HP EliteBook Ultra G1i AI review

1 month ago 3

If you're on the hunt for one of the best business laptops, you can stop searching if your budget allows. The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is the perfect companion to grace your C-suite desktop. Perhaps that's not surprising, as HP has a reputation to maintain, and the EliteBook range replaces our old favorites, the premium Dragonfly models.

It's got a bold blue backing instead of the boring black and (bleh) gray options that business laptops tend to gravitate towards, powerful Lunar Lake CPUs, and two screen options, both of which are outstanding quality OLEDs, with the only difference being a touch-sensitive layer.

In every way, this is as much of a style statement as a computing choice, and that's also the biggest downfall of this laptop. It's superb, but it's also more expensive than almost any of the competition, so you end up paying for the design. And that's perfectly fine, if you know that going in.

About this article: HP sent us a production unit of the EliteBook Ultra G1i. It had no input on its contents.

Pros & Cons

Gorgeous from every angle
Superb OLED screen
Powerful hardware and lots of security features

Screen wobbles when typing
Worrying creaking or popping noise when opening the lid
Extremely expensive

Specs, price, and availability

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i AI on a cardboard bus

HP announced the EliteBook Ultra G1i in January at CES 2025, and it was available for purchase on HP.com in February. That's currently the only place you can get it from first-party sources. It starts at $2,419 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, but the Core Ultra 7 versions are often on sale below that price point, and we recommend looking for sales.

As reviewed, this business-class laptop is the price of a business-class flight: $4,859. That gets you the Core Ultra 7 268V, the touch version of the sublime OLED screen, and 512GB of storage—at least if your IT department specs it out for you. HP often has huge discounts, and it's currently $2,909 as a preconfigured unit. The only thing missing is 5G connectivity, which is a shame because we love seeing that in the best business laptops.

CPU Up to Intel Core Ultra 7

GPU Intel Arc

Display type OLED, touch, 400 nits

Display (Size, Resolution) 14 inches, 2880 x 1800

RAM Up to 32GB LPDDR5X

Storage Up to 2TB PCIe M.2 SSD

It's blue, but you won't be

This business laptop is built to turn heads

The EliteBook Ultra G1i is a svelte, slim, sultry contender for my favorite design of the year so far. The Atmosphere Blue anodized magnesium shell is stunningly beautiful, and it's one of those colors that is very difficult to photograph accurately. This clamshell is super-thin, with the side profile only thick enough to safely add two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one USB4 port, and a headphone jack. One USB-A port is cleverly hidden behind a half-hinge, like Ethernet ports on some laptops.

The EliteBook Ultra G1i is a svelte, slim, sultry contender for my favorite design of the year so far.

The color and design will turn heads wherever you go. Some of those might also be people trying to read the new HP logo, but it's a stunner from any angle. Oh, and there is a neat feature where the laptop lid is slightly curved, so the OLED screen doesn't touch the keyboard while it's closed. It's a smart idea; nobody likes getting keyboard outlines on the screen.

I mean, could there be anything else for this beauty?

The 14-inch OLED panel is also visually stunning, with a 2880x1800 resolution, variable refresh rate, and a promised 400 nits of brightness. It's better than that, as we measured 417 nits peak brightness, which is great for an OLED. We tested the touchscreen version, but the touch layer is the only specification that changes between the two, so the readings should transfer over.

It covers 100% sRGB, 92% AdobeRGB, 100% P3, and a slightly under-target of 2.1 gamma. Uniformity was under 1.2 DeltaE everywhere, and 0.71 DeltaE color accuracy, so this is a well-calibrated and pristine display for getting your work done on. Oh, and the 9MP webcam is helped by HP's Poly Studio Pro software that does background replacement, tone adjustment, and other useful things. I couldn't figure out how to reverse it for Google Meet use, so my name and email were backward during the few calls I used it for.

The 14-inch OLED panel is also visually stunning, with a 2880x1800 resolution, variable refresh rate, and a promised 400 nits of brightness.

The keyboard and haptic touchpad are a joy

As our EIC Rich Woods noted in his hands-on, the EliteBook Ultra G1i has a haptic touchpad. That's a bigger deal than it sounds, because none of HP's premium laptops had one before (an odd oversight), even when some of the Chromebooks did. It makes using the computer much nicer and closer to the feel of input devices on a MacBook.

