HP EliteBook 8560p review

A 2011 EliteBook whose main appeal today is the rock-bottom price

The HP EliteBook 8560p is a 2011-vintage business machine built around an Intel Core i5 2520M, an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 6470M dGPU, and 8 GB of RAM, landing at $140 — well below the business-class median of about $297. At this age, every meaningful metric reflects the platform's vintage: reliability is at the floor (2 versus a median of 42.5), overall performance is low (5.66), and the dGPU of this era cannot run modern games.

The price is the only real story

There is no metric on which this laptop leads its modern peers — the reliability index of 2 places it at the bottom of the bracket, and the performance index of 5.66 reflects a CPU more than a decade old. The case for this machine rests entirely on the very low asking price and the EliteBook build quality of its era, not on any current capability.

Long-term reliability is the honest warning

The weak spot by level is reliability, which is the right way to think about a 2011 laptop: this is hardware near the end of its useful life. The Mobility Radeon HD 6470M dGPU was entry-level when new and is now obsolete — capability data shows it cannot hit even minimum playability on modern titles like The Witcher 3 or Counter-Strike 2. This is a machine for offline document work, light web, or as a spare.

Depreciation has nearly bottomed out

From a base near $1300, the laptop has settled to $140 at roughly 5.7% per year, with a projected value around $124 in two years. The curve has flattened — most of the value has already been lost.

Cheaper and pricier vintage peers

Slightly pricier options include the HP ProBook 4740s ($155) and Dell Latitude E5520 ($160); cheaper alternatives include the HP 250 G3 ($122) and HP 250 G4 ($127), both of which are newer but similarly low-spec.

Bottom line

The EliteBook 8560p is worth considering only as a cheap, disposable machine for genuinely light duties — offline documents, a spare, or a child's first laptop. Long-term reliability is limited and the GPU cannot game, so buyers who need a dependable daily driver should spend slightly more on a newer peer.