PC shipments have fallen for the first time in more than two years, hit by the memory supply crunch caused in part by the rise of AI.

Recent analysis from IDC found global PC shipments slid 4.9% on year in the second quarter of this year to 68.2 million units, down from 71.7m in the same quarter last year.

The figures mark the first decline in the market after nine quarters of growth, and that’s largely down to continued memory shortages.

IDC noted, however, that the situation has been exacerbated by supply issues with storage and other components, as well as what the company referred to as "geopolitical issues".

The massive AI infrastructure build-out has led to a shortage in memory, spurred on by manufacturers pivoting to produce more lucrative data center components rather than those for consumer products.

That RAM shortage has led to a sharp decline in lower cost devices, with Gartner predicting earlier this year that PC sales will drop by 10%.

Consumers picking up the bill

IDC said that while units shipped slid, PC makers reported growth in revenue, showing how the cost of such challenges are being passed on to consumers and businesses.

"The real story here is the disconnect between units and dollars: shipments are falling, but revenue is climbing because vendors are pushing through price increases faster than demand is dropping," said Jitesh Ubrani, research director for consumer devices at IDC.

That's not likely to change anytime soon, Ubrani warned.

"Given worsening macro conditions and a memory shortage that isn’t expected to ease until early 2028, we don’t expect another round of inventory pull-forward, which points to a sharp slowdown in growth rates in the second half of 2026," he added.

"Vendors are bracing for further price hikes into 2027, and channels are already flagging concern about elevated inventory at these higher price points."

A host of device manufacturers have raised prices in response to the spiralling memory crisis. Outgoing Apple CEO Tim Cook said last month that the company would raise prices due to the issue.

"There's less supply at a time when consumers want devices and the memory guys are passing along huge price increases," he said at the time.

Apple wins with MacBook Neo

The increased pressure on brands could lead to vendor consolidation of market share, IDC warned. The consultancy noted that larger brands such as Apple, Dell, or Lenovo can use their scale across different product lines – be it smartphones or servers – to access memory supply.

The result here is that smaller rivals could be left in the dust and scrambling for what supplies are left.

"As market conditions continue to worsen… supply chain management and capabilities are increasingly important," said Jean Philippe Bouchard, vice president for consumer devices at IDC.

"The largest vendors, with their buying power and long-standing supplier ties, are best positioned to take share from smaller rivals."

Compared to the second quarter in 2025, the big three PC makers – Lenovo, HP, and Dell – were largely flat in terms of market share, though all three saw single-digit decreases in shipments, with HP in particular down 9%.

Apple, however, grew market share from 8.5% to 9.9%, with shipments up 10% from 6.1m to 6.7m in the second quarter of this year versus 2025.

"Apple’s share gain coincided with its latest product launch, the MacBook Neo, and while the company did raise prices in line with the broader market, it still remains well positioned against rivals facing the same cost pressures," added Bouchard.

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

With the new EliteBoard G1a, HP has manufactured one of the most interesting bits of kit to hit the corporate world in recent years; it's little surprise that it was an honoree at the CES 2026 Innovation Awards. You can define it in different ways, depending on your perspective. Perhaps it's a mini PC with a keyboard above, or a portable keyboard with powerful components fitted beneath, or perhaps it's even a laptop that's missing a touchpad and screen. Either way, it's highly compelling and guaranteed to turn heads in the office.

Devices like the EliteBoard G1a aren't entirely new – although it's fair to say we haven't seen one like this in a good few decades. It's reminiscent of some of the earliest machines to mark the history of the enterprise laptop, including the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64.

Like these historic machines, the EliteBoard G1a is fitted with components and devoid of a display – relying instead on you to provide an external screen, whether at home or in the office. Unlike these devices, however, it's portable, stylish, and provides a new dimension to mobile working. You can easily draw it from its fabric sheath should you wish to pick up a portable display and pitch up on public transport, and it's especially suitable if hot-desking is the name of the game. But how does it stack up against your go-to laptops, 2-in-1s, and mini PCs?

HP EliteBoard G1a: What's in the box?

There's quite a lot to unpack when you first set up the EliteBoard G1a. The machine itself is snugly tucked into a stylish felt case with a diagonal etching effect and a magnetic clip to securely open and close the flap. Despite being soft to the touch, it's firm and protective, and neatly complements the keyboard's overall design.

You'll also find a USB-C charger with a USB-C cable, a second USB-C cable (with premium threading), and a dongle with HDMI output. This gives you a few options when setting up your device and connecting it with an external display.

Plug-and-play via USB-C (with power draw) is straightforward enough, while opting for HDMI via the dongle means recharging with the separate USB-C charger. There are a few ways of doing this; you can either plug the dongle into your monitor and go from there, or plug all cables directly into its input ports, which include Ethernet, HDMI, and two USB-C ports.

The device also comes with a basic pre-paired mouse that you can connect directly using two Bluetooth channels or a USB-C RF peripheral. It's as easy as switching it on and clicking the button on its rear to cycle between these options as you see fit. It's nothing special – but does the job.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Design and build

HP has put a lot of thought into defining the shape of the EliteBoard G1a, not just in terms of its overall look and feel, but the economics of its sizing. The carbon-colored chassis offers minimalist appeal with office-centric credentials thrust front and center. The keyboard sits atop a sloping base that angles upward to maximize ergonomic comfort – with the hardware crammed in underneath.

The sides are flattened, with an exhaust vent subtly carved into the center of the rear, and the base features an expansive grill overlaying in-built speakers. Two USB-C ports are also on the leftmost side of the rear. There's a high degree of plastic in the machine, especially in the slightly indented keycaps that comprise the near-gapless keyboard, but such is the engineering quality that this remains subtle. The unusual font is also a nice touch and adds much-needed character – with HP taking great care to find the right balance between elegance and showmanship. The only hint of color is in the horizontal blue LED baked into the power button in the top right. Helpfully, this doubles as a fingerprint scanner.

There's almost no room to spare on the keyboard itself. The keys, which are well-sized, are packed neatly alongside one another in a gapless formation. You can't get much more change out of it with dimensions of 358.1 x 118.7 x 17.9, making it eminently portable and much smaller than many full-sized keyboard peripherals. Meanwhile, the felt case that accompanies this 670g (1.47lbs) device is a perfect travel companion, with the parallel diagonal grooves on its front a neat design flair.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Keyboard and mouse

With so much riding on the standard of the keyboard, it's essential that HP nailed the brief – and to some extent it's brilliant for its size, with a few caveats. The low-profile keycaps use silicon dome switches for the mechanisms, which lead to a springy and muted touch-typing experience. There's plenty of force feedback in each rather deep 2mm keystroke to make for a satisfying experience, but you won't by any means recreate the noisy clacking when using a mechanical board.

That's where the good news ends, though. While most keys are firm, a modicum of looseness exists in a handful of the smaller keys, meaning that applying some pressure generates minor wobble. The worst culprits are the arrow and function keys. The sound the plastic makes is also very noticeable, and tapping the smaller keys may often feel hollow and (sometimes) shrill.

As with some HP keyboards, the EliteBoard also suffers from placement issues. The inclusion of PG UP and PG DN directly above the Left and Right arrow keys made for a nightmare for accidental taps while navigating for the first few days. The half-sized Enter key, too, is a little irritating. In all these cases, the sizing is a direct consequence of attempting to fit to the extremely tight specifications. The function keys are broadly useful and include shortcuts for sound controls, screenshot taking, as well as system functions like the Settings menu and Windows Search. There's even a programmable key (F9) that you can assign as a custom shortcut. Directly above the numberpad is a shortcut for the Calculator app – which makes logical sense – but you're unlikely to ever really use it.

The pre-packaged mouse is simple but useful. Clicking feels firm, and moving the cursor is smooth, with some grip, thanks to elevated plastic mounds on the base. Rubbery pads also line either side where your fingertips would rest, which offers comfort while you're working. Scrolling with the mouse wheel lacks bite, unfortunately, while the middle button is a Copilot shortcut – for whatever that's worth to you. Sadly, it lacks physical forward and back buttons, but is otherwise everything you'd expect from a basic peripheral. The best part is how it pairs automatically when you turn it on with the switch at its base and press the button to cycle between channels. Hidden under the plastic cover is a USB-C RF receiver that you can plug into a device, or an external monitor. Set-up is simple, and you need not make adjustments beyond tinkering with the cursor speeds to suit your own preferences.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Performance and battery life

The EliteBoard might raise eyebrows in the office, but what ultimately matters is how it stacks up against PCs, laptops, 2-in-1s, and mini PCs given you're using it as your primary work machine. You may find a variety of configurations on the market. Processors including the Ryzen AI 5 Pro 330, Ryzen AI 5 Pro 340, Ryzen AI 5 Pro 350, and Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350. RAM options, meanwhile, including 16GB, 24 GB, and 32GB, while you can also find units with an attached USB-C cable baked in.

Our review configuration included a six-core AMD Ryzen AI 5 Pro 340 processor with an AMD Radeon 840M Graphics card for company, alongside 32GB DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD – so fairly high-end if not the most powerful version of this device. There's also a healthy amount of AI processing power to the tune of up to 50 TOPS. Overall, it's a healthy package that should prove capable for most office-based workloads.

In performance testing with Geekbench 6, we registered a single-core result of 2,739 and a multi-core score of 11,095 – both strong results. For reference, Intel Core Ultra 200 Series processors normally hit the same level for single-threaded performance and between 10,000 and 11,000 for multi-core performance. When you compare it with some workstations, it's also just as competent. The AMD Ryzen AI 7 Pro 360 processor, fitted into the HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14, scored 2,797 and 10,809, for example. You tend to squeeze more juice from MacBooks and Qualcomm-powered machines, but the EliteBoard can hold its own against the competition in the enterprise laptop market.

Unfortunately, the GPU lacks punch and registered an underwhelming 12,859 in our OpenCL benchmark. Today's best entry-level Intel graphics cards are considerably better, with the Intel Arc Graphics card capable of reaching between 20,000 and 30,000. The Radeon 840M Graphics chip is more comparable with integrated Intel Iris Xe. That said, it beats the Radeon 860M Graphics chip fitted into last year's HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16. With this setup, you can sustain mid-intensity workloads without a hitch. When connecting the EliteBoard to an external monitor, we could easily sustain a 4K connection at 120Hz, scaling up to 240Hz if we slashed the resolution to 2,560 x 1,440. HP claims you can connect the machine with up to four 4K displays running at 60Hz.

While a 512GB SSD (256GB models are also available) is smaller than the 1TB minimum you'd expect from a premium enterprise notebook, it's fast enough – with average reads of 5,797MB/s and considerably above average writes of 5,962MB/s.

The device comes with a small 32 Wh battery that can prove useful if you're in a pinch and can't link up with an external monitor via USB-C with power delivery. We ran a looped video playback test on a 4K monitor running at 30Hz at 400 nits brightness on Airplane Mode, and the device lasted 7hrs and 53mins. It's a useful amount of reserve power, which you'll need if you're primarily connecting via HDMI, but with the right setup, you'll never need to worry about power supply.

Generally, the machine performs smoothly, and the fact it's a computer itself is incredibly well disguised. The only giveaways are the surface of the keycaps warming up very slightly after prolonged use, and fans that may whirr up completely unprompted from time to time. It's also more noticeable than a desktop or mini PC, because you're physically closer to your keyboard than you are to the actual machine. But for the most part, it remains idle.

The built-in speakers are sub-par, but not much different from those fitted into most laptops. Audio is muffled and tinny, with bass seriously lacking in punch. The volume, however, can get surprisingly loud, but listening to the noise at these levels is uncomfortable. Depending on the quality of the external monitor you use, you may be better off switching your audio output.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Features

We have mentioned biometric security in the form of a fingerprint scanner seamlessly integrated into the power button, but the machine also comes with HP's standard suite of enterprise tools. Chief among these are its Wolf Pro Security package, which is included. You'll benefit here from full-stack protection (with software and hardware layer protection) as well as features like endpoint isolation to stop malware from spreading throughout an organization's fleet of devices. Our review unit was also packaged up with Office Home and Business 2024, a one-time purchase that would give us access to classic 2024 desktop versions of apps, including Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, and OneNote.

The machine is also easy to service, thankfully. You may remove the base to get direct access to two DDR5 SODIMM slots, a removable M.2 WLAN module and a single M.2 2280 SSD slot. One disappointment, however, is the lack of physical connectivity beyond one USB-C port that offers 40Gb/s and a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port. Both offer DisplayPort 1.4 support and 5V/1.5A power delivery. Yes, you can use the dongle if you want to use other connections, but it's fiddly and native HDMI and USB-A ports would have made the user experience much better. Notable omissions also include an SD Card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack. There is, however, a security lock slot on the left-hand side of the EliteBoard's chassis. Wireless standards include the very latest Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0, so future-proofing is guaranteed.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Is it worth it?

The EliteBoard G1a is certainly the most interesting enterprise device to hit businesses this year, and is fundamentally a space saver as well as being stylish and practical.

HP representatives weren't able to share accurate pricing information ahead of its full launch, but you can seemingly purchase through some channels already. For example, the wired Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350 version (with 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD) is available for $2,269 (approximately £1,700). Given you'll be looking at north of $2,000 for high-end enterprise-facing machines, this feels reasonable.

We do understand how tempting it is to compare it with laptops and see it through the prism of what you're losing out on rather than what you're gaining. You'll cut out the screen and touchpad for not much of a pricing differential – but there's a cohort of users out there for whom the laptop screen is far less useful than a single or dual monitor setup alongside keyboard and mouse peripherals. Things get a little rosier when you compare it with a desktop computer or a mini PC – and much of that is thanks to some clever engineering and a keyboard that, thankfully, is very enjoyable to use, barring some minor spacing issues.

For the first device of its kind, the EliteBoard G1a offers an excellent blueprint for a different way to approach mobile working. There are, of course, improvements that HP may wish to make in future generations, including a variety in the hardware you can pick up (such as a choice between Intel, Qualcomm, and more advanced AMD chips), or even more ports so you can take advantage of more options for how you work. That said, in its current guise, the HP EliteBoard G1a looks the part, packs a hefty punch, and would make for a fantastic addition to the workplace.

HP EliteBoard G1a: Specifications

Conventional enterprise laptops can often feel bland and stuffy, but the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i offers something a little different. The Lunar Lake-powered 2-in-1 hybrid adopts a sleek and stylish design aesthetic while packing plenty of the same enterprise features you would expect from the Elitebook series – namely, it's similar to the clamshell HP EliteBook laptops.

The key difference here, of course, is the 360-degree hinges that can transform your device into a tablet at a moment's notice, whether you want to use it as a touchscreen or a second display in your setup. Helpfully, it's also a little lighter and trimmer, making it a great option for mobile working, especially for those working with sensitive material. Questions remain as to whether its display is strong and vibrant enough to justify being used as a tablet and whether its battery life offers more than the clamshell version, so you can rely on this 2-in-1 when away from the desk.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Design and display

HP's design aesthetic for its EliteBook family is clean and sophisticated, and the manufacturer brings the same minimalist look and feel to the EliteBook X Flip G1i. It's practically indistinguishable from its cousins, including the likes of the EliteBook 8 G1i or the EliteBook X G1i. Although you aren't likely to stand out from the crowd, there's no reason to be disappointed with a clean and elegant overall look. The silver aluminum chassis exudes freshness, while its rounded corners give it a softer and more accessible feel – akin to that you might feel when using a MacBook.

Its dimensions are consistent with what we'd expect from a machine like this, and impressively, it's even thinner than the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition (which doesn't feature an HDMI port). But its weight is on the heavy side at 1.4kg. For instance, Lenovo's 2-in-1 is 1.32kg, and the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is 1.34kg.

Generally, the device is well constructed and robust, which is the least you could ask for. That's the case whether you're using it as a laptop or if you bend the display back and use it in a variety of tablet modes. The one element that's a bit of a letdown is that the display does feel a tad loose when you tap it too firmly. This is still within the bounds of acceptability – and it's certainly an issue in most 2-in-1s – but firming this up would have given the EliteBook that extra edge.

The display itself isn't completely flush against the lid and instead features a plastic outline that protrudes slightly. Although visually unappealing, it's smart in the sense that it prevents the screen from being marked by the keyboard when shutting it – which it does with a firm snap thanks to the magnetics. Another oddity is that the end of the lid and the main body don't fully line up. It's a minor, and mostly visual, complaint, rather than a functional one, but it stood out nonetheless.

