HP has started shipping several SKUs of its 13-inch ProBook 5310m in Europe. The ProBook 5310m is a rather odd beast, as it's basically a business notebook on the outside, but it packs affordable CULV chips under the bonnet.

It ships in Celeron SU2300 dual-core or Core 2 Duo SP9300 flavour, and you'll be able to choose from several SKUs. Options range from a SU2300 with 1GB of memory and 160GB of storage, all the way to an SP9300 version with 4GB of memory, 320GB of storage, 3G connectivity and a host of other goodies. The cheapest Celeron version, with FreeDOS, will set you back just over €500, while the high end SP9300 versions should end up around the €1000 mark.



The key feature that sets the ProBook apart from other CULV-books is the fact that it packs a matte screen, so there's none of that glare nonsense. Most CULV notebooks have glare screens, with Acer's Travelmate series being the only notable exception. We're really not keen on glare screens. We believe they are useless on the go, frankly, we have no idea why vendors insist on using them.

Apart from the screen, we also like the looks. HP used brushed aluminium on the chassis and the lid, and the chicklet keyboard looks nice, too.