When I envision a business laptop, I think of three qualities: powerful, reliable, and secure. The first laptop I think of when I hear business laptop is Lenovo’s long-revered Thinkpad series. However, HP and its EliteBook series have been in the business laptop market for well over a decade.

Business laptops are designed for maximum portable productivity for people who need performance and reliability anywhere they go. This year’s EliteBook lives up to that expectation and delivers powerful performance while being as sleek as ever.

The HP Elitebook 1040 G11 is a great pickup-and-go business laptop thanks to its ultra-light design and reliably excellent performance delivered by its Intel Core Ultra processor. After using this laptop as my daily driver for two weeks, I was genuinely impressed by its performance in everyday productivity tasks and AI capabilities.

Price, specs, and availability

The HP Elitebook 1040 G11 is available now in various configurations and warranty/security options starting at $2384.00. The base model features the Intel Core Ultra 5 125H 4.5Ghz boost clock CPU, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB NVMe SSD.

A more expensive configuration is the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H 5.0Ghz boost clock CPU option, which could cost anywhere from $3,000 to $4,000 depending on the storage and display options selected.

There are several different display configurations for the EliteBook 1040 G11, with varying levels of brightness and privacy options, as well as touchscreen capability. Most configurations share a 14-inch 1920×1200 IPS display. A 14-inch 2.8K 120Hz OLED configuration is available.

These models can get even more expensive if you choose a configuration with a longer warranty and HP Wolf Security, which offers users and businesses “preconfigured enterprise-level protection.” It uses malware prevention, threat containment, OS resiliency, and application persistence to help keep the EliteBook secure and recoverable in the event of a security compromise.

Design

Slim, sleek, and light

There’s a lot to like about the HP EliteBook 1040 G11, starting with its premium sleek design. Its aluminum frame has a nice texture that feels great to hold and walk around with. I prefer laptops with a clean, minimal design. Sitting next to my M1 MacBook Pro and Dell XPS 15, the EliteBook fits in well and scores good points in the looks department.

At just 2.6 lbs, the EliteBook has a thin, light chassis that isn’t flimsy. Its chassis feels rigid and sturdy and wasn’t susceptible to any bending or flexing when I tried to. This makes the EliteBook great for traveling and will slide well into any backpack or carry-on.

The EliteBook’s lid is smooth and easily opened with one hand. Behind that lid is a 14-inch 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution 60Hz IPS display that honestly didn’t impress me all that much. It looks decent, but I immediately noticed the screen’s 60Hz refresh rate. It would be nice if HP offered a higher refresh rate IPS display as a configuration option. After using a 144Hz monitor in my home office and having ProMotion on my MacBook and iPhone when I’m on the go, I’ve become highly adjusted to higher refresh rate displays. The 120Hz OLED option is there, but if you don’t want an OLED, and prefer IPS on a laptop, you’re stuck with 60Hz.

The display is also not fully glass and features plastic bezels bordering it. It’s a bit of a disappointment, as the cheaper bezels detract from the premium design of the rest of the laptop.

If I were considering buying the HP EliteBook 1040 G11, I would definitely go with the 120Hz OLED display. While businesses looking to buy a fleet of these might not make that choice, it’s certainly one I would make as an individual consumer buying this laptop.

The EliteBook comes equipped with a 5-megapixel IR camera located at the top of the screen. I conducted a few video calls on Discord using the webcam, and the calls looked clear. The webcam also has a privacy shutter which hides your webcam simply by sliding the tab above the camera.

It also supports Windows Hello, which works most of the time. I had some days when Windows Hello worked marvelously, and other days when it was constantly telling me to be further away from the laptop for it to work, which I found frustrating. Not sure if this was just an issue I experienced, but it’s worth mentioning.

Another cool feature is that you can set the laptop to automatically turn off the screen when you walk away and turn it back on automatically when you re-approach the laptop. The feature is called Presence and is located under Power & Battery in Windows 11 settings. It even lets you select a custom detection distance for walking away and re-approaching.

It’s really cool to walk back to my desk, sit in front of the EliteBook, and have it immediately turn back on. Of course, having the screen turn off when you walk away helps preserve the battery, which is a bonus plus.

Keyboard, trackpad, and ports

Looking at the keyboard, after writing and typing on the EliteBook 1040 for two weeks, I may like its keys better than my MacBook’s. As I write this using the EliteBook 1040’s keyboard, it feels very responsive, and the key positioning and spacing are perfect. The switches feel deeper than my M1 MacBook Pro. I like the keyboard’s gray color as it matches the EliteBook’s clean silver appearance. The keyboard also has a nice white backlight and bold lettering on each key to easily distinguish them in any setting.

I tend not to use a wireless mouse when I’m using my laptop, even for extended periods, so the trackpad on any laptop I’m using is really important to me. That being said, the EliteBook’s trackpad has a lot to offer. It’s a great size and I found it superb for navigating and scrolling, and the feedback I got when clicking felt very responsive and made a nice click noise.

The EliteBook 1040 G11 also has an excellent port selection. It has everything you need to connect in any office or meeting room quickly. On the left side of the chassis, you’ll find an HDMI 2.1 port, two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports, and a headphone jack. On the right is a USB-C 10Gbps port, a USB-A port, and a NanoSIM slot. The only thing missing is an SD card slot, but since this is a business laptop that is not geared toward creative tasks, it makes sense why they would’ve gone with a SIM card slot instead.

