HP EliteBook Ultra Review: HP at its best

I’ve been extremely impressed with HP’s recent laptops. In 2024, HP announced a revamp to its laptop line alongside Microsoft’s Copilot Plus PC announcement. Since then, I’ve taken the company’s OmniBook X and now EliteBook Ultra for a spin. The ‘Omni’ brand is HP’s consumer gear, while the ‘Elite’ laptops are aimed at businesses. Regardless, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with both and would highly recommend them.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been using the EliteBook Ultra as my daily driver for work at MobileSyrup. The hardware feels fantastic, I absolutely love the keyboard, and performance is solid. But, nothing is perfect and the EliteBook Ultra did have its issues. Read on to learn whether those issues are enough to detract from a generally great experience.

Specs

• Display: 14-inch 2880×1800 pixel 120Hz variable refresh rate OLED touchscreen
• Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 268V
• Memory: 32GB
• Storage: 512GB
• Dimensions: 31.37 x 21.72 x 0.9-1.21cm
• Weight: 1.19kg
• Camera: 9-megapixel webcam with IR for Windows Hello, privacy slider
• Operating System:
• Battery: 64Wh
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4
• Sensors: Fingerprint reader
• Ports: 1x USB Type-A, 3x Thunderbolt 4, 1x 3.5mm audio
• Graphics: Intel Arc

The full list of specs across different configurations is available on HP’s website.

Immersive atmosphere

The EliteBook Ultra comes in a lovely shade of ‘Atmospheric Blue’ that manages to look subtle and professional – suitable for a business laptop – without being boring like the usual (50) shades of grey and black you get in this category.

I especially like the accent colours on the keys, with the function row and combination power button fingerprint reader sporting different, lighter shades of blue. Coupled with the superb legend on the keycaps, and the EliteBook is a real looker without being in-your-face.

HP built on the excellent hardware experience of the OmniBook X here with the EliteBook, which manages to feel even more premium. The chassis is made with 90 per cent recycled magnesium, which helps attain the light weight that makes the laptop feel extra portable.

The OLED display also looks great with accurate colours, which was nice for photo editing work I did on the laptop. Moreover, I appreciate the EliteBook’s 120Hz variable refresh rate display. Oddly, you can’t set the display to 60Hz like most other laptops I’ve tested – instead, you can pick between 120Hz or 48Hz, with the variable refresh option locked to the 120Hz setting.

While I’d be more than happy to stick with 120Hz, I point this out because I find I often need to use lower refresh rates on laptops to maximize battery life. This is true for the EliteBook too, but the 48Hz option feels weird to me, so I ended up leaving it on 120Hz variable for most of the review period.

Runs as good as it looks

Speaking of the battery life, that’s one area where the EliteBook could definitely use some improvement. The Intel chip combined with the 64Wh cell left me needing to top up more often than not.

My typical benchmark for good battery life is whether a laptop can last through a full in-office workday. I live in Hamilton, Ont., but occasionally trek into Toronto to work at MobileSyrup’s office. On those days, if a laptop can last from when I leave Hamilton in the morning around 8:30 a.m. through until when I get home around 4:30 p.m. without needing a charge, I consider that a success. Unfortunately, the EliteBook barely scraped by, often dropping below 20 per cent by the time I got home.

However, battery life improved significantly by running the laptop in ‘efficiency’ mode. Windows 11 includes power options allowing users to set their device to run in three modes: best performance, balanced, or best efficiency. Additionally, these options can be set separately for when the laptop is on charge and when it’s on battery. I previously avoided the efficiency mode – on Intel and AMD chips, I found it noticeably reduced performance to a point where it wasn’t worth the tradeoff, while Qualcomm chips had no noticeable difference in performance or battery life, making the option feel redundant.

But with the EliteBook Ultra, the efficiency mode surprised me by improving battery life without noticeably hurting performance. It didn’t extend the battery into multi-day territory, but I was able to comfortably make it through my usual in-office workday test and end the day around 40 per cent charge, rather than the 20 per cent on balanced mode.

