB) of RAM, and storage choices up to 512GB. There are also extra features like fingerprint scanners, smartcard readers and more — all of the enterprise functions you would expect on a business laptop.
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It also features full size USB and USB Type-C ports for added connectivity, and can come with one of two keyboard designs. HP offers a basic travel keyboard, but there is an Advanced one too, though as Liliputing points out they are both backlit and neither requires a battery.
It’s light and small too, weighing in at just 1.9 pounds and measuring as little as 0.3 inches thick. The battery is said to last around 10 hours with careful use.
To help cater to enterprise users, HP has made certain parts of the design serviceable. That means the storage and memory can be switched out for another solution if required and the battery too can be replaced if it degrades over time or a larger capacity version becomes available.
The HP Elite x2 1012 will go up for pre-order on November 23 starting at $900 and is expected to begin shipping in January.
