HP EliteBook Ultra G1q Review: Is Microsoft Windows on ARM Coming of Age?

6 minutes of reading Last updated: August 2, 2024 | 14:41 IST

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1q is an enterprise-focused laptop with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI) features, performance, design, and battery life. It is one of the first AI laptops in India, powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processor. This Windows 11 ARM-based laptop brings Microsoft’s inaugural AI PC features, called Copilot+, exclusive to Qualcomm platforms, along with HP’s suite of software to provide a customized user experience. But does that make it a better work machine, especially considering its price tag of Rs 1,69,934? Let’s find out:

Design

The EliteBook Ultra exudes a premium look, especially in blue (review unit). It’s a thin and light laptop that carries over HP’s familiar design language, and that’s for the better. The laptop has an aluminum chassis and plastic keycaps that HP says are made from 50 percent recycled materials. The fit and finish are top-notch, and the overall build quality is in line with what you’d expect from a premium laptop.

Display and sound

The HP EliteBook Ultra has a 14-inch 2.2K LED touchscreen display. The display offers decent colors and brightness. However, it requires frequent adjustments due to suboptimal viewing angles, which are exacerbated by a somewhat flimsy display hinge. Additionally, the display’s glossy nature makes it reflective and less suitable for use in bright environments.

Despite these minor shortcomings, the display is good and suitable for work purposes. With a 16:10 aspect ratio, the display fits more vertical content in a single view compared to traditional 16:9 screens. This feature reduces the need for excessive scrolling, which proves beneficial for work-related tasks.

When it comes to sound, the laptop has a pair of bottom-firing stereo speakers that deliver loud, balanced, and clear sound. These speakers are well-suited for everyday use.

Windows 11 on ARM

As mentioned above, the EliteBook Ultra is part of the first generation of AI laptops based on Microsoft’s Windows 11 on ARM platform. It’s essentially a Windows 11 experience tailored to take advantage of the unique architecture of ARM-based processors to boost performance without compromising battery life.

The primary difference between Windows on ARM and regular Windows is application compatibility. While regular Windows 11 supports a wide range of legacy applications designed for x86/x64 architectures (32-bit and 64-bit), Windows 11 on ARM relies on emulation or native ARM64 support for applications. This means that not all applications designed for regular Windows 11 can run natively on ARM devices without additional compatibility issues.

Most of the software and apps you need for everyday use—Microsoft productivity suites like Word, Excel, and Powerpoint; browsers like Chrome, Firefox, and Opera; and creative software like Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom—work great because they’re available in native ARM64 form. There are also apps like Adobe Acrobat and Reader that aren’t available in native ARM64 form but work fine on the laptop because they’re emulated by Windows 11 on ARM.

However, there is still a long list of apps and software that are not yet ready for Windows 11 on ARM. Among the most important are Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Premiere Pro, and Media Encoder. Native ARM64 apps for them are in the works, but there is no specific timeline for availability.

In addition to apps, it’s important to check if you have any third-party hardware like printers, scanners, etc. that requires software to connect and function. During my tests, I found that an old Canon printer I’ve been using for over a decade wasn’t compatible because the software it required to connect to my laptop was X86 (32-bit) based and couldn’t even run in emulation.

Software and AI Features

Powered by Microsoft Copilot+ AI PC, the EliteBook Ultra is packed with Microsoft AI features – Studio Effects to enhance video conferencing, Cocreate to generate content in Paint and Photos apps, and Live Captions to translate audio and video content into English subtitles from 44 languages.

The EliteBook Ultra also comes with HP’s suite of software, which includes tools — HP AI Companion — for generating content with text suggestions and the Poly Camera Pro app for enhanced video conferencing. The Poly Camera Pro app offers features similar to Microsoft Studio Effects, and both use on-device AI. However, the app drains battery life even when it’s running in the background.

Crucially, some of these tasks are offloaded to the integrated Neural Processing Unit (NPU), which improves performance and battery efficiency by reducing the load on the CPU and GPU.

Performance and battery

Powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite, the EliteBook Ultra comes with 16GB of soldered LPDDR5x RAM and up to 1TB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage. These specs may not look like much on paper, but the Qualcomm chip is a performance powerhouse that can meet most requirements. Whether it’s regular operations or the AI-related workloads that the platform supports, the performance is more than enough to keep you going.

Complementing the fast performance is impressive battery life. During typical usage, the laptop easily lasts all day, providing around fourteen hours of battery life on a single charge. In mixed usage scenarios, battery life stabilizes at around ten hours, which should be more than enough for most professionals. As mentioned above, the Poly Cam Pro app drains the battery even when it’s running in the background. Therefore, you may want to force it off in the startup settings to get the best battery life.

Verdict

The EliteBook Ultra is a powerful Windows laptop, enhanced with AI features from Microsoft and HP. From its thin and light design to its productivity-focused display, smooth performance, and long battery life, the laptop ticks all the boxes for a good notebook. However, prospective buyers should investigate application compatibility to make sure all the necessary software is ARM-compatible.

First published: August 2, 2024 | 14:41 IST