Our feelings about the display itself are generally mixed. The review unit we tested featured an entry-level 1,900 x 1,200 IPS screen with HDR and a 60Hz refresh rate – although you can also buy this laptop with a 2.5K (2,560 x 1,600-pixel) panel with a much smoother 120Hz refresh rate. Both are stated to be 400 nits bright (a little above average), but we imagine the user experience differences are stark, with added sharpness and smoothness rendering it a much better proposition.

The version of the display that we tested, however, only reached 316 cd/m2, which is a little below average. Color accuracy had a better showing with an excellent 100% coverage of the sRGB gamut, backed up by an excellent 76.4% and 88.1% coverage of the Adobe and DCI-P3 gamuts, for photo and video editing, respectively (where scores above 70% and 80% indicate adequacy for professional color work). This pairs with an outstanding 0.18 black level and relatively high 1,694:1 contrast ratio (great results in a non-OLED screen). Capping this off is a 0.29 average Delta-E result and a maximum of 1.05, generally in line with the best laptop displays.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Performance and battery life

Powering the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i is an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V processor and an Intel Arc Graphics chip alongside 32GB LPDDR5X RAM and a 1TB SSD. The integrated NPU can also squeeze out a decent 47 TOPS, which is enough to power most innate AI workloads. Unfortunately for the Lunar Lake generation, power is a little compromised for the sake of efficiency – and that's something we certainly noticed in testing this 2-in-1.

Testing this machine using Geekbench 6 produced a single-threaded result of 2,464 and a multi-core score of 10,239. It's not much of a leap from machines built in 2023 and beyond. For example, the last HP Spectre x360 14 scored 2,110 and 10,480 with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip. But this model only offered 11 TOPS of AI power and a comparatively weak GPU. By contrast, the EliteBook X Flip G1i's graphics card scored a solid 28,966 – which is more than usable for visual workloads. Other 2-in-1s that we previously tested hit scores a little higher, including the Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Gen 10 Aura Edition (30,830) and the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (33,349).

On the other hand, this machine's battery life puts it in a much better light, having lasted 16hrs and 27mins in our looped video playback test. It's a decent score compared with the average machine featuring the same Intel chipset. It's roughly an hour longer than the Yoga 2-in-1, for instance, and an hour shorter than the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14. In today's market, anything above roughly 14-15 hours can be considered a good battery life, although there are a handful of machines out there capable of beating 20-plus hours.

The SSD speeds are slightly below average at 5,152MB/s and 4,505MB/s for reads and writes – which is much lower than we would normally see in HP machines, which usually score close to 7,000MB/s for reads and more than 5,550MB/s for writes.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Features

We generally enjoyed using the HP EliteBook X Flip G1i's keyboard. The travel distance is a little on the shorter side, but not as short as some of the consumer-grade devices, and there's a huge amount of snappy force feedback with each keystroke. There's also the downside of a higher resistance with such heavy feedback, meaning it becomes harder to get into a proper touch typing flow. That said, it's still eminently enjoyable to use. We appreciated the inclusion of a full-sized Enter key, but were disappointed that the PG UP and PG DN keys were crammed just above the Left and Right arrows. There are no surprises otherwise, with the Function keys giving an array of useful toggles – including F2 to activate the screen guard that dims the display and decimates the viewing angle in such a way that prevents shoulder surfing and ensures privacy on the move. There's also a shortcut with F11 that opens the MyHP control dock. The EliteBook touchpads are perfectly sized, well-positioned in the center of the machine, and look far better than most you'll find in laptops. But they suffer from a glassy surface that's far too slippery and doesn't offer enough friction for more precise cursor movements. Left-clicking and right-clicking, however, is perfect with plenty of travel distance and feedback.

You'll also benefit from a full complement of ports – which is hard to pull off in a 14-inch machine. The ports include HDMI 2.1, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 and 3.5mm headphone jack on the left-hand side of the chassis, another USB-C port and a USB-A port, in addition to a Nano lock slot and a SIM slot for mobile communications on the right-hand side. Wireless options include Bluetooth 5.4 and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity. Other than a lack of an SD card slot, there's pretty much everything you would need in this impressively compact device.

As with HP's EliteBook family of security-centric laptops, you'll get access to the HP Wolf Security suite alongside a one-year subscription, alongside a plethora of apps like HP Sure Start, Sure Run, Sure Recover, Sure Click, and Sure Admin. Thanks to a 5MP AI infrared camera, you can benefit from facial recognition with Windows Hello, onlooker alerts (notifications that warn you when you're being watched), and presence sensing (meaning the machine can sleep or wake depending on your proximity). There's even a fingerprint scanner built into the power button.

HP also claims that the firmware is protected against quantum computing hacks thanks to the HP Endpoint Security Controller – an isolated, dedicated microprocessor that protects the BIOS. Chances are you aren't going to face those in the wild for a good few years. But it's better to be safe than sorry.

HP EliteBook X Flip G1i: Is it worth it?

You're going to be drawn to a machine like this if you're a professional who needs to work on the move and finds value in the configurable form factor – whether you're presenting, viewing content, using it as a secondary display, or just want the option. Although a little on the weighty side, it's a compact and sufficiently stylish device with an excellent build quality and premium feel. Thankfully, if you're working in sensitive areas in particular, the mobility that this machine encourages is also met with a raft of protective and safeguarding features that tries to give you the freedom and peace of mind to work confidently and capably while on the move, without looking over your shoulder; indeed, there's a feature for that.

The display that we tested (a basic 1,900 x 1,200-pixel panel) punched above its weight, so we'd expect good things if you wanted to upgrade to the higher-quality version. The hardware, however, is a little bit of a letdown. That's common with mobile Lunar Lake processors, but the trade-off is better power efficiency with a battery life that will last a full working day, and then some. Overall, there's nothing particularly standout – but nothing particularly worrisome about this solid and sophisticated enterprise laptop that will put even the most paranoid professional's mind at ease.

HP ZBook X G1i review: Specifications

HP is putting security front and center in the EliteBook 8 G1a 16 – a stylish and compact 16in business laptop that caters to enterprise users who could specifically benefit from tight security measures as well as top-of-the-line hardware.

Powered by an impressive AMD chipset, you would expect performance and battery life to match the best machines on the market – especially at a premium £2,277.50 retail price – alongside plenty of AI power to run native workloads. But the most appealing part of this machine is the security-centric software and hardware protections that come with it.

Given its relatively sleek dimensions and lightweight frame, this machine is also in with a shout of being one of the best 16in machines to work with on the move. Question marks remain over a fairly basic IPS display and a processor that might not live up to the highs of some of its counterparts.

HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16: Design and display

The EliteBook fits the mould of a modern business-centric notebook to a tee; it's designed to feel fresh and compact, thanks to its sharp silver finish, while remaining minimalist enough in nature to avoid drawing too much attention in a busy office environment. The lightweight chassis, made from a combination of aluminum and magnesium, is sturdy and well constructed – it feels comfortable when you're resting your palms against it and feels incredibly robust, especially when manipulating the lid.

It's also among the lightest 16in business machines out there, weighing 1.69kg, which is just as light as the Dynabook Tecra A65-M while exuding a much more premium feel. It's also on the thinner side, with a height of just 15.5mm. The Dell 16 Premium, by contrast, weighs 2.11kg and has a height of 16.7mm, while the Dynabook is much bulker at 19.9mm. Overall, this is as small and compact of a 16in laptop as you'll find.

One of the downsides comes in the way the display is slightly recessed and encased with plastic bezels. While they're fairly narrow bezels, the overall look spoils the otherwise sleek design aesthetic. Our disappointment with the display extends to the quality of the screen overall.

Although HP fits some of its higher-end machines with outstanding displays, including those with OLED technology, the HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16 features a fairly uninspiring panel that lacks the flair you'd expect to pay for at this price point. The 1,900 x 1,200 IPS screen is the same used in the HP ZBook Power G11 – and it's limited to a basic 60Hz refresh rate and poor 140.45 pixels-per-inch sharpness. It's also on the dimmer side; we measured a peak luminescence of 319 nits using a display calibrator (less than the roughly 350 to 400 nits average); anything less than 300 nits would be a noticeable problem, so thankfully, this model falls just on the right side of the line.

If you can put up with a display that isn't the brightest available, you'll find that its colors are at least accurate for professional usage, boasting a solid 99% coverage of the sRGB spectrum, as well as 74.7% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum and 81.4% coverage of the DCI-P3 spectrum (above the 70% and 80% that we're looking for). The screen also boasts an impressive 0.16cd/m2 black level (excellent for an IPS screen), corresponding to a 1,960:1 contrast ratio. The downside is a horrible maximum delta-E figure of 15.21 (where under 6 is considered a decent result) – translating to a heavy propensity for color distortion against the norm. We'd say this rules out any prospect for using this machine for accurate visual-based work, despite a good set of color accuracy results.

HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16: Performance and battery life

For a more-than-£2,000 machine, you should expect high-end performance – but the HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16 sadly doesn't quite hit the mark. Our review unit was configured with an AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 350 (8 cores) processor and AMD Radeon 860M graphics card, alongside an impressive 1TB SSD and 64GB RAM. The processor also includes an integrated NPU with 50 TOPS of AI power to make the most of the features available natively on AI PCs.

For a configuration like this, our benchmarking results were a letdown. When testing the machine with Geekbench 6, we registered a single-threaded score of 1,639 and a multi-core result of 9,659 – which are collectively well below average compared with the current generation of laptops. We would expect single-threaded performance of above 2,000 at a minimum – while multi-core performance of under 10,000 puts this alongside processors from at least one or two generations ago. The same processor fitted into the Asus ExpertBook P3 scored 2,659 and 11,004, while the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H in the Dell 16 Premium, by contrast, scored a huge 2,803 and 16,016. Overall, the EliteBook isn't as convincing for users who want to take advantage of maximum power.

The machine's capacity for graphics power is respectable, on the other hand, with a 20,855 score in the OpenCL test. That makes it good enough for basic-to-mid-level graphics-based workloads, but it's a little weaker than the Intel Arc Graphics GPU, as well as the same AMD Radeon 860M Graphics chip we tested in the HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14, which scored 22,153.

It's worth noting, however, that HP tends to fit its devices with faster-than-average SSDs, and that's certainly true for the EliteBook, with the 1TB SSD hitting read and write speeds of 7,041MB/s and 5,841MB/s respectively – comfortably above average.

Where the hardware comes to the rescue is the machine's battery life, with a lifespan of 14hrs and 29mins a very good result for a 16in machine, thanks to the chipset's efficiency. Many 16in laptops, by comparison, can't last beyond 12hrs in the same test – with the exception of the HP ZBook Power G11, which lasted more than 17hrs.

HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16: Features

The full-sized keyboard in the HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16 is a mixed bag, but pleasant overall. The keys are incredibly firm to the touch and snappy – perhaps giving too much bite with each keystroke – but satisfying while touch typing, given the deep travel distance and audible snap with each push. Our only major issue was the lamentable inclusion of PG UP and PG DN keys above the Left and Right arrow keys -- meaning it's a recipe for jaunty button taps. There's also, bizarrely, a shortcut to open the Calculator app. While useful to some extent, it would have been much better to turn this into a configurable hotkey that opens an app of the user's choosing. The touchpad, meanwhile, is almost perfect if it weren't for the slight lack of friction that might see your fingers slipping a tad too much if you are trying to be precise. Otherwise, it's large enough, and there's a healthy amount of force feedback with each click.

The connectivity options in this machine are satisfying – with the variety, modernity, and distribution of ports exactly what you would expect. On the left-hand side, you'll find two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 (40Gbs), an HDMI 2.1 port, and 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right, you'll find another USB-C port (10Gbps), a USB-A port (5Gbps with power delivery), and a security lock slot. You'll also get access to Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, futureproofing this machine. Unfortunately, there's no room for an SD card slot, but it's otherwise a decent array.

One of the biggest selling points of this machine is its security features. The most noticeable is a display that guards against shoulder-surfing. The viewing angle, however, is incredibly restricted – meaning you'll need to look at the screen from a specific angle to see visuals at their brightest and most color-accurate, but it's a price worth paying for safety while working on the move. Otherwise, this laptop ships with the HP Wolf Security suite and a one-year subscription, alongside a host of additional features including HP Sure Start, Sure Run, Sure Recover, Sure Click, and Sure Admin. With 50 TOPS of AI power at your disposal, you can also tap into a collection of HP-developed and Windows 11-based AI tools. Among the most useful ones are meeting-based tools like Poly Camera Pro (compatible with the 5MP IR AI camera) that improves your backgrounds and focus during video calls, as well as a color tuning feature that adjusts your image based on the ambient light. Alongside facial recognition, there's also a fingerprint scanner built into the power button.

HP EliteBook 8 G1a 16: Is it worth it?

There's plenty of positives to find in this machine – but we can't help but feel its hardware and screen lets it down. The build quality is fantastic, with its weight and size lending it well to working with on the move – underlined by an impressive battery life for a 16-inch machine. The sturdy and robust chassis also exudes freshness thanks to its sharp silver finish. The security features included in this machine, meanwhile, make it ideal for anybody working with sensitive material – or anybody advised to take as many precautions as possible against information security threats and cyber attacks.

We can't help but feel let down by the hardware, however, with middling performance levels that don't hit the mark we'd expect from high-ticket items. We also wanted more from the screen, with a basic IPS display lacking sharpness and brightness, while also registering an outrageously high maximum Delta-E score, suggesting it's not fundamentally reliable for visual workloads despite otherwise strong color accuracy results that we gleaned in testing.

Whether we'd recommend this machine comes down to pricing. Our configuration with 64GB RAM is heavily overpriced, but you can sometimes find the same machine with 32GB RAM available at a discounted rate of £1,600, which would make it a solid pick for deployment in the enterprise.

HP ZBook X G1i review specifications

Sometimes it's not enough for a PC monitor to be big. Sometimes it needs to be beautiful and well-connected, too. And that's before you even consider the key elements such as image quality or color accuracy. HP's latest 32-inch business monitor, the Series 7 Pro 732xk, isn't content to simply tick every one of these boxes – this is one of the best value monitors I've seen in recent years.

Aside from a few quibbles, which will mostly irk the lunchtime or post-work gaming crowd, the spoiler here is that HP has done an amazing job. It delivers all the essentials and also goes above and beyond in one key way: it supports hardware calibration. For around £700, that's unheard of, and it allows you to calibrate and maintain its color-accurate performance for the entirety of its working career.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Design & Features

The 732xk is a 31.5in monitor with a standard 4K, 3,840 x 2,160 pixel resolution. The panel of choice is an IPS Black variant with a matte anti-glare coating, and this, according to HP, promises a peak brightness of 450cd/m2 in SDR mode, a 2,700:1 contrast ratio, and an unusually broad color coverage of 99% for both DCI-P3 and Adobe RGB. It also gets a VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification, which, as per usual, suggests that HDR is present, but the panel doesn't get bright enough to do anything exciting with HDR content. Still, for around £700 – these kinds of panel specifications are about as good as it gets.

It's really quite a striking model, too. The heavy metal base slots elegantly into the slender black and silver stand, and the panel itself both feels really solid and looks great. The acres of brushed silver, gentle curves, and relatively slender profile make for a really good-looking monitor. For the money, it's probably one of the prettiest we've had on our desk to date.

The adjustable stand is superb, too. It moves through its 150mm range of height adjustment smoothly, and you only need a single hand to get it just so – there's no wobble or unsteadiness at all. There's plenty of scope for tilt and swivel, and the panel rotates around into portrait mode in either direction. Even the cable management – a traditional afterthought for many manufacturers – is good. It's just a simple square of plastic though, which you have to slot the cables, but unlike other designs that snag or pinch the cables when you try to move the panel to the extent of its adjustment, this just works. Kudos, HP.

HP has more than just image quality on its mind with the 732xk, however. Connectivity is top of the agenda, and that's why you'll find a healthy supply of ports around the back in addition to a built-in KVM switch. All of the ports are rear-facing, so there's no scrabbling around – just rotate the monitor around a touch, find the port you're after, and slot the cable home.

The HDMI 2.1 and full-sized DisplayPort 1.4 inputs are flanked by a DisplayPort output for daisy-chaining a second monitor, and there's also a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C input, which supports DisplayPort Alt video inputs, Thunderbolt 4, and also provides 100W of power delivery. You also get a secondary Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port for daisychaining duties. A secondary upstream USB-C connects to a second computer, and both of the upstream USB-C ports power up 4 USB-A ports at the rear, and a single USB-C port.

