Setting apart its ZBook cellular workstations and ultralight Dragonfly line, HP’s EliteBook 800 fashions are the agency’s second-best enterprise laptops (between the 600 and 1000 collection). The EliteBook 840 G9 (begins at $1,129; $1,609 as examined) sits smack within the mainstream of 14-inch, clamshell company notebooks. This laptop computer is full of up-to-date options like a barely taller 16:10 (as a substitute of 16:9) side ratio show, Wi-Fi 6E, and 5G cellular broadband. HP’s 840 G9 does not upstage Lenovo’s legendary ThinkPad X1 Carbon as our favourite enterprise laptop computer, but it surely’s a trim and terrific enterprise possibility.
Prepared for the Nook Workplace
On HP.com, the most cost effective EliteBook 840 G9 is $1,129 with a twelfth Era Intel Core i5 processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 256GB NVMe solid-state drive. 4 display screen selections can be found, all IPS panels with 1,920-by-1,200-pixel decision: non-touch or contact with a modest 250 nits of brightness, a sunnier 400-nit non-touch display screen, and certainly one of HP’s Positive View Mirror panels with an built-in privateness filter. Disappointingly, you’ll be able to’t get a sharper 4K or OLED show.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
For $1,609, our Home windows 11 Professional check unit steps as much as a quicker Core i7-1280P chip (six Efficiency cores, eight Environment friendly cores, 20 threads) with Intel’s vPro IT manageability tech, a 512GB SSD, and Intel 5G Answer 5000 connectivity for desolate locations with out Wi-Fi protection. Extras embrace a SmartCard slot in addition to each a fingerprint reader and face-recognition webcam to skip typing passwords with Home windows Hi there. The laptop computer additionally options HP’s Wolf Safety bundle, together with BIOS and AI-based malware safety together with Positive Click on sandboxing of on-line apps and web sites.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
This aluminum-clad EliteBook measures 0.76 by 12.4 by 8.8 inches, and it simply clears our ultraportable cutoff at 2.99 kilos. Amongst different 14-inch enterprise programs with 16:10 display screen side ratios, Lenovo’s X1 Carbon is an eighth of an inch thinner and half a pound lighter (2.48 kilos), whereas the Acer TravelMate P6 is lighter nonetheless at 2.2 kilos.
Skinny bezels border the edges of the display screen, with barely thicker bars above and beneath. A sliding shutter covers the webcam lens if you need some privateness, and a microphone mute key’s included on the highest row. Ports embrace two USB4 ports with Thunderbolt 4 help on the left flank, together with an HDMI monitor port. The laptop computer options one 5Gbps USB 3.2 Kind-A port on all sides plus an audio jack, a nano SIM slot, and a security-cable lockdown notch on the proper. HP’s compact AC adapter has a USB-C connector.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
HP Will get the Keyboard Proper
Past even the not too long ago rising 1080p customary, HP’s webcam captures as much as 2,560-by-1,440-pixel (16:9 side ratio) or 2,560-by-1,920-pixel (4:3) stills, in addition to 1080p or 1440p movies. Photographs produced by the digital camera are moderately well-lit and colourful, with minimal static. The myHP utility’s HP Presence enhancements embrace a backlight and low-light adjustment, in addition to framing instruments to your head, head and shoulders, or higher physique—relying on how a lot of your shirt or shirt you wish to present.
Talking of shirts, what seems in my critiques extra typically than torn bodices do in romance novels? Complaints about HP laptops arranging the cursor arrow keys in a slipshod row as a substitute of the handier inverted-T format. The EliteBook’s arrow keys are solely half-size however are—amazingly—correctly positioned.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
Even higher are the devoted Residence, Finish, Web page Up, and Web page Down keys in a ThinkPad-style association on the prime proper for the primary two and decrease proper for the latter. The backlit keyboard has a shallow however moderately snappy typing really feel, and typing on it’s audible however not too noisy. The laptop computer’s decently sized, buttonless touchpad glides and clicks easily.
Sound from the bottom-firing audio system is not precisely symphonic, but it surely’s loud and sharp sufficient for any enterprise use, in addition to for having fun with streaming films or music. These audio system produce little or no bass to talk of, however the audio is not harsh or tinny even at prime quantity, and it is easy to make out overlapping tracks. HP Audio Management software program offers music, film, and voice modes, in addition to an equalizer. Lastly, AI-based speaker and mic noise discount, and sound calibration for supported headsets, are additionally accessible right here.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
I am unhappy that the EliteBook does not match most rivals in supporting a high-res display screen possibility, however the 1,920-by-1,200 show is completely crisp and fairly vibrant. Colours are wealthy and well-saturated, distinction is respectable, and viewing angles are broad. White backgrounds are clear, helped by the power to tilt the display screen again so far as you want, and I can not see any pixelation across the edges of letters on web sites and in emails.
