EliteBook 1040 G11 (Latest Model) 14

You get more of that silvery finish on the palm rest and keyboard deck. HP says the touchpad is 16% larger than the one on last year’s model, with plenty of room to comfortably fit your palms and wrists. The dark-gray, full-size keyboard is backlit and sits between a slim pair of speaker grilles. The hinge almost extends across the length of the deck holding everything in place. A small HP logo is centered below the shiny black screen bezels, which are a bit thick for my taste, particularly at the top.

The notebook’s undercarriage is a blasé affair consisting of a long gray raised rubber foot in the back and a pair located in the front. A large vent occupies the middle of the panel with two front-firing speaker grilles along the bottom lip. The bottom panel is held in place by four gleaming gray screws.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The G11 could use a few more ports. I know it’s a hard ask with such a slim profile, but with this lineup, you’ll probably want to pick up a desktop dock. On the right, you have USB-C and USB-A ports with a nanoSIM slot and a security lock slot. Take a look at the left side of the laptop, and you’ll see a pair of USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, and a headset jack.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Features: The Fort Knox of Business Laptops

Although I love the searing, vivid hues of a nice, glossy OLED panel, matte screens have their own allure, namely the absence of glare. While matte panels aren’t known for their vibrancy, the EliteBook’s 1,920-by-1,200 display did a fantastic job with color. Watching the trailer for The Plus One, the pink orchids of a lei looked resplendent, with details sharp enough to see the delicate baby hairs framing the side of singer/actor Ashanti’s face.

The 5-megapixel webcam captures stills and video at 2,560-by-1,440 resolution, and in both cases, the results look great. The integrated shooter accurately captured the myriad of colors in my hair. It’s one of the best webcams I’ve used this year. And when you’re done snapping selfies or conducting video calls, you can slide a security shutter into place as an added layer of protection from Peeping Toms.

HP outfitted the G11 with a pair of top- and bottom-firing speakers with four smart amplifiers. Paired with Poly Studio, the seemingly teeny speakers are surprisingly powerful, having no problem filling my medium-size living room. I took a few video meetings and clearly heard everyone on the call. When I streamed music from Spotify, I found synthesized instrumentals got a little distorted at full volume, while the low end on some tracks was practically nonexistent despite the 11 EQ presets available in the HP Audio Control software.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The EliteBook’s island-style keyboard has bright backlighting and large keycaps (6% larger, according to HP, than its predecessor’s). I really enjoyed the clickiness of the keyboard as I typed this review and managed to surpass my usual 70 words per minute in the Monkeytype test, achieving 78wpm. In case you spill some coffee, there’s no need to panic since the keyboard is spill-proof; just wipe it off and get back to work. The glass touchpad, also larger than the G10’s, proved agile and responsive, performing Windows 11 gestures in near-instantaneous fashion.

There’s a lot of HP-branded software on this thing. For starters, there’s MyHP, a utility in which you can create custom shortcuts, manage the system’s power settings, access a deep well of videoconferencing tools, and check battery health, among other things. HP Easy Clean temporarily disables the keyboard, touch screen (if applicable), and touchpad so you can give the interior a good wipe-down. HP Support System is there to help troubleshoot any problems that may arise, while HP Privacy Settings lets you decide what info you will and won’t share with the manufacturer.

Since the EliteBook is a business laptop, it has some special security features baked in. Besides Intel vPro allowing for remote management and protection, HP Sure Click protects against browser-based malware with micro virtual machines to keep any bad actors sequestered away. HP Wolf Security is a small suite of apps designed to keep your laptop safe from cyber attacks using AI to constantly monitor, access, and isolate threats. And in case your system does fall prey to malware, you can restore the OS to a state before infection.

The 1040 G11 also has a fingerprint reader hiding in the power button, and you can set up facial login via Windows Hello.

Testing the HP EliteBook 1040 G11: A Capable Workhorse

Not many business laptops have completed our new benchmark regimen (we rolled out a slate of mostly new tests in September), but we compared the HP to similarly outfitted 13- and 14-inch competitors in order to rate its performance. The EliteBook has an Intel Core Ultra 7 165H “Meteor Lake” processor with 16 cores and 22 threads, plus integrated graphics and an onboard NPU for AI applications. The H-series chip is designed to handle more taxing jobs such as video and photo editing as well as word processing and spreadsheet jockeying.