Review: HP EliteBook Ultra G1q / Snapdragon X Elite / Copilot+ PC

HP’s EliteBook Ultra G1q represents the launch of a new silicon platform, a new version of Windows on Arm, new Copilot+ PC and AI features, and new branding for HP (...and a new laptop). HP’s first Snapdragon X Elite Copilot+ PC for enterprise buyers optimizes for battery life and includes HP’s own security, AI, and Poly camera and audio software as well.

New Platform, New Branding

HP is using the launch of Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X platform to dramatically simplify its brand portfolio and naming conventions. Corporate laptops, sold mainly through HP’s extensive distribution network, are now EliteBooks, with various letters and numbers indicating where they fit on the price/feature tree. For consumers, HP has revived the OmniBook brand. The confusing Dragonfly brand – which appeared to be aimed at prosumers and entrepreneurs but was primarily sold through corporate buying channels – is gone for now. Alongside the EliteBook and OmniBook name is a designation that corresponds to its pricing and position in the line – 3, 5, 7, X, and Ultra. Is this going to be confusing when HP wants to release a PC aimed at a market segment that incorporates some baseline components and some leading-edge features? Yes. Am I currently testing another HP laptop with an old name that was launched after the new branding? Yes. Is the new branding and naming convention significantly better than HP’s previous mess? Absolutely.

HP’s first Copilot+ PC based on Qualcomm’s much-anticipated Snapdragon X platform is being sold in two versions: the OmniBook X, which starts at $999, and the EliteBook Ultra G1q, which starts at $1699. I tested the EliteBook, but they are nearly identical. The EliteBook has a nicer blue color, is certified to 19 MIL-Std tests, has Windows 11 Pro instead of Home, starts at a lower 512GB storage level, has Wolf Security chip and software, and a longer three year warranty. However, the rest of the hardware is the same. I suspect that the enormous difference in cost is meant to cover higher margins for resellers and steep discounts provided to volume buyers. In other words, there are different prices for different channels, but nobody should – or likely will – pay $1700 for this.

New Silicon Architecture: Snapdragon X Elite

HP is leaning heavily on the performance-per-watt of Qualcomm’s mid-level Snapdragon X Elite chipset (the 12 core X1E-78-100) and optimized its design for battery life with some concessions to size and weight. The design of the EliteBook Ultra G1q is fairly conservative – in fact, no OEM has used the Snapdragon X Elite to build anything that folds, flips, or is unconventional in any way. However, the EliteBook is relatively thin and comes in under 3 lbs. HP put a 59 Whr battery in the chassis that it balances with a low power 14” display that offers reasonable resolution (2240 x 1400) but low brightness (300 nits) and refresh rate (60Hz).

The result is a strong performance and really strong battery life, not just in artificial benchmark suites and static video playback tests, but in real workloads. I took the EliteBook Ultra it to a pizza store for an AI-heavy working lunch, and after an hour I'd barely budged the battery meter. Later that day, I joined my family for bowling and with on-and-off use in between frames I still had 85% battery left. More consistent use will eventually run the battery down – but it will take you at least ten to twelve hours of heavy use in Windows Balanced power mode to get there, and you’ll get snappy browser and native app performance while away from a wall plug. The system does have a fan, but I never heard it spin up, and the system remains cool if you use it on your lap. If all you’re doing is watching video or web browsing, the battery will last even longer, and the battery didn’t drain much when in sleep mode over several days, either.

You will not need to bring a charger with you for hybrid work scenarios, even if the workload is processor-heavy. This is the first Windows platform that's truly competitive with MacOS/Apple Silicon in this regard. In some ways, the Qualcomm platform handily beats Apple’s implementation on lower-end MacBooks; I was able to connect the HP EliteBook Ultra G1q to two LG 4K monitors via a Targus Thunderbolt 4 dock while using the HP’s own display as well. Overkill? Perhaps. But highly productive.

Geekbench 6 - on batteryApple iPad Pro M4 16GBApple MacBook Air 15" M2 16GBApple MacBook Pro 14" M3 Max 64GB HP Elitebook Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100Lenovo Slim 7x Snapdragon X Elite X1E78100Microsoft Surface Laptop Snapdragon X Elite X1E80100Samsung GalaxyBook4 Edge Snapdragon X Elite X1E84100
CPU single-core3846264928862415241828312913
CPU multi-core14608100972110613765139091449414145

Windows on Arm (Not New, But Might as Well Be)

