Review: HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Copilot+ PC

Say what you want about the creative power of AI in the new Microsoft Copilot+ PCs, with its new EliteBook Ultra G1q, HP says, “Why not take it to the office?”

This is a laptop that’s all business—an “atmospheric blue” (not black) 14-inch clamshell, with nothing in the way of design frills aside from a silvery HP logo on top and a row of half-height function keys that are a bit lighter in color. Oh, and there’s a baby blue power button! Never accuse Hewlett-Packard of not knowing how to have a little fun, even in the corner office.

The feature list here is a familiar one for the Copilot+ PC market, though the specs on this machine are surprisingly entry-level. The slower Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100 serves as the CPU, backed by 16 GB of RAM and a 512-GB solid-state drive. The 14-inch touchscreen resolution sits at an oddball 2,240 x 1,400 pixels, a step down from the 2,880 x 1,800 resolution that has become the prevailing standard for machines with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Port selection isn’t impressive either, with two USB-C ports (one specified at Thunderbolt-class 40 Gbps, the other at 10 Gbps) and a single USB-A port. Contrast that with the Asus Vivobook S 15, which has two fast USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, HDMI, and a microSD card reader.

Photograph: Christopher Null

At 18 millimeters thick, the machine cuts a svelte profile, but its 3-pound weight is on the high end for 14-inch laptops. That’s surely in part due to the tough aluminum chassis—50 percent recycled, and the keycaps are made of 50 percent plastic—and it’s also clear that the laptop has been designed to be beaten up a little bit: tossed in a shoulder bag, abused on an airplane’s tray table. If nothing else, the EliteBook certainly feels sturdy enough to hit the road with you without worry of damage.

Alas, the fairly low-end specs under the hood beget disappointing performance, and across the board, the EliteBook turned in 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 on broad CPU-focused workloads, and slower by up to 10 percent on most graphics tests—but it’s measurable, and sometimes noticeable on tasks such as Live Captions, which had trouble keeping up with faster-moving speech. As expected, the EliteBook has the same lingering compatibility issues as other Qualcomm Snapdragon-based laptops that utilize the ARM architecture, which I explain in broader detail here.

Photograph: Christopher Null

The plus side of all of this is battery life. A full-screen YouTube video test at maximum brightness netted 17 hours and 20 minutes of running time, the highest mark I’ve clocked on a laptop aside from the MacBook Pro M3 Max I reviewed last year—and an easy record for Windows machines. It’s an impressive feat, but there is a catch: The overall brightness of the EliteBook is extremely low, and even when maxed out, it doesn’t quite feel bright enough, even in a darkish room. If you’re looking for a dazzling, cinematic experience, this isn’t the machine for you.

Audio on the other hand is solid, plenty loud, and room-filling when it’s called for. Unlike other Snapdragon machines I’ve tested to date, I did manage to get the EliteBook’s fan to kick in under heavy loads, but it remained barely audible and not at all distracting while running. The laptop stayed cool to the touch throughout my days of testing too.

Photograph: Christopher Null

Again, this is a business-focused laptop, and you will find various nods to the commercial market here, including integrated security software called HP Wolf Security NGAV, a new AI-based anti-malware platform. Time will tell if Wolf is better than existing security tools, but I wasn’t able to slip anything by it.

The base installation of the EliteBook Ultra G1q runs $1,699, which is cheaper than the similarly configured Surface Pro, but still very high. Considering its specs, feature set, and general performance, I’d expect to see this at least $200 less expensive, epic battery or no—and that’s only if you’ve decided that a Copilot+ PC is the right move for you.