Design and Ergonomics
The EliteBook 820 is a surprisingly attractive Ultrabook with a tapered design, contrasting lid and side colors and a magnesium casing. The laptop passed a number of MIL-STD 810G tests for things like dust, drops and vibrational shock. It feels solid and it should appeal to those who feel that ThinkPads are dull matte black blocks.
Perhaps the most enchanting thing in a sea of similarly spec'd and sealed Ultrabooks is the removable bottom panel. This grants easy access to all internals including the battery, socketed WiFi + Bluetooth card, 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD drive bay, a flash cache slot (optional for HDDs to speed them up) and a WAN card slot.
Keyboard and Trackpad
HP makes a good keyboard, though not as good as Lenovo ThinkPads and Dell XPS models in terms of tactile feel. Still, it's more tactile than the Spectre 13 and Sony Vaio laptops, to name a few. This is a standard keyboard with a normal layout and for those who are defecting from ThinkPad land, there's a TrackPoint style eraser stick pointer embedded in the keyboard. The keyboard is water resistant with drain holes and it has very even backlighting. The trackpad is pleasant and predictable and it has mechanical buttons top (for the pointing stick) and bottom (for the trackpad).
