- So if you've been following this channel
you may know that my favorite laptop style is 14 inch,
that's why I'm very excited
about the HP EliteBook 1040 G5, that's generation five.
Today I'm gonna review it and tell you why I think
it's one of the best business laptops around,
if you have the money, stay tuned.
(electronic music)
Alright before we get started, let's add some context.
If you don't know, the EliteBook is HP's
premium line of business laptops.
You could think of it as a sister
to the Spectre line for consumers.
The EliteBook line gets broken up into the 800 series,
and 1000 series, which is what this is,
that's made for executives and high end managers.
So they're gonna be the real expensive stuff.
You can think of it as like Lenovo's ThinkPad X1 line,
which is also very expensive.
Now there's a couple of these,
including the EliteBook 1030 which we recently reviewed,
that's a 13-inch version of this laptop.
So if you want something smaller, go check out that review.
The 1040 is the 14-inch and this is the G5,
so fifth generation.
And I'll show you what's new now
and give you a quick product tour.
Let's get to it.
Starting with the exterior here,
you can see HP uses an all-metal chassis.
Not a lot of flex to it.
It's also not very heavy either.
You do get the HP logo here in a nice little chrome finish.
And, as you can see, there is the antenna line
for a Bluetooth and WiFi.
And if you get this with LTE that would also be there.
HP is very adamant about putting the antenna lines
on top here so you get better reception.
But it does give you that effect,
and it also gives you a little bit of a thick bezel,
which we'll talk about when
I talk about the display in a second.
Alright looking at the left-hand side here
you get a USB type A, headphone jack, little power button,
with that nice little angular design,
Kensington lock, and that's where you would have
a SIM card were you to have LTE on board as well.
Right-hand side, you get a nice selection here as well.
Another USB type A, full HDMI, two USB type C,
and yes you do get Thunderbolt free with this.
And you can use the other one for charging.
This does use a USB type C charger that's in the box,
65-watt, which is really nice.
And you get some volume controls on the side as well
because well, this is an x360 device,
so this will turn into a tablet.
Looking at the display here, this is a 14-inch display.
This version is a full HD matte display.
What's really interesting here is
this is new technology to make it matte.
Usually when you do a matte screen it's glossy
but they put a layer over it to give you that matte effect.
It said here HP worked with 3M for new technology
where they basically engrave and scratch the screen
at a micro-level and it gives you this matte resilience.
And what's nice about that is the screen
will last you a very long time.
That finish will never wear off.
That's important 'cause this screen supports inking,
and if you're gonna use a pen on it,
well you don't wanna scratch off the layer.
So you get the sort of best of both worlds.
Now if you don't like having full HD
or you don't like matte, well that's okay
there are tons of other options including
regular full HD or you can go all the way up to 4K.
There's also the sure view privacy screen stuff,
if you wanna basically hide what you're looking at
so onlookers can't see what you're doing.
So you get a whole bunch of selections here.
What you don't get though is a 2K display which is
actually something I would have appreciated.
Now looking at the top here, you do get a semi-thick bezel,
but like I said that's where all the antenna lines are,
plus you do get a Windows Hello Camera with
two giant IR lenses and basically a full HD
web camera which is an okay camera.
It still not nearly as good as the surface cameras
but one of the better ones on the market.
You also get really thin bezels on the side
and that's a change for this year.
So the screen display area is basically smaller
from the previous version and it looks pretty nice.
You also get a nice little chin here at the bottom.
It's a nice parallel to the top.
I do wish it was a little bit more thin, but that's okay.
Alright look at the keyboard here.
I'm a huge fan of these.
This is one of my favorite keyboards on the market.
Very good job all round, 1.1, 1.2 millimeter,
very crisp is how I would describe these keys.
They also have very good backlighting,
because they're black keys, you can see the light
when it's going through at night time.
You also do get all their little controls here
for Skype and everything like that.
This is, again, a business-oriented laptop
so, you only get those features.
So small arrow keys, but I do like the design overall
and I think it works very well.
For added security, there is a fingerprint reader,
if you don't want to use the Windows Hello login system,
you can use that as well.
