HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Useful AI Tricks + 18h Battery 🔥

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Specifications

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is a laptop powered by an Intel Core Ultra (Series 2) CPU. This series is part of the processor line codenamed Lunar Lake. Specifically, this machine has an Intel Core Ultra 7 268V processor. It's paired with 32GB of RAM, and the Lunar Lake NPU handles much of the AI processing this machine promises.

However, you only get integrated graphics here, and that's generally fine for a lightweight, ultraportable laptop. But, if I'm taking this machine's AI aspirations seriously, I have to say that I feel like Intel's GPU isn't quite right for what I envision as an AI PC, where many workloads—like Stable Diffusion imaging, for example—still require a GPU.

• CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 268V
• Memory: 32GB LPDDR5X RAM
• Graphics/GPU: Intel Arc 140V
• NPU: Intel AI Boost (up to 48 TOPS)
• Screen: Touch screen 14-inch OLED 2880×1800
• Storage: 512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD
• Webcam: 1440p camera
• Connectivity: 3x Thunderbolt 4 (USB4 Type-C), 1x USB Type-A, 1x combo headphone jack, 1x Kensington nano lock slot
• Networks: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Biometrics: Fingerprint reader and IR camera for Windows Hello
• Battery capacity: 64 watt-hours
• Dimensions: 12.35 × 8.55 × 0.48 inches
• Weight: 2.68 pounds
• MSRP: $2,429, as tested

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Design and Build Quality

The 14-inch HP EliteBook Ultra G1i has a great build quality. The chassis comes in a beautiful, dark "Atmosphere Blue" color with a black bezel around the display, giving it a sophisticated, premium look. It's made of magnesium, giving it the solid yet lightweight feel characteristic of a high-quality metal laptop. At 2.68 pounds, it's a good weight—not unusually heavy, but not trying to be extraordinarily light either.

The laptop's AI aspirations aren't exactly loud: the lid has an "HP" logo, but nothing AI-related. The only sign of those AI aspirations is the small blue "AI" logo in the lower right corner of the keyboard, below the right arrow key.

HP includes several apps here, such as the HP AI Companion app, which includes an assistant that can answer questions based on HP product manuals and change PC settings. The HP AI Companion app has several features that use GPT-4o in the cloud—the same model you could use with ChatGPT. While the integration is interesting and the AI features are much less rudimentary than on early AI PCs, they probably won't convince many people to buy this particular laptop. (But maybe they will convince you!)

For the price, I wish some of the software was a little less intrusive from the start. As I write this, I see a pop-up for “HP Wolf Pro Security” promoting the software’s AV-Test rating and urging me to register for full protection. For $2,000 and up, we deserve a smoother experience from the start.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Keyboard and Touchpad

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i's keyboard feels excellent, and I say that as someone who's been spending more time with mechanical keyboards lately. This isn't a mechanical keyboard at all, but there's something about it that feels crisp and responsive. It's not mushy at all. You press a key and get a crisp response with a quick lift. It's a pleasure to type on.

The touchpad is also a success. HP has decided to use a haptic touchpad here—something I've been asking PC manufacturers for. It's a large, smooth surface, and you can click anywhere on the surface thanks to haptic feedback.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Display and Speakers

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i features a 2880x1800 OLED display with a variable refresh rate of up to 120Hz and 400 nits of brightness. It's a touchscreen, too!

It's a beautiful OLED display and it looks great 🌈.

The variable refresh rate should also reduce power consumption, eliminating the need to constantly lock the laptop to 60Hz. I'm a big fan of OLED displays, but keep in mind that this is a fairly bright display (no surprises for OLED displays) and that 400 nits of brightness isn't the brightest you'll find. That means reflections on this display can be quite harsh, especially in direct sunlight. Just something to keep in mind—it's the nature of a glossy display.

This laptop has a "quad speaker design," according to HP. They sound pretty good for a laptop of this size. They manage to achieve a decent level of volume and clarity. There's maybe even a little more bass than you might expect, but this is still a speaker system built into a lightweight 14-inch laptop.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Webcam, Microphone, Biometrics

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i has a 1440p camera with a physical shutter, which is always nice to see. As for AI features, you have both Windows Studio Effects (thanks to the NPU) and Poly Camera Pro built in. Poly Camera Pro offers a variety of features like "magic backgrounds" to transform the appearance of your webcam background in any app—replacing it, stylizing it, or applying effects. The webcam image looks unusually high-quality and clear—it's excellent. 👌

HP boasts dual-array microphones that generate "loud and clear" sound. They sound fine to me, although I've heard clearer audio from some other laptops.