Testing the HP EliteBook 840 G9: The Excessive Finish of Mainstream
For our benchmark charts, we’re evaluating the HP to 4 different 14-inch slimline laptops, together with the premium Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 (begins at $1,439; $2,249 as examined) and the extra reasonably priced Acer TravelMate P6 (begins at $1,299.99; $1,499.99 as examined). The Dell Latitude 9430 2-in-1 (begins at $2,169; $2,994 as examined) is a enterprise convertible, whereas the Lenovo Slim 9i (begins at $1,249; $2,070 as examined) is a client showpiece with a 4K OLED show.
Productiveness Assessments
Our major efficiency benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, simulates quite a lot of real-world productiveness and content-creation workflows to measure general efficiency for office-centric duties reminiscent of phrase processing, spreadsheeting, net shopping, and videoconferencing. We additionally run PCMark 10’s Full System Drive check to evaluate a laptop computer’s storage load time and throughput.
Three extra benchmarks give attention to the CPU, utilizing all accessible cores and threads, to price a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a fancy scene, whereas Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Professional simulates fashionable apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease instances are higher).
Our ultimate productiveness check is Puget Programs’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which makes use of the Artistic Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to price a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia functions. It is an automatic extension that executes quite a lot of common and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
HP’s EliteBook 840 G9 finishes first or second in each occasion, displaying greater than ample energy for on a regular basis apps (scoring half once more the 4,000 factors in PCMark 10 that point out glorious productiveness for Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace) and even sufficient muscle for some delicate digital content material creation, although it is less than workstation-class CGI rendering or knowledge science.
Graphics Assessments
For visible testing, we benchmark Home windows PCs’ graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Evening Raid (extra modest, appropriate for laptops with built-in graphics) and Time Spy (extra demanding, appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).
We additionally run two exams from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses each low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like picture rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Automobile Chase exams, rendered offscreen to accommodate totally different show resolutions, train graphics and compute shaders utilizing the OpenGL programming interface and {hardware} tessellation respectively. The extra frames per second (fps), the higher.
Lenovo’s glossy Slim 9i laptop computer leads the pack with the HP shut behind, however all these notebooks’ Intel built-in graphics fall means in need of the 3D efficiency you may see from the discrete GPU of a gaming laptop computer or workstation. They’re positive for informal gaming and streaming media, however not meant for high-speed shoot-’em-ups or notably heavy-duty visible content material creation.
Battery and Show Assessments
We check laptops’ battery life by enjoying a domestically saved 720p video file (the open-source Blender film Tears of Metal(Opens in a brand new window)) with show brightness at 50% and audio quantity at 100%. We be sure that the battery is absolutely charged earlier than the check, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.
For show testing, we use Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Home windows software program to measure a laptop computer display screen’s coloration saturation. Meaning what proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 coloration gamuts or palettes the show can present—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per sq. meter).
No complaints right here, because the EliteBook reveals greater than sufficient unplugged stamina for a full day’s work—plus a night’s Netflix or YouTube leisure. Bested solely by the Dell Latitude on this check lot, this makes the EliteBook ideally suited for employees who regularly journey.
Sadly, this EliteBook’s display screen cannot match the vivid hues of the Slim 9i’s OLED panel in coloration protection. Nonetheless, the display screen is greater than colourful sufficient for enterprise apps, and it is truly brighter than its rated 400 nits—once more, beat solely by the Dell Latitude.
(Credit score: Kyle Cobian)
Verdict: A Modern Silver Slab for the Enterprise
In the event you can stay with a merely positive display screen as a substitute of a show-off OLED or 4K show, it is exhausting to fault HP’s EliteBook 840 G9. This enterprise laptop computer contains every thing from 5G cellular broadband to a high-res, AI-enhanced conferencing digital camera, together with extremely aggressive efficiency and extra safety. The one query in our minds is how HP can prime it with the would-be EliteBook 1000 collection, and whether or not it could actually earn our Editors’ Alternative award subsequent time.
HP EliteBook 840 G9 4.0 (Opens in a brand new window) See It $2,196.00 at HP(Opens in a brand new window) Begins at $1,129.00 Execs Spectacular efficiency, battery life, and safety
Trim design with an honest array of ports
Obtainable 4G or 5G cellular broadband
Sensible 5-megapixel webcam View Extra Cons A tad heavier than rivals
No high-res or OLED display screen choices The Backside Line With almost all trendy conveniences—together with Wi-Fi 6E, 5G, and first-rate safety—HP’s EliteBook 840 G9 is a wonderful company traveler…however not fairly exemplary.