Alright, HP trackpads, always sort of controversial
but not this one, this one's a really good one, it's huge,
what I'd say actually is that it is a very good size,
it's glass, smooth, it has a really nice click to it,
just a nice, soft, but satisfying click,
and it does use precision drivers,
I've talked about this in the past,
EliteBook series do use precision drivers,
and they're very good,
Spectres don't, and they're not very good,
so, that's that.
Finally, another great design aspect
are the speaker systems on here,
so you do get two top-firing speakers on the deck here,
very good, very loud, but there's more than that,
besides being Bang & Olufsen,
there's also two other speakers on the bottom,
so you get quad speakers on this.
HP's done, in my opinion, a really outstanding job here,
for audio on their latest devices,
and this device is just another great example of it,
just some of the best audio you're gonna get.
Yeah, I wish there was a little bit more bass to it,
but I'm never really complaining on a business laptop,
for a business laptop, this is some of the best audio
you're going to find.
While looking at the bottom here,
you can see those speaker rails for the other two,
and a bunch of screws here,
you can remove this, it's pretty easy.
You can also service it yourself,
over here you do get two fans for intake and cooling
and an exhaust here on the back.
Another big change this year, is this is now an x360 device,
so it's a full convertible, and you can use it for inking,
and just use it as a tablet,
and it feels really nice, actually, to hold,
you don't get the, uh, doesn't pull back the keys on there,
but they don't work of course,
and you do get a Windows Hello camera,
which actually really helps
when you're logging in as a tablet.
And also, for an extra $70,
you can get the new HP Wacom 2.0 pen,
actually a really good pen, but it's not perfect,
so, it's very good for drawing
and it does have tilt support as well,
it does also charge by USB Type-C,
which actually sounds really clever,
because you don't need batteries,
and you can use the included charger to charge it on the go.
It's also a magnet, so it just attaches to the side,
and boy, is it a strong magnet,
you can actually drag the laptop by it,
it's so powerful.
You also get that new Bluetooth eraser
which, again, is a very good feature to have,
that we haven't seen on previous HP pens.
The downside here is a Type-C, because it's very convenient
but, it does die very quickly,
so if you don't use the pen very often,
you'll have to recharge this like once a week
at least, in my opinion,
and that's just not so good because
when you do wanna use that on that rare occasion,
more often than not, it'll probably be dead,
unless you're recharging it frequently.
And that's sort of a bummer.
Alright, power and performance.
So, nothing unusual here, you can get this as a core i5
or up to a core i7, we're using an 8650U,
that's the latest Intel 8th Generation processors.
Now that is a difference from last year,
so these are 15 watt chips,
it's the run-of-the-mill stuff you find in the Ultrabooks.
Last year's model actually had a 45 watt chip,
which was kind of crazy if you think about,
having a 45 watt processor in something this small and thin,
the problem was, a lot of people ended up not liking
having that much of a powerful CPU, and that much for a GPU.
So, instead of 15, the GPU party just lowered the processor,
so this is a standard Ultrabook one,
it does preform well, now the MateBook X Pro
is going to out-preform it,
I think it has better thermal, so,
but when it comes down to it,
it feels just as fine as a core i7,
as any other laptop out there.
For graphics, getting back to that,
so these are Intel UHD 620,
so, again, nothing usual there, it preforms pretty well
but, I would have preferred to see a MX150,
or even an MX250, to give you a little bit
of that extra graphics push,
but HP says they didn't see much of a need for it,
so they didn't add it.
We're aiming to go up to 32 gigabytes,
if you can configure that on HP's website,
we're running it at 16 gigs here.
They say dealing with the SSD can go up to one terabyte,
or even higher, if you want to do it yourself.
They are using a Samsung PCIe NVMe SSD on here,
so I get very good performance.
When it comes to WiFi and Bluetooth,
you're getting Intel 8265, so that's the good stuff
and if you want to get 4G LTE,
you can also get that as an option as well.
Better life is actually very good,
the EliteBook series has always been
one of those that just last a really long time,
and HP set a really good job here
with power of management.
So, I'm getting eight to ten hours out of this advice,
which, with the core i7 at full HD,
actually falls in line with what you would expect,
but I feel like I could use this all day,
I really had no issues, it just lasts a really long time.
