HP EliteBook 1040 G11 First Impressions

With HP transitioning to a new branding system for its PCs, the EliteBook 1040 G11 is in some ways the last of its kind. But it also marks the beginning of a major transition for the product line, which has long been at the top of my all-time favorites: This new EliteBook 1040—this last EliteBook 1040, I bet—looks familiar, but it packs many upgrades, some major, some minor.

For those who haven’t heard, HP is consolidating its PC brands around two top-level naming prefixes, Omni and Elite, that represent its consumer and commercial PC products, respectively. Below that, it will use the Book, Studio, and Desk signifiers for its portable, All-in-One (AIO), and desktop PC models. And within each of those, it will use a series of numbers, from 2 to 10 (where 10 is represented by “X”) to represent the relative quality (design, features, performance) of an individual model, with odd numbers (3, 5, 7, and X) for consumer PCs and even numbers (2, 4, 6, 8, and X) for commercial PCs. There will also be an “Ultra” modifier to denote HP’s most premium models.

If you’re familiar with the recently launched HP Copilot+ PCs, then this information will help you place them within HP’s new branding structure. The HP EliteBook Ultra I’m currently reviewing is a premium (“Ultra”) portable PC (“Book”) aimed at HP’s commercial customers (“Elite”). Its sibling, the HP OmniBook X is a high-end (“X”) portable PC (“Book”) aimed at HP’s consumer customers. Given this, it’s perhaps reasonable to expect a future HP OmniBook Ultra that offers an even more premium experience.

The EliteBook 1040 G11 is, as its name suggests, the 11th-generation version of one of HP’s most iconic commercial PCs. There are traditional clamshell and convertible laptop (“x360”) versions of this product, as before, and I’m reviewing the former. Had it been conceived after the new branding had been adopted, it would be marketed as an HP EliteBook X, I’m told, while the convertible version would be branded as the HP EliteBook X Flip. We can look forward to that change in future generations. But for now, the EliteBook 840 sits atop a commercial PC lineup that also includes a wide range of EliteBook, ProBook, and HP-branded models, plus the weird but wonderful Dragonfly models that were somewhat over to the side.

Whatever its name, this is, in many ways, HP’s most important commercial laptop model, one that competes head-to-head with business-class stalwarts like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon. And so HP gave the EliteBook 1040 G11 important internal and external upgrades to better differentiate it from those competitors as well as from its other EliteBooks and commercial PCs. As a bit of a fan boy of the 1040, I follow these changes very closely. And as someone who fears change when the product in question was already so good to begin with, I was initially worried that perhaps HP may have changed too much.

But my initial time with the G11 has eased those worries. And while it’s unlikely you’re as intimately familiar with this product as I am, a happy coincidence of timing will help bring you up to speed: The HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11 I just reviewed is nearly identical to the previous-generation EliteBook 1040 from a form-factor perspective, so you can easily compare the old look and features to the new.

Like the ZBook, the EliteBook 1040 G11 is understated yet obviously premium, and not at all flashy or unusual looking. Subtly, the color has shifted from a traditional gray to a light gray that looks white depending on the lighting, and it’s the first EliteBook to provide a fingerprint-resistant coating.

The G11 is disarmingly light at just 2.59 pounds, and it lifts so effortlessly it feels like a battery-less engineering sample instead of a shipping product. This is astonishing: The similarly sized EliteBook X weighs 2.9 pounds, and while 0.3 pounds may not seem like a big difference, you can really feel it.

When you open the display lid, you can see the most radical design change: HP’s best-in-class keyboard has an all-new look, with curved, dark gray keys and surround providing a nice visual contrast with the rest of the laptop. Seeing this for the first time was when my first worries crept in: The EliteBook 1040 has long been among the very best keyboards I’ve ever used, and this keyboard looks quite different.

HP assured me this was nothing but an upgrade: The keyboard and each key are a bit bigger than those in previous generation 1040s, and they look a bit different. But they are the same basic keys inside, with better than ever key stability and improved use of recycled materials. And in my early few hours of setting up the PC, I of course paid particular attention to the typing experience. And it is indeed excellent.

As an AI PC—more on that in a moment—the G11 does include a Copilot key, of course. And I’m not too thrilled with the half-height Pg Up, Pg Dn, Left arrow, and Right arrow keys. But other than that, the keyboard seems nearly perfect from a layout perspective, and the fingerprint reader is integrated into the power button in the upper-right corner. That key provides a power light and a bit of texture so you can easily find it with your finger without looking, both nice touches.

The touchpad seems fine in early use. HP say it’s more durable than before, and it makes a clicky feedback sound when tapped, lightly or not.

