HP 550 Reviews, Specifications, and PRICES!

From £386.00	Out of Stock	From £333.97	Out of Stock	From £310.49	Out of Stock

HP550.co.uk is here to give you an honest and frank review of the brand new HP 550 notebook PC, as well as help you find the best online price for the HP 550.

The HP 550 is the new version of the extremely popular HP 530, which has now been discontinued. The updated and upgraded HP 550 includes new features such as Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8GHz or Intel Celeron M 550 2GHz processors, increased storage, increased memory, as well as being lighter in weight and therefore more mobile!
Check out the full specifications and prices of the HP 550 here...

Our Thoughts of the HP 550

The HP 550 is a seriously sharp looking mobile notebook PC which is built for business, and at an extremely affordable price!

Out of the box, we were pleasantly surprised with how light the HP 550 felt; it certainly lends itself well to computing on the move. The HP 550 also made us drool somewhat with it's sleek 'titanium' finish and glossy screen; this certainly fullfils the criteria for looking like some professional, executive hardware, but then, it's always fun unwrapping a new bit of kit...would the HP 550 follow through with our expectations?

Going Past The HP 550's Good Looks

It goes without saying that the build quality of the HP 550 is unquestionable, as you would expect from HP. For such a mobile notebook, the HP 550 delivers on ports too, having 3 USB2 ports in addition to the standard network and dial-up ports, ExpressCard 34/54, mic socket and media card slot. If you're looking to want to hook your HP 550 up to more than this on the move, then maybe you'd want something a bit more substantial than the HP 550...we could potentially recommend the HP Pavilion range, or even the HP HDX series.

With the HP 550, we're not looking at a gaming laptop; this machine doesn't quite have all the bells and whistles that you'd need for running the most demanding of 3D games. Having said that, the HP 550 does do what it's designed to do extremely well, and that's running all your business/office applications. In addition to fulfilling it's business requirements, the HP 550 does have a DVD drive and excellent 15.4", widescreen display which is just hte job for watching movies on long commutes or trips around the globe. Having said all that, the integrated Intel graphics card in the HP 550 has been greatly upgraded from the graphics capabilities of the HP 530, to provide you with the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100.

HP definitely listened and responded to the user's feedback about the old HP 530 when they developed this HP 550 uprgade. The battery life has taken a giant leap to now provide from a considerable 4.5 hours of use, which should keep you working away for the majority of journeys you'll be doing. The HP 550 also packs a bit more of a punch with the 1GB or 2GB of memory, which can now be extended to up to 4GB! This should be more than enough for you to get your tasks done; we found it easily coped with the applications we threw at it.

The storage capacity of the HP 550 has now grown to substantial minimum of 160GB on the base model to 250GB if you need that bit of extra space. We felt that this was plenty of storage for a mobile laptop; if you need more space we recommend you buy an external hard drive to go with the HP 550 to keep you going!

It was nice to see a full size keyboard on the HP 550, so we weren't having to deal with shrunk down keys, and the touchpad for mouse control also incorporates and handy scroll bar to allow easy scrolling through your documents and websites.

We did like the upgrade to the DVD R/RW that HP have installed in the HP 550 which is called 'Lightscribe'. This allows you to print labels onto your DVD's as you're burning them, meaning that you can back-up your documents from your HP 550 straight onto a DVD and have it labelled without the fuss of carrying permanent markers with you to scribble some shorthand, handwritten label on them.

Our Verdict on the HP 550

The Score: 9/10
We really liked the HP 550. In it's class this notebook PC is going to be very difficult to beat on price, quality, and performance. The HP 550 does it's job extremely well and looks good doing that! If you're shopping around for a gaming laptop, this isn't for you, but if you're looking for a laptop which is extremely mobile, with good battery life, connectivity and storage, then we think that this has to be top of your list.

Check out the specifications of the HP 550 here...

Compare Prices on the HP 550

From £386.00	Out of Stock	From £333.97	Out of Stock	From £310.49	Out of Stock

Laptop Security...

Buying anti-virus software for your HP 550?? Before you spend money on the same old, usual, security software just take a moment to have a look at the Yoggie Gatekeeper.

The Gatekeeper is mini computer which plugs into your USB socket or card slot and handles all your security needs. Where normal anti-virus software uses up a considerable amount of your computer's performance, the Yoggie Gatekeeper uses only a tiny percentage of the computer's resources meaning that your HP 550 can fly along using all that available power to run the applications that matter to you!!

Go here to take a look at the Yoggie Gatekeeper...