I tested HP’s new EliteBook X G1i, and it’s a featherweight champ in the office

Back in 2024, HP announced that it was simplifying its laptop portfolio and combining everything into two new commercial lines: Omni for regular consumers and Elite for businesses. I’ve had the opportunity to try both sides, and I think HP has done a standout job in both differentiating the lineups and hitting the right notes so far. 

As of July 2025, the second generation of the rebrand is rolling out. I recently had the opportunity to try out the HP EliteBook X G1i–>, a laptop that is remarkably similar to the EliteBook X G1a from last year, with some differences in key areas. 

Also: The best HP laptops you can buy

Its design is the first notable improvement you can see (and feel). The EliteBook X G1i is a little bit bigger, measuring 12.36 x 8.66 x 0.59; however, it is much lighter at 2.6 pounds. I’ve spent the last couple of months carrying around hefty laptops, so traveling with this featherweight machine was a nice change of pace.

Office boss

Overall, the display is okay. It has a WUXGA (1,920 x 1,200 pixel) resolution touchscreen that covers the entire sRGB gamut, so colors are vibrant. I appreciate the anti-glare coating over the glass, as it made working under the sun a lot better. My biggest problem with the display is the bezels. The glass is surrounded by these thick black bars, restricting what could’ve been a large screen area. It still has a 14-inch display, but to me, the screen looks small.

Also: This compact laptop dock streamlined my workspace – and it’s buy one get one

What’s interesting is that Windows 11 has a different layout here. Seemingly, in an effort to compensate for the small screen area, the taskbar is hidden by default, leaving only a virtual touch bar denoting its location.

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Above the display is a 5MP IR camera. It’s one of the nicest webcams I’ve seen in a while. Colors were nicely balanced, and nothing was oversaturated, nor was there a weird blue tint like with other laptops. Videos are shot at a crisp 2,880 x 1,620 resolution. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that the webcam is one of the EliteBook’s best features. Keep that in mind if you find yourself hopping on a lot of calls throughout the day. 

Also: This Dell laptop is my top choice for both work and travel – and it’s on sale for $420 off

I also liked the laptop’s audio system. It houses four stereo speakers with discrete amplifiers, resulting in a loud and noticeably bass-forward output. The audio quality isn’t on the same level as a soundbar, but it’s clear enough. Spoken word comes through the speakers with no distortion.

The keyboard is fairly decent, too. Its key caps are large and evenly spaced out, allowing for comfortable typing. That said, I think I’ve been spoiled by the HP OmniBook X Flip, which has a fantastic lattice-style keyboard – one of the best I’ve used this year. This particular model can’t hold a candle to it, but it does have a better trackpad. The trackpad takes up a larger area of the wrist rest, even sporting a small divet on the bottom for comfortable scrolling.

Port selection is quite solid, too. Across its thin frame, you’ll find two Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1, a 10Gbps USB-C, a headphone jack, and a single USB-A input. You have enough options on hand that you won’t need to supplement with a docking station.

Humble performance

When it comes to hardware performance, it’s a mixed bag. The numbers reveal that it doesn’t perform quite as well as the EliteBook X G1a, which ran on an AMD Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 processor, compared to the EliteBook G1i Intel Core Ultra 7 268V CPU. Below is a table comparing the benchmark test results of HP’s EliteBook X Gl1 to last year’s model and the Dell 14 Plus.  

These numbers were reflected in my other tests. In one instance, I edited one of EliteBook’s high-quality photographs using the online image editor Pixlr. I also had 10 other tabs open, one of which had a 3D rendering tool running. Editing images can be a resource-intensive task, resulting in some performance quirks. While using the Stamp tool, I noticed that the on-screen reticle had a delay. Its movement did not match my direction — it was a little off. However, once I closed the other tabs, the Pixlr delay immediately disappeared.

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I eventually noticed the EliteBook has trouble multitasking under certain circumstances. When I had 50 unique tabs running YouTube livestreams in 1080p, looping GIFs, ZDNET reviews, and Amazon listings, everything was fine. There was no slowdown. But the browser-based photo editing just didn’t sit right with the laptop.