It's good to see PBP and PIP functions, too. These make life easier when using two machines side by side – or just keeping up with the football while you work on a particularly pressing presentation.

The on-screen display is a really good example, too. The menus use simple, sensibly-sized light grey text on a dark background, and the directional buttons at the rear make it easy to delve through the menus and adjust the features as required. There's no show or pizzazz, just useful features and key information – current resolution, refresh rates, and enabled modes – exposed in a sensible menu system. There's lots of fine adjustability, too.

Install the HP Display Center software – this is Windows-only at the time of writing – and you can adjust the 732xk's features and swap between color modes without having to reach around behind the monitor and prod buttons.

It's here that you can also recalibrate the various factory presets or create up to three of your own. It's worth noting that this feature didn't work during our testing, but this is almost certainly because we use an OEM X-Rite i1Display colorimeter. We encountered similar issues with BenQ's calibration software, and support was added in a recent software update. We've emailed to check whether support is planned.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Display quality

The Series 7 Pro 732xk more than lives up to its quoted specifications. And in terms of color accuracy, it puts in an excellent performance. If you can't be bothered to read the whole of this section, then all you need to know is that the 732xk produces images that are sharp and color accurate in both SDR and HDR.

Turn on the monitor, and the default color space is Display P3 – but you can use the menus to quickly switch to any of the factory-calibrated color modes. HP provides Display P3, sRGB, and Adobe RGB. There's no DCI-P3 mode, but that will be no great loss for most users.

Gamut coverage is excellent. We tested the monitor in each of its factory-calibrated modes, and our colorimeter showed 100% Adobe RGB coverage, 96% P3, and 100% of sRGB.

Image quality is excellent across the board, too. The IPS Black panel keeps contrast over 2000:1, and color accuracy is excellent with an average Delta E of 1 or less in all of the factory-calibrated modes. Brightness tops out around 400cd. This is as good as we've seen from a sub-£1,000 monitor in recent times.

Backlight uniformity is a regular bugbear for these types of edge-lit IPS monitors, and the HP is no exception. We measured the panel's brightness and contrast across 25 points on its panel, and the result was that the panel's lower left corner dropped below the recommended tolerance levels. Look closely, and you can see that the lower left and right flanks of the monitor are dimmer than the central section. Even here, though, the deviations are relatively well controlled: brightness dips by no more than 12% in those areas, and that's better than some similarly priced monitors we've seen.

In terms of HDR performance, the VESA DisplayHDR 600 certification suggests that the 732xk might actually do a passable job with HDR – and it does. The lack of Mini-LED or full-array local dimming means that there isn't the dynamic range of pricier panels, but the 732xk offers a decent-looking HDR image nonetheless. Brightness peaked at around 670cd/m2 for smaller highlights, and combined with the panel's wide color gamut and accuracy, it produced a really watchable rendition of HDR content.

If there's a chink in the 732xk's armour, it's motion clarity – this just isn't a strong point of the IPS Black panel. It's the price you pay for the increased contrast ratio and improved overall image over standard IPS panels. That said, it's not something that will bother most users for everyday use – or for watching video content. Fire up a game, however, and the detail on moving objects is smeared and blurry even with the panel at its maximum 120Hz refresh rate.

Increasing the panel's overdrive settings does provide a subtle improvement, but in contrast to most overdrive settings we've seen on rival monitors, the 732xk's four settings only make a very subtle difference. This is sensible. HP has provided a maximum overdrive setting that doesn't absolutely destroy the image quality by adding lots of inverse ghosting – instead, it provides a usable range of overdrive settings that don't introduce excessive visual nasties. Kudos.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor: Is it worth it?

This is not a cheap monitor by any stretch, but the Series 7 Pro 732xk more than justifies its price. The only sticking point here is the motion clarity – but unless gaming is high up your list of priorities, you'll be unlikely to care. And if it's just for the occasional bout of casual gaming, you still may not be too bothered.

For the money, though, the overall balance here is incredibly well-judged. Balancing big-screen productivity needs with superb image quality, oodles of connectivity, and ample adjustability in a downright gorgeous package is no mean feat. HP has made it look easy.

HP Series 7 Pro 732xk monitor specifications

“WXP is quickly becoming the command center for the enterprise.”

These were the words uttered by Manoj Leelanivas. president, HP solutions as he detailed the latest enhancements the company has made to the Workforce Experience Platform (WXP).

Continuing the key ‘future of work’ theme at the firm’s Imagine event in New York this week, Leelanivas talked about the disruptions employees face due to technology getting them down. It’s a massive barrier to productivity and morale, but also a time sink and financial strain for organizations, he suggested,

“Unfortunately, downtime and device failures are actively undermining employment today in this world. This is real digital friction, and it's putting productivity under attack, and that is why we built WXP,” he said.

Leelanivas shared with the audience some bleak statistics that drilled home just how much is at stake through technology issues.

Some six percent of employees face serious issues lasting one to two hours every week, while 65% face weekly device issues or failures. Furthermore, 20% of workers experience disruptions to meetings due to IT issues.

To help remedy the situation before it gets worse, HP has announced a number of key updates to WXP, which itself was launched in 2024 before global rollout commenced in 2025.

AI is front and center. Indeed, HP is using AI to help enterprise IT departments and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) acting as IT teams for SMBS, to get a clearer picture of how their devices are performing. Automated assistance is also available to proactively resolve issues before they become a major problem.

One key example Leelanivas gave was the ability to make smarter refresh decisions with WXP.

“One of the biggest constraints the whole world is facing today is memory. WXP [offers] visibility and advanced analytics that enable our customers to pinpoint exactly the memory utilization. No issues, no guesswork, they can figure out where the problem is, and they will know exactly where to invest and where not to invest so they can make those choices,” he said.

Smarter refresh with WXP will enable organizations to:

• Better match memory and storage requirements to each user
• Measure sentiment and right-size components
• Extend device life by quickly and easily identifying and resolving issues

Updated features available immediately are: Enhanced AI Remediation, Workflow Builder, Custom Data Reports, Pulse Notifications for Microsoft Teams, the Wolf Protect and Trace API, and Poly+ Analyze.

The ability to generate Carbon Footprint Reports will be made available later this year.

“The proof of the pudding is in the eating. The results speak for themselves,” Leelanivas said.

“Our customers in one year have seen 30% fewer cognitive credits, faster resolution of problems, and 30% less downtime, and up to 50 hours saved per employee.”

HP has launched a new solution designed to thwart attackers looking to exploit a BitLocker security vulnerability made possible when those with malicious intent are able to gain physical access to a hardware device.

The vulnerability, which involves essentially hijacking the communication between a device’s Trusted Platform Module (TPM) and CPU (known as a TPM bus attack), can be exploited in less than a minute using a cheap tool you can buy online.

As such, it represents a major source of worry for businesses that are increasingly reliant on mobile devices - which are frequently lost or stolen - to support the employees in working wherever they are.

HP’s solution, dubbed TPM Guard, will be rolled out as a firmware update in July, but then baked into future products.

“The nature of vulnerabilities after they’ve been discovered is that it only gets easier to exploit them. We’ve seen that the cost of executing that attack and the level of sophistication required to do it have just gone down and down over time. It’s a serious concern for many organizations,” according to Dr. Ian Pratt, HP’s vice president, security and commercial systems CTO, personal systems.

“When this attack was first conceived, people thought it would be espionage agents breaking into hotel rooms, targeting an individual. You might use it not just for extracting information but also to implant malware and do things like that to the executive’s device while they’re out for dinner. The reality is that the bigger concern is around laptops, which are lost and stolen every day. They’re usually in a backpack, and there’s usually something in that backpack or bag that identifies the company the person works for.

“These devices can then work their way through the criminal underground to a criminal organization that’s a bit more sophisticated and knows how to perhaps monetize that data. So it’s a far broader issue.”

Existing ‘fixes’ for this include BitLocker PINs - which can create more complexity in terms of management and users forgetting them - or ways to identify if someone is trying to remove the back cover of a device.

But attackers have become wise to these, upping their game in response, according to Pratt.

“Although the possibility has been known about for a while, it’s only very recently become accessible. Just as an example, at Black Hat back in August, there was actually a training session being run teaching people how to do this. How to bypass some of the defenses that had been built in, like protecting the back cover of the machine,” he said.

“We had a unique capability to be able to detect the cover removal and wipe the machine. We were in a better position than other vendors in that respect. But in this session, they were showing how you can drill a hole through the back cover of the case and then use a tube of superglue to reach in through the hole, put a lot of superglue on the microwitch that detects the cover removal, and then you’re able to remove the cover. Seeing people actually being taught how to do it, we know this kind of attack is now being democratized, and we can’t just ignore it going forward.”

HP has worked closely with AMD and Intel to move TPM Guard from theory to reality and, according to Pratt, also envisages working with Qualcomm to implement the solution across its entire G2 commercial platform.

What’s more, in recognition that this issue affects more than just HP hardware, the tech giant hopes to turn it into an industry standard.

“It’s an industry-wide issue. We’re going to follow a similar oath we have done with many security innovations over the years. With HP Labs, we’ve spotted a problem, created a solution, and then ultimately driven it as an industry standard. Because this is something that needs all vendors. It’s not a good look for the PC ecosystem as a whole to have this kind of vulnerability,” Pratt added.

“We’re now working with the Trusted Computing Group to create a standard around this. There will be a new TPM standard, which will probably take a couple of years to roll out.”

Cyber criminals are using “modular malware components” to create custom campaigns and speed up attacks, according to new research from HP.

Findings from HP Wolf Security's latest Threat Insights Report show hackers are combining off-the-shelf malware components, usually purchased via cyber crime forums, to wage attacks against enterprises globally.

Researchers at the firm noted that while early-stage lures and final payloads typically change, attackers are “reusing the same intermediate scripts and installers”.

This means that threat actors are able to build, customize, and scale campaigns with little effort and at a rapid pace – and it’s a trend that’s gaining traction. HP said it has observed multiple unrelated groups using the same basic building blocks in several campaigns.

The emergence of this ‘flat-pack’ malware trend aligns closely with the increased use of AI among threat actors, according to HP. Findings from the Threat Insights Report show attackers are also using AI to automate malware delivery as part of a focus on ‘vibe-hacking’ techniques.

In one example cited by the company, threat actors used AI to create a fake invoice PDF which triggered a silent download from a compromised site. Thereafter, this redirected unsuspecting users to trusted platforms such as Booking.com to curb their suspicions.

Alex Holland, principal threat researcher at HP Security Lab, said the increased use of AI in malware operations, combined with the focus on ‘flat-pack’ components, shows threat actors are prioritizing faster attacks and cheaper costs.

“It’s the classic project management triangle - speed, quality, and cost,” he said. “You often sacrifice one of them. What we’re seeing is many attackers are optimizing for speed and cost, not quality.”

“They are not using AI to raise the bar; they’re using it to move faster and reduce effort.”

Holland further warned that although these campaigns are often basic in nature, the “uncomfortable reality is they still work”.

AI malware is taking off

The HP research comes in the wake of repeated warnings over the use of AI to build and fine-tune malware. As ITPro reported last month, research from Zscaler shows hackers are leveraging the technology to create more potent malware strains.

Google also warned that threat actors were found abusing its Gemini AI models to build malware in early February.

The use of AI in this instance also goes beyond building malware, however, with the technology also used during the early research and development stages.

Analysis from Trend Micro in September 2025 warned that hackers were ‘vibe coding’ malware by using AI to dissect publicly available threat intelligence reports.

This, Trend Micro noted, allowed threat actors to essentially reverse engineer malware strains based on technical blogs from industry stakeholders, create “partial malicious” code, and even mimic other group’s TTPs.

Ian Pratt, global head of security for personal systems at HP, said the firm’s research highlights the significant risks now posed by threat actors using AI.

“When attackers can generate and repackage malware in minutes, detection-based defences can’t keep up,” he said. “Instead of trying to spot every variant, organizations need to reduce exposure.”

Reducing exposure in this sense can be as simple as “containing high-risk activities” such as warning staff not to open untrusted attachments or clicking unknown links - typical advice given by most enterprises yet often still the source of breaches.

Separate analysis from the firm showed 14% of email threats identified by HP Sure Click bypassed one or more email gateway scanners, underlining the increasing success rates of threat actors.

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

PayPal has announced the appointment of HP chief Enrique Lores as its new CEO, in a move the payments giant said will help it maintain its industry standing in the era of AI.

Lores – who has served on PayPal’s board for nearly five years and as board chair since July 2024 – will succeed Alex Chriss from March 1.

Chief financial and operating officer Jamie Miller will act as Interim CEO until Lores formally assumes the role. The leadership reshuffle also sees David W Dorman appointed as independent board chair, effective immediately.

The move follows what PayPal described as a detailed evaluation conducted by its board of directors on the company’s competitive position set against the wider industry landscape.

While the firm acknowledged that “some progress had been made” over the last two years, it added that the pace of change and execution was not in line with expectations.

In an announcement, David W Dorman said Lores’ wealth of experience and customer-centric focus will now provide the leadership required to lead PayPal into its next chapter.

"Enrique is widely recognized as a visionary leader who prioritizes customer-centric innovation with demonstrable impact,” he commented.

“His strong track record leading complex transformations and disciplined execution on a global basis will ensure PayPal maintains its leadership of the dynamic payments industry now and into the future."

‘Culture of innovation’

Lores arrives following six years as president and CEO at HP, where he led the company’s transition beyond traditional PCs and into services, subscriptions, and AI-enabled future-of-work solutions.

During his time in the role, the Lores played a pivotal role in the separation of HP and HPE, credited with strengthening operating discipline, simplifying cost structure, and positioning the business for long-term innovation.

Commenting on his new role as CEO, Lores highlighted the importance of balancing long-term transformation with short-term goals.

"We will further strengthen the culture of innovation necessary to deliver long-term transformation and balance this with near-term delivery, executing with greater speed and precision, and holding ourselves accountable for consistent delivery quarter on quarter, to further assert PayPal's industry leadership position," he said.

Lores also noted the rapid changes sweeping the commerce industry, driven by a combination of new technologies, evolving regulations, increasing competition, and the ever-increasing presence of AI.

"PayPal sits at the center of this change, and I look forward to leading the team to accelerate the delivery of new innovations and to shape the future of digital payments and commerce," he added.

Long-term success

In the announcement, PayPal reiterated its belief that its long-term success is grounded in global scale, data, and the strength of its consumer, merchant, and partner relationships.

The company also thanked the outbound Alex Chriss for his two and a half year tenure as CEO, citing his role in monetizing Venmo and expanding the BNPL business.

"I am proud to have had the opportunity to lead such a great company and work with such a talented team,” Chriss commented. “Now is the right time to make a transition to a seasoned leader who can take the company through its next phase of transformation.

“I have enjoyed a great working relationship with Enrique, and I am certain he is the right person to meet that challenge."

FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA

We don't all need a bright, vibrant display. For many office workers, the job is just about email and spreadsheets. Graphs and analytics. The input of data. That requires a laptop with a decent processor and a long battery life. And that is where HP's ProBook 4 G1a presents itself as a reliable, yet affordable business notebook.

HP has refreshed the ProBook series with both AMD and Intel processors; our review unit came with the AMD Ryzen 7 250 and Radeon 780m graphics and a few new AI capabilities (as all laptops apparently do, nowadays). There are 16in models, but we have the 14in one, which will set you back around $1199 (£948).

HP ProBook 4 G1a: Design

The HP ProBook 4 doesn't push any boundaries with its design. We would describe it as professional and smart, if not particularly flashy or memorable. It isn't for the front-of-house, but it is suitable for your average office desk.

Lots of plastic has been used in the making of this device, but it's HP, so you know that's been sustainably sourced. It feels sturdy around the keyboard and underside, but the lid will flex under the slightest pressure. There is also a slight rattle to the underside when tapped.

It is fair to say the ProBook is better to look at than touch, with a couple of nice signatures, such as the Poly logo by the left-hand ports, and the 'ProBook' label under the left side of the keyboard. The power button and fingerprint sensors are two different buttons on the ProBook, with the latter down below the right-hand side of the keyboard.

