Ben Madilynn
Pros:
– Solid build quality
– Incredible battery life with super fast charging
– Snappy performance
– Vibrant, contrasty and snappy touch display
– 2.2K, 14-inch display
– Solid camera and mic array
– Pretty well-tuned speakers
Cons:
– ARM platforms have a very limited software
– Microsoft’s x86 translation software needs optimisation
– No SIM support
– Limited I/O even for a thin and light
– Keyboard takes some getting used
Price: Rs 1,69,934/-
Rating: 4.5/5
The laptop market is filled with Windows-based business models that claim to offer top-tier performance but often fall short in day-to-day use. However, thanks to Qualcomm’s advancements with the ARM platform, things are looking up for PC users. Enter HP’s Elitebook Ultra G1q, powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite SoC, a clear sign that ARM-based PCs from Qualcomm are now serious contenders.
The Elitebook Ultra G1q comes with HP’s best features typically reserved for their high-end work laptops. It has an excellent display, a reliable keyboard and trackpad, and consistent performance. But what sets it apart is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite SoC, packed with AI-powered features and impressive processing abilities, all while delivering mind-blowing battery life.
For professionals who have always prioritised battery life, the only real option had been Apple’s MacBook lineup up until now. However, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X series now provides a solid Windows option, offering 21-25 hours of battery life in real-world use. This is a potential game-changer.
The HP Elitebook Ultra G1q makes some bold promises, and if it can deliver, it might just shake up the market for those still considering x86-based laptops. That said, like all current Qualcomm-powered laptops, it has its issues. But are these deal-breakers? We take a closer look.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Design and Build Quality
Right from the start, it’s clear that the HP Elitebook Ultra is one of the most premium-looking business laptops HP has on the market today.
The laptop features a sleek all-aluminium build, with at least 50% recycled aluminium, and a matte finish. The model we tested came in a striking Atmosphere Blue shade. It doesn’t look like a typical business laptop and feels just as premium as it looks, especially once you start using it.
One of the standout features of its design is the hinge. The hinge feels solid and robust, but is smooth enough that the laptop’s lid can be opened using just a finger. Furthermore, the lid does not shake uncontrollably when someone bumps the table you’re working on.
HP has managed to design a sleek, durable laptop. Despite its slim profile, the EliteBook Ultra G1q feels sturdy in hand, and the hinge redesign is a nice touch. Whether working from home or on the move, it handled the usual knocks and bumps confidently.
We appreciated the laptop’s clean, minimalist design, though the matte finish tends to pick up fingerprints, especially noticeable due to the dark colour.
In terms of weight, it’s quite impressive, coming in just over 1.34kgs and only 1.12 cm at its thickest point. With its aluminium chassis, there’s no flex or bending, making it feel solid and durable. In fact, the Elitebook has passed the MIL-STD 810H tests for resistance against shocks and vibrations, proving its toughness. Saying it’s built like a tank is no exaggeration.
The ports available are decent, but there could have been more. You get two USB Type-C ports (one with a 40Gbps signalling rate and the other with 10Gbps), a USB Type-A port, and a combo mic/headphone jack. While it’s understandable that HP couldn’t squeeze in an ethernet port given the laptop’s slim design, an SD card slot would have been a welcome addition. Also, we wish one of the two USB-C ports would have been a USB4 or a Thunderbolt port.
For wireless connectivity, we get WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3, which work really well, but despite being a business notebook, we don’t get any LTE options.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Keyboard and Trackpad
The keyboard on the Elitebook Ultra G1q does take a bit of time to get accustomed to. It has a certain depth that might not appeal to those who are used to touch typing on more shallow keyboards. However, after typing on it for around 40-45 minutes, I was able to return to my normal typing speed without much trouble.
Despite the slightly deeper keypress, the overall typing experience is fairly comfortable once you get the hang of it. The keys don’t feel particularly crisp or snappy, but they are far from being the worst I’ve come across on a laptop. The keycaps themselves are well-sized, spaced out nicely, and they come with backlighting, which is a helpful feature for working in low-light environments. Additionally, the function keys and the power button come in a slightly lighter shade of blue, adding a subtle yet nice touch to the laptop’s aesthetics. HP also highlights that at least 50% of the keycaps are made from recycled plastic, which is a nice nod to sustainability.
That said, HP has definitely delivered better keyboards in some of its other laptops, both in the premium range and in more budget-friendly models. There’s certainly room for improvement when it comes to the Elitebook Ultra G1q’s keyboard, but overall, it does the job well enough for most users.
On the other hand, the trackpad is a standout feature. It’s generously sized and well-positioned, fitting comfortably alongside the keyboard despite the laptop’s compact design. More importantly, it’s highly accurate and responsive, with excellent palm rejection algorithms that prevent accidental touches from interfering with your work.
