The HP Compaq 2510p is an ultra-portable notebook aimed at the business market, it weighs in at only 2.8 lbs and even has an optional built-in DVD burner, which most ultra-portables don’t have. The only question is, how is the performance in such a compact notebook? Read on after the jump.

The 2510p has a 12.1-inch LED backlit widescreen display and both a touchpad and a pointing stick for the best of both worlds ala Lenovo ThinkPad. The LED backlit supposedly extends the unit’s battery life by 90 minutes. On the right corner of the palm rest is a fingerprint reader for added security, always a nice touch. Inside the 2510p is up to a 1.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor with a 2MB L2 cache and up to a 100GB 4200rpm 1.8-inch hard drive. In the memory area, you have a choice of either 1 or 2GB of RAM. For graphics, you’ll find a Intel GMA X3100 graphics chipset, which uses up to 384MB of shared memory.

For the ultimate in portability, you can also choose to add in your choice of a WWAN connection, EVDO or HSDPA from AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. For expansion, there are 2 USB 2.0 ports, VGA, stereo microphone in, headphone, FireWire, power, modem, ethernet, and a docking connector. Our review unit came with both a 3 cell and 6 cell battery. In our tests we received an amazing 3.5 hours using the 3 cell and double that using the 6 cell. HP also sells a 9 cell battery which should give you a full work day of battery life.

The LED backlit screen was also very good and instantly lit up upon resuming the notebook from standby. The sturdy construction of the notebook’s case made for a solid feel and something that wasn’t cheaply put together. The keyboard was great and the touchpad was one of the best ones we’ve used on a notebook to date. From a personal standpoint, the pointing stick was a welcomed addition and one of my favorite features on any notebook.

On to performance, the 2510p isn’t the fastest notebook, nor has the most powerful graphics - but it should work fine for most office tasks such as word processing and spreadsheets. Performance is mainly reduced by the slow 4200rpm hard drive and the ULV processor. Unfortunately, we were unable to run one of our benchmarking applications, PCMark Vantage on our review unit, so we cannot give you an accurate rating of the performance. In the graphics department, the 2510p received a CINEBENCH score of 2256 utilizing both CPU cores, with a 1.88 speedup over the single core test.

Since we were unable to run our PCMark Vantage tests, we don’t have an exact representation of performance in terms of scores, but we can say that it should work fine for light office work and something to carry to and from work every day. The HP Compaq 2510p is available today from HP starting at $1,499.

Pros

• Sturdy construction.
• Excellent battery life.
• Bright, LED backlit screen.
• Built-in fingerprint reader and WWAN.
• Solid keyboard & trackpad.

Cons

• Slow 1.8-inch 4200rpm hard drive & ULV processor create a performance bottleneck.

Final Verdict
4 out of 5 stars.

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