Alright, so let's bring it all in,
what do I like about this laptop?
Well, the four factors really kind of perfect,
I think the overall design of it is just,
very professional-looking, I love 14 inch displays,
it's an x360 now, so I can use it as a tablet,
I can use it with inking, the pen works well,
I love having a matte display, especially on this,
and I think they did a really good job with it.
It's a bright display, it works very well,
keyboard is excellent, trackpad is good, go HP!
And the audio is exceptional,
if you're using a business laptop,
usually you sacrifice audio,
they just throw in really crappy speakers,
but HP did a really outstanding job here for audio,
and it's just really fun to use.
Performance is also very good,
I like how the options they give you cleanup 4G LTE,
which I really wish this version had,
'cause then I would use it all the time.
Now there are a few things here I don't like as well,
so that pen is actually really good,
it's a great pen to use, it feels nice in the hand,
I love the Bluetooth button on it,
and the magnets are super strong.
Yeah, it can still get knocked off in your bag
but, this is one of the best versions you're going to get.
What really bothers me is
the recharging ability for the pen.
So, I like using Type-C,
but it doesn't hold a charge very long,
more often than not, when I go to use the pen,
it's going to be dead,
and I think that's really, sort of, a downside here,
I wish they'd go back to a battery system,
which I think was more efficient.
Now, another thing that really bothers me
are the thermals on this device,
so it seem pretty cool, and that's not the issue,
and the fans work, but they're very loud,
or I should say, it's not so much loud,
they have a high pitched whine to them.
And it depends on how you use a laptop,
you use it plugged in, throw it into performance mode,
you'll hear those fans more,
but I did find, in a quiet room, the fans irritated me,
it just has that high pitched tea kettle whine
that you can kinda hear from the fan,
versus a low-level whooshing,
which I would get on the MateBook X Pro.
So, I think that's one area
that HP really needs to focus on here is thermals,
they've had complaints about this past
with the Spectre series, and as well as previous EliteBooks,
and it still kinda exists here,
it cools the device down very well,
but they need to work the fan so it's not as annoying.
Or, at the very least, they should be able to give you
a software so I can control it,
I'm okay with, say, turn those fans down
and having a warmer laptop,
or, if I really don't like that,
well I can run those fans at a high level
and just keep a cool laptop.
A lot of companies give you that option through software,
HP surprisingly doesn't do that, I say surprisingly
because there is a ton of software on this device,
meant for enterprise and security level stuff,
but nothing for the fans and thermals,
and I think they can address that,
they've done that on the Spectre series,
they need to do it on the EliteBook series as well.
Finally is going to be pricing, this is an expensive laptop,
it starts around $1900 and just goes up there,
depending on how you're gonna configure it,
you go with that 4K display, you add an LTE modem,
it's going to get very expensive,
but these are the kind of devices
that companies buy for employees,
that are meant to last years.
And it's meant for, like I said,
the high level people, up in the company,
so they really want to be nice and premium,
it has all the security features that they want,
and, in that sense, the pricing here,
that much of a doing a ThinkPad X1 series,
is going to run you as well for a similar spec features.
This is also a pretty rugged laptop,
so it should last a long time.
I personally love using EliteBooks,
I think they're just a lot of fun to use,
I'm not really, obviously, in-business type,
but it does bring a lot of good features
that I think a lot of people want in a laptop.
That x360 is really nice, the pen support,
everything about this laptop is pretty solid,
so if you're looking for a 14 inch business laptop,
and you like the design and features said here,
I think it's a pretty outstanding buy,
if you can afford it.
Alright, that does it for this review,
if you have any questions or comments,
leave them below, I'll try to answer them as well.
If you want more information about this advice,
we'll have a link in the description as well.
Otherwise, if you liked this video,
give me a thumbs up, and don't forget to subscribe,
thanks for watching, take care everyone.
(electronic music)
For the young executives and high level managers,
that's the business line...
(bleep sounding)
One more time, I gotta do that over again.
I gotta warm up.
Otherwise, you can go to the description,
we'll have links on where you can buy this as well...
Yeah, I (bleep sounding) up.
Lost my train of thought.