HP’s new EliteBook Ultra G1i is the latest generation of the company’s high-end executive notebook, formerly known as Dragonfly. It’s a well-built, sleek laptop, based on Intel’s latest Lunar Lake chip, and is part of the Copilot+ PC program. As such, like other recent machines I’ve tested, including the Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen13 and X9 and the Dell Pro 14 Premium, it performs quite well. HP adds a few unique AI features, including its HP AI Companion and PolyCamera Pro apps, which I’ve seen on its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375-based EliteBook X G1a as well.
The EliteBook Ultra G1i looks fairly similar to the Snapdragon-based EliteBook Ultra G1q I tested nine months ago, with an “atmospheric blue” tint. It measures 12.35 by 8.55 by 0.36 to 0.48 inches and weighs in at 2.58 pounds (3.08 with the included small 65-watt charger), making it a good size for a 14-inch notebook, marginally lighter than the Dell Pro 14 Premium or the ThinkPad X9, but not as light as the 2.15 pound X1 Carbon. This model came with a 14-inch 2,880-by-1,800 OLED display capable of 400 nits of brightness that looked terrific. As usual in machines of this class, the bezels are minimal. The top bezel contains the webcam.
(Credit: HP)
It has a good selection of ports, with an audio jack, USB-A (with a pop-down cover to keep the machine slim), and a USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 port rated at 40Gbps on the left-hand side, and two more USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports and a locking slot on the right. I like having charging USB-C ports on both sides of the machine, as I find that very convenient. But unlike the ThinkPads or the Dell Pro 14 Premium, it does not have an HDMI port, so I was forced to use a USB-C-to-HDMI dongle or a docking station to connect my external monitor. (Many newer monitors do have USB-C connections, but many monitors still in use do not.)
From an AV perspective, the EliteBook Ultra is terrific with a 9-megapixel webcam with IR that’s among the best I’ve tested. It has quad speakers and a dual-microphone array, and sound quality is quite nice as well. The webcam has a tiny physical cover switch above it, which I also appreciate. And the 2.8K 120Hz OLED display looks great.
The keyboard is fine, with the fingerprint reader now embedded in a power key on the upper right-hand corner of the keyboard), and a large haptic trackpad.
(Credit: HP)
Part of what makes the EliteBook series stand out is HP’s specific software, most of which I covered in the review of the EliteBook G1a. This includes Poly Camera Pro, which provides a variety of effects that go beyond the Windows Studio Pro effects included on all the Copilot+PCs. These include watermarking and the ability to work with external cameras as well as the internal one. HP includes a 1-year license for its Wolf Security software, with a self-healing BIOS and containing threats via isolation for untrusted files. Many enterprises may have other security solutions, but this is nice for other businesses or individuals who may want an extra level of protection.
HP’s AI Companion app, still labeled as Beta, continues to offer a Discover option for typical AI chats, Analyze that can compare documents, and Perform, which keeps your PC up to date and lets you control the device. (Although I will note that while they both came close, neither Perform nor Copilot gave me the correct steps to silence notifications from Outlook, so I still think of these as a work in progress.)
AI Companion is still powered by ChatGPT, but it’s been redesigned, and the Analyze feature now supports up to 10 libraries with a maximum of 100MB. It’s nice and HP promotes this as being more private that public AI services, but it seems to still be a bit behind the more common web-based services.
And as usual, HP uses its myHP app to control the PC. This includes setting up such things as the ability to use the touchpad to control brightness and volume (which works fine, though I don’t find it particularly more useful than the traditional function keys, which are still available), a programable function key, and various camera gestures.
Performance Tests
From a performance standpoint, the model I had was based on the Intel Core Ultra 7 268V (Lunar Lake), the same processor used on the Dell Pro 14 Premium and a slight upgrade from the 258V I tested in the X1 Carbon Gen 13. The main processing parts of the chip are made on TSMC’s N3B (3nm) process, a departure from previous generations of chips made by Intel itself. It has eight threads: four performance cores and four efficiency cores, but no multi-threading, runs at a base frequency of 2.2GHz, with turbo speeds up to 5.0GHz, requires 17 to 37 watts of power, has Intel Arc Graphics 140V with 8 Xe cores, an NPU that Intel rates at 48 Int8 TOPS, and 32GB of DRAM. It supports Intel’s vPro enterprise management technology, which is required by many enterprise buyers. My test unit had a 512GB SSD.
Get Our Best Stories!
Your Daily Dose of Our Top Tech News
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Thanks for signing up!
Your subscription has been confirmed. Keep an eye on your inbox!
Performance tests were quite good. On basic benchmarks, the EliteBook Ultra G1i was a hair slower than the Dell Pro 14 Premium on some things, but generally quite close. I doubt anyone would notice the difference in real-world use. (In basic CPU benchmarks, the AMD-based EliteBook X G1a was a bit faster than the Lunar Lake systems, though the Lunar Lake machines are faster on some graphics tests.)
On my toughest tests—those that run for a long time—the Ultra G1i did well, though not quite up to the other Lunar Lake systems. (I wonder if some of the HP software slows it down a bit.)
Running a large model in MatLab took 28 minutes and 45 seconds, compared with times in the 25-minute range on the ThinkPads and Dell Pro. Still, that’s remarkably better than the 35-46 minutes I saw on AMD and older Intel Meteor Lake systems. On a large Excel spreadsheet, it took the EliteBook G1i 43 minutes, compared with 41 minutes on the ThinkPad X9 and EliteBook Book G1a, 38 minutes on the Dell Pro 14 Premium, and 34 minutes on the ThinkPad X1 Carbon. Transcoding a video in Handbrake has really slowed down on the last few systems I’ve tested; my guess is it has something to do with recent Windows or driver updates, so I’m discounting that.
Recommended by Our Editors
On AI applications, the 48 TOPS NPU seemed to work pretty well for local applications. I tried running local versions of Stable Diffusion (though Automatic) and Llama 3.2 (through LM Studio). All the Lunar Lake systems did notably better than the Meteor Lake systems but not quite as strong at the AMD Strix Point ones. The differences between the various Lunar Lake systems are minor.
I saw similar results with UL’s Procyon AI Inference tests for both computer vision and image generation, where the Lunar Lake systems are similar but the AMD Strix Point or Qualcomm Snapdragon-based systems do better. I’m still not sure most people want to run these applications locally yet, but it’s something to keep in mind.
With a 64 watt-hour battery, the EliteBook G1i lasted a bit more than 16.5 hours on PCMark 10’s Modern Office test with the screen set to 100 nits of brightness. This is an improvement on what I saw on the Dragonfly, and in line with what I got with the ThinkPad X1 Carbon and X9 but well behind the 30 hours I saw on the Dell Pro 14 Premium.
As configured with an Intel 268V, 32GB of memory, 512GB SSD, 2.8K touch screen OLED, and a year of Wolf Security tested, the EliteBook G1i has a list price of $2,519, but as I write this, it’s selling for $1,999 on HP’s website. A smaller configuration with an Intel Ultra 5 226, 16GB of memory, and 512GB SSD is currently being sold for $1,699. This is still an expensive laptop, but these prices are notably less than what I’m seeing for the Dell Pro 14 Premium or ThinkPad X1 Carbon with similar configurations.
All in all, the EliteBook Ultra G1 is a very impressive laptop. It’s not quite the lightest, or the one with the best battery life, but it does a good job of balancing features and providing excellent performance and still quite good battery life while including excellent AV features and some unique software.
About Michael J. Miller
Former Editor in Chief
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *