HP EliteBook 840 G9 Review

Aside from the ZBook mobile workstation and the ultralight Dragonfly line, HP’s EliteBook 800 model is the company’s second best business laptop (between the 600 and 1000 series). The EliteBook 840 G9 (starting at $1,129, $1,609 as tested) is a mainstream 14-inch clamshell enterprise notebook. This laptop is packed with the latest features such as a slightly taller 16:10 (instead of 16:9) aspect ratio display, Wi-Fi 6E and 5G mobile broadband. HP’s 840 G9 doesn’t stage Lenovo’s legendary ThinkPad X1 Carbon as our favorite business laptop, but it’s a nice trimmed-down enterprise option.

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Corner office ready

On HP.com, the cheapest EliteBook 840 G9 is $1,129 and has a 12th generation Intel Core i5 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB NVMe solid state drive. Four screen choices, all IPS panels with 1,920 x 1,200 pixel resolution: non-touch or discreet 250-nit brightness touch, bright 400-nit non-touch screen, and one of HP’s Sure View Reflect panels am. Use integrated privacy filters. Unfortunately, you can’t get a sharper display than a 4K or OLED display.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Our $1,609 Windows 11 Pro test unit uses a faster Core i7-1280P chip (6 Performance Cores, 8 Efficient Cores, 20 Threads ) to handle bleak environments. Places where Wi-Fi does not reach. Extras include a SmartCard slot and both a fingerprint reader and facial recognition webcam to eliminate the need to enter a password with Windows Hello. The laptop also comes with HP’s Wolf Security bundle, which includes BIOS and AI-based malware protection, and Sure Click sandboxing of online apps and websites.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

This aluminum-clad EliteBook measures 0.76 x 12.4 x 8.8 inches, clearing the 2.99-pound ultraportable cutoff. Among other 14-inch business systems with a 16:10 screen aspect ratio, Lenovo’s X1 Carbon is 1/8-inch thinner and 0.5 pounds lighter (2.48 pounds), while the Acer TravelMate P6 is even lighter at 2.2 pounds.

Thin bezels line the sides of the screen, with slightly thicker bars at the top and bottom. A sliding shutter covers his webcam lens if privacy is desired, and the top row contains his key to mute the microphone. Ports include his two USB4 ports with Thunderbolt 4 support on the left side, as well as an HDMI monitor port. The laptop features a single 5Gbps USB 3.2 Type-A port on each side, plus an audio jack, nano SIM slot, and security cable lockdown notch on the right side. HP’s compact AC adapter has a USB-C connector.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

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HP treats keyboards well

HP’s webcams surpass the recently growing 1080p standard to capture still images up to 2,560 x 1,440 pixels (16:9 aspect ratio) or 2,560 x 1,920 pixels (4:3), and 1080p or 1440p video. capture. The images produced by the camera are reasonably bright and colorful, with minimal static. The HP Presence extension in myHP Utilities includes backlight and low light adjustments, head, head and shoulders, or upper body framing tools (depending on how much you want your shirt or blouse to show off).

Speaking of shirts, what comes up in my reviews more often than a ripped bodice in a romance novel? The EliteBook’s arrow keys are half the size, but surprisingly well-placed.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Even better is the ThinkPad-style placement, with dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys in the upper right for the first two and in the lower right for the latter. The backlit keyboard has a shallow but moderately snappy typing feel, and you can hear typing but it’s not loud. The laptop’s decently sized buttonless touchpad slides and clicks smoothly.

The sound from the bottom-firing speakers isn’t exactly symphonic, but it’s loud and sharp enough for business use and for enjoying movies and music streaming. It produces little bass, but the audio isn’t loud, harsh, or soft, and overlapping tracks are easy to identify.HP Audio Control software offers music, movies, voice modes, and an equalizer. Finally, AI-based speaker and microphone noise reduction and sound calibration for supported headsets are also available here.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

It’s a shame the EliteBook doesn’t match most of its rivals in supporting high-resolution screen options, but the 1,920 x 1,200 display is perfectly sharp and super bright. Colors are rich and saturated, contrast is adequate, and viewing angles are wide. The white background is clean, you can tilt the screen back as far as you like, and you won’t notice any pixelation on the edges of website or email text.

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HP EliteBook 840 G9 Test: Mainstream High End

In our benchmark charts, HP beats four others, including the premium Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 10 (prices start at $1,439, test price $2,249) and the more affordable Acer TravelMate P6 (prices start at $1,299.99). Compared to a 14 inch slimline laptop. $1,499.99 (tested). The Dell Latitude 9430 2-in-1 (starting at $2,169, $2,994 as tested) is a business convertible, while the Lenovo Slim 9i (starting at $1,249, $2,070 as tested) sports a 4K OLED display. It is a consumer product with

Productivity test

UL’s PCMark 10, a leading performance benchmark, simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content creation workflows to improve overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video conferencing. measure. We also ran the PCMark 10 full system drive test to assess the laptop’s storage load time and throughput.

Three more benchmarks focus on the CPU using all available cores and threads to assess a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses the company’s Cinema 4D engine to render complex scenes, and Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, he uses the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert his 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (the shorter the better).

The ultimate productivity test is Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop. It uses Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s renowned image editor to evaluate PC performance for content creation and multimedia applications. This is an auto-enhancement that performs a variety of common GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks, from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving images to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

HP’s EliteBook 840 G9 finished 1st or 2nd in all events, showing plenty of power for everyday apps (half of PCMark 10’s 4,000 points for superior productivity in Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace). acquisition), showing plenty of power even for some mild digital content. However, it does not support workstation-class CGI rendering or data science.

graphic test

Visual testing benchmarked Windows PC graphics in two DirectX 12 game simulations from UL’s 3DMark.

We also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5. It focuses on both low-level routines such as texturing and high-level game-like image rendering. The Aztec Ruins at 1440p and Car Chase at 1080p tests were rendered off-screen to accommodate different display resolutions, each using an OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation to run graphics and compute shaders. Did. The more frames per second (fps), the better.

Lenovo’s sleek Slim 9i laptops lead the pack with HP right behind them, but the Intel integrated graphics in all these notebooks are seen from discrete GPUs in gaming laptops or workstations. Nowhere near 3D performance. Fine for casual gaming and streaming media, but not for fast shooters or creating particularly intensive visual content.

battery and display test

Locally stored 720p video files (open source Blender movie tears of steel(opens in new window)) with display brightness set to 50% and audio volume set to 100%. Before testing, turn off Wi-Fi and keyboard backlight and make sure the battery is fully charged.

The Display Test uses the Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure the color saturation of your laptop screen. This means the percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamut or palette that the display can display, and 50% of that plus the peak luminance in nits (candelas per square meter).

The EliteBook shows plenty of stamina for a day’s work without being unplugged, plus an evening of Netflix and YouTube entertainment, so no complaints there. Only the Dell Latitude wins in this test lot, making the EliteBook perfect for employees who travel frequently.

Unfortunately, this EliteBook’s screen doesn’t match the vibrant hues of the Slim 9i’s OLED panel’s color gamut. However, the screen is colorful enough for business apps and is actually brighter than the 400 nit rating. Again, only the Dell Latitude wins.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

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Verdict: Sleek Silver Slabs for the Enterprise

It’s hard to fault HP’s EliteBook 840 G9 if you could just live with a pretty screen instead of a showy OLED or 4K display. This business laptop has everything from 5G mobile broadband to AI-enhanced high-definition conference cameras, with competitive performance and extra security. The only question on our minds is how HP can come out on top with the EliteBook 1000 series, and whether or not it can win an Editors’ Choice award next time.