Testing the HP EliteBook X G1a 14 revealed an AI-centric business laptop designed for early adopters

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: 30-second review

I thought HP naming conventions were silly, but the excessively convoluted title of HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI borders on self-parody.

To interpret, this is an EliteBook X model of the G1a generation, featuring a fourteen-inch display, and it has extra AI features applied, much like cream frosting on a birthday cake.

The critical technology under its hood is an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 coming directly from AMD’s equally obtuse product labelling department. Under the hood, it uses one of the new Strix Point chips, and only one rung below the extreme Strix Halo series processors.

For a laptop, this is a computing powerhouse with twelve cores and twenty-four threads, equipped with a decent Radeon 890M GPU. In the review machine, it features 64GB of LPDDR5x-8533 memory.

The caveat to such a powerful laptop is two-fold: firstly, it can eat through its 75Wh battery quicker than something less gun-ho, and it costs around $2300 to own one.

Why would you want to spend that much on a laptop? This machine is ideal for anyone who wants to run AI models locally. The NPU is rated at 55 TOPS, and when combined with the CPU’s AI power, the combined rating reaches 85 TOPS, which is impressive for a laptop system, but less than the Zbook Ultra G1a.

However, if this seems attractive to you, then you might also want to consider the HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14, as it utilises the AMD Ryzen AI 3950X Max, a full-blown Strix Halo chip.

If you are looking for a powerhouse for users who need all the help they can get, the HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI is up there with the best business laptops^[2] we’ve reviewed.

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Price and availability

• How much does it cost? From $1850/2028
• When is it out? Available now
• Where can you get it? Direct from HP or via Amazon

In the current crop of HP business laptops, this is one of the more expensive options, but part of that price is that these machines come with either 16, 32 or 64GB of DDR5-8000 RAM.

What’s mildly hilarious is that on the HP website in the US, they claim that the MSRP for the review hard spec is $5,149, where they’re offering it at $2,299^[4]. In Europe, HP don’t claim anything like that, probably because it’s against the law here to claim a price reduction from a cost that nobody ever paid.

For those wanting this machine at the lowest cost, HP has a model for $1,848 that comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. But you need to be aware that you can’t upgrade the RAM later.

The cost in the UK of the review hardware with 64GB of RAM and 1TB of storage is £2,027.99^[5] VAT included. In the UK, you can’t get a machine using the 16GB of RAM, but you can get one with the Ryzen 7 AI Pro processor, 32GB of RAM and 512GB of storage for £1,631.99. Given the specification, that is a reasonable cost.

The products that this machine competes directly with are the Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 6, which typically sells for only $1459 in the US, but £2,399 in the UK. However, that comes with the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, not the 375. For those interested, the only difference between the two is that the 375 offers 55 TOPS AI processing, compared to 50 on the 370.

Asus also has a machine built around the 370, but wants £2,699 or $2199.99 for the ProArt P16 (H7606), making it even more expensive than the HP.

From that perspective, it looks pricey, but given how few brands are offering the top-level 375 processor, this is not insanely expensive. And, it’s easier to get than the Zbook Ultra.

• Value: 3.5 / 5

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Specs

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Design

• Thin and elegant
• Lots of USB
• Stunning OLED screen
• Easy access but little to upgrade

On the outside, this machine is practically identical to the Zbook Ultra, as they share the same upper chassis, OLED display, keyboard and touchpad.

The underside features a single large perforated vent that spans 90% of the width and 20% of the depth, providing ample airflow for the internal components. As I discovered later, only the ends of this are actually open to flow, making much of it irrelevant to cooling.

It’s a mostly metal exterior, making it feel cool to the touch when you pick it up in the morning.

The port layout is also common to the Zbook Ultra, featuring a Thunderbolt port on each side, as well as an additional USB-C, USB-A, and HDMI port. That’s enough ports to avoid needing to budget for a docking station, and if you do include one, it only needs to deliver 100W to cover the recharge requirements.

I’ve mentioned this 2.8K OLED panel in glowing terms before, as HP has utilised it on a selection of 14-inch laptops; it’s terrific for content creators and also touch-capable. Its only limitation is that because it’s protected by glass for touching, it does suffer from reflections in bright sun conditions.

Removing four screws and some spudger actions gets you inside relatively easily. Additionally, since this is a metal skin, the likelihood of damaging the underside is significantly reduced compared to a plastic skin.

Removing the back revealed an identical layout to the Zboiok Ultra, with two fans that suck in air from either end of the perforated slot for cooling the CPU, memory and other motherboard components.

The single M.2 2280 slot features a dedicated heatsink that utilises the undertray via a thermal pad to dissipate heat. That means any drive cloning to a larger capacity will require an external USB or Thunderbolt caddy. It’s interesting that this machine is generally offered with a maximum of 1TB, but I’m confident that at least a 2TB or even 4TB might work, as long as the drive doesn’t have a permanent heat sink attached.

As the memory is soldered to the motherboard, the only reasons to go in here are a storage swap or to replace the battery, since those are the only user-replaceable parts.

The amount of commonality between this and the ZBook Ultra suggests that HP didn’t expect to sell a large number of these, so it didn’t warrant much that was unique.

