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 repair able 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 okay I'll
play ball let's see what you
got full disclosure that wasn't just a bit I am in indeed personally invested
in framework laptops to the tune of
$225,000 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 chucking 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 45 G9 is lightweight but durable chassis
uses recycled aluminum throughout and they're using postc consumer recycled
Plastics in the bezel and the key caps
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 going to 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 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 uh rubber foot that's in the way of someone opening up a laptop is another
potential point to give up and 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 noons 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 6850 U which is an 8 core 16 thread zen3
plus chip fresh out of tsmc's advanced 6
nanm Fab this thing boosts up to 4.7 GHz
in 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
G bit 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 USB 4 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 6
card here is from Qualcomm how cool is
that the RAM Shield has a little tab
adorable 26 gig kits of also Samsung
memory running at 4,800 megat 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 wat 4 ohm speakers not
terribly fancy although they are tuned by bang and Olson 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 wat 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 let's see how long we can keep that gravy
train rolling out of the box HP boasts they can go from 0 to 50% charge in only
30 minutes and rates this bad boy add up to to 19 hours of use that's solid but
as you guys know batteries wear out over time and I'm pleased as punch 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 the fan
is not actually even taped no adhesive
even between the fan and the heat sink 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 of 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 reasonable oh also on the daughter
board is a 5 GB 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 GB per second usb4 type-c ports I mentioned earlier
both with power delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 along with another 5 GB per
second type a port and a full-sized HDMI
2.0b 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 please don't
break you just pull out okay oh there's
your fingerprint sensor bo bo Boop the realtime clock battery uses no screws at
all and the touchpad has just seven screws around the perimeter we finally
had to change the bit and the screwdriver that's okay I understand why
these are very very tiny little screws so we're going to use a Phillips
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 to 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 touch pad'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 uh 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 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 touchpad is able to be so big is the
aspect ratio of the display the excellent 16 by10 that I and that guy
hey Alex 16 by10 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 autof framing infrared for Windows hello and a
physical camera shutter as well as the Hubbard that powers both it and hp's
dynamic noise leveling microphone array to hp's credit while this does use clips
and 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
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 upgradeable like this one cannot be
overstated when deployed at scale in a commercial setting with dozens hundreds
or even thousands of users the text that actually have to work on them will be
infinitely thankful to have someone at HP in their corner are fighting for
Simplicity in design and maintenance there are other benefits for commercial
users as well such as HP wolf security and HP sure view 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 part 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 on 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 sponsored 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 freedos as an OS option so bottom line
for $2,000 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
cooled a Mac Studio there that was fun
not really very much like this video but definitely fun