HP EliteBook 1040 review: simple, beautiful business laptop

Aiding that perception of quality is a thin-and-light chassis. It’s not the most compact 14-inch laptop due to display bezels on the top and bottom that are a little tall. The Dell XPS 14 manages to fit a 14.5-inch display into a chassis that’s around the same size, and that’s thanks to the XPS 14’s insanely thin bezels. The XPS 14 is considerably thicker and heavier, though, which makes it feel denser. But somehow, the EliteBook 1040 manages to avoid feeling flimsy by comparison.

Aesthetically, the EliteBook 1040 is conservatively designed, with smooth, angular edges and a silver color scheme that makes it suitable for its target corporate environments. The keyboard is dark gray, which adds a little to the overall look, but there’s no doubt that HP went out of its way to avoid creating a “consumer” laptop. The one negative I’ll note is the use of plastic display bezels rather than having edge-to-edge glass. That detracts a bit from the laptop’s modernity and also its status as a very expensive machine.

Keyboard and touchpad

As a writer, I’m very sensitive to keyboard feel. I like light, snappy keyboards with plenty of key spacing and large keycaps. Those things combine to make a keyboard that’s comfortable for long typing sessions. My favorite is the Magic Keyboard on Apple’s MacBooks, but the EliteBook 1040’s keyboard comes very close. The switches are a bit deeper and almost as precise, and the springy bottoming action means I was never slowed down as I used the laptop to write this review. I also like the bold lettering and clean backlighting.

A touch display is optional. My review unit did not have touch and so I can’t comment on its performance.

Connectivity, webcam, and security

You can choose a variety of Intel chipsets for the EliteBook 1040, in both U and H variations and with or without Intel’s vPro technology — which is required for some of the security and management features mentioned above. HP offers so many different configuration options to please large corporate buyers. But looking at HP’s web store as I write this review, the number of configurations that can be bought outside of HP’s commercial channels are limited.

I reviewed the laptop with the 28-watt Core Ultra 7 165H, a 16-core (six Performance, eight Efficient, two Low Power Efficient), 22-thread chipset running at up to 5GHz. That’s slightly faster than the more common Core Ultra 7 155H, but not significantly. In our suite of benchmarks, the EliteBook 1040 was plenty fast, but not so much faster that performance alone is a reason to buy it.

Ultimately, the laptop will meet the needs of the most demanding productivity users. Its Intel Arc graphics are the fastest integrated graphics yet, but still considerably slower than entry-level discrete GPUs. That means the EliteBook won’t please creators, and of course, it’s not at all a laptop for gamers.

There are two different battery sizes available for the EliteBook 1040 — 56 watt-hour and 68 watt-hour versions. My review unit had the larger battery, and that combined with the low-power and low-resolution IPS display should offer very good battery life.

In our benchmarks, battery life was good, but not great. I was a little surprised that I didn’t see a couple more hours of life given the components. The XPS 14 lasted longer with an IPS display, and a couple of the laptops in the comparison group went for as long or longer with OLED displays. And of course, the MacBook Air M3 lasted a lot longer.

In any event, the EliteBook 1040 may or may not last for upwards of a working day depending on workflow. If battery life matters to you, make sure you opt for the larger battery.

HP offers a number of different display options, all 14.0 inches with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The options include WUXGA (1920 x 1200) low-power IPS touch and non-touch panels, 2.8K (2880 x 1800) OLED, and WUXGA IPS Sure View privacy panel. Only the OLED display runs at the increasingly common 120Hz that makes for a smoother Windows 11 experience.

I reviewed the EliteBook 1040 with the low-power WUXGA IPS display, which looks fine out of the box. I’ve reviewed so many OLED laptops lately that I’m always underwhelmed when I turn on a laptop with an IPS display, especially one at a lower resolution. This one was fine, with some pixelation in text that I noticed, but I suspect many people won’t.

According to my colorimeter, the IPS panel is a mixed bag. I’ve found IPS displays to be generally a lot better today than they were a couple of years ago, particularly in their brightness and contrast. Some have wider colors and better accuracy. The panel HP chose is bright at 425 nits and has excellent contrast (for IPS, when compared to OLED) at 1,630:1. We used to have standards of 300 nits and 1,000:1, but most IPS displays blow past them today.

The colors, while accurate at a Delta-E of 1.30 (1.0 or less is suitable for demanding creative work), weren’t very wide at just 99% of sRGB, 77% of AdobeRGB, and 77% of DCI-P3. That’s still roughly average for IPS, but the display on the MacBook Air M3 has wider colors at 100%, 88%, and 99%, respectively.

These results are likely more than good enough for business users, and there’s always the OLED option that is sharper and likely more colorful with inkier blacks. It has a faster refresh rate, but that would have a meaningful impact on battery life.

Unsurprisingly, the EliteBook 1040 is tailor-made for large organizations. It offers the kind of security and management features that enable efficient management of a large fleet of laptops, not to mention a superior three-year warranty. All of that combines to make for an expensive laptop.

It’s also a great laptop independent of those features. It’s extremely well-built, has a great keyboard, is thin and light, and it’s reasonably fast. Any very security-conscious buyer should take a look, and for that reason, I’m going to recommend it for a select group of laptop users.

Editors’ Recommendations