This is not the first time Microsoft and Qualcomm have attempted to build a market for Windows on Arm architecture, but this is the first time it has a chance to be broadly viable. All of Microsoft’s productivity apps have been recompiled to native apps for Arm. All the major web browsers now have native versions as well. Many core creative apps from Adobe and others are either native today, or will be in the coming months. Finally, most apps that don’t have native Arm versions can run well in emulation thanks to Microsoft’s new improved Prism emulation layer and the raw horsepower that the Snapdragon X Elite platform provides. You wouldn’t want to buy a Snapdragon X PC just to run emulated apps – they won’t be as fast or as efficient as native apps – but it rounds out the experience so that long tail apps like music players, image viewers, and even the encryption apps I tried all worked without issue. There are still three areas of concern:

  • Gaming – This is basically irrelevant for HP’s enterprise-focused EliteBook, but gaming is an area where Qualcomm, Microsoft, and game developers are a long way from fully solving. There are over a thousand games that are known to work (see worksonwoa.com), but that’s a fraction of what consumers want. Emulation is fine for turn-based strategy games, but for FPS, racing, and even RPGs, gamers demand performance that only optimized code and discrete graphics can provide. Windows on Arm also supports cloud gaming, and I was able to connect an Xbox controller over Bluetooth and play through the entire opening sequence of Forza Horizon 5 on Xbox Cloud without crashing my virtual supercar too many times.

  • Device drivers – Compatibility could be a problem if you regularly need to connect to unique printers, scanners, or lab equipment. However, I had no problems connecting to my Brother MFC-J995DW all-in-one printer, as Windows seemed to already have the drivers in its system. I was also able to download the drivers for my Fujitsu ScanSnap ix1600 and connect to it wirelessly. (Connecting directly via USB failed, but that also failed on an Intel Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon; the setup for this scanner is finicky no matter the platform.) I was even able to plug in an old StarTech USB-powered external DVD drive to play a CD in Windows Media Player and watch a Looney Tunes short, Rabbit Seasoning, on DVD using VLC Media Player.

  • Unique corporate, engineering, VPN, and creativity apps – The move to SAAS with web apps has made this less of an issue, but apps that have low-level access to the CPU and GPU for performance reasons may not run well in emulation or won’t run at all. Qualcomm has done a good job getting manufacturers and developers on board with the Snapdragon X platform, so this is a problem that I expect will largely be resolved over time as apps from Adobe, Box, and others get updated. For example, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, and Lightroom are all native, and the rest of Adobe’s Creative Suite is scheduled for optimization, including Premiere Pro.

Copilot+ PC

Microsoft launched its Copilot+ PC initiative alongside Qualcomm to great fanfare ahead of its BUILD developer conference last month (see Microsoft Reinvigorates Windows with Recall and Snapdragon). The Copilot+ PC program requires PCs to have an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) with a performance measurement of at least 40 TOPS to handle on-device AI tasks without slowing down the CPU or GPU or killing battery life. The Snapdragon X provides 45 TOPS, and Microsoft has written its Copilot+ PC software and AI models for Windows on Arm to start, so even as Intel and AMD start shipping systems with 40-55 TOPS they won’t be part of the Copilot+ PC program until Microsoft updates it for x86.

The Copilot+ PC featureset may eventually drive demand, but at launch it is somewhat crippled. All Copilot+ PCs feature a dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard, but the button and cloud-based AI assistant are not part of the Copilot+ PC program. The flagship feature, Recall, was supposed to use AI to watch everything you do on the PC and give users the ability to find anything that they have seen while using it. Unfortunately, Recall has been recalled to address security concerns with no clear release date.

That leaves drawing assistant CoCreator in Microsoft Paint and Studio Effects in Teams video calls as the main AI-enhanced features.

When I tested CoCreator in Paint, it was fun, responsive, and barely impacted the battery at all. Microsoft CoCreator works on-device, is very fast, lets you start with a stick drawing rather than just a text prompt, lets you iterate easily, and it's already in a paint program so you can add text, layers, edit, crop, export, etc. The output isn't always what you want -- multiple times I couldn't get the AI generated version of an object to be centered and fully visible in frame, it refuses to make "an explosion," and …the usual image caveats. But it's so easy to iterate and change the amount of "creativity" that it can be a useful tool for creating graphics for PowerPoint decks, illustrations, and (in my case) report thumbnails. The good news is that there’s essentially no learning curve. The bad news is that it is missing many AI tools found on smartphones like object eraser, and it certainly won’t play any role in a serious creative group’s workflow – you’ll need Adobe Creative Suite or Figma for that.

There are also a small but growing number of third-party apps that take advantage of the Snapdragon X Elite’s NPU to power AI features on-device. For example, Zoom and Camo have Snapdragon X -specific image processing capabilities that run on the NPU for better performance without impacting battery life.

