Staying with the trusted IT guy’s “spend at least $600 and buy a solid state drive” recommendation, this laptop did not let me down. Two months into ownership, I’ve performed video editing and basic user level tasks, never once seeing this machine flinch. It does not appear to have user serviceable RAM from every note I’ve read, and unlike these easy-access underbody panels my old ProBook had, this unit is screwed together tight as a drum. In comparison to my 4540 ProBook, it is a bit flimsier. My son habitually sets various toys, foods, or beverages on it and I worry about the screen’s integrity of he gets excited and starts slapping it, toy in hand. It has held up well so far. The screen casing is a plastic textured matte finish, as opposed to my previous plastic polished and brushed finish. As such, it has incurred several scratches already while the ProBook shows little damage.
Performance wise, it boots from sleep to PIN screen to ready in under ten seconds. Every time. The multitasking is unparalleled. I was reluctant to purchase the smaller 256GB SSD when I was replacing a 500 GB 5400 SATA but keeping all my storage on my NAS makes up for that, especially with everything running gigabit connections. My purchase criteria included Win 10, gigabit Ethernet, high-capacity SSD, 15” screen, long battery life, non-touch screen, no-hesitation processing speed, a Core i5 7th Gen processor, and full keyboard with numpad. This unit met all those criteria, and the 12 months no interest plan made it very affordable. The only sour feelings I had about this purchase were based on the lack of BestBuyRewards points I failed to earn. The associate failed to mention that by financing the unit, I was ineligible for rewards points. And while this stipulation was likely written in fine print somewhere, I failed to read it so that’s on me.
Back to the laptop, it is, in summary, a lightweight powerhouse. For low resources task, it practically anticipates your requests because the applications open so fast. Compared to my work HP ZBOOK which leaves deep crease lines in your lap after a half hour of use, this 250 model weighs nearly nothing, and seems to perform (for my needs) identically.