You’d never guess that HP’s latest PC is actually a business laptop

While HP has completely revamped its consumer laptops, with its budget, premium, and gaming laptops all falling under the new OmniBook brand, it has retained the EliteBooke lin to designate its commercial machines. The first was the EliteBook X G1a, which used a custom AMD chipset for enhanced performance and particularly fast on-device AI.

The EliteBook Ultra G1i takes a different approach. It features the same enterprise features as all EliteBooks, but it’s built around Intel’s Lunar Lake chipsets for greater efficiency. I took a look at a preproduction model, and so I couldn’t run the usual tests, but I came away suspecting that the EliteBook Ultra G1i might very well make our list of the best business laptops.

Specs and configuration

We don’t have any pricing yet for the EliteBook Ultra G1i. Given its commercial focus with extra security and management features, it’s likely to garner a premium price.

Design

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HP has had a distinct style with its laptops going back to the beginning of the older Spectre era. The overall design cues are subtle, but I can tell it’s an HP when I pulled the EliteBook Ultra G1i of the box. HP’s EliteBooks have never been as decorative as Spectres, with more of the subdued lines and angles that business users might want, but the edges are a bit curved to be more comfortable, the keyboard has the same look, and it’s familiar from various directions. It’s a good look, equal to any other premium laptop.

The build quality is also excellent in all metal. There’s no bending, flexing, or twisting, which has become pretty much the norm for any laptop that costs more than $1,000. So while the EliteBook Ultra G1i is well-built, that aspect doesn’t stand out quite as much. The hinge is a bit stiff, which means you need two hands to open the lid. That can either contribute — or detract from — the overall feeling of quality depending upon your point if view.

In terms of size, the laptop has small enough bezels to remain nicely sized in width and depth, but not as small as Dell’s XPS lineup. The EliteBook Ultra G1i is thin at just 0.59 inches at its thickest point, but not the thinnest, and it’s around the 14-inch laptop average at 2.6 pounds. So, it’s highly portable, but again, it doesn’t really stand out.

Keyboard and touchpad

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HP has always had great keyboards on its premium laptops, with large keycaps featuring bold, highly visible lettering, tons of key spacing, and quality switches. This keyboard maintains that trend with a new design that’s been further refined in the EliteBook series. I did find the switches on this model to be a little less snappy than on the EliteBook X G1a, with a bit of an abrupt bottoming action. But that’s being picky.

The touchpad is a large haptic version that’s excellent, as have been all of HP’s haptic touchpads. It would be the equal of Apple Force Touch haptic touchpads except it lacks Apple’s Force click feature. It’s as precise and responsive as any Windows touchpad, however.

A touch display is optional for those who like that input option. I do like to have it, but it’s not a must-have for most people.

Connectivity and webcam

There are three USB-C with Thunderbolt 4 ports, which is one more than usual and a plus given that one is needed for charging. There’s also a USB-A port for legacy support. Wireless connectivity is fully up to date.

The webcam is HP’s usual high-resolution 9MP version, and HP has a number of features that utilize the on-device capabilities of the fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU) included in the Intel Lunar Lake chipsets to enhance videoconferencing features.

Performance

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I couldn’t test performance, but we have some experience with the Lunar Lake chipsets used in the EliteBook Ultra G1i. Whether it’s the Core Ultra 5 or the Core Ultra 7, the Core Ultra Series 2 chipsets have provided solid — but not outstanding — productivity performance. They’re good enough for demanding productivity users, but offer no real advantage for creators or gamers.

That matters because the Qualcomm Snapdragon X chipsets have the same efficiency goals, but are considerably faster across the board. They run Windows on Arm, however, which might be more problematic for commercial users with applications written for Intel architectures.

Note that the Lunar Lake chipset options include Intel’s vPro features, which provide for enhanced security and management system support. HP has its Wolf Security suite, along with a host of plug-ins for enterprise environments, and that makes the EliteBook Ultra G1i a great option for large companies. Any buyers looking for higher performance should consider the EliteBook X G1a that uses a custom AMD Ryzen 9 AI chipset that’s bound to be a lot faster.

Battery life

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The EliteBook Ultra G1i has a 64 watt-hour battery and a high-res OLED display. Those are matched up with Intel Lunar Lake chipsets that have demonstrated very good efficiency in other laptops I’ve reviewed.

In our testing, Lunar Lake provides battery life across both lightweight and demanding tasks that’s closer to Apple’s highly efficient Arm-based silicon chipsets than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X. Those are also more efficient than previous Windows laptops, but they lose some of their advantage when working the CPU harder.

You’ll still get overall better battery life with a MacBook. But the EliteBook Ultra G1i will likely provide good enough battery life that you won’t be able to tell the difference.

Display

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There’s one basic display option for the EliteBook Ultra G1i, coming in touch and non-touch versions. It’s a 14.0-inch 16:10 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED display running at 60Hz. Subjectively, it’s as good as any other OLED display I’ve used and tested, with bright, dynamic colors and inky blacks.

I couldn’t use my colorimeter to test it, but I suspect that the display is as good as any other OLED panel. That would make it quite good, indeed. Is it necessary for a laptop that will likely be used for mostly productivity tasks? Maybe not. But it’s not like this would be a bargain laptop if the display was just IPS.

Another in a strong line of business laptops

It looks like HP has checked all the boxes for a premium commercial laptop. Performance and battery life should be more than good enough, the high-res OLED display will please every potential user, and HP’s suite of enterprise utilities will be attractive for companies of all sizes.

But we won’t know for sure until we have a chance to run it through out benchmarks. And we don’t know the pricing, which is likely to be relatively high given the business user target.