HP EliteBook Ultra First Impressions

Well, the mystery is solved: My review unit HP Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PC finally arrived today after a two-week wait. And now I know which of the two HPs it is.

It’s the business-class HP EliteBook Ultra.

It’s gorgeous, with a Dragonfly-like Atmospheric Blue anodized aluminum body, a surprisingly whimsical light blue row of function keys, three USB Type-C ports (two on the left, one on the right), a headphone/microphone jack (on the right), and light branding throughout. From a look and feel perspective, this has a neat EliteBook/Dragonfly crossover vibe that I like quite a bit.

There are subtle EliteBook and HP AI logos on both the wrist rest and the exterior of the hinge. And just a single “Snapdragon X Elite” sticker is visible. (There’s a Windows sticker on the bottom as God intended.)

The display is a 14-inch 16:10 2.2K (2240 x 1400) multitouch IPS panel that looks quite nice, though it’s limited to 300 nits of brightness.

The display doesn’t lie flat, and the bezels are about average, larger at the top.

Power comes via a 12-core Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100 processor (the low-end version with no dual-core boost), 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD storage. There’s Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.4 for connectivity, and Windows Hello facial recognition (but not, irritatingly, fingerprint recognition) with presence detection.

HP’s premium keyboards are among my most favorite, and my very early experiences suggest that will be the case here.

As noted, I really enjoy how the light blue function keys customize the look. And there are some interesting key choices, like the Calculator and programmable keys in the function row, the apparently now-standard (in Copilot+ PCs) Snippet key (also in the function row), and the now-familiar Copilot key. The arrow keys are nicely bereft of half-height PgUp and PgDn keys, thankfully.

While there appears to be an air intake on the bottom of the PC, as with the Yoga Slim 7x, HP redesigned its EliteBook hinge to allow for more airflow to the back, which should help with thermals. This design improves airflow even when the lid is closed, so it can quickly cool when you’re carting it around, too. I am curious to see how well that works.

Aside from the basic design, there are some software differentiators that set the HP apart from other Copilot+ PCs. But to get to that, I need to describe my onboarding experience, as I did things a little bit differently this time.

For starters, the EliteBook Ultra comes with Windows 11 Pro version 24H2, which gave me another opportunity to test whether a workaround I’ll be documenting in the Windows 11 Field Guide still works. It does: I was able to sign in to this PC using a local account without issue. There was no ad for Recall as per the Surface Laptop 7, and because HP had prepped the PC for me, I booted right into build 26100.1000. That’s very interesting since this build requires you to install last week’s Week D update; the stable version of Windows 11 24H2 is build 26100.863.

HP’s Support Assistant app is nowhere to be seen, so this PC is clearly using Windows Update for all updates. And there was nothing to speak of waiting in Windows Update.

HP kept the software image mostly cruft-free with just 7 HP utilities, two of which—HP AI Navigator and Poly Camera Pro—will require further investigation. I fully uninstalled HP Wolf Security and its supporting services because I’m an individual and don’t need it, and because it adds overhead that impacts system performance. There’s no real crapware.

This configuration is a bit expensive at $1699. But the EliteBook Ultra is very similar to its prosumer cousin, the OmniBook 14, in fact, they’re nearly identical. And you can save a lot of money going with the OmniBook, as the EliteBook Ultra comes with three years of warranty and support. A similar OmniBook costs about $1199, for example.

I’m a bit pressed for time as I need to prep for Windows Weekly, but I’ll have more soon, including a comparison between the three Copilot+ PCs I have in-house now. But they’re all excellent laptops, from what I can tell, with premium builds, great specs, and very nice displays.

More soon.