Performance

The EliteBook means business

The review unit for the HP EliteBook 1040 G11 I was sent has an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe M.2 SSD, and a 68-watt-hour battery.

It handled every productivity task I threw at it smoothly, whether it was browsing the web, writing and researching, Microsoft Office, or even light photo editing. I experienced no hiccups or slowdowns at all while using this device, which you would expect, considering it has a top-of-the-line Intel processor in it.

Running a GeekBench 6 CPU benchmark, the laptop scored an impressive 2,120 single-core score and a 11,899 multi-core score. The laptop was set to performance mode during this test. Compared to other laptops Pocket-lint has tested, this puts it quite a bit ahead of the Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 we looked at earlier this year in terms of CPU performance.

For graphics, the HP EliteBook has no dedicated GPU and uses Intel Arc graphics integrated with the CPU. This laptop is absolutely not geared toward gamers or video editors, and the Intel Arc graphics are more than enough for most productivity workers or business people who will be considering this laptop.

The EliteBook 1040 G11 does have some upgradability. By removing the bottom panel of the laptop, you can change the SSD, Wi-Fi card, and battery. The RAM is soldered to the board, so you can’t make any changes down the line to it, which is becoming more and more common with laptops.

Battery life

The HP EliteBook 1040 G11’s battery life was average. It lasted for the work I was doing but didn’t feel extraordinary. While writing and researching at just above half brightness, I was able to use it for about seven hours before having to plug it in. If I were going out for the day, I would definitely bring the charger with me just in case, depending on how long I’m gone for. If I were using my MacBook, I wouldn’t worry about this as much.

Watching an hour-long episode of House of the Dragon at half brightness, I saw the battery drop about 16 percent. After watching about two hours of YouTube, I also lost another 30 percent. So, the battery was losing about 15 percent an hour, consuming media. I was using Google Chrome for both instances. The laptop charges at a decent rate. I never let the battery die all the way, but the lowest I got was 13%, and it charged back up to 75% in about 45 minutes.

I also tried out HP’s Smart Sense through the myHP app. This feature detects the demands of the applications you’re using, the placement of the laptop, and the status of the battery to automatically optimize the laptop’s performance, including its fan noise and temperature. That means Smart Sense can tell if your EliteBook is on a desk or your lap and adjust the thermals accordingly. While using the EliteBook, I only heard the fans spin up a few times, so it felt like Smart Sense was doing its job.

AI features

AI ready at the press of a button

Out of the box, Microsoft Copilot is immediately available to use, and the keyboard even has a dedicated button for it. You can use Copilot to summarize web pages, do research for you, or draft a quick email. Thanks to the Intel Ultra chipset found in the EliteBook, the PC has its own dedicated NPU (neural processing unit) for handling AI tasks.

When I tested out Copilot on the EliteBook 1040 G11, it generated responses to any questions I gave it pretty quickly and listed any sources it used to get the information, so I could investigate further and ensure its accuracy.

Copilot is totally optional, so if you don’t want to use it, you can hide it from the taskbar and never think about it again, which I’ve personally done on my Windows 11 desktop.

I’m not the biggest user of AI, but I think the integration on the EliteBook is pretty useful, especially to its target market of business people, who may want to use it to help draft lots of emails everyday, do some quick research, or even help decide what’s for lunch.

AI also helps with videoconferencing on the EliteBook 1040 G11, thanks to Microsoft’s Studio Effects software. You can use AI to automatically frame your webcam and add a portrait light. You can also add two background effects: a standard blur and a portrait blur.

There is also a feature called eye contact that keeps your eyes constantly in contact with the camera. This feature intrigued me the most and actually works really well. Enabling and disabling the feature in real time changed the location of my eyes. So, if you want to look away during an on-camera video meeting, AI is here to save you. I did notice in the task manager as well that the NPU was being utilized to facilitate these features, putting less strain on the CPU.

HP also integrated four Poly Studio-tuned speakers and an SNR studio microphone into the laptop. I watched lots of YouTube videos on the EliteBook and found the quality of the speakers to be quite good. Even when compared side-by-side with my M1 MacBook Pro, I didn’t notice too much of a difference, other than the MacBook having a bit deeper bass.

When testing the microphone, I also found it to be clear and did a good job of canceling out background noise. I was snapping my fingers while talking to test it, and it was able to isolate my voice and cancel out the finger-snapping really well.

Should you buy the HP EliteBook 1040 G11?

This laptop has a specific target market: productivity workers, businesses, and security-conscious users. If you’re a business owner looking to purchase a fleet of secure laptops and can afford the high price tag, this laptop might work for you. It’s sleek and modern, performs well, and has about average battery life for a Windows laptop. It also has AI features if you’re looking to integrate AI into your workflow.

If you’re not a business person but just an everyday consumer looking for a sleek laptop, then I’d definitely look at more consumer-targeted laptops, such as the Dell XPS series, the MacBook Air/Pro, or even the new Snapdragon powered PCs. A laptop with a dedicated GPU would be beneficial too, especially if you want to game or do any creative things like photo and video editing.

For a business laptop, the HP EliteBook 1040 G11 is a compelling choice if you’re okay with the high price tag. It has a powerful Intel processor, peace-of-mind security features if you want them, average battery life, and AI features that actually improve the user experience. And most importantly, it’s reliable.