HP’s Own AI and Security Tools

HP AI companion is its own suite (in beta, naturally). There does not appear to be a charge for HP AI, so if HP AI processing took place entirely on device, this might be a tool that IT managers prefer to enable over Copilot. However, it doesn’t, and my queries met significant limitations. While it requires an Internet connection, things that a typical Google search query return instantly gets an error message, “I'm currently unable to browse the internet for real-time information.” HP AI was able to ‘compose lyrics for a song about breaking up with your employer in the style of Taylor Swift’ and also attempted an answer to, ‘should I buy a Snapdragon X Elite Copilot+ PC or wait for an Intel one,’ but in both cases CoPilot provided the richer, better responses.

The more useful feature is the ability to create a library of your own documents to analyze, but it’s extremely limited in what it can handle: text only (no graphics or spreadsheets) and maximum 100MB. Setup is non-trivial: it asks you to categorize every file you add, it requires Internet access to work – which opens up privacy and security issues – and it takes an interminably long amount of time setting up the library before you can query it. It eventually indexed half the files I gave it and was only partly accurate when I queried it. HP has a lot of work to do building out the value proposition here.

HP bought Poly in 2022 and it incorporates some Poly software here. Like HP AI, some of this functionality is redundant to what Microsoft builds into the OS with all Copilot+ PCs. Poly’s software can be centrally managed, so that could be a reason to choose it for some organizations. I found the ability to adjust the zoom on the 5MP camera was the best use of Poly Camera Pro, and some may find the watermark feature helpful – it’s an overlay that can be customized with your contact information. However, if you use Poly Camera Pro you’ll need to turn Studio Effects off, and no matter what enhancement software I tried, the webcam still required my LED lighting setup for natural color. Poly Studio software engages microphone noise cancellation that works well.

HP’s Wolf Security is onboard for malware protection. Wolf Security uses the CPU, not the NPU, so this does lower performance slightly, but it should help businesses that standardized on Wolf Security on x86 adopt Windows on Arm. It may also be a factor for some IT managers in choosing the HP EliteBook over rival Snapdragon X Elite offerings for enterprises who haven’t chosen a security suite. Enterprises who rely on other solutions (or just Microsoft’s built-in tools) may prefer to maximize performance and leave it off. The consumer-focused OmniBook doesn't have this benefit/issue.

The Hardware

The industrial design on the EliteBook Ultra is conservative, but I really like the dark blue color, rounded edges everywhere, and matte finish. HP has eliminated plastic in the packaging for the EliteBook Ultra, and the PC uses 50% recycled aluminum in the covers and 50% post-consumer recycled plastic in the keycaps. Despite using non-virgin materials, build quality is excellent and it is easy to believe that the EliteBook Ultra passed MIL-STD 810 durability tests. The relatively thick bezels on top and bottom of display are less than ideal, but the 5MP webcam with physical privacy shutter has to go somewhere. The 14” 2200x1400 16:10 IPS display is sharp and color accurate, but can be too dim for use in direct sunlight. This is the only colorway and display offered. Port selection is fine: two USB C, one USB A (in a chassis so thin that it needs a hinge on one end), and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The keyboard travel is somewhat limited, though it feels good overall, if a step below Microsoft and Lenovo. HP uses a different grayish-blue accent color on the top row function keys which includes a button for the Snipping Tool which I use often, along with a user-defined macro key that defaults to launching the myHP app. HP really needs to make mapping that key the first thing you see in that app; I couldn’t figure out how to change it, and Copilot was no help. The arrow keys double as Page Up/Down/Home/End in combination with FN, which makes using them more difficult, but also means you don't accidently hit them. What I did nearly hit multiple times is the Power button, which sits right next to the delete key. The trackpad isn’t the largest but it functioned perfectly, and it would be hard to make it meaningfully bigger on this chassis.

Unfortunately, the speakers aren’t all that loud. Treble is fine but there’s no bass and if you’re in a noisy environment with people or window air conditioners, it can’t overcome that even at full volume.

You won’t need to do it often, but when you do plug it in, the EliteBook Ultra has HP Fast Charge, which brings the battery up to 50% in just 30 minutes.

Competition/Conclusion

Qualcomm is the big winner here, as the performance per watt and extended battery life on HP’s EliteBook Ultra shines. However, the displays on Microsoft, Lenovo, and Samsung’s Snapdragon X Elite laptops I have in for review are simply better: brighter with a 3:2 aspect ratio for Microsoft’s Surface Laptop, and OLED options on Lenovo’s YOGA, Samsung’s GalaxyBook4 Edge, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro. HP’s own AI and A/V software are not unique enough today to be a differentiator, though enterprises that standardize on Wolf Security will likely start their Snapdragon X Elite decision process with HP. Even so, Lenovo and Microsoft both sell strongly into the enterprise, so HP will have to be willing to give up a lot of margin on its $1700 price point to be competitive.

To discuss the implications of this report on your business, product, or investment strategies, contact Techsponential at avi@techsponential.com.

Hybrid Work, AI, Silicon, Smartphones/ComputingAvi Greengart