At 1.40kg, the ProBook is not particularly heavy, easy enough to carry one-handed from room to room. And the device is just 17mm when closed, which is about standard for a budget work machine, though if we consider ports, this is quite impressive. You have two USB Type-C slots for charging and data transfer. Two USB Type-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 slot, a headphone jack, an Ethernet port, and an optional Nano SIM card slot, as well as an integrated security lock slot. All in all, it's a very busy set of sides on the chassis, though despite the amount of options, there's no room for Thunderbolt 4 here.

HP ProBook 4 G1a: Display, keyboard, and trackpad

Display benchmarks for the ProBook 4 1Ga are underwhelming, to say the least, but it isn't really for that. This is not a screen for any kind of graphic or color work. This is a 14in WUXGA LCD panel that can barely stream a movie. The touchscreen element is good, but it could have done with a refresh rate higher than 60Hz.

With our colorimeter, it registered a measly 53.8% for sRGB gamut color coverage. And its peak brightness was a rather modest 311.77cd/m2 – though we found it to be adequate under reasonably bright conditions.

With the largely plastic chassis, you have a rubbery feeling keyboard; this is a standard HP keyboard, according to the company. Though it does have a spill-resistant, 'durakey' layer. Overall, typing on the HP ProBook is fine, with decent travel and a nice rattly sound as you type.

The trackpad is not great as it's small and stiff to click. And the cursor oddly goes missing on some applications – like Google Docs, where you have to half-guess where it is. It does have a scroll function, which works well, and some other minor smart functions. But overall, it could be better.

HP ProBook 4 G1a: Specs and performance

Inside our ProBook review unit is an AMD Ryzen 7 250 chip, which is part of AMD's 200 series that uses the Hawk Point refresh core. It features eight cores and sixteen threads. Our model came with the top memory spec of 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage, which enables the machine to handle multiple applications and large files easily.

The Ryzen 7 250 is one of the middle-tier chips in the Ryzen 200 series. It offers efficient AI acceleration and good general performance. You only have 16 TOPS with its NPU, which is sufficient for local AI tasks, like image enhancement and your basic translation features. But it sits in a weird category where it is AI-capable but not exactly fully AI-native – it doesn't meet Microsoft's Copilot+ certification threshold, for example.

In Geekbench 6, the ProBook hit 1921 on single-core tasks and 8093 for multi-core, which is pretty good for the price. It also lasted 10hrs, 18mins looped video test, which is OK. The test is purposely intensive, and in real-life use, the ProBook lasts a full workday. Heavy video editing (which you wouldn't really do on this) drains the battery before lunch.

HP ProBook 4 G1a: Is it worth it?

This is a no-frills laptop, with a lot of its appeal tied up in being durable, reliable, and affordable. The AI capabilities are low, the battery is merely OK, and the display is not worth mentioning. But it does look good, runs smoothly, and does offer a decent typing experience.

If you have an office full of people needing affordable machines that don't scratch easily, have all the juice their workloads need, the ProBook 4 is a great option. It's not exactly fun, but it is a serious business machine.

HP ProBook 4 G1a specifications

Squeezing genuine desktop performance into a compact laptop is easier said than done; the balance between performance, battery life, size, weight, and thermals is hard to get right, and this is one reason Apple's 14in MacBook Pro has been so successful. It gets the balance absolutely right. The HP ZBook Ultra G1a aims to follow suit.

AMD's Ryzen AI 300 Series processors with their potent integrated GPUs have been threatening to let Windows laptop makers knock the MacBook off its perch since their launch earlier this year. Now we finally have one in for testing: HP's new ZBook Ultra G1a, which is built around the range-topping AMD Ryzen AI Max+ 395.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a: Design

The ZBook Ultra shares a strong familial similarity to HP's EliteBook business laptops, but that's no bad thing. It's a solid, smart, and sober affair made from aluminum and is MIL-STD-rated for resistance to shock, temperature change, and particulate ingress.

There's only one colorway, which HP calls Meteor Silver but which we'd describe as grey. The paint finish does a good job of keeping greasy fingerprints at bay, so we'll forgive the rather dowdy color scheme.

At 1.57Kg and 312 x 215 x 18mm, the new HP is very similar in terms of both weight and size to the MacBook Pro, which hardly comes as a surprise given that the smaller MacBook and the ZBook Ultra are targeted at the same customers.

On the left side of the ZBook, you'll find one Thunderbolt 4 and one 10Gbps USB-C port, an HDMI 2.1 video output, and a 3.5mm audio jack. On the opposite side is a second Thunderbolt 4 and a 10Gbps USB-A port, along with a Kensington lock.

We'd have liked to have seen Thunderbolt 5-spec ports and an SD card reader. Both are features of the latest MacBook Pro. Incidentally, the USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port is also capable of pumping out DisplayPort video. The MediaTek MT7925 WLAN card is right up to date, supporting Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4

Getting inside the ZBook Ultra is easy enough, but once in, you'll find no space for a second SSD and no option to add more RAM; what there is is soldered in place, as is the WLAN card. The Samsung-made 1TB SSD in our review machine proved a sprightly performer, recording sequential read and write speeds of 5,209MB/s and 2,930MB/s, respectively.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a: Keyboard, touchpad and webcam

The keyboard has quite a few positives and only one or two negatives. In the former, we must mention the rock-solid deck, the tactile, slightly rubberized keycaps, and the perfectly calibrated key travel and end-stop. There's a handy two-stage white backlight too.

In the negative column, the action of the space bar felt rather looser than the rest of the keyboard, and the cursor buttons are all half-height, with the spaces above the left/right keys occupied by the page up and down keys rather than left open as on the MacBook Pro keyboard. It makes the bottom right corner of the keyboard look and feel a wee bit crowded. We've no complaints at all about the glass touchpad, though, which at 125 x 80mm is nicely sized and has a sharp and quiet click-action.

The 1440p webcam is crisp and bright, but has a slightly over-warm color balance, which can sometimes give images an orange tint. The camera array supports Windows Hello facial recognition and the full range of Windows Studio enhancements. There's also a manual slide-across shutter to prevent unwanted surveillance. If you prefer, you can log into Windows using the fingerprint scanner built into the on/off button in the top-right corner of the keyboard.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a: Display

Our review machine came with the optional Samsung-made 2,880 x 1,800 120Hz OLED touchscreen. We found it to be an impressive display with good maximum brightness levels of 400cd/m2 in SDR mode and 630cd/m2 from a 10% screen area in HDR mode.

Gamut coverage is wide, with 162.6% of the sRGB, 115.2% of the DCI-P3, and 112.1% of the AdobeRGB color volumes accounted for. Out-of-the-box color accuracy was good rather than perfect, with a Delta E reading of 1.9 vs the DCI-P3 profile.

On such a wide gamut display, recalibrating to an even lower figure should not be a challenge if you need to undertake highly color-critical work. Assuming, of course, you have a colorimeter to hand.

Numbers aside, to the naked eye, the ZBook Ultra's screen is a joyously colorful and limpid affair and is super-sharp. Granted, the HP's pixel density isn't quite as high as that of the MacBook Pro at 243 to 254DPI, but you can't tell the difference with the naked eye.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a: Specs and performance

AMD's new AI Max 300-series CPUs impressed us mightily when we encountered them in the form of the 8-core Ryzen AI Max 385 in the Framework Desktop.

The ZBook is built around the 16-core Ryzen AI Max+ 395, which, on paper, is the more powerful of the two, though in the Framework, the wick is turned up higher, so in practice, the ZBook is slower, but only by the smallest of margins.

The chipset in the ZBook Ultra is technically the PRO model, which means it supports more enterprise security features than the consumer-oriented non-PRO version, but otherwise the two are technically the same.

Slower than the Framework Desktop it may be, but the ZBook is still remarkably powerful for a compact laptop. In our Handbrake-based 4K multi-media benchmark, the ZBook scored 489 points to the Framework's 510, while in the PCMark 10 test, it scored 7,944 to the Framework's 8,856.

For context, the 10-core M4 MacBook Pro scored 395 points in the same 4K media test, while the best we've seen from one of Intel's 16-core Core Ultra 9 285H CPUs is 424. Looking more closely at the M4 MacBook Pro comparison, in the Geekbench 6 single- and multi-core workload tests, the ZBook Ultra scored 2,905 and 18,083 while the MacBook scored 3,899 and 15,234.

While there's no doubt that the MacBook Pro feels very fast in almost all circumstances, the ZBook Ultra runs like the very devil himself is chasing after it. But where the AMD chipset really comes into its own is graphics performance.

The 40-core Radeon 8060S graphics chip ran the SPECviewperf 3dsmax 3D modeling benchmark at a blistering 122fps. That's on a par with an Nvidia RTX5060 discrete GPU and more than four times as fast as the best Intel iGPUs can manage.

In the Blender 4.2 benchmark, the new HP posted a median score of 1,264 compared to the M4 MacBook Pro's 1,074. Granted, the most powerful M4 Pro and M4 Max machines can run the test around 2.5 and 5 times faster, respectively, than the base M4, but both cost significantly more.

In the Geekbench 6 OpenCL test, the ZBook Ultra scored 83,532 points, which compares to 38,337 for the M4 MacBook Pro. The best we've seen from a recent Intel chipset with an iGPU is 42,600 from a Core Ultra 9 285H with Arc 140T graphics. That's one heck of an advantage.

Though not a gaming machine, it seemed churlish not to see how the ZBook Ultra could handle a Triple-A title. Running the Cyberpunk 2077 benchmark at 1,920 x 1,080, high detail preset with no ray tracing, produced a result of 105fps. Using the ray tracing low detail preset again at FullHD, the score dropped, but only to 75fps.

Granted, both those results benefited from the help of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling and frame generation voodoo, but for a small laptop without a discrete GPU, that is still an outstanding level of performance.

The AMD chipset also features a 50 TOPS NPU, giving the ZBook Ultra full Windows Copilot+ accreditation. That means you get Windows AI features like Recall and generative fill in Paint Cocreator, as well as support for whatever new AI features Microsoft may serve up in the short and medium term.

Given those high levels of performance, the ZBook is remarkably civilized even under duress. Under maximum stress, the CPU and GPU utilization levels settled at 85% and 95% respectively, with the fans making surprisingly little noise and very little heat in evidence on the external bodywork.

All that performance does, however, come at a price in terms of battery life. In our standard video-rundown test, the ZBook Ultra lasted for just over 10 hours, which is a mediocre result and no more.

You can expect twice that from a MacBook Pro and at least a couple of hours more from a machine like the Asus TUF Gaming A14, which uses an AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU and an Nvidia RTX5060 discrete GPU.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a: Is it worth it?

The ZBook Ultra we were sent to evaluate will set you back £2,111.99 and comes with a 1TB SSD and 64GB of LPDDR5x-8533 RAM. That is £100 less than an entry-level 14-inch M4 MacBook Pro with a matching 1TB SSD but only 32GB of RAM.

Pick the AMD Max Pro 390 CPU with 32GB of RAM, and the price drops to £1,993, which doesn't seem like such great value in comparison. At the other end of the scale, for £2,820, you can have the machine we tested, but with a 2TB SSD and 128GB of RAM.

For comparison, choose a 14in MacBook Pro with the entry-level M4 Pro chipset, a 2TB SSD, and 48GB of RAM, you'll be out of pocket to the tune of £3,199.

If you want a compact 14in Windows laptop with a discrete GPU, there are several alternatives. An RTX5050-equipped HP Omen Transcend currently costs £1,499 (down from £1,799), an RTX5060 Asus TUF Gaming A15, just £1,249 and an RTX5080 ROG Zephyrus G14, £2,999.

Of course, all three of those are primarily gaming laptops with a patina of civilization. The MacBook is the only direct competition.,

Which should you go for? The MacBook certainly delivers the goods when it comes to battery life, but the ZBook Ultra counters with phenomenal levels of graphics performance. Which is the best depends entirely on which feature you place the most emphasis on.

What is beyond any reasonable contestation is that the new ZBook Ultra delivers truly impressive levels of performance for a £2,000 compact laptop and is a genuine game-changer.

HP ZBook Ultra G1a specifications

If maximum performance is on the agenda, HP's line of ZBook workstations should be top of mind. These machines might be much weightier and chunkier than your classic business notebook or slimline ultraportable, but you are guaranteed top performance and a premium build quality – as well as a high-end price tag.

The HP ZBook X G1i is the mid-level version of the current lineup, but that just means it isn't as powerful as the most souped-up version – this laptop still packs way more punch than the average notebook. Fitted within it is the latest Intel hardware as well as an Nvidia RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell graphics card to really underline its performance-first offering. This model is recommended for advanced 3D modeling, rendering, and simulation workflows, as well as conceptual design, video editing, and data analytics, according to HP. But should you go all in, given its weighty price tag?

HP ZBook X G1i review: Design and display

The ZBook series has carved its own design identity – with a robust frame and a classic silver all-aluminum chassis that's as sturdy and reliable as you're going to get in a heavy-duty workstation like this. That's underlined by its MIL-STD testing.

Overall, the design exudes a certain gravitas, which is matched by its weightiness – at 2.04kg (4.5 lbs). This is, however, a touch lighter than the HP ZBook Power G11, which retains the same build and frame as the newer machine. What you aren't going to get is sleightness, with a 22.9mm depth, so we wouldn't recommend this laptop if you plan on taking it out and about.

The machine features a full-size keyboard including a number pad, which retains the same design as all new HP machines, with contrasting keys that make it stand out. There's a fingerprint reader just beneath it, as well as a touchpad that's also plenty spacious. Overall, it's really well laid out in terms of both look and functionality.

Encased in the indented bezels of our review unit was a 2,560 x 1,600 pixel IPS display (a 4K version of this machine is also available). While the brightness is about average, at 369 nits, the screen reproduces colors excellently, with 100% coverage of the sRGB spectrum proving a solid foundation. For photo and video editors, respectively, you'll be delighted with a 98.7% and 99.8% coverage of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 spectra, respectively, which are outstanding results. There is perfect color balance between the red, green, and blue values too – albeit the screen does look a little oversaturated to the naked eye. You also benefit from a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

HP ZBook X G1i review: Performance and battery life

The performance in the HP ZBook X G1i certainly justifies its price tag if this is the most important draw for you. Our review unit was fitted with an Intel Core Ultra 7 265H (16 cores) processor and a huge 64GB RAM. Paired with the CPU was an Nvidia RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell graphics card. We also had a huge 2TB SSD in our model.

The single-threaded performance in the HP was a tad lower than we had expected, with a score of 2,674 versus the 2,701 and 2,828 that we achieved with the Intel Core Ultra 7 256V in the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 (16GB RAM) and the Dell Pro 13 Premium (32 GB RAM), respectively. But a multi-threaded score of 16,103 dominates both – with the HP and Dell scoring 10,793 and 11,196. It's an extremely dominant result and makes this laptop faster even than a MacBook Pro, with the M4-powered laptop scoring 15,234 in the same test.

The MacBook Pro's graphics performance of 38,236 in the OpenCL benchmark was trounced by the monstrous 87,860 we achieved with the 16-inch workstation. This laptop is, indeed, primed to handle all kinds of tasks, especially graphics-intensive workloads. It's worth noting, however, that the Nvidia RTX 3000 Ada graphics card fitted into the HP ZBook Power G11 was slightly more powerful, with a score of 88,543, but it's negligible at this point. And you get plenty more juice thanks to the upgraded processor. A worthy mention too must go to the SSD, which is really zippy with read/write speeds of 6,728MB/s and 4,931MB/s. These speeds are above average; something we've noticed when testing HP laptops, especially.

The laptop's battery life was about average, lasting just 12hrs 59mins in our looped video playback test. This is probably about what we expected from a 16-inch machine that draws so much power – and it's certainly not something you'd necessarily be swayed by, given it's not the most portable laptop out there anyway. We will say, however, that the HP ZBook Power G11 lasted 17hrs 48mins in the same test. So it's worth considering this alternative if having a great battery life is a priority.

HP ZBook X G1i review: Features

HP usually makes excellent keyboards, and we thoroughly enjoyed using the expansive version in the HP ZBook X G1i. The keys felt spaced out and large – and there's even enough room for a number pad, should you wish to use one. We do lament the lack of a full-sized Enter key, but it's a minor grumble with what's otherwise really enjoyable to type with. Each key has plenty of resistance (if anything, maybe a tad much) and a deep travel distance, making touch-typing punchy and satisfying. The touchpad, too, is superb for the most part in terms of its sizing and spacing on the chassis. If anything, there's a tiny amount of unwelcome friction, but not enough to put us off using it.

