HP EliteBook Ultra G1: The perfect AI business laptop?

Our working world is getting more and more mobile: in the office, at home, on the train, on vacation or in a café. For that you need a powerful and mobile device. The HP EliteBook Ultra G1, HP’s next-generation AI PC, is a handy 14-inch laptop. In my case, an Intel Core Ultra 5, the integrated Intel Arc graphics and 32 GB of RAM bring the necessary power. On top of that come AI features that are finally useful.

Design and ports

The body is made of high-quality aluminum in the color Atmosphere Blue, a blue so dark and elegant that you could mistake it for black. At 1.21 cm thick and 1.19 kg, the device is compact and light. I can open the lid with one hand without the bottom part coming along, an important quality criterion.

• Left: combo jack for microphone and headphones, one USB-A port and one Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port.
• Right: two more USB-C ports with Thunderbolt.
• Underside: four stereo speakers that sound very good thanks to the AI-assisted Poly Studio.
• Battery: six-cell 64-watt-hour lithium-ion polymer battery, charged at 65 watts using the included power adapter.

Display, keyboard and touchpad

The display is a 14-inch 2.8K OLED touchscreen with a 120 Hz refresh rate and 400 nits of maximum brightness. The picture is bright and sharp and can be looked at all day without flicker.

A personal highlight is the keyboard with adaptive backlighting. It’s insanely good to type on: short keystroke, muted instead of bright and wobbly, everything nice and solid. At the top right is the power button with a fingerprint scanner, and there is also Windows Hello face recognition. On my device I enabled the proximity sensor, and then the laptop unlocks as soon as I approach. That’s nice when you’re alone in the office.

The touchpad is large and gives pleasant haptic feedback instead of a loud click. It also has gesture control for volume and brightness. For everyone who always presses all the way down on the touchpad, I can recommend switching to the EliteBook for the sake of those around you.

AI features for everyday work

• Poly Camera Pro: The 9-megapixel camera in the top bezel is well suited to video calls. The AI-assisted camera app automatically optimizes picture and sound, puts the focus on you, reduces background noise and adjusts the lighting.
• Virtual Sapiens: A preinstalled third-party AI coaching tool that offers real-time coaching for camera and communication behavior. You can also install it separately on other laptops. I like that HP thought about which AI tools are useful in a business context.
• Live Captions: Real-time subtitles for 44 languages. For now they are only translated into English, but even that helps in international meetings when you don’t fully understand something.
• HP AI Companion: Preinstalled and free to use. You can ask questions, create scripts and concepts, prepare the next meeting or have minutes summarized. There is a history, frequently used prompts can be pinned at the top, and in the library you can upload documents as a data source or template.

Data protection

The AI on this laptop doesn’t process any data in the cloud, only on the computer itself. That is a big advantage for data protection, especially with sensitive private or company data. It also needs less bandwidth and uses less energy.

Verdict

With the EliteBook Ultra G1, HP has created a really great package of design, performance, AI and security. The AI consists of tools we can really use in everyday life, and not crazy gimmicks nobody uses.