"Chunky!" was the first thought that entered our brains upon sighting the 2570p. Looking more like Panasonic's Toughbooks than the recent rash of ultrathins, the newest EliteBook's height got us momentarily excited that there might be decent graphics in there. Sadly, no; we still only have the standard HD Graphics 4000.

Connectivity

USB 3.0: 2
USB 2.0: 1
Optical: DVD&plusm;RW
Video: DisplayPort, VGA
Ethernet: Gigabit
Wireless: Dual-channel 802.11n, Bluetooth 4.0, WWAN

The reason for the height is simply the business target market, as a mix of legacy and new connectivity dots the sides. Despite wielding the very strange screen size of 12.5 inches, it's packing heat: a full-sized tray-loading DVD drive, gigabit Ethernet, 56k modem, secure card slot and thumb scanner, a docking connector, a combined USB 3.0/eSATA slot, stand-alone USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, VGA and DisplayPort connectors, an SD card reader, a headset jack and an ExpressCard 34 slot. There's even a SIM slot under the battery, and Bluetooth 4.0 is along for the ride, as well as 2.4 and 5GHz 802.11n.

Specs aren't at the extreme high end, but the 2570p is no slouch, either. A Core i7 3520M @ 2.9GHz sits inside, with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD supplied by Micron.

As tends to be the case with old-school business laptops, there are buttons both above and below the Synaptics touch pad, with a track stick in the middle of the keyboard.

The 1366x768 matte screen is passable, although its ability to lie parallel with the body of the laptop makes finding a comfortable viewing angle significantly easier than usual.