Also featured on this machine is a fingerprint reader on the far right beneath the keyboard, as well as a 5MP webcam with Windows Hello and AI-powered Poly Camera Pro software to adjust your framing and picture during calls, as well as a tiny switch to obscure the lens when not in use. Other software includes HP Smart Sense, to optimize thermal management, as well as HP Power Management software to preserve your battery's conditioning and charging schedules.

Wireless connectivity comes in the form of Wi-FI 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, the latest standards, while there are also plenty of hardware options to use. On the left, you'll find a USB-A port, two USB-C ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a 3.5mm headphone jack, as well as a separate charging port. Yes, it does come with a bit of a weighty power brick – but it's a sacrifice worth making for a 50% fast-charging rate in 30mins. On the right-hand side, you'll find another USB-A port, an Ethernet port, an SD card reader, and a nano security lock slot, as well as a SIM card slot. There really is everything you could ever need.

HP ZBook X G1i review: Is it worth it?

The HP ZBook X G1i really is a wonderful machine – the question should be whether you will maximize its value for your work and your needs. That's because it comes with a weighty near-$4,000 price tag from some vendors (especially if you opt for the 4K resolution version). We would highly recommend this machine if money was no object, and you needed a reliable and powerful machine that can blast through any intensive workloads, from machine learning projects to 3D modeling or CAD. It's really a machine for power users, and a fantastic one at that – but if portability is more of a priority, or a stronger battery life – or you even just need something for more basic tasks – we would consider a cheaper option. That said, for a workstation, you couldn't ask for much more.

HP ZBook X G1i review specifications

HP ZBooks are synonymous with power, which is why ITPro has reviewed a handful of machines in this lineup so favourably – if all guns blazing performance is what you're looking for, you'd be hard-pressed to look any further. That's because these machines look good and feel great to use, too, thanks to the engineering prowess the manufacturer has shown in building this family of workstations.

On the slimmer side of this family is the new HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14, a more portable AMD-powered 14-inch alternative to the typically large and boisterous desktop replacements like the excellent HP ZBook Power G11 or the HP ZBook X G1i models. But does its more slender frame mean it's any less punchy? It's crucial to consider, especially given that ZBooks tend to be fairly expensive.

HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14: Design and display

You can immediately see from the look and feel of this laptop that it means business – ditching the features you'd usually find in an ultraportable for a thicker frame. We are fully on board with the high-end build quality (including MIL-STD testing) and premium feel of its aluminum chassis, which is finished in a sharp Meteor Silver color. It's as if the 16-inch version of the HP ZBook had been miniaturized very elegantly.

If you're mostly looking for something more suited to using on the move, we'd point you elsewhere – but this machine is very portable for what it is. At 3.17lbs (1.44kg) heavy, it's a weightier than average; it's sandwiched between the HP EliteBook Ultra 14 G1q – 2.98 lbs (1.34 kg) – and the HP Elitebook X G1a – 3.51lbs (1.59kg). All three are lighter than the MacBook Pro M4 (14-inch), however, which weighs 3.4lbs (1.55kg). That said, it's good enough to use on the move if you don't mind the extra weight and size; with a thickness of 0.74in (18.9mm), it's chunkier than most, but not by much.

Encased in plastic bezels is a 14-inch IPS HD display that's very sharp (2,560 x 1,600 pixels, translated to a solid pixels-per-inch of 216). We also noticed how bright it was to the naked eye, which we confirmed in our testing with a display calibrator. The machine registered a peak luminescence of 470 nits – about 100 nits brighter than average. You won't find many that can match this unless you turn to a MacBook Pro (516 nits), the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 Aura Edition (also 470 nits), or the Microsoft Surface Laptop (474 nits), among a few other competitors.

We were also impressed with 99.8% coverage of the sRGB spectrum, 81.2% coverage of the Adobe RGB spectrum (for photography), and 98% coverage of the DCI-P3 spectrum (for video editors). All three are good results and, while not the best out there, far better than you'll find in the average notebook. Coupled with a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR, it makes for really crisp and clean viewing experience. Of slight concern, however, was a high black level of 0.61 nits, as well as an average and maximum Delta-E score of 1.5 and 4; while falling between 3 and 6 is usually a "good" result, these days most panels hit a maximum close to 1.

HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14: Performance and battery life

This is the first ZBook that's powered with an AMD processor – the AMD Ryzen AI 7 PRO 360 (8 cores) to be precise – and it's paired with an AMD Radeon 860M graphics chip. Our review unit also came with 32GB DDR5 RAM as well as a 512GB SSD. Overall, the performance was a mixed bag, and didn't live up to the levels we expected.

In testing with Geekbench 6, we registered a pretty strong single-threaded score of 2,797 – comfortably beating most other processors apart from the M4 chip in the latest MacBooks. But multi-core performance was sluggish, hitting 10,809. This is on par with the second-generation Intel Ultra 7 processors, and a tad behind the Snapdragon X Elite chips (which tend to hit between 13,000 and 15,000). While the score is not terrible by any means, we'd have certainly expected something closer to a MacBook Pro. By contrast, we registered a score of 11,196 in the Dell Pro 13 Premium, and it's comparable to 10,684 in the Lenovo ThinkPad X9 14 Aura Edition. The SSD, meanwhile, is just as fast as we have come to expect from those fitted into HP machines, with read/write speeds of 7,071MB/s and 5,694MB/s, respectively. This is about as fast as you're likely to get in a laptop.

Graphics performance, however, was disappointing; we registered a paltry 22,153 in our OpenCL benchmark. The new generation of Intel Arc Graphics cards can usually achieve between 25,000 and 30,000, by contrast. And the Nvidia RTX PRO 2000 Blackwell that we tested in the bigger and beefier HP ZBook X G1i scored a mammoth 87,860. Also worth noting that the integrated graphics in Apple's M4 chips usually hit between 36,000 and 39,000, depending on the context and model.

Its battery life is also below average, with the model lasting 12hrs 12mins in our looped video playback test. This is a better score than you'd have expected a few generations ago, but plenty of Windows laptops can reach 15-hours-plus these days.

HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14 review: Features

We loved using the keyboard fitted into the HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14 – it's pretty much identical across all of HP's current line-up of laptops and 2-in-1s, with minor differences, and that's no bad thing at all. In this instance, the keys are incredibly snappy and offer plenty of force feedback – we may suggest it's a bit too much, if there are any criticisms to make, meaning typing for prolonged periods of time may feel quite difficult until you get used to the sheer amount of feedback you get with each keystroke. The trackpad was flawless, on the other hand, and about as useful and fuss-free as we have seen.

One of the highlights when it comes to a machine like this is also the sheer amount of connectivity options you get in a relatively portable body. The 14-inch ZBook includes two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, a USB-A port, an HDMI 2.1 slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, a security lock slot, and an Ethernet port. While you don't get the SD card or SIM slots you would find in the 16-inch ZBooks, this is far more than you'd get compared with most notebooks on the market. Wireless standards are up-to-date too, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 compatibility.

One thing you'll be guaranteed is a suite of security services courtesy of the HP Wolf Pro Security Edition software, as well as hardware-level protection and biometric login thanks to a fingerprint reader and Windows Hello compatibility via the 5MP webcam. Elsewhere, you'll find all manner of AI-friendly features, powered by the 50 TOPS NPU fitted into the machine, including the Poly Camera Pro app to adjust your framing and picture quality during calls. HP Smart Sense also adjusts your performance to for an optimal PC experience, according to the manufacturer.

HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14 review: Is it worth it?

We weren't blown away by the HP ZBook 8 G1ak 14 – although it's a perfectly capable machine that's enjoyable to use day-in and day-out. It looks every bit the part as a workstation should, with an outstanding build quality and extremely robust chassis, while also looking easy on the eye. However, it unfortunately fails to deliver on the performance levels you would really want from a machine built like this. While the display is also excellent, you can find better displays (with superior technologies like OLED) in ultraportables like the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 – and better performance in plenty of comparable non-workstations too. For that reason, while there is plenty of potential in this machine, it's hard to recommend over alternative devices unless you need the connectivity features, added security extras, and a really bright display.

HP ZBook X G1i review specifications

HP has unveiled 14 new office-based products for its fall launch, aiming to enable users to do more simultaneously on workstations, printing, and AI.

The launch includes a 49in monitor and a Grace Blackwell-powered AI desktop to help workers with what HP calls 'mega-tasking'.

Mega-tasking – a phrase the company used several times during the launch event for the devices – is multi-tasking taken to its extreme. It's also perhaps an admission that we're working on too many things all at once and generative AI is not simplifying our jobs like we had first thought.

The level of burnout in software development, security, and various other professions in technology is well-documented but, according to HP's research, we are also asking for it.

Workers want to get more done; they want more tools, more capabilities, and they want generative AI, the company claimed. HP's senior manager of NPI displays and docks, Umang Patel, compared the apparent desire to do everything at once to Iron Man, who works with such futuristic technology that he can complete multiple complex tasks simultaneously.

HP series 5 Pro conferencing monitor

What we need to be more efficient in this endeavour is to be able to see more of our tasks, HP claimed. Its answer is a 49in Series 5 Pro Conferencing monitor that is short in height but extremely wide. HP called this the world's first 'ultrawide' conferencing monitor and a new way to 'curate and maximize' a workspace.

The Series 5 Pro features AI noise reduction capabilities and a 'virtual multiple displays' feature that can be used to create up to three virtual workspaces. This is what will enable mega-tasking, the company claimed, allowing users to run and see multiple tasks at the same time. The Pro is described as a conferencing monitor, but the nod to mega-tasking also means it can be used by power users – providing they have a large enough desk or office space.

For remote workers, there is a significantly smaller display, the 14in Series 5 Portable. It connects to most laptops and comes with a nifty cover case that can be removed from the screen and then used as a mouse mat – there's also a range of fast scrolling, ergonomic input devices being launched this autumn.

Other desk-based products included the USB-C 100W G6 Dock, which has a proximity activation feature that can detect and connect a laptop over Bluetooth. The idea is to speed up pairing and reduce downtime for those who leave or move from their desks many times during the working day. The dock also features a single cable that can power multiple 4K displays, according to HP.

It wouldn't be a HP event without new AI-focused hardware, which this time came in the shape of a new desktop box, the HP ZGX Nano G1a workstation. This is a local, high-performance solution that's been curated for software developers, researchers, and data scientists. According to HP's research, 80% want specialized AI hardware, with 70% saying they need it for greater data privacy and 80% citing rising cloud costs. The ZGX has a Nvidia GB10 Grace Blackwell chip and can deliver up to 1,000 TOPS of AI performance, according to HP.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• HP reports surging AI PC sales
• HP hones its edge AI ambitions at Amplify 2025
• The HP OmniBook X Flip 16 review: a brilliant, big, beautiful 2-in-1 laptop – and an absolute bargain

Let's cut to the chase: the HP OmniBook X Flip 16 is a brilliant laptop. This 16-inch 2-in-1 daintily pirouettes between laptop and tablet modes, the 16-inch OLED touchscreen is stupendous, and the performance from the mid-pack Intel Lunar Lake processor – both in games and productivity – is spot on.

The big surprise is the price. As with most of HP's laptop range, the OmniBook X Flip 16 is available in a variety of specifications, but our review sample comes in at a very reasonable £1,299. For that money, a bright, color-accurate OLED panel and a modest but capable specification is something of a coup.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16 : Design & connectivity

The OmniBook X Flip 16 doesn't deviate from the HP 2025 design guide – and that's no bad thing. Clad in a pale, matte silver with a subtle sparkle, HP has crafted a really good looking laptop. The OmniBook X Flip's straight lines all flow smoothly into smooth curves and rounded edges, and the inward filleting around the base adds a little character.

The visual flair goes hand in hand with good build quality. It's not rock-solid, but this feels like a premium laptop – there's a little flex in the base, but not worrying amounts. Sensibly, the lid housing the OLED touchscreen feels like the stiffer of the two parts. And despite the solid build, the 1.88kg weight is modest for a laptop of this size.

The hybrid design is well thought out, too. The hinges smoothly float through 360 degrees, and the keyboard and touchpad turn off at around the 190-degree mark. This provides all the usual 2-in-1 options: you can use the OmniBook in tent mode, and as a tablet in portrait or landscape modes. You even get a USB-C rechargeable active pen in the box for inking purposes, and it works well.

Connectivity is ample. There's a full-sized USB-A port on either edge, both of which reach 10Gbps speeds, and two USB-C ports on the left-hand side. Only one of the USB-C ports supports Thunderbolt 4, though – the other is a plain USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection. Both support USB Power Delivery 3.1, however, so you can charge the laptop from either – and both provide DisplayPort Alt functions, too. To round things off, there's also a 3.5mm headset socket and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 output.

Wireless is handled by Intel's BE201 card, and this provides Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity.

Sadly, the speakers are the least impressive part of the package. There's very little meat and bones on the audio here, and they really don't do justice to the OLED display at all. They're not unspeakably awful, but it just feels like a missed opportunity here.

Oddly enough, the speakers sound worst when they're firing forward in laptop mode. Flip the laptop around into tent mode and, even though the speakers are firing downwards into the desk, they actually sound a little more full and balanced. If you're watching movies or playing games with a gamepad, that's what we'd recommend doing.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Keyboard and touchpad

It's so nice to find so little to say about a laptop when it comes to the core essentials. The backlit keyboard is spacious and provides a nice amount of travel and feel for fuss-free typing.

It's largely free from any strange layout decisions, but we still wish manufacturers would sacrifice uniform looks for an even more spacious layout: the up and down cursor keys are still crushed into a single row, and it'd be nice to have a full height Enter key, too. After all, there's lots of room on the deck for a laptop of this size.

Again, HP's engineers have made the sensible decision to make it nigh-on impossible to turn off or send the laptop to sleep by accident. Tap the power button when the laptop is running, and nothing happens. Hold it down for a couple of seconds, and it does what you'd expect. It's a little thing, but it's important – and something which rivals often fail to think about.

Another small but welcome touch is the little status LEDs by the various toggle buttons. The Caps Lock, speaker mute, microphone mute, and power buttons all indicate when they're active. Again, a simple sign of basics done well.

The mechanical touchpad is large and almost entirely forgettable – and we mean that in a good way. It just does its job of moving cursors and clicking things without any fuss or fanfare.

The lack of a fingerprint reader is one omission, but it isn't a big deal for a laptop like this, though – the 5MP IR camera is Windows Hello compatible, and this worked perfectly in our time with the OmniBook. Image quality isn't stunning – there's a lot of grain to the image at lower light levels – but make sure to keep yourself well-lit, and colors are natural and there's enough detail to make for decent-looking video calls.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Display

The OLED display is a highlight. The 16-inch, 2,880 x 1,800 panel covers a claimed 100% of DCI-P3, provides an adaptive refresh rate from 48Hz to 120Hz, and a 0.2ms response time. Peak brightness in SDR is a claimed 400cd/m2 and 500cd/m2 in HDR.

Subjectively, those numbers translate into glorious image quality. The panel looks impeccably crisp from edge to edge, colours are wonderfully intense, and there's no shortage of brightness. It is quite simply a lovely display.

In our tests, the display put in a terrific performance. We tested against a Display P3 target, and the HP's panel was impressively accurate across the board. The average Delta E of 1.63 is superb, the white point measured a perfect 6,504k, and peak brightness reached 392cd/m2 in SDR and around 520cd/m2 in HDR. Color coverage is superb, too, as the panel reproduces 100% of DCI-P3 and an impressive 95% of Adobe RGB.

Suffice to say, this is a panel that you can legitimately use for photo and video editing and be pretty confident of color-accurate results. Or you can just enjoy the clarity and vibrancy for games and videos.

We tested HDR in Hogwarts Legacy, and thanks to the in-game HDR adjustments, we managed to get HDR looking pretty good with a little tweaking. Wonderfully deep blacks and eye-popping highlights were the order of the day.

For HDR video content, however, we had the same overexposed image issues that we encountered on the Dell XPS 13 9350. With brightness at maximum, activating HDR crushes the brighter parts of the image into a flat, uniform white. It's not until you lower the screen brightness by over 50% that the highlights in video content display properly – and then the image is too dim to be watchable. Right now, we'd point the finger at Intel's Arc Graphics drivers as the XPS 13 exhibited the same issues with its tandem OLED display. Fingers crossed that a software update rectifies the issue. For now, we'd stick with SDR video content – which, happily, looks fantastic.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Performance

The OmniBook X Flip 16 is a great showcase for Intel's mid-range Lunar Lake chips. Our review model (16-as0009na) came equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU, 16GB of on-package RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It's a modest but sensible package, and the result is a predictably solid performance in both applications and games.