This machine has a good selection of biometric hardware: both an IR camera for facial recognition with Windows Hello and a fingerprint reader in the upper right corner of the keyboard above the backspace key.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Connectivity

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i It has a decent number of ports, assuming you're looking for Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports. On the left, you'll find a combo audio jack, a USB Type-A port, and a Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) port. On the right, the machine has two more Thunderbolt 4 (USB Type-C) ports as well as a Kensington lock slot for physically securing the machine.

That's it; there's no microSD card reader, for example. And keep in mind that this laptop charges via USB Type-C. For more ports, you'll need a dongle.

Thanks to Lunar Lake, this machine also has the hardware for Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Performance

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i performs well in everyday desktop use. That's not surprising, given the Intel Lunar Lake CPU, a fast SSD, and 32GB of RAM.

As always, we put the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i through our standard benchmarks to see how it performs.

First, we ran PCMark 10 to get an idea of the system's overall performance. With a total PCMark 10 score of 7,324, the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i was slightly faster compared to other Lunar Lake systems we compared. However, it wasn't as fast as the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 with its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX hardware.

Next, we ran Cinebench R20. This test is a highly multithreaded benchmark that focuses on overall CPU performance. It's a fast benchmark, so cooling during extended workloads isn't a factor. However, because it's highly multithreaded, CPUs with more cores have a significant advantage.

With a multithreaded score of 3799, this machine fell behind other Lunar Lake systems and far behind other PCs with CPUs that have more cores. Lunar Lake CPUs only have eight cores, so they struggle in these types of synthetic benchmarks. That doesn't mean they struggle in everyday computing, but they aren't ideal for multithreaded, computationally heavy tasks.

We also ran an encoder with Handbrake. This is another highly multithreaded benchmark, but it runs for an extended period of time. This requires the laptop's cooling to come into play, and many laptops will reduce their performance under load.

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i completed the encoding process in 1,576 seconds—that's over 26 minutes! That's a bit slow, even for Meteor Lake, suggesting some slowdown under load. This isn't the ideal system for sustained CPU performance.

Next, we ran a graphics benchmark. This isn't a gaming laptop, but it's still good to check how the GPU performs. We ran 3DMark Time Spy, a graphics benchmark that focuses on GPU performance.

With a score of 4,186, this machine offers pretty standard Lunar Lake graphics performance. Intel's integrated graphics are much better than they used to be, but they still can't compare to a good discrete GPU.

Overall, the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i offered reasonably standard Lunar Lake performance—slower in some benchmarks and faster in others. There were no major surprises here.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Battery Life

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i pairs a 64-watt-hour battery with Lunar Lake hardware that theoretically consumes less power, so we'd expect to see better battery life, but not as much as we could, as some machines have larger batteries.

To evaluate battery life, we played a 4K copy of Tears of Steel looped on Windows 11 with airplane mode enabled until the laptop went to sleep. This is an optimal scenario for any laptop, as local video playback is so efficient, and actual battery life during daily use will always be less than this.

We set the display to 250 nits of brightness for our battery tests, and it's important to note that the EliteBook's OLED display has a slight advantage, as OLED displays use less power to display the black bars around video.

This machine lasted 1,089 minutes before shutting down—that's over 18 hours! It's a substantial number that matches what we typically see on Lunar Lake-powered systems, though the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 pulled ahead in this regard.

HP EliteBook Ultra G1i: Conclusion

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is a good laptop: solid build quality, a beautiful OLED display, reasonable overall Lunar Lake performance, and impressive battery life. That's not even considering the AI features, and if I have to evaluate a laptop on its AI features, this is one of the best packages I've seen so far. HP definitely put a lot of effort into this.

However, this machine is so expensive. With a suggested price of almost $2,500, you could choose from many other Lunar Lake-powered PCs. Consider the Samsung Galaxy Book 5 Pro, for example. It's significantly cheaper and has a much longer battery life.

Plus, if you're really looking for an AI workstation, this machine isn't it. Lunar Lake doesn't really offer the multithreaded CPU performance you might want, and the lack of a discrete GPU means many more demanding local AI tasks are effectively out of reach. This limitation is significant given the machine's high cost.

The HP EliteBook Ultra G1i is a beautiful premium laptop, but its price simply means it's not the right choice for most people.