But while the EliteBook Ultra didn’t feel noticeably slower, benchmarks tell a different story. I ran all my usual tests with the laptop plugged in and set to ‘best performance’ to show what it’s capable of. Then I reran the Geekbench CPU benchmarks unplugged using ‘efficiency’ mode and noted a significant drop-off in performance — the EliteBook scored nearly half as well. Again, I didn’t feel this difference in day-to-day use, but it’s definitely something to be aware of.

The battery life situation is ultimately a bit frustrating. I look at the Intel-powered Dell XPS 13, which blew me away with its excellent battery life, and wish more Intel laptops had that kind of battery life. It offered very similar performance to what I got from the EliteBook Ultra as well.

Beyond the battery, the EliteBook Ultra handled everything I threw at it with ease. The fans would spin up occasionally but even that was rare, I never noticed it getting hot to the touch. It did warm up during benchmarking, but not a concerning amount. From opening way too many tabs in my browser while researching stories to editing photos in Photoshop, the EliteBook Ultra handled it all.

AI, software bloat, and more

While I praised the keyboard for looking good above, I also want to take a moment to praise it for the excellent typing experience. The EliteBook sports one of my favourite laptop keyboards in recent memory. It has shallow travel but excellent tactility and an extremely satisfying click. It makes typing a real joy.

Similarly, the trackpad is superb thanks to its large size. It feels smooth and generally worked quite well, though I noticed it’d occasionally register extra inputs. For example, sometimes when trying to click something, it’d register a double click. When scrolling with two fingers, it often registered a third finger, triggering a gesture that opens Windows’ task view instead of scrolling. Occasional glitches aside, the trackpad generally worked quite well.

The EliteBook Ultra also shipped with tons of pre-installed AI and software features of varying usefulness. That includes several HP apps, like “AI Companion,” various support apps, Wolf Security, and more, along with some other bundled apps like the Poly software for adding backdrops and background blur to the webcam.

Some of the bundled software is redundant. Poly, for example, overlaps with the built-in Windows Studio Effects for cameras, while Wolf Security offers similar features to Windows Defender. (And speaking of the camera, even the Poly software didn’t do much to improve the mediocre webcam.) I didn’t find any of these apps to be particularly compelling or useful, but then, I haven’t found AI as a whole to be particularly compelling or useful either.

One feature that I do think is worth mentioning is the built-in, customizable shortcut key. Through the myHP app, users can set different custom actions for the key, making it a potentially powerful add-on. Users can program the key to input text of their choosing, trigger automations they build, or even have it trigger keyboard shortcuts. Moreover, users can create up to four shortcuts with the key, one for pressing the programmable key on its own and then shortcuts tied to pressing it alongside the Ctrl, Alt, or Shift keys. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but the programmable key could prove really useful for some.

Worth the price?

The EliteBook Ultra configuration I tested retails for $2,999 in Canada, which is definitely on the pricey side. Other configurations have different Core Ultra 7 and Ultra 5 Intel chips—for example, the Core Ultra 5 228V variant goes for $2,649. There’s even a version sporting the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and 16GB of RAM that usually retails for $1,999, which is much more affordable.

While pricey, the Core Ultra 7 268V variant isn’t out of bounds and falls in the same ballpark as laptops from other manufacturers with that same chip. Given it’s a business-oriented laptop, it makes sense that it’s on the pricier side. Plus, I think most regular shoppers will be looking for consumer-grade hardware instead. All that said, the EliteBook Ultra boasts excellent build quality and solid performance. My only gripe is that, at this price, the battery life should be better.

Back on the map

As I said up top, HP’s latest laptops are quite impressive. I’ve reviewed several HP laptops over the year, but the OmniBook and EliteBook from the last few months are by far some of the best I’ve seen from the company. The design and build quality are excellent, the performance is solid. Coupled with the excellent keyboard, there’s a ton that’s great about this laptop.

The most significant issue I had with the EliteBook was the battery life, though it can be improved by adjusting some settings. Still, it’d be nice if HP included a larger cell. Beyond that, it’d be nice to have a better webcam, especially in a work-focused laptop that will likely see a lot of use for virtual meetings.

All this said, HP’s hardware is in a great spot, and I can’t wait to see where the company goes next. It has an excellent foundation to work from.

The EliteBook Ultra is available from HP and Amazon Canada.