HP also gave the EliteBook 1040 the expansion upgrade I’ve been recommending for years: It has USB-C ports on both sides of the device, freeing up room for charging or connecting peripherals as needed. There are two USB-C ports on the left, both with full Thunderbolt 4 capabilities, next to a full-sized HDMI port and a combo headphone/microphone jack.

And then there’s one USB-C (10 Gbps) port on the right, alongside a 5 Gbps USB-A port and a Kensington nano lock slot. Nice: Previous EliteBooks had just the two USB-C ports on the right.

As always, HP offers several display panel choices, with matte IPS, OLED, and SureView privacy shield options. Basically, each is 14 inches in size, and you can choose between Full HD+ (1920 x 1200) or 2.8K (2880 x 1800), the latter of which is OLED.

The review unit has a 400 nit Full HD+ display that’s almost certainly what I’d choose for myself. The bezels are thin on the side, but chunky on the top to accommodate the webcam and sensors. The display does lie flat.

Internally, HP is differentiating the G11 from other EliteBooks with the use of H-series Intel Core Ultra (yes, “Meteor Lake”) vPro processors. This is a Core Ultra 7 165H in the review unit, but there are other Core Ultra 5 and 7 H-series processor choices too. Given my mixed results with other Meteor Lake-based PCs, this was—maybe still is—a worry. But HP explained that it has worked some magic to help customers best take advantage of the chip’s performance advantages—its integrated Arc graphics are a significant advance over previous-generation integrated GPUs—while simultaneously addressing the power management and thermal issues that might have been the cause of my initial issues with the ZBook Firefly G11.

We’ll see. But here’s the short version: HP overrides the Windows 11 power management capabilities with a new generation of its Smart Sense technologies that dynamically adjusts the performance and efficiency of the PC while keeping it nearly silent in normal use and whisper quiet under load. Alternatively, you can configure it to use a performance mode in which all bets are off, and the thing will crank up to full capacity. But it also features two features, Motion AI and Intelligent Hibernate, that work in tandem with a voltage regulator to address the sleep/wake-up problems I experienced. It can detect when it’s in a bag, and it uses a power-gated version of Modern Standby to go into a deeper sleep after it’s been undisturbed for a while. On the other end, it wakes up when taken out of a bag, when picked up, when plugged into a charger, or when you open the lid. The goal is for the user to have an instant-on experience when it’s time to use the PC while ensuring that it doesn’t hot-bag or leak battery life all night.

I can’t say yet whether any of this works. What I can tell you so far is that it’s been silent and that when I opened its display lid this morning, it came on, if not instantly, then at least normally, without a boot wait. And the battery life didn’t move a single percentage point overnight. Even the Snapdragon X doesn’t do that: It comes on instantly, but it also gives up about 3 percentage points of battery life overnight.

I’m most curious where battery life will land—HP claims well over 20 hours, but for video playback—but the larger 68 Wh battery (compared to 51 Wh previously) should help, as should the non-OLED display.

The G11 supports 16 or 32 GB of LPDDR5X-7467 MT/s RAM and 256 GB to 2 TB of PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD storage in various configurations. The review unit has 16 GB of (soldered) RAM and 1 TB of storage.

The EliteBook 1040 G11 can be configured with Wi-Fi 6E or 7, Bluetooth 5.3 or 5.4, and, optionally, 5G Sub-6 (or 4G/LTE) cellular data with both nano-SIM and eSIM options. NFC is optional as well. The review unit has Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and 5G.

The G11 has some nice hybrid work upgrades.

The 5 MP webcam with Windows Hello is pretty standard, as is its manual privacy shutter, but it features dynamic color tuning for the first time.

Where previous versions offered two speakers, the G11 has four—two top firing, two bottom firing—and they’re powered by discrete amplifiers and optimized by Poly Studio.

And this is the first HP to offer signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) edge microphones, which should significantly improve audio quality. Software controls include a Studio Mode for voice recording, HP Dynamic Voice Leveling for optimal voice clarity and microphone gain configuration, and basic Windows Studio Effects support courtesy of Meteor Lake’s NPU. Poly Camera Pro is coming to all EliteBook 1040 G11s next week, and it will ship in the box with new PCs.

From a software perspective, there are no major surprises: You get Windows 11 Pro, of course, about 10 HP utilities, and a few superfluous Start menu entries for things like Adobe Offers, TCO Certified, and Miro Offer. The system is protected by HP Wolf Security and HP’s standard set of commercial hardware-based protections.

More soon: Despite it being summer, this is a curiously active time for new PCs, and I’ll have further review PCs to share soon.