HP ProBook 445 G10 in review: Lights and shadows of the office laptop

The ProBook's competitors include other 14-inch office notebooks with AMD processors like the Lenovo ThinkPad L14 G4 and the Dell Inspiron 14 7435 (also Ryzen 5 7530U) as well as the Lenovo Thinkpad E14 G5 and the Asus ZenBook 14 (each Ryzen 7 7730U).

Apart from the design of the webcam bar and some connection details, the case looks very similar to the ProBook 440 G9 or ProBook 445 G8, so we will only briefly discuss the chassis, the equipment (interfaces), and the input devices in this article.

The chassis offers a solid quality without really being able to inspire. Compared to the recently tested ZBook Firefly 14 G10, the surfaces are not as high-quality and seem less stable. Meanwhile, there is nothing to complain about in terms of design and workmanship.

With a weight of only 1.3 kg, the 14-incher is the lightest notebook in the test field. The height of 2.0 cm is at the upper end of the scale, but the differences are quite small. Above all, the generous opening angle of up to 180° deserves praise. Opening the case is possible after removing five cross screws on the bottom. However, since it was a store device, we refrained from disassembling it.

In addition to three classic USB A 3.0 ports, the 14-incher has a USB C 3.1 Gen2 port with PowerDelivery and DisplayPort 1.4 function. There is also an RJ45 Gigabit LAN port, an HDMI 2.1 output, a jack for headsets or microphones, and a Kensington Lock. Buyers have to do without a modern USB 4 as well as a card reader. Last but not least, there is a fingerprint scanner as a security feature.

A Realtek 8852CE chip is responsible for wireless communication, which achieves good rates during transmission and very good rates during reception.

Although the webcam delivers better results than many rivals, you should not have too high expectations in terms of color accuracy, for example.

The scope of delivery includes a few info booklets and a pleasingly compact as well as light 45-watt power cord (unfortunately no USB-C).

The touchpad proved to be unspectacular in the test, so it neither scores badly nor particularly well. Precision, gliding properties, click behavior, and gesture support are inconspicuous.

While the display brightness of the ZBook Firefly 14 remained slightly below the manufacturer's specifications, the ProBook 445 even exceeds HP's promises. Instead of 400 cd/m², we could determine an average of 464 cd/m², which is very good for an IPS panel.

In terms of CPU performance, the ProBook 445 G10 belongs to the mid-range of office laptops. 16 GB of RAM should provide enough reserves for most buyers. Meanwhile, 512 GB of mass storage capacity is a bit modest in 2023.

Although the name suggests otherwise, the Ryzen 5 7530U is not based on the new Zen 4, but still on the old Zen 3 architecture. The six-core model clocks with 2.0 to 4.5 GHz under load and can process up to 12 threads in parallel via SMT. HP has chosen 25 watts PL1 and 30 watts PL2 for the 7 nm chip's TDP.

The Ryzen 5 7530U performs as expected in the benchmark course and follows the previous average for this processor. The stronger Ryzen 7 7730U is about 20% faster across all benchmarks. Top: As the Cinebench loop shows, the ProBook achieves a constant long-term performance.

The gaps between the comparison devices are even smaller in terms of system performance, although the ProBook has to settle for last place here as well.

Certain savings measures can be seen in the mass storage. Besides the mediocre size, the performance of the installed Kioxia SSD can only be convincing to some extent. At least the speed remains stable even after a longer load.