Except the keyboard is nicer than a Mac. I know, I said it and I'm not taking it back. Everyone makes a big deal over ThinkPads for typing feel, but the EliteBook Ultra is as usable, with a nice level of key travel, spacing and layout that helped me not typo too many times while testing it out. It says a lot that I didn't take long to get used to it, when many of the laptops that hit my desk in a year take some adjustment period before I can type at full speed again.

But maybe the battery isn't as good here, and there's a LOT of AI

Intel's Lunar Lake has brought it back to parity with other CPU manufacturers, and that's much the story here. The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i handled everything I threw at it, from using Copilot to fix CSS issues and HP's AI assistant to summarize PDFs of tech jargon that would have taken me days to sift through. The Intel Arc iGPU is powerful for creative uses, and can even handle gaming if you don't mind turning settings down slightly.

	HP EliteBook Ultra G1i Core Ultra 7 268V	Yoga 7i 2-in-1 Core Ultra 7 256V	HP EliteBook X G1a Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375	Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Core Ultra 7 258V	Dell Pro 14 Premium Core Ultra 7 268V
PCMark 10 (AC best perf / battery / battery balanced)	6,730 / 6,287 / 5,457	6,764 / 6,637 / 6,527	7,542 / 6,828 / 5,473	7,056 / 7,101 / 4,806	7,257 / 6,828 / 5,473
Geekbench 6 (single / multi)	2,709 / 10,742	2,641 / 10,685	2,750 / 14,075	2,711 / 10,963	2,873 / 11,217
Cinebench 2024 (single / multi)	119 /479	116 / 577	109 / 1,033	120 / 551	125 / 665
3DMark (Time Spy / Wild Life Extreme / Night Raid)	4,196 / 7,371 / 30,687	3,320 / 4,513 / 27,613	3,916 / 7,043 / 32,294	3,978 / 7,608 / 32,429	4,539 / 7,643 / 34,386
CrossMark (Overall)	1,815	1,804	1,735	1,871	1,783

It's worth noting that the EliteBook Ultra lagged behind the other Core Ultra 7 268V in most of these tests, presumably because the firmware has an aggressive throttling policy so that the laptop stays cool without ramping the fans up too far. I barely noticed the fans during benchmarking, which was nice, but it does come with a tiny hit to full performance—nothing that you'd really notice while doing office tasks.

For a 64Wh battery, I was disappointed that the Procyon productivity battery benchmark wasn't slightly longer. Still, it did make it to 10 hours and 52 minutes, which is more than many laptops I've looked at recently. Certainly enough for all-day work, possibly well into the second day, and with a USB-C PD charger, it'll be filled back up in no time.

We tested it: iGPUs are good, actually

The integrated graphics in your laptop has a lot more power than you give it credit for.

It's so thin

This EliteBook needs to hit the gym a little

Somewhere between the transition from Dragonfly to EliteBook Ultra, this premium laptop gained a few ounces. Not many, though, as the magnesium shell keeps it at 2.63 pounds. That's a third of a pound lighter than the aluminum-clad EliteBook Ultra G1q, and a tiny bit below the MacBook Air's 2.7 pounds. And the MacBook has a smaller screen, making this reduction even more impressive.

And it shows, everywhere. The EliteBook Ultra feels almost weightless when you pick it up, because almost everything that size has trained your brain to expect a certain heft, which isn't there at all. It's so slim that a normal USB-A port has a hinged lower half, because it wouldn't fit otherwise.

I said everywhere, and I meant it. The slimness is also one of the main issues with this laptop. It throttles down instead of getting warm, and the thin display lid wobbles at the slightest provocation, including stiff breezes, typing, or putting your hand down on the table next to it. There are some worrying creaking and popping noises from behind the OLED when opening or closing the lid, too, which is unbecoming of a budget laptop, let alone when dealing with one of this caliber.

two lenovo thinkpad x9 aura edition laptops back-to-back

You should buy the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i if:

Your employer offers it to you
You want one of the best business laptops available
You like blue

You should NOT buy the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i if:

You need 5G connectivity in your business laptop
The wobbling screen would irritate you
You don't want to spend so much on your laptop

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is a fantastic device. It really is a joy to use, performs well, and looks even better. EliteBooks are always awesome, but there's one thing missing from this model to make it complete for me. That's 5G connectivity, available on the tier down EliteBook X, because it's using a Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. Why there's no 5G modem option for this model, I don't understand, but maybe it's something that will be added at a later date.

this is a well-calibrated and pristine display for getting your work done on