HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Windows Battery Leader

Say what you privation astir the originative powerfulness of AI successful the caller Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, with its caller EliteBook Ultra G1q, HP says, “Why not instrumentality it to the office?”

This is simply a laptop that’s each business—an “atmospheric blue” (not black) 14-inch clamshell, with thing successful the mode of plan frills speech from a silvery HP logo connected apical and a enactment of half-height relation keys that are a spot lighter successful color. Oh, and there’s a babe bluish powerfulness button! Never impeach Hewlett-Packard of not knowing however to person a small fun, adjacent successful the country office.

The diagnostic database present is simply a acquainted 1 for the Copilot+ PC market, though the specs connected this instrumentality are amazingly entry-level. The slower Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 serves arsenic the CPU, backed by 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB solid-state drive. The 14-inch touchscreen solution sits astatine an oddball 2,240 x 1,400 pixels, a measurement down from the 2,880 x 1,800 solution that has go the prevailing modular for machines with a 16:10 facet ratio. Port enactment isn’t awesome either, with 2 USB-C ports (one specified astatine Thunderbolt-class 40 Gbps, the different astatine 10 Gbps) and a azygous USB-A port. Contrast that with the Asus Vivobook S 15, which has 2 accelerated USB-C ports, 2 USB-A ports, HDMI, and a microSD paper reader.

At 18 millimeters thick, the instrumentality cuts a svelte profile, but its 3-pound value is connected the precocious extremity for 14-inch laptops. That’s surely successful portion owed to the pugnacious aluminum chassis—50 percent recycled, and the keycaps are made of 50 percent plastic—and it’s besides wide that the laptop has been designed to beryllium beaten up a small bit: tossed successful a shoulder bag, abused connected an airplane’s tray table. If thing else, the EliteBook surely feels sturdy capable to deed the roadworthy with you without interest of damage.

Alas, the reasonably low-end specs nether the hood beget disappointing performance, and crossed the board, the EliteBook turned successful the lowest benchmark scores among Copilot+ PCs I’ve tested to date. The delta isn’t huge—2 percent slower than the Microsoft Surface Pro connected wide CPU-focused workloads, and slower by up to 10 percent connected astir graphics tests—but it’s measurable, and sometimes noticeable connected tasks specified arsenic Live Captions, which had occupation keeping up with faster-moving speech. As expected, the EliteBook has the aforesaid lingering compatibility issues arsenic different Qualcomm Snapdragon-based laptops that utilize the ARM architecture, which I explain successful broader item here.