The only thing we'd change here is the RAM. For £130 more, you can buy a model with double the RAM (part code: 16-as0005na), and that's well worth doing in our opinion as it gives the integrated graphics more memory to play with. In our time with the OmniBook, we encountered some stuttering in more demanding titles, such as Hogwarts Legacy, and also when we were spreading high double-digit Chrome tabs across multiple virtual desktops. We'd point the finger of blame at the 16GB of RAM here. Given that the RAM is physically on the CPU package itself, it's not something you can upgrade later, either.

The combination of a 68Wh battery and Intel's power-efficient Lunar Lake has predictable results. In our video rundown test, the OmniBook lasted for a creditable 15 hours 24 minutes. In Balanced power mode with Wi-Fi on and multiple virtual desktops in play, we tended to get well over a full working day before we had to reach for the charger.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Is it worth it?

The OmniBook X Flip 16 is a great all-rounder. It's well built, lovely to use, and the balance of power and stamina make for a laptop that's as happy sitting on a desk as it is coming on your travels. And whether it's work or play, the OLED touchscreen is a delight.

There is room for improvement here, naturally. Firstly, we'd strongly recommend opting for the pricier 32GB model, and secondly, we really wish the speakers were better. If HP could find a way to get a more full-bodied audio experience, this would be a nigh-on perfect laptop for the home – or the home office.

Even as it stands, though, this is one of our favourite laptops of 2025 so far. If you've got around £1,400 to spend on a laptop, the OmniBook X Flip 16 should be very near the top of your shopping list.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16 specifications

The Windows 11 upgrade cycle and AI PC adoption has helped HP beat sales expectations, the company says.

The device manufacturer’s recent quarterly earnings report shows revenue for the third quarter rose 3% to $13.93 billion – just ahead of analysts expectations of $13.70 billion.

Revenue in the company’s personal systems unit also rose 6% to $9.93 billion.

"In Q3 we delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of revenue growth, driven by strength in Personal Systems and strong momentum in our key growth areas," said Enrique Lores, President and CEO of HP.

HP reported growth in personal systems, with consumer devices revenue up 8% and commercial systems up 5%. But it was less successful with printing, which fell 4% to $4 billion for the quarter — despite efforts to spur on that division earlier this year by adding AI software features.

While HP had good news on PCs, the company is experiencing challenges in other domains, Lores revealed.

"In services, momentum continued with strong revenue growth year-over-year, driven mainly by digital services and managed services," Lores said in a call with analysts. "Yes, we did see softer demand in hybrid systems as companies are delaying some of their IT projects."

HP reaping the rewards of AI PC adoption

Lores said HP was finding success in shifting sales to "higher value segments", including AI PCs, those devices with the technical specification to run AI.

"We are very pleased with the accelerating demand for the AI PC category, which grew revenue double digit sequentially," he said.

"It has surpassed our expectations with shipments continuing to ramp, now reaching over 25% of our mix, a quarter ahead of our plan."

“Strong momentum” in the AI PC ecosystem has played a key role for the company, Lores added, particularly as software companies continue to introduce AI-powered tools - which have grown by double digits quarter-on-quarter.

"Key ISV partners such as Adobe and Zoom are shifting workloads locally to take advantage of the NPU," Lores told investors.

Alongside strong sales of PCs for AI tasks, Lores said that HP would continue to use AI in-house operationally.

"Beyond driving structural cost reductions, we see tremendous potential to automate additional workflows, streamline decision-making and accelerate innovation across the business," he said.

"These capabilities will help us reduce complexity and drive lower costs. You will hear more about this from us in the quarters ahead."

Strong future

The company predicted that the continued impact of the Windows 11 refresh cycle bodes well for future sales.

"Looking forward, we remain confident in the strength of the PC market opportunity, and expect continued momentum from Windows 11 refresh and AI PC adoption,” said Karen Parkhill, CFO at HP.

Lores said that HP believes the PC market will stay strong for the rest of 2025.

"We expect the market to grow mid-single digits in the second half with continued strong momentum from Windows 11 refresh and the AI PC adoption," he said. "We believe these catalysts will continue to drive PC market growth in 2026."

Political pressures

While HP has had a boost from Microsoft pushing users to upgrade to new hardware via the end of support for Windows 10 looming in October, the PC maker has also had to contend with ongoing supply chain disruption as a result of US tariffs.

Lores said in a call with analysts that previous work to shift products made for the US market out of China were nearly complete.

"This quarter, as planned, nearly all products sold in North America are now built outside of China, helping to further reduce trade-related costs," Lores said. "We continue to ramp up production across Vietnam, Thailand, Mexico and the US."

"Most importantly, we have done what we said we would. We have demonstrated we can remain agile in responding to external pressures while staying focused on our long-term strategy," he added.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• HP’s sustainability drive is paying off for channel partners
• HP wants you to start hyping up AI benefits to staff
• AI is the best way to keep your workers happy, says HP

The HP OmniStudio X is HP's answer to the iMac, only bigger, brawnier, and aimed squarely at creative professionals who want more screen real estate than Apple's flagship all-in-one offers.

HP claims the OmniStudio X, as its name suggests, is a studio-grade machine that's designed not just to replace your PC, but your entire creative setup. The model we tested features a 32-inch 4K-resolution display with an ergonomic, height-adjustable stand, an Intel Core Ultra processor paired with Nvidia RTX graphics, and a minimalist aesthetic that clearly indicates HP's pursuit of the same design-conscious crown that Apple has long held.

Unsurprisingly, this all comes at a price. The Windows all-in-one starts at £1,699 in the UK, putting it firmly in premium territory, especially when compared to more budget-friendly desktop setups. So, is the HP OmniStudio X just another flashy all-in-one, or is it a genuine contender for the creative desktop accolade?

HP OmniStudio X: Design

HP's OmniStudio X 32-inch makes a strong first impression. The all-in-one oozes premium appeal, from its expansive 4K screen framed by slender bezels to the solid aluminium stand that gives it an almost sculptural-like aesthetic. Unlike many all-in-ones, there's no bulky base or clunky plastic in sight. Instead, HP has opted for clean lines, minimal branding, and an understated matte finish – a far cry from Apple's multicoloured iMac lineup.

Setting up the OmniStudio X was easy, too. Once out of the box, you simply screw the base to the stand, and attach the latter to the monitor. It's worth noting that the 31.5-inch display is quite large and heavy, so you may need two hands for the initial setup, although no additional tools are required. The sheer heft of the OmniStudio X also means you'll need a sizable desk to accommodate it; this isn't a machine designed for small boxroom offices.

You'll also find a matching keyboard and mouse inside the box, which automatically pair with the desktop once two AAA batteries have been inserted.

One of the best things about the design of the HP OmniStudio X is that it comes loaded with ports; three USB port – one Type C and two Type A – can be found on the stand, and the back of the monitor comes equipped with three more USB ports, a HDMI-in port for using the panel as an external display, a HDMI-out port, an audio-jack, a 2.5Gbps ethernet port, and a full-size power port.

Another net design trick is the pop-up 4K webcam that neatly retracts back into the monitor when not in use, ideal for the privacy-conscious and for keeping the machine looking sleek.

HP OmniStudio X: Display

As we've mentioned, the HP OmniStudio X's display is huge. We may have struggled with our small office setup, but for those looking for a statement screen for creative work or multi-window multitasking, the 4K panel offers a ton of space – and then some.

It delivers quality-wise, too. The 3840 x 2160 resolution panel is exceptionally bright, offering richly saturated colours and deep contrast – unsurprising, given it's primarily designed for creative professionals editing in Photoshop and juggling multiple windows at once. The IPS panel also offers excellent viewing angles with minimal colour shift, even when viewed from the side.

While it's one of the best all-in-one displays we've tested, it's perhaps not the best for gaming. It's limited to a 60Hz refresh rate, which means that while it can handle some light after-work gaming, it's not designed for top-tier titles or extended gaming sessions.

HP OmniStudio X: Keyboard, mouse and webcam

As mentioned, the HP OmniStudio X ships with a bundled keyboard and mouse, which match the all-in-one's overall aesthetic.

We were impressed with the keyboard, which has a premium, cool feel like the Magic Keyboard that ships with Apple's iMac. Though it can't be adjusted beyond its built-in tilt, the low-profile keys are surprisingly responsive for such a slim peripheral. We found typing quiet, feedback tactile, and the key spacing generous, which helps reduce typos. The keyboard also features a full-size numpad, ideal for productivity tasks, and a variety of handy shortcut keys, including search, paste, and screen capture.

There's also a built-in Copilot button that fires up Microsoft's AI assistant and lets you generate images and summarise text.

Unfortunately, the mouse bundled with the HP OmniStudio X sadly doesn't live up to the premium standard set by the all-in-one itself. While it shares the same minimalist design language, it feels noticeably flimsy in the hand. The lightweight plastic construction lacks the heft and solid build you'd expect, and the buttons have a slightly hollow click that detracts from the overall experience.

Tracking is accurate enough for basic tasks, and Bluetooth connectivity is stable; however, this mouse isn't suited for more intensive use, particularly for creatives or power users who rely on precision.

The top of the HP OmniVision X houses a 5MP 1440p webcam, which is a nifty bit of engineering. Although the camera's quality is somewhat average, it conveniently pops up from a hidden panel and can be pushed back down when not in use.

HP OmniStudio X: Performance

The HP OmniStudio X features an Intel Core i7-155H processor, paired with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 GPU, 32GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD.

The Core Ultra 7 chip delivers speedy responsiveness and smooth multitasking, while the RTX 4050 brings a welcome boost for GPU-accelerated tasks, from creative software to casual gaming.

However, it's worth noting that the RTX 4050 is a mid-tier Nvidia GPU, typically found in mid-tier laptops. While it's capable enough for creative workflows and productivity tasks, it's not designed for intensive 3D rendering or high-end gaming. Power users with more demanding graphics want to find something with a bit more grunt.

During testing, the machine remained impressively quiet under pressure, with fans rarely making a fuss. The onboard 32GB of RAM allows you to run multiple heavy applications without any issues, and the 1TB SSD provides fast load times and ample space for large media files or project libraries.

HP OmniStudio X: Is it worth it?

The HP OmniStudio X is an impressive all-in-one PC that clearly aims to give Apple's iMac a run for its money, and in many ways, it succeeds. Its huge 32-inch 4K display is excellent, delivering the screen space and colour accuracy that creative professionals demand. The minimalist aluminium design not only looks high-end but feels built to last, and the wealth of ports tucked around the back is a welcome bonus.

Performance is another strong suit. With Intel's Core Ultra 7 and Nvidia's RTX 4050 under the hood, this machine is more than capable of handling demanding creative workloads, from video editing to 3D modelling. However, the mid-tier GPU may leave the most power-hungry users wanting more, particularly those working with real-time 3D or high-end gaming.

At £1,699, this isn't an impulse buy, but for professionals seeking a powerful, design-led all-in-one for creative work, the HP OmniStudio X makes a compelling case.

HP OmniStudio X specifications

It is a strange kind of legacy that we don’t talk about the pandemic anymore, but continue to develop the technologies that got us through it. It’s five years later and we are still trying to make video calls more immersive, lifelike, and engaging. Why?

We have, of course, held on tightly to remote work for its benefits; better work-life balance, access to global talent, more flexible work practices, and more simplified onboarding. While we can go outside and into the office now, we also have more reasons not to do so. What is more confusing, however, is that most of the larger tech companies are demanding their workers return to the office, while simultaneously working on improvements to video conferencing software.

This leads us to Project Starline, which has finally made it out into the world, albeit with a more Star Trek-friendly name: ‘Google Beam’. The change seems frankly pointless as it's not directly being launched by Google. Instead, hardware partners will incorporate the technology into their own products and, you guessed it, use a different name. So ‘Beam’, ‘Starline’, whatever, it’s largely a waste of marketing.

HP is the first company to preview new hardware that incorporates Beam and has gone its own way on the naming with the rather forgettable moniker, ‘HP Dimension’. HP’s model will cost enterprise businesses (or extravagant startups) a whopping $24,000 and that price does not include the software you need to actually hold any calls. Businesses will have to fork out for a separate Google Beam license to use Google Meet or Zoom on the device and there aren’t any details on how much that costs, as yet.

What you get, for $24,999, is a 65in light field display with six high-speed cameras inside a thin frame, which work to create a lifelike 3D video of the person you’re video calling. Not your standard video call, not digital tiles of your work colleagues and bosses, but a “truly immersive” experience, according to HP.

It is a phenomenal piece of science and engineering and whole teams of technicians and programmers should be pleased with themselves. But like the guys that brought dinosaurs back to life in Jurassic Park, they were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

Why are we spending so much time on this? There is nothing in the business world worth meeting over that will be made more enjoyable or more inclusive with super high-definition visuals and crystal-clear audio.

I mean, how detailed do I need my boss’ face to be when all the meeting is for is to tell me about the monthly strategy? A weekly catch-up with my line manager is not made more enjoyable by seeing her in 3D. She’s not a summer blockbuster. I don’t come prepared with popcorn. I don’t need the guilt of turning my camera off when the company installs a $25k monitor.

And this is the problem with Google Beam, or whatever it eventually gets known as: it’s not a serious way to conduct business. Similar to Facebook/Meta and its Metaverse nonsense that made everything look like Wii Sports – thank god that never caught on.

We don’t need more immersive meetings or more reasons to have virtual ones. No amount of visual clarity will improve productivity – sometimes it literally can be an email.

This year HP Inc brought its annual Amplify partner conference to Music City, Nashville – but it wasn’t guitar notes the hardware giant wanted to project.

AI the edge was the overriding theme this year at the Gaylord Opryland resort, with AI PCs front and center and an ensemble of other AI-equipped devices close behind.

It’s clear HP has gone all in on Copilot PCs, Microsoft’s designation for the new class of AI-native Windows devices, as HP completes its overhaul of its consumer and commercial PC roster ready for what it has billed a new generation of PCs sporting neural processing units (NPUs) for AI computation.

In addition to its physical offerings, HP has put the spotlight on independent software vendors (ISVs) to how business users were going to be able to leverage local AI compute to their advantage. This was the case throughout last year’s HP Amplify AI event in New York, which fired the starting pistol on HP’s AI PC aspirations.

This year its lineup of AI-enabled PCs became more extensive, as well as more fleshed out. HP has used the event to build out its commercial PC and workstation portfolio, to ensure it could offer users an AI PC for as many enterprise use cases as possible.

On stage at the opening keynote of Amplify 2025 Alex Cho, president of Personal Systems at HP, said that while last year’s AI PCs showed ambition, HP was now turning this into reality and dubbing the event the “big bang” moment for HP’s AI PCs.

“We are announcing today the world's largest AI PC portfolio, the world's largest,” Cho said. “I don't have one product here to show with you today, because we have over 60 new platforms that we have completely redesigned to enable AI like never before.”

Last year, the industry still had questions about whether AI PCs were ready for the mainstream and whether the software landscape had caught up with this new hardware. These questions still remain and HP is addressing them head on.

For example, Cho announced HP’s new AI ISV acceleration program, aimed at catalyzing new AI application development for its device ecosystem.

“We have collated over 100 top tier AI applications that are applicable across multiple job types to enable the future of work,” Cho said. “Last year it was a spark of an idea, this time we’re delivering it big time.”

HP made a concerted effort throughout Amplify Conference 2025 to show progress is being made in this area and there is no doubt the wider software landscape for AI is maturing, though whether it is quite ready to create meaningful value for businesses right now remains to be seen. Regardless, AI PC adoption looks to be on the cards for many businesses as Windows 10 end-of-life beckons towards the end of the year and more enterprises adopt the AI-enabled Windows 11.

Recent IDC research projected AI PCs will account for 93.9% of the commercial market by 2028, with 60% of surveyed IT leaders indicating they plan on replacing their old fleet with new Windows 11 PCs rather than simply updating the operating systems of existing devices.

This shows the appetite is there from end users, and HP thinks they will quickly see returns on investing in AI PCs capable of running LLMs locally. For example, HP began deploying AI PCs internally last May across a range of users and found that on average individuals were able to save four hours per week in terms of productivity benefits.