The trackpad feels incredibly precise and easy to use, making navigation smooth and enjoyable. Plus, the tactile feedback it provides when clicking is highly satisfying, enhancing the overall experience and making it a pleasure to use during everyday tasks.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Webcam and Speakers
The Elitebook Ultra G1q features a webcam positioned on the top bezel of the display, which is impressively thin. HP has equipped the laptop with a 5MP sensor for the webcam, along with a physical shutter for added privacy and security. And because this is an IR camera setup, you get support for Windows Hello.
The camera natively shoots in 16:10 aspect ratio, as opposed to 16:9, which is great. The camera delivers great quality for video calls. While it might not match the highest-end sensors found in HP’s more premium models, it still stands head and shoulders above most other options on the market.
This higher resolution allows for smooth 1080p broadcasting in virtual meetings, and it also supports auto-reframing by cropping the field of view, which is a handy feature for professionals who move around during calls.
Because this is an AI PC and you get a fairly powerful NPU, you get to enjoy the full array of Windows’ AI-powered Studio Effects which are part of Copilot+. Besides those, HP has also bundled its own Poly Studio Pro software, which offers various features that enhance the webcam experience.
The quality of the webcam itself is impressive. Even some premium laptops from other brands don’t offer a webcam as good as the one found on the Elitebook Ultra G1q. While much of the clarity and sharpness comes from software algorithms that enhance the image, the higher resolution still gives users more flexibility and better image quality, making it one of the best webcams in its category.
As for the audio setup, the laptop comes equipped with dual speakers that have discrete amplifiers, along with integrated dual-array microphones. The bottom-mounted speakers deliver sound that is reasonably loud and crisp, providing a good level of clarity across various frequencies.
We noticed decent bass and minimal distortion, even when multiple audio tracks overlap. Whether you’re on a call or listening to music, the sound quality is solid and capable.
Additionally, the preinstalled MyHP software includes AI noise reduction, which is especially useful for conference calls, helping to filter out background noise and improve the overall clarity of your voice.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Display
The HP Elitebook Ultra G1q is equipped with a 14-inch diagonal 16:10 touchscreen IPS display, which is a real treat to use.
The screen can tilt quite far back, though not completely flat at 180 degrees, but it’s flexible enough for most viewing angles.
With its 2.2K resolution, everything from documents to movies looks sharp and vibrant, making it suitable for both work and leisure. Whether streaming videos or working on spreadsheets, the rich colours and crisp text make for an enjoyable viewing experience.
The brightness levels reach up to 300 nits, which is adequate for most indoor environments. Whether working in a normally lit room or a dimmer space, the display’s brightness was sufficient to keep everything clear.
However, it does struggle a bit outdoors, particularly in direct sunlight, where visibility can become a challenge. That being said, this isn’t a major drawback since most of us don’t spend much time working outdoors, especially during the hot summer months. It might be slightly inconvenient in winter or for those who do need to work outside, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
The display also offers high contrast and wide viewing angles, so colours and details remain consistent even when viewed from the side. The only downside is that the touch glass tends to reflect room lighting, which can be distracting in certain situations. Despite that, the touchscreen functionality is smooth and responsive, making navigation through apps and documents a breeze with simple taps and swipes.
One of the key advantages of this display is its 16:10 aspect ratio, providing extra vertical space that’s particularly useful for productivity tasks. Whether you’re working on large spreadsheets or going through lengthy PDFs, the extra screen real estate is invaluable.
Additionally, because the display covers 100% of the sRGB colour space, colours look accurate and vibrant, making it an excellent choice for media consumption. My only complaint would be is that the refresh rate stays locked at 60Hz. Still, after a long day at the office, watching your favourite shows or movies on this display is a highly satisfying experience.
While the Elitebook Ultra G1q’s display might not be the brightest out there, it’s certainly more than capable of handling everyday tasks and business use with ease. For most professionals, it offers a balance of quality, sharpness, and functionality that makes it a reliable and pleasant tool to work with.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Performance
The HP Elitebook Ultra G1q is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78100 SoC, which sits at the entry-level of Snapdragon’s X Elite lineup. This chip features 12 cores, 42MB of cache, and operates at a multicore clock speed of 3.4GHz. In addition to the CPU, the laptop includes Qualcomm’s Hexagon NPU, which handles AI tasks at an impressive rate of 45 TOPs, and an Adreno GPU capable of 3.8 TFLOPS. Both the GPU and NPU share 8GB of memory from the 16GB of onboard LPDDR5x RAM, which runs at a swift 8400 MT/s.
The technical specifications aside, the performance of the Elitebook Ultra G1q is quite commendable, particularly considering it’s a thin and light business laptop. It manages to perform reliably across most common business tasks without breaking a sweat.
During my usual daily routine, which involves heavy writing and light photo editing, the Qualcomm SoC handled everything efficiently, showing no signs of slowing down. Even during benchmarks, the laptop maintained a respectable performance, provided the tests were compatible with ARM architecture.
What stood out to me the most was the consistency in performance, regardless of whether the laptop was plugged in or running on battery. There were no significant fluctuations in speed or responsiveness, ensuring that tasks ran smoothly without any noticeable dips when switching between battery and mains power.