Apart from the lack of upgrades, this is a design that packs plenty of power into a relatively small chassis, revealing the same ethos that created the ZBook Ultra. I’m not sure which came first, or if they arrived as twins.

• Design: 4 / 5

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Hardware

• AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375
• Radeon 890M GPU
• Bandwidth of LPDDR5x-8533

AMD has spawned no less than three processor ranges from its Zen 5/RDNA3.5/XDNA2 architecture in the Ryzen AI 300 series.

These are divided into the Krackan Point, Strix Point and Strix Halo models, with the top being the Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 from the Strix Halo line. The AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO 375 in this machine is a Strix Point design, and the top of that food chain.

This is a twelve-core CPU with four Zen 5 and eight Zen 5a cores, and all cores have hyperthreading, enabling twenty-four thread processing. This contrasts strongly with Intel’s 200 series designs, which have three core levels, not just performance and efficiency, and hyperthreading is no longer supported.

If you need more cores, the Ryzen AI Max+ chips offer a 16-core, 32-thread option, but that silicon is also clocked higher, with a base clock of 3GHz. In contrast, the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO has a 2GHz base. But the Zen 5 cores can boost to 5.1GHz, and the reduction in cores allows for heat to be better shared around the chip. The amount of L3 cache here is 24MB, which sounds great until you realise the AI Max+ 395 has 64MB.

The downgrade to the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO also includes the GPU, which receives a previous-generation 890M, rather than the new Radeon 8060s.

There might be some confusion about the GPU, as many benchmarks and tools I used to test this system repeatedly reported that it has an 880M, not a 890M. But given how small the difference is between those two GPU designs, that’s a mistake that’s easy to make.

Sadly, that one change does result in significantly less graphics performance, so those wanting the best integrated GPU should opt for a laptop with the Ryzen AI Max+ chip or one with a discrete mobile GPU.

Where the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX PRO excels is in AI processing, with an NPU rated for 55 TOPS, surpassing the 50 TOPS required by Microsoft to run CoPilot locally. When combined with the CPU, the total TOPS capability is 85.

For most AI users, running local models is a decent level of performance, although the combined capability of the AMD Ryzen AI 395 Max+ is 126 TOPS combined.

Therefore, in the AMD processor lineup, this is the second-best AI option and is easily better than anything Intel offers.

What elevates this chip’s designs is that, alongside the increases in cores, threads and cache, AMD also introduced support for LPDDR5x-8533. That one change delivers a massive bandwidth boost for these systems, and it also makes the GPUs that share main memory perform dramatically better.

The memory model used is something you should keep in mind when considering the performance of this machine in our tests.

• Hardware: 4.5 / 5

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Performance

These numbers might seem a bit cruel, but the comparison I went with was the HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14, a machine that’s almost physically identical but uses the pinnacle of AMD’s mobile processor technology, the impressive AMD Ryzen AI 395 Max+.

As you might expect, the EliteBook X G1a can’t match the Zbook Ultra G1a when it comes to any test that uses graphics, since the 8060s GPU is imperious.

But as a computing platform, it certainly holds its ground. And if I were to put an Intel machine up against it, like the HP EliteBook Ultra G1i with its Intel Core i7-258V CPU, then the EliteBook X G1a would be the one that had the edge in processing and graphics.

It has one significant win against the Zbook Ultra, and that’s battery life, as going slightly slower delivers an additional two hours of running time. Neither of these machines can compete with the Snapdragon X laptops in terms of longevity, but the EliteBook X G1a should easily get most people through a working day. And, it can recover 46% of the battery capacity in 30 minutes.

The takeaway from testing is that, by any laptop standard, this is a fast and powerful system that is only overshadowed by others, such as the Zbook Ultra, which uses an even more impressive CPU and GPU. A question needs to be asked about how much you are prepared to pay for this performance level, or even higher.

• Performance: 4.5 / 5

HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI: Final verdict

It’s curious how the order in which I review things can significantly influence my thinking about them, and the EliteBook X G1a falls into that category. Had I not seen the HP Zbook Ultra G1a 14 and its breathtaking performance, then I’d probably be more enthusiastic about the EliteBook X G1a, because it’s spectacular compared to almost everything else.

Its problem is that if you are prepared to spend a lot, and some clearly are, then the HP ZBook Ultra G1a 14 is the machine to have, not this one.

However, if you are happy to have something which is powerful and suitable for local AI, then this is exceptional and should deliver the punchy performance you need.

It’s not cheap, but it’s built for its purpose and priced accordingly.

Should you buy a HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

For more options, we reviewed the best laptops for work and gaming and the best laptops for working from home.^[6][7]

References

1. ^{^} Find out more about how we test. (www.techradar.com)
2. ^{^} best business laptops (www.techradar.com)
3. ^{^} HP EliteBook X G1a 14 AI (14-inch) at HP US for $1,749 (www.tkqlhce.com)
4. ^{^} $2,299 (www.anrdoezrs.net)
5. ^{^} £2,027.99 (clk.tradedoubler.com)
6. ^{^} best laptops for work and gaming (www.techradar.com)
7. ^{^} best laptops for working from home (www.techradar.com)