HP EliteBook X G1a

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Introduction

The HP EliteBook X G1a is one of the brand’s more upmarket and powerful business laptops – the kind that’s more designed for the C-suite than for middle management.

That’s reflected both in its spec sheet, which packs in an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 Pro processor plus 64GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD, plus a 14-inch 2880×1800 120Hz touch-enabled OLED screen and a versatile port selection in the top spec model I have. It’s going to run you £2099.99.

While that may seem expensive, enterprise-grade laptops are usually around that area, and this laptop’s key rivals, such as the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 13 Aura Edition and Dell 14 Premium are comparably priced and specced in some regards.

I’ve been putting this HP option through its paces for the last couple of weeks to see if it can come out on top of some rather stiff competition and emerge as one of the best laptops

Design and Keyboard

• Sturdy, but hefty, aluminium frame
• Capable port selection
• Tactile keyboard and comfortable trackpad

The EliteBook X G1a features a slick aluminium frame that feels solid and sturdy in hand, and certainly plays more into this laptop’s MacBook Pro lookalike credentials. For a machine designed for business professionals, it definitely looks the part.

With this in mind, the aluminium frame contributes to it being quite a hefty 14-inch laptop. It tips the scales at 1.49kg, which isn’t unreasonable in a general sense, and means this HP option is still quite portable. That’s especially thanks to it being a more compact choice.

It’s around 18mm thick at its thickest point, which technically classifies the EliteBook X G1a as an ultrabook of sorts. It packs in an excellent set of ports, too. On the left side, you’ll find a full-size HDMI, a Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C port, a 10Gbps USB-C port and a headphone jack. On the right, there’s a Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C port, a USB-A and a Kensington security lock.

Opening up the lid reveals a contrasting darker grey keyboard tray against the lighter aluminium finish – another MacBook Pro nod, you could argue. It’s a more compact layout, ditching the number pad, but it keeps a function row and arrow keys. As laptop keyboards go, it’s one of the best I’ve tested in a long time, with a snappy and tactile feel plus a solid amount of travel. It’s also white backlit for when you’re working in the dark.

The trackpad here is of a decent size and provides a decent, dampened feel to its clicks that makes it comfortable and easy to use for extended periods.

Display and Sound

• Gorgeous OLED screen
• Brilliant colours, black level and contrast
• Decent speakers 

HP offers a couple of different screen options for the EliteBook X G1a, with my option coming with the 14-inch 2.8K (2880×1800) 120Hz OLED panel that provides a detailed and responsive experience with excellent clarity and generally crisp and responsive images.

This panel has some deep blacks and excellent contrast, as you’d expect from an OLED, with measured levels of 0.01 and 27680:1 using my trusty colorimeter.

A peak SDR brightness of 379.2 nits makes this laptop suitable for indoor and outdoor use, and there is a decent punch to on-screen action. It’s about average for an OLED screen at this price, and you can get brighter with more creative-focused laptops such as the Asus ProArt P16 (2025), although that is more expensive than this HP choice.

As is typical with OLEDs, colour accuracy is particularly excellent, with perfect 100% of both the sRGB and DCI-P3 gamuts, as well as 93% Adobe RGB. This makes this display a marvellous choice for mainstream and creative workloads.

The speakers on the EliteBook X G1a are surprisingly capable, with decent body and volume for general media consumption. Helpfully, they’re also upwards-firing, so don’t suffer from being muffled if the laptop is placed on a softer surface, such as a desk.

Performance

• Boosted AMD Strix Point APU inside
• Potent multi-threaded and graphical performance
• Lots of RAM, and a decently brisk SSS

As much as this is a business-oriented laptop, what’s inside the EliteBook X G1a makes it one of the more interesting laptops in its class. The top model I have features an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375 processor, which is a more enterprise-grade version of the HX 370 chip we’ve seen in more consumer-oriented laptops in the last year.

To make it more suitable for enterprise use, this chip has an extra 5 TOPS of AI horsepower on the XDNA2 NPU that these chips have, plus it supports ECC (or error correcting RAM) memory in some configurations, and has a higher potential RAM speed of up to 8000MT/s.

The actual core of the Ryzen AI 9 HX Pro 375 is identical to the HX 370, though, with 12 cores (four Zen 5, eight Zen 5c) and 24 threads, plus a boost clock of up to 5.1GHz. As with other laptops with the HX 370 chip inside, the EliteBook X G1a provides some beefy raw performance in the Geekbench 6 and Cinebench R23 tests, benefitting from added cores and threads over its Intel Lunar Lake counterparts.

Moreover, the Radeon 890M integrated graphics in the chip has its 16 RDNA 3.5 compute units, which provides some potent results in the 3DMark Time Spy test in my testing. This is roughly on par with the Lunar Lake chips you’ll find in key rivals, with the Arc 140T or 140V integrated graphics in those chips. In essence, it’s close on graphics, although this HP laptop wins on raw processing power with AMD at the helm.

This particular configuration leans heavily into RAM, coming with 64GB of headroom for creative tasks such as video editing or even running local AI models, which can be quite RAM-intensive. The 1TB SSD here is of a good capacity and is one of the brisker PCIe 4.0 options out there on a business laptop, with tested read and write speeds of 7105.48 MB/s and 6818.25 MB/s, respectively.

Software 

• Little bloatware in Windows 11
• Some HP-specific apps
• Copilot+ PC functionality is here

The EliteBook X G1a comes running full-fat Windows 11, and with a decently clean install, too. There isn’t much in the way of additional bloatware or unneeded third-party software, although you will find some HP-specific apps to greet you on startup.

Chief among these is MyHP, which is their catch-all system app where you can check on vitals such as system utilisation and configure settings such as power modes and energy optimisation. There is also HP’s own AI Companion nestled in the taskbar, along with the Support Assistant app for troubleshooting.

As well as having HP’s software, this is a Copilot+ PC, so it comes with Microsoft’s usual AI gubbins built into Windows, such as generative powers and filters in the Photos and Paint app, as well as the clever Windows Studio webcam effects for background blurring, auto framing and maintaining eye contact.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 12 hours 44 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for between one and two working days

The EliteBook X G1a comes with a decently large 74.5Whr cell inside, which should provide decent endurance, even if AMD’s existing crop of laptop chips isn’t as efficient as the Intel Lunar Lake models inside this laptop’s rivals.

When dialling the brightness down to the requisite 150 nits and running the PCMark 10 Modern Office test, this laptop lasted for 12 hours and 44 minutes. That beats our ten-hour target for all laptops comfortably and provides you with between one and two working days of runtime away from the mains.

With this in mind, as good as this result is, the Dell Pro 14 Premium will keep going for another six or so hours against the EliteBook X G1a. Moreover, the adjacent Lunar Lake-powered HP EliteBook G1i model can go for another three hours.

HP has also bundled this laptop with a reasonably-sized 100W power brick that does a decently speedy job of putting charge back into the cell, with a charge to 50% taking 30 minutes, and a full charge taking 82 minutes.

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Should you buy it?

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