However, not everything about the performance was perfect. The Elitebook Ultra G1q handles native ARM apps effortlessly, but things become a bit tricky when it comes to non-ARM-optimised applications. Several apps refused to run at all, and even those that had been optimised for ARM still caused issues from time to time. For example, I experienced unexpected crashes with Adobe Lightroom, and even Photoshop, which is ARM-optimised, crashed a few times during my testing. Unfortunately, I couldn’t install Premiere Pro from Adobe Creative Cloud at all, which was frustrating.
The problem lies in the fact that many popular applications are still not fully optimised for ARM-based Windows devices. To get around this, some apps run through a translation layer called Prism, which works similarly to Apple’s Rosetta 2 on their ARM-based Macs. While Prism allows x86 apps to run on ARM platforms, it has its limitations, and the emulation process can only handle so much before performance issues arise.
Microsoft, Qualcomm, and Adobe have all promised that more apps, particularly from Adobe’s Creative Suite, will be ported over to ARM, which is encouraging. But until those apps are properly optimised, recommending this laptop to professionals in creative fields remains challenging.
Even though the the Elitebook Ultra G1q is a business thin and light we did try a few games, and again encountered compatibility issues. While we could run a few titles like Genshin Impact, GTA V, Baldur’s Gate III, pretty smoothly on 1080p on low-medium settings, in certain titles the performance wasn’t always smooth.
For example, Cyberpunk 2077 produced decent frame rates with FSR, but without it, the game became stuttery and nearly unplayable. It’s clear that with better optimisation, this laptop could handle popular games at a more playable level, but as of right now, gaming performance is hit or miss. Certain games, like Valorant, refused to run altogether.
Because the laptop is AI-powered, it comes with a dedicated Copilot key to launch the AI assistant instantly. HP has also integrated AI-driven optimisations such as background noise cancellation during calls and video enhancements for conferencing.
As part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ program, the Elitebook Ultra G1q supports features like Microsoft Co-Creator, enhanced Microsoft Studio effects, Live Captions, and the latest version of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant.
While there are no mature benchmarks available to measure the AI capabilities in laptops that would give us a clear and concise picture as of yet, I found that tasks like regenerating AI images in Paint or creating AI-generated audio files in Audacity were incredibly smooth. It’s clear that the AI integration enhances certain creative and productivity tasks, but without clear benchmarks, it’s difficult to gauge its full potential.
HP Elitebook Ultra G1q Review: Battery
Having a laptop that can last through an entire workday without needing a charger is more important than ever, especially when you’re a working professional who’s always on the move. Thankfully, the HP EliteBook Ultra G1q excels in this area. It comes with a 3-cell, 59Wh LiPo battery and a 65W USB Type-C charger, which proves to be more than sufficient for a busy workday.
During my typical day, which included plenty of typing, photo editing, browsing with multiple Chrome tabs open, and some casual Netflix and YouTube streaming, the laptop easily lasted through the day. By the end of the day, I still had about 30% of battery life left, which is pretty impressive considering the workload.
The HP Fast Charge feature is another standout. It’s a real lifesaver when you’re pressed for time. In under half an hour, the battery charged up to 50%, and in less than an hour, it went from 0 to a full 100%. This makes it incredibly convenient for those moments when you forget to charge your laptop overnight or need to quickly top it up before heading out.
What’s even more impressive is the minimal battery drain in sleep mode. If you shut the lid but don’t completely power down the laptop, the battery barely loses any charge. This is a significant improvement over older Windows laptops, which were notorious for losing a substantial amount of battery life while in sleep mode.
All in all, the Elitebook Ultra G1q’s battery performance is one of its strongest selling points, offering the reliability needed for a full day’s work and beyond.
HP EliteBook Ultra G1q Review: Verdict
HP’s EliteBook Ultra G1q makes a compelling argument for Windows on ARM systems, especially for business professionals. The laptop delivers quality performance, outstanding battery life, and a vibrant display, making it suitable for most professional settings.
The main factor holding the EliteBook Ultra G1q back from dominating the business laptop market is the same issue that has plagued Windows on ARM systems for years: app support and emulation.
Although the number of applications running natively on ARM has grown and x86 emulation has significantly improved, if your job requires specialised software, you might find the EliteBook lacking. In such cases, it’s likely better to opt for a more traditional Intel or AMD-powered system.
However, if your work primarily revolves around web-based tasks or standard applications, the limitations of ARM-based Windows likely won’t be a dealbreaker. For those users, the EliteBook Ultra G1q is an excellent choice. The Snapdragon X Elite SoC is highly efficient at handling everyday tasks, and the laptop’s stellar battery life, sharp 2.2K display, and additional Copilot+ AI tools are real productivity boosters. Features like noise cancellation and video enhancements during calls add to its overall appeal for business users.
Beyond its functionality, the EliteBook Ultra G1q stands out with its premium design and solid build quality. For professionals who want a laptop that balances performance, battery longevity, and modern features, the HP EliteBook Ultra G1q is a worthy contender.