AI PCs as a first step toward AI at the edge

In a recorded conversation shown onstage at the event Lisa Su, chair and CEO at AMD, told Enrique Lores, CEO at HP, that she expects every PC in the future to have an AI component.

The notion that the distinction between AI PCs and regular PCs will disappear down the line was frequently hit on at Amplify Conference 2025. But David McQuarrie, chief commercial officer at HP, added that while he agrees with the broad trend, the dividing lines between the two remain useful for now.

McQuarrie said there will be many non AI PCs that continue to sell, admitting this number will most likely be “more than we would like”, but detailed why he is telling customers the time is now to get on board and transition to next-generation hardware:

“What we counsel customers, we have had a number of customers here this week, is ‘begin now’.

“If you’re a 10,000 employee company, there are some that will switch all 10,000 devices and we have those conversations, but we need them to get started,” he said, adding that those who don’t ready their hardware soon could face long-term impacts. “If they don’t get started and figure out how to get the best from it, we worry that those companies will be left behind.”

Lores and all HP executives were clear throughout Amplify 2025 that AI PCs will soon hit the mainstream. They also set out their vision to drive AI at the edge, so customers can take advantage of the cost, security, and latency advantages of running AI where data resides rather than the other way around.

The company’s belief is that smaller, more targeted models will be the future of how AI is used in industry . Although AI PCs were easily the most obvious area HP were focused on driving this AI at the edge vision, Lores emphasized that the overarching goal was to drive this change across its portfolio.

HP aims to form a hybrid approach to AI with both AI at the edge and cloud-based AI working in tandem across its ecosystem. Eventually, HP wants to infuse all of its devices with AI, with new AI printer features announced at the event. The company’s target is to build out a complete portfolio of AI-enabled devices that provide a consistent ‘OneHP’ experience which can all connect seamlessly.

The next big goal is to develop a new industry standard for connectivity to make this a possibility and ensuring CIOs and IT DMs the tools to manage this new portfolio of devices.

AI PCs are just the tip of the iceberg for what HP says will be a big shift towards a tech stack defined by local AI capabilities and the firm will continue to build out this portfolio anticipating a new era of agentic AI where the hardware is able to support running agents locally.

We’re not there yet, but this is the next big ambition HP is trying to turn into a reality. For now, however, HP can use its AI PCs as a good litmus test for customer uptake and value generation. Much rests on these devices – at next year’s event, we’ll all be able to pore over the results for ourselves.

The sustainability of technology vendors' distribution channel could hold many back from meeting their ESG targets, and HP has made efforts to ensure its partners are onboard with them on its sustainability journey.

HP set itself the goal of becoming the most sustainable technology company in the world and as a company that claims to have the channel as part of its DNA, aligning partner organizations towards this goal was vital for success.

Four years ago HP introduced its global channel sustainability, Amplify Impact, to do just that, setting itself the goal that by 2025 more than 50% of its Amplify partners would take part in the program.

On stage at HP Amplify 2025 in Nashville, Kobi Elbaz, SVP and GM of global revenue operations, shared that HP has met this target. The next step, he said, will be to continue working with channel partners to ensure it can meet its larger goal of leading the tech industry in sustainability.

Speaking to ITPro, Mary Beth Walker, head of global channel strategy at HP, set out why HP needed to build the program to stay on track to meet its 2030 aspiration.

“We realized a few years ago that if we wanted to be the most sustainable technology company in the world, which is our goal by 2030, we can’t do business with partners who don’t care about sustainability and customers don’t necessarily want to buy from partners who don’t care about sustainability.”

Walker noted that a large part of this program centered around sharing the sustainability learnings HP had developed internally to its channel partners via the Amplify Impact program.

“It started out as a program to really help partners, especially smaller partners, take advantage of all the money that we had invested in sustainability training. They can’t afford to do that so let’s just share our training with them,” she explained.

“We also shared road maps for them to create a sustainability strategy, to be able to know how to produce a sustainability report and basically create the credentials that they need to be able to show customers that they have the capabilities and care about sustainability so customers want to do business with them.”

Sales boosts for HP channel partners

Walker said the results have shown channel partners who have committed to the program and received higher sustainability ratings through the Impact system have experienced a marked increase in sales.

“It’s been very successful, and the partners who have got those ratings are seeing the benefits in their sales,” she announced.

“We started getting statistics last year and the partners who are part of the program and established even a three star rating, 70% of them said that they got more sales this year than last year because of that.”

Not all HP’s partners have embraced the Impact program, however, with Walker acknowledging the firm has seen "diversity" in terms of how much value certain countries have attached to the program.

She noted that HP is leaning into the areas of the world where this is the case to maximize global impact.

Walker added that HP has not come up with a plan for a potential scenario where non-compliant channel partners are holding it back from meeting its 2030 target, but ultimately that channel partners cannot afford to not have a sustainability strategy in place.

MORE FROM ITPRO

• HP's AI printer push continues with new edge capabilities and security features
• HP just launched the world’s first business PCs designed to protect firmware against quantum hacking
• HP shows the AI PC ecosystem is starting to bear fruit

Threat actors are exploiting users’ familiarity with verification tests to trick them into loading malware onto their systems, new research has warned.

A report from HP Wolf Security highlighted multiple threat campaigns where hackers took advantage of the fact users are forced to jump through a growing number of hoops to prove they are a legitimate user.

The report describes this trend as ‘click tolerance’, where the prevalence of authentication protocols has led to users being accustomed to follow steps given to them.

In the cases observed by HP, the attackers used fake CAPTCHAs to redirect users to attacker-controlled sites which prompted them into completing a number of fake authentication steps.

As users progress through these steps, the website copies malicious code to their clipboard and subsequently prompts the victim to press a number of shortcuts that open a ‘run’ dialog and execute the code directly on their system.

Speaking to ITPro , Ian Pratt, global head of security at HP, said attacks like this are not necessarily new but this campaign stood out as it actually gets the victim to infect themselves, which helps the attackers bypass traditional security products.

“It’s certainly not the first time it’s been done but it’s been done really well and it’s being done at a scale we haven’t seen before,” he noted.

“It’s a really good way of bypassing a lot of security products because effectively the user typed it into the run box. It’s not like they downloaded a script. There was no file that the antivirus could look at and make a decision about. They just hit CTRL + V and it ran.”

What happens after you click

Much like previous social engineering tactics that relied on MFA fatigue to steal user’s one time passcodes (OTPS), this campaign illustrates how additional security protections also breeds new types of complacency attackers can exploit.

Pratt said this campaign relies on the idea that users are used to completing tedious authentication measures and often can’t distinguish between legitimate procedures and malicious ones.

“People are being trained that sometimes a screen is going to appear and then you’re going to have to click through it. Maybe you’ll be logging in, maybe it's just but people do it without thinking now and attackers are exploiting that with these fake CAPTCHAs.”

He argued that this has laid bare an obvious shortcoming in employee security training, noting that it’s important phishing training and other security awareness programs put more emphasis on what users do after they fall for the initial deception in the attack chain.

“I think that the most important part of phishing training is going forwards… what they should be adding to what they’re doing is that it’s actually what happens after you click that’s most important,” he explained.

“After you clicked on that thing, was it what you expected, was the content correct. Did anything seem off at that point? The most important thing you can do is report it because we’re seeing a lot of effort being put into the lures but not necessarily a lot of effort being put into the thing that you can get taken to, often it will be completely irrelevant content or a command shell flashes up on your screen.

“Anything suspicious like that, that’s the best opportunity of spotting that something’s gone wrong and then to disconnect your laptop from the network and go and call someone. That’s the big one.”

MORE FROM ITPRO

• Malware-free attacks surged in 2024 as attackers drop malicious software for legitimate tools
• Why 'malware as a service' is becoming a serious problem for enterprises
• Hunter-killer malware is on the rise, and security experts are seriously concerned

HP has enhanced its partner program to encourage channel partners to sell its entire range of products and solutions as it expands its portfolio, targeting long-term growth with a diversified go-to market strategy.

Speaking at the firm’s annual Amplify 2025 conference, HP chief executive Enrique Lores said the company’s goal was to provide a more unified and consistent experience for end-users across its tech stack, and it was adapting its channel strategy to support this new ‘OneHP’ vision.

First of all, HP is restructuring its compensation system to incentive partners to meet and exceed their sales targets across four key pillars of the HP ecosystem: personal systems, print, services, and peripherals.

HP will build on its More for More benefit, introduced in 2023, which included a rate multiplier to boost sales and compensation from its partners, to include the entire HP portfolio of products and solutions.

Under this structure, partners that met their targets in a particular area would have their base compensation accelerated, and with Amplify SuperPower Booster, partners that meet their targets in each of HP’s four verticals could potentially earn up to 40% more than they do today.

The SuperPower Booster will come into effect from 1 May 2025, and in addition to incentivizing portfolio-wide sales, HP has also added further tools to support channel partners in this area.

This includes resources like a dedicated AI partner companion that can answer questions on the HP tech stack so sales reps can quickly get up to speed on the entire portfolio as well as a new sales experience tool to boost partner productivity.

HP makes channel changes to support new diversified vision

Speaking to ITPro, Mary Beth Walker, head of global channel strategy at HP, said these changes reflect the company’s efforts to support partners as HP has diversified its business over recent years.

“Over the last few years we’ve really diversified what’s in our portfolio. We used to be fairly print and PC [focused], now we’ve both acquired and built peripherals, we’ve pretty aggressively built services and solutions, and not all of our partners 1) are used to or 2) have built selling across the portfolio into their strategy.”

Walker tied this change into HP’s wider OneHP vision and growth strategy, where customers see recurring value from adding HP products and services to their stack and future deals can become more lucrative as a result.

“We think that selling everything helps the customer. So we want [partners] to be able to sell across [the stack] and, from a growth perspective, deals are more profitable when you include services and so on,. so we really want entire partners to do that.”

Walker added that the new incentives and bolstered partner support ecosystem could also include supplanting competition in new areas of the market for HP, such as peripherals.

“This is a way for us to have [partners] not only sell across the portfolio, but potentially, because we can entice them now with this compensation benefit, sell our stuff instead of a competitor,” she explained.

“For instance, with the Poly peripherals that we bought, maybe they’re selling a lot of Jabra right now. We can say ‘Hey, if you sell ours instead then we’re going to make that worthwhile for you.’

MORE FROM ITPRO

• HP wants you to start hyping up AI benefits to staff
• HP just launched the world’s first business PCs designed to protect firmware against quantum hacking
• HP shows the AI PC ecosystem is starting to bear fruit

HP recently announced sweeping changes to its portfolio of enterprise notebooks this year – and a handful of lines including the Spectre, Pavilion, and (mournfully) the Dragonfly were ditched. We understand why – the nomenclature was confusing and there were too many models to choose from. Now, you can pick from the OmniBook or the Envy.

So with new and shiny Copilot+ AI PC-infused laptops coming out left, right, and center, you may ask: why bother reviewing a discontinued machine in the first place? There are several reasons, including the fact you're likely to grab a great deal on a machine with mileage. You may not need the newest AI features too (courtesy of an NPU, which this device lacks). For under $1,000, packaged with an Intel Core Ultra 7 CPU and an OLED display, the HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na) is a strong candidate if you're looking for a cut-price hardware refresh.

HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na): Design and display

We weren't blown away by the HP Envy x360's overall look and feel, despite the existence of unsightlier options on the market. Unlike the 14-inch Spectre x360, the Envy x360 curved edge design gives it a bulkier look despite occupying the same dimensions – and its matted Meteor Silver finish resembles more of a corporate gray. Despite its recycled aluminum chassis, it also feels plasticky – but you can forgive all this in light of its pricing. On the plus side, it's highly portable at just 1.39kg, making it one of HP's lightest 2-in-1s, and perfect for working on the go or carrying while you're out and about.

This overtly grayscale design language carries through to the laptop's keyboard and touchpad – which seem devoid of much life. You would hope this makes the colors in its OLED screen pop even more, but the 14in 16:10 panel's vibrant colors and deep blacks appear less impressive given how dim the screen looks to the naked eye. This was backed up in our display testing. Despite boasting 100% accuracy of the sRGB color spectrum – an impressive feat alongside 0 cd/m2 black level and 1:infinity contrast ratio – it achieved a brightness of just 360 cd/m2.

OLED panels tend to be dimmer than LCD displays due to the lack of backlighting – which is a compromise that's often worth making. But here, it seems unnecessary. Anybody regularly working with media or video files will likely invest in a much beefier machine with more firepower and a dedicated GPU – and most other tasks simply don't need an OLED screen.

HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na): Performance and battery life

The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip – paired with 16GB RAM – performed decently in our benchmarking tests and achieved an expected 2,122 for single-threaded performance alongside a below-average 8,365 in the multitasking test. It's not a major red flag considering its price; by contrast, the 14-inch HP Spectre x360 (fitted with 32GB RAM and costs nearly twice as much) registered a weaker score in the single-threaded test and a marginally better score of 10,480 in the multi-tasking result.

You wouldn't expect fireworks from its Intel Graphics component – and a decent score of 16,118 in our Geekbench 6 benchmarking meets our expectations. It's one of the weaker options out there when looking for a new laptop, however. Qualcomm's Hexagon chip fitted into the newer AI PCs score slightly better (19,000 to 21,000) in our experience, while Intel Arc Graphics trumps them all – with the HP Spectre x360's chip registering 24,993.

That said, it's a considerable step up from last-gen's integrated Intel Iris Xe Graphics option. Where we were disappointed was in the 512 GB SSD's data transfer speeds – with a CrystalDiskMark score of 3,335 MB/s for reads and 2,732 MB/s for writes relatively sluggish at the sight of many other machines and internal/external SSDs out there. So we wouldn't recommend the machine if you often find yourself moving massive amounts of data between devices and storage solutions.

The 2-in-1's battery life was another underwhelming note. A lifespan of 11hrs 10mins in our looped video playback testing was once considered a good result; it's more than a full working day – and 40mins more than HP's own claim. But it's also underwhelming when you compare it with the many of its contemporaries which can hit 14-plus hours. For example, the AMD version of this very same laptop can last 14hrs 45mins, according to HP.

HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na): Features

Using the 2-in-1 to type was enjoyable thanks to the crisp and snappy keys with a sizeable travel distance to them. There were few complaints to make, given their size and spacing, apart from a half-sized enter key. The touchpad, on the other hand, was rigged with problems despite being well-sized. It feels highly grating to navigate using your fingers (akin to the feeling of fingernails running down a chalkboard) and sometimes unresponsive when you try to use the right-click button. The solution might be to get a mouse, but this won't cut it if you need the laptop to work on the move.

As with any modern HP device, meanwhile, there is a slew of security features you would expect to benefit from when you set this up and a handful of entry-level AI PC features. The 'walk away lock' and 'wake on approach' features are neat touches when it comes to security – while we also enjoyed the AI-powered anti-shoulder surfing measures, which notify you when you're in public that somebody may be close behind. As always, the AI-powered video conferencing features are excellent – including background blur, AI noise removal, eye contact tracking, and auto-framing – which apply across various different services.

Its ports were another selling point, with two USB-A ports (including one with HP Sleep and Charge support), one HDMI 2.1 port, and two USB-C ports (including one with Thunderbolt 4 support) alongside a 3.5mm headphone jack. Given plenty of laptops have ditched USB-A, this is certainly a win. The 2-in-1 also benefits from a camera privacy switch, assigned to the F1 key. There is no fingerprint sensor, but you can log in with facial recognition.

HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na): Is it worth it?

HP has moved on from the Envy line, but that doesn't mean the 14-inch variant has nothing left to offer. Enterprises looking for a capable machine that's a few steps above entry-level, but doesn't blow the bank, would do well to consider the HP Envy x360 14-fc0009na despite several flaws that dock a few points off. It performs admirably for its price tag and is enjoyable to type with. The display could be much brighter, sure. The battery life could also be much longer, and the SSD a bit faster – but this is very much par for the course with a laptop that's around the $1,000 mark. Ultimately, it offers very capable hardware and a handful of entry-level AI features alongside some great security tools to keep you protected while you're working on the go while letting you go light on the budget.

HP Envy x360 (14-fc0009na): Specifications

Enterprise PC purchasers face a confusing state of affairs as revenue and share prices dip at some of the leading device manufacturers.

Dell posted fourth quarter revenue expectations below Wall Street expectations according to reporting by Reuters, with executives noting that enterprise customers are being mindful of their PC and IT spending in the short term at a post-earnings conference call.

