(Credit: HP)
Qualcomm Snapdragon-based Copilot+ PCs pose an interesting question for enterprise users. On one hand, the concept of machines with local AI capabilities could offer faster response capabilities and more privacy than cloud-based AI. And users always appreciate better battery life. On the other hand, enterprises typically run a variety of software, that legacy base was designed for the x86 architecture of machines that use Intel or AMD processors, and everything needs to run before you could do a wide rollout.
In my last post, I talked about the pros and cons of this new generation of Copilot+ machines. This time, I want to focus on the HP EliteBook Ultra G1q, the company’s Qualcomm entry into its enterprise laptop lineup. The EliteBook Ultra name replaces the Dragonfly moniker for HP's top-of-the-line executive laptops.
(Credit: HP)This EliteBook Ultra follows the HP Dragonfly tradition with a solid design in "atmospheric blue." The hinge on the unit was redesigned to allow better airflow, but otherwise, it has a very similar look to last year's models. A new stylized "helix" AI logo symbolizes the AI capabilities.
Measuring 12.31 by 8.79 by 0.44 inches and weighing 2.9 pounds (3.55 pounds with the included 65-watt charger), it’s a good size for an enterprise notebook. It has a 14-inch 2,240-by-1,400 IPS touch display with up to 300 nits of brightness.
(Credit: HP)The solid keyboard has a few additions, including the dedicated Copilot key that Microsoft is requiring on all machines in this class, along with function keys that offer immediate access to the calculator, snipping tool, and a programmable function. It has a fairly large trackpad and felt good to type on.
One area where this version falls a bit behind the Intel-based Dragonfly is in ports. On the EliteBook Ultra, the left side of the machine has one 40Gbps USB-C port and another 10Gbps USB-C port, while the right side has a 3.5 mm audio jack and a USB-A port, which I still find useful. It supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3—not the latest standards, but fine for most users.
(Credit: HP)It's a very nice machine for video conferencing. It has a 5MP MIPI camera and Poly Sound with four speakers and two microphones. When combined with HP’s Poly Camera Pro application, it provided one of the best conferencing experiences I’ve seen on a laptop.
The EliteBook Ultra is based on the Snapdragon X Elite (X1E-78-100), which contains 12 of the company's Oryon CPU cores that theoretically can run at up to 3.8GHz, with a boost to 4.3GHz. It also includes the higher-end version of Qualcomm's Adreno graphics and a Hexagon NPU rated at 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS).
For performance, on most basic tasks, it was comparable with current PCs on the applications that run, particularly with native applications such as the Microsoft Office suite. On my toughest tests, it could transcode a video using Handbrake in an hour and 24 minutes, comparable with the best of the regular x86 PCs I’ve tested. (PCs with discrete graphics do notably better). But it took almost 49 minutes to run a complex Matlab portfolio simulation, notably shower than current Intel or ARM-based systems, which usually come in at 32-34 minutes and even much slower than Lenovo's Yoga Slim 7, based on the same processor, which took 38 minutes. I’m not sure why.
Running a complex big data table in Excel was also slower, taking 55 minutes compared with the 46 or 47 minutes I’ve seen on current Intel Meteor Lake systems (13th Generation Raptor Lake systems remain even better, taking only 37 minutes). Excel macros may rely on emulation, which may explain this.
On AI tests, it gave great scores on the Procyon Computer Vision Test, outscoring even machines with dedicated graphics by 3x. But it’s unclear how many applications this would apply to.
Battery life using the 59 watt-hour battery was excellent, lasting 17 hours and 44 minutes on PC Mark 10’s Applications test with 100 nits of brightness, compared with 15 hours and 20 minutes for the Intel Meteor Lake-based Lenovo ThinkPad 2-in-1 Gen 9. It did even better with 40 nits of brightness, lasting 19 hours and 32 minutes.
As you would expect, HP includes all the features of Copilot+ PCs, including Windows Studio Effects, Windows Paint with Cocreator, and Live Captions. (For more details, see my previous post, and note that the much-touted Windows Recall feature has yet to be released.)
In addition, HP includes a number of special applications, including a one-year subscription to its Wolf Pro Security Pro antivirus solution. (Note that this isn't the full Wolf Pro security suite that comes on its Intel- and AMD-based enterprise machines, which also support a special security controller chip and things like Sure Start and Sure Admin—one area where the Qualcomm-based machines still have some catching up to do.)
More interesting is HP's Poly Camera Pro, which runs on the NPU and gives you even more control of things like Background Blur, filtering, and framing. It does far more than what Windows Studio Effects can do, and also works with an external camera, a nice feature.
The most impressive native software is the HP AI companion app, based on GPT-4o. This app bases its replies on data stored on your machine. It is still listed as Beta software, and it works a little differently than Microsoft Copilot (which, of course, also comes with the machine).
AI Companion has four options—Ask, Analyze, Discover, and Perform. Ask is what most people expect from AI assistants, where you can ask questions. In this section, which is most comparable to Copilot, it did seem a bit more helpful in some ways. For instance, when I asked it to generate a graph showing some government statistics, it said it couldn't generate graphs but told me which website to go to and the exact commands to generate the graph. In contrast, the normal Copilot told me where to find the data and where to find a similar graph but didn't give instructions on generating it.
Analyze seems designed more for your data. It lets you create libraries of documents and can summarize documents, including comparing them and even turning them into blog posts. I found this interesting. The size of the library is limited to 100MB, and uploading documents takes a little time, but the results seemed pretty good. Comparing results with Microsoft 365 Copilot, the HP AI Companion seemed to give somewhat more detailed results on first prompting.
Discover suggests other AI solutions you can use, while Perform is meant to keep your PC running optimally, including suggesting BIOS, firmware, and driver updates.
One thing I thought was interesting was that despite pushing these features as on-device, AI companion only works when you are online and logged into an HP account.
The unit I tested came with 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD and retails for $1,699; that's not inexpensive for a corporate laptop.
Overall, I certainly don't expect enterprise buyers to switch to Qualcomm-based Windows laptops in large numbers at this point. There's still work to be done on the security and management tools big organizations expect, and many of the Copilot+ features are still nascent. But the EliteBook Ultra G1q is a great example of what such machines can do. It offers very good performance for most things, excellent battery life, and a terrific video-conferencing experience.