The firm said it expects revenue to be between $24 billion and $25 billion, while analyst estimates forecast revenue to be $25.57 billion, according to the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG).

HP is having a similar issue, posting first-quarter profit that was also below Wall Street expectations in a revelation that sent the firm’s share price down by 8%.

Both leading PC manufacturers are facing a number of challenges according to Andrew Hewitt, principal analyst at Forrester, with traditional PC demand and AI PC demand in a state of flux.

“The low earnings and revenue certainly demonstrate that manufacturers are in a bit of a lull at the moment,” Hewitt told ITPro.

“OEMs are dealing with multiple compounding factors: a pandemic-era fleet of devices that's set for refresh but not quite there yet, an impending Windows 10 end of service in 2025, and the prospect of a sizeable ramp up in AI PC adoption in 2025,” he added.

This has put enterprise buyers in a “state of confusion,” Hewitt said - many aren’t sure if they are ready to invest in AI PCs while others don’t have the hardware to support the transition to Windows 11. This is manifesting the returns seen from OEMs, he added.

Better times ahead? 

Despite worrying returns from these big name manufacturers, Hewitt expects the market to bounce back, and some research seems to support the claim.

“I do expect this trend to be short-lived. The PC has and will remain (for quite a while at least) the dominant productivity tool in the enterprise,” Hewitt said.

“I'd expect the market to start moving faster in the second half of 2025 due to increasing AI PC demand combined with an opportune time to upgrade devices: the Windows 10 end of service in October 2025,” he added.

In April 2024, research firm Canalys reported that global shipments of desktops and notebooks grew 3.2% to 57.2 million units in the first quarter of 2024. Notebook shipments specifically were up 4.2% to 45.1 million units, while desktop shipments were down by 0.4% at 12.1 million units.

Gartner predicted a rebound in the PC market back in late 2023, suggesting that the slump had “bottomed out” and that a return to growth could be expected in 2024.

While Dell and HP’s earnings don’t necessarily align with Gartner's prediction, the analyst consensus appears to be that the PC market is set for a period of growth at least some time in the near future.

There are some reservations in the channel as well though, with research from Canalys suggesting that many aren’t enthusiastic about AI PCs despite being a fan of AI more generally.

More than a third don't plan on selling Copilot+ PCs next year, with a further 34% telling Canalys they expect such devices to make up less than 10% of their device sales across 2025.

The research found that the underlying value of AI PCs was not sufficiently clear to channel partners or their customers, in part due to a lack of availability.

Amazon has confirmed that a security incident affecting a third-party vendor has exposed employee information.

The incident saw data allegedly belonging to employees at a host of major tech firms leaked, with the data believed to have been stolen during the 2023 MOVEit breach.

An Amazon spokesperson told ITPro its internal systems remain secure, insisting the incident was isolated to one of its third-party property management systems.

“Amazon and AWS systems remain secure, and we have not experienced a security event. We were notified about a security event at one of our property management vendors that impacted several of its customers including Amazon.”

The statement added that the published information was limited to employee contact information, as well as some location data.

“The only Amazon information involved was employee work contact information, for example work email addresses, desk phone numbers, and building locations.”

Amazon did not confirm how many employees were impacted by the breach.

The tech giant isn’t the only major organization impacted in the data dump. HP, Lenovo, and other parties including HSBC and MetLife have allegedly been impacted in the breach.

ITPro has contacted the organizations for confirmation.

Leaked by a cyber criminal using the moniker ‘Nam3L3ss’, the cache is said to include a variety of employee data including names, email addresses, phone numbers, cost center codes, and, in some cases, entire organizational structures of the affected parties.

Nam3L3ss claims to have over 2.8 million records stolen from Amazon in particular, as well as half a million taken from life insurance company MetLife.

The total number of records published in the initial release was nearly five million lines of data, affecting 25 large organizations.

Nam3L3ss claimed that what they have released so far is less than 0.001% of the data they have in their possession, alleging they have 1,000 releases coming with data that has never been seen before.

The threat actor, who claims not to be a hacker, said the information was taken during the May 2023 MOVEit attacks.

Hackers affiliated with the Cl0p threat collective exploited a zero-day vulnerability in Progress’s MOVEit file transfer protocol, used by thousands of large organizations around the world.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-34362, was an SQL injection flaw identified in the MOVEit Transfer web application that was leveraged by the threat actors to gain access to MOVEit Tranfer’s database.

The OmniBook X 14 is a big deal for HP, representing the first entry in its revived OmniBook brand since 2002, and its first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered Copilot+ PC. This isn't the first HP laptop to use Qualcomm's tech – you may remember the innovative faux-leather bound EliteBook Folio that launched back in 2021 – but the OmniBook X 14 is a far more mainstream proposition. And with the OmniBook line replacing HP's existing Pavilion and Envy laptop lines, it needs to be; like the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 this is an AI-enhanced small business and consumer laptop, targeting much the same audience as Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air.

If so, the OmniBook X 14 is competitively priced. At £1199, The base 14-fe0001na version is £150 more expensive than the entry-level 13.8in Surface Laptop 7, but it uses the 12-core Snapdragon X Elite XE78100 processor rather than the 10-core Snapdragon X Plus, and has double the 256GB of SSD storage. A similarly configured Surface Laptop 7 would set you back £1449. Meanwhile, the equivalent MacBook Air, with an 8-Core CPU, 10-Core GPU, and 512GB SSD would cost you £1299, plus an extra £200 to upgrade the 8GB of RAM to 16GB. With a 1TB SSD and 16GB, our 14-fe0000na test sample comes in at £1299. As a value proposition, the OmniBook X 14 looks very tempting indeed.   

HP OmniBook X 14: Design

It also looks very tempting in the flesh, thanks to an all-aluminum, slim-and-light design that only begs more comparisons with the new Surface Laptop and the MacBook Air. It's a compact 313 x 224mm unit not much larger than the 14-inch screen, despite a good 8mm of bezel above the display and 17mm below. It's just 14.4mm thick at the rear of the laptop, tapering to 14.3mm at the front. The aluminum shell seems seamless from the top, with the only ventilation at the rear and under the base. There's nothing spectacular or anything you haven't seen before, but it's going to look good anywhere from the living room to the boardroom, while the construction feels solid and well-engineered.

The downside of the slim dimensions is fairly minimal connectivity, with just two USB Type-C ports on the left-hand side and a single USB Type-A port on the right. What's more, only one of the two ports supports 40Gbits/sec USB 4.0 speeds, while the other is stuck on 10Gbits/sec USB 3.2 Gen 2. On top of that, one Type-C port will be required occasionally for charging. If you plan to connect to a desktop setup, you're going to want a USB Type-C dock. Still, HP wins a few points back for providing a rather neat slimline USB Type-C charger with a distinctive fabric-covered cable. 

HP also gets a lot right with the keyboard. For one thing the layout is hard to fault, with large, well-spaced keys, decent-sized shift keys, and functional cursors in the bottom-right corner, even if these double up as the navigation keys. And while there's not a huge amount of travel, the action is crisp and fast. Meanwhile, the touchpad makes up for its limited area – 12.5 x 8cm is about as big as you can go on a laptop of this size –  with excellent accuracy and responsive tracking. Anyone using the OmniBook X 14 as their daily driver shouldn't have any serious complaints.  

HP OmniBook X 14: Display

If there's one area where the OmniBook X 14 falls slightly short, it's the 14-inch IPS display. There's nothing really wrong with it; the 2,240 x 1400 resolution gives you ample clarity and detail at this screen size, and color reproduction is reasonably good. It's capable of showing 99.9% of the sRGB color gamut, 76% of Adobe RGB, and 81% of DCI-P3. In my color accuracy tests, the average Delta E was just 1.55. 

However, HP specifies a maximum brightness of only 300cd/m2, and in our tests, we recorded 290cdm/2. In isolation, in a room without too much bright sunlight, it still looks pretty good, but put it against other laptops in the same class and it's slightly dim. While it has the resolution of a £1,000+ laptop screen, the overall image doesn't quite match up. It's not a serious issue in everyday office work, but it can impact visibility when you're watching dimly-lit scenes in TV shows or films, and you might wish there was more zing if you're engaged in creative work.

This is a shame, as the sound is surprisingly rich and powerful for a thin-and-light laptop, working well for both entertainment and video meetings and calls. We were also impressed by the output from the 1080p webcam, which provided clear and well-exposed video, particularly with the aid of the new Copilot+ PC Studio Effects for enhanced lighting and background portrait blurs.

HP OmniBook X 14: Performance

We've already seen from the Asus Vivobook S15 that the Snapdragon X Elite can be a formidable CPU, delivering impressive results across both single-core and multi-core benchmarks, and excelling in the latter. Here it's not quite so far, presumably as a result of the smaller form factor and a power profile that prioritizes low noise. Where the Asus's fans could be heard to kick in during demanding activities, the OmniBook X 14 barely makes a whisper.

In Geekbench 6, for example, the Vivobook scored 2427 in the single-core tests and 14337 in the multi-core. The OmniBook X 14 scores 2315 and 12585 respectively. In the Cinebench R24 rendering benchmark – the first to support ARM CPUs without emulation – the HP scores 87 (single-core) and 808 (multi-core) against 941 and 2804 from the Asus. To put this in perspective, though, this is still a fast machine. The Asus VivoBook Pro 15 OLED, with a Core Ultra 7 155H, scored just 12612 in the Geekbench 6 multi-core test, and nobody would accuse it of being a slowcoach. 

As with the Vivobook S15, performance is slick and speedy in apps built to run on an ARM architecture, and more than good enough in apps running under emulation, provided they actually work (some notable applications including Adobe InDesign and Illustrator still don't at the time of writing). However, more demanding 3D applications, including games, can still leave the Snapdragon X Elite struggling. Where we'd expect to see a Core Ultra 7 155H scoring between 2700 and 3500 in the 3D Mark TimeSpy benchmark, the OmniBook X 14 scores just 1810. That also puts it a long way behind the Asus Zenbook S16 with its AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX370 processor, which scored 3725. 

We're still experimenting with AI benchmarks, but in the Geekbench ML test the OmniBook X 14 scored higher than the VivoBook S15, with a score of 2914 to the Asus's 2804. All the same, it trails the AMD-powered Zenbook S16, which, with a score of 3308, is the top dog in this benchmark at the moment.

Still, the OmniBook X 14 reigns supreme in another crucial area: battery life. Running our standard video loop test it survived for an astonishing 19 hours and 27 minutes before dropping into hibernation, putting it ahead of even Apple's stamina champs. We suspect that more of us prize battery life over raw performance these days, and right now nothing can stay functional for longer without a recharge than the HP OmniBook X 14.

HP OmniBook X 14: Is it worth it?

Yes. While it doesn't perform quite as well as the Asus VivoBook S15, it's a slimmer, lighter laptop with incredible battery life. It's also fantastic value when you compare it to other laptops with a similar form factor, including the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 and MacBook Air. The one thing that really goes against it is the underwhelming screen, but while it doesn't go as bright as we would like it to, the resolution and color reproduction aren't a serious concern. It might be an OLED panel short of greatness, but the OmniBook X 14 is an excellent buy. 

HP OmniBook X 14 specifications

When it comes to finding the best laptop – whether for typing up notes or dabbling in some photo editing, I'm harder to impress than a cat at teatime. My journey as a technology reporter has spoiled me – I am to laptops as a Decanter editor is to wine.

So far I've come face to face with devices of all different shapes and sizes, from heavy-duty enterprise workstations to foldable 4-in-1s and everything in between. But one device that has stood above the rest of the pack is the ethereal HP Elite Dragonfly G1.

If there is any device that has come close to achieving cult status it is this. Draped in a distinctive navy blue finish and lighter than a bag of rice, it may not have been as precision-engineered as the Dell XPS or as corporate as we know Dynabooks can be. But it was an unexpected winning formula precisely because it was absolutely mad.

It didn't fit into any particular category neatly; a passion project in search of a market, but one that still oozed class and character – and crucially weighed under 1kg. Indeed it was, for its time, a pricy but powerful enterprise essential, as I wrote in my review.

The HP Elite Dragonfly: A mad idea to begin with

I still remember picking it up for the first time. HP had invited a handful of journalists to a mysterious device launch in a swanky Central London location. It was vastly preferable to how we'd normally receive review units (exchange a few emails with the PR and be sent a package through the post). Plus, they were providing snacks.

What followed was a slick presentation with precision-engineered messaging extolling the virtues of this unique machine. I was escorted to the roof, where HP representatives flew in the device via drone, delivering the machine as if I were Tom Cruise on assignment. Plenty of devices with better hardware and new features have come and gone since, but nothing has hit the same.

Since then, the Dragonfly line has undergone a few revisions – not all for the better. For example, its trademark finish was unceremoniously canned in the Dragonfly G3 for a more conventional (read: stale) silver, which persisted in last year's G4. This was emblematic of the wider trend we've seen – until AI entered the picture.

The AI PC era has been sweeping wholesale changes across the industry — packing devices with a renewed burst of energy. Now the latest laptops are all fitted with basic GPUs, and we're not just talking about processing power, but TOPS, thanks to dedicated neural processing units (NPUs). My thoughts immediately turned to the Dragonfly; if there is any machine primed to take advantage of this moment, it must surely be this?

Imagine a sub-2.2lb (1 kg), 2-in-1 fitted with a stunning 3:2 display that can rotate on a 360-hinge in a chassis that feels incredibly high quality. Beneath the bonnet, you would find an excellently optimized Arm-based Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, an Intel ARC GPU, and a 55 TOPS NPU to boot – all while boasting plenty of ports like HDMI and USB-A as well as the latest security and connectivity features.

Sadly, my dreams were shattered when I learned that HP has ruthlessly discontinued this series, leaving the Elite Dragonfly in the dust of its new "streamlined" portfolio of boring and clunkily branded machines (sorry, I am indeed very bitter). Yes, I know it's a bit extra to mourn a series of laptops, but I'm not alone. Reddit forums were lighting up with enthusiasts swilling in shared grief for what was among the most unique and impressive enterprise-centric machines we've seen. Perhaps to its detriment, its creators engineered something that simply doesn't exist anywhere else.

AI PCs must not slide into blandness

Let's be clear – I'm not just dumping on HP. The PC market has been getting a little stale lately, and the cost of living (and doing business) crisis has had a latent and compounding effect on what we can and can't spend. After two years of decline, PC shipments only got back to growth in April, according to IDC. Innovation has persisted in pockets, especially with foldables and portable desktops, but by and large there was nothing really new or genuinely compelling screaming out to businesses that are, on the whole, happy to supply their employees with five-year-old relics.

AI PCs might change this, mostly because they are genuinely impressive. The latest laptops are configured with excellent Arm-based hardware and NPUs that take on plenty of battery-draining workloads that GPUs or CPUs might have handled. The result? Much better battery life. Windows Studio Effects is also a game-changer for online meetings – letting you set up your webcam as you like it, agnostic of your video conferencing software.

In the rush to market new AI PCs to businesses in dire need of a hardware refresh, it's easy to see how nobody's willing to take a risk. I am sure almost every machine in the AI PC line-up (scroll to the bottom) is a fantastic piece of kit. All use the latest Snapdragon chips coupled with excellent GPUs and NPUs. Some may have dazzling OLED displays and others may last you for more than two days.

But OEMS must also remember that specs, technical quality, and even the engineering that goes into these devices, are only one part of the equation. This may sound odd, but laptops and 2-in-1s are effectively an extension of the self, especially in the era of home-working where you rely on it for pretty much everything including blowing off steam with colleagues. It’s hard not to become attached. OEMs must, therefore, ensure their AI PCs exude not just technical proficiency but a certain emotional quality and genuine character.

The HP Elite Dragonfly was a mad proposition that nobody asked for but one that inadvertently ticked all those boxes, for me at least. It was, simply, an absolute joy to use. I'm sad to see the back of it but I can't lose hope that somebody, somewhere, in a lab at Dell, HP, Lenovo, or any other device making company, will be bold enough to devise a machine that makes all others feel, well, just a little bit ordinary.

Despite vendor enthusiasm, analysts have been clear they do not think 2024 is going to be the year that sees PCs with dedicated hardware for AI workloads enter the mainstream.

But as software catches up to the new hardware, it may be time for the industry to take these devices seriously and take a deeper look at how they can add value through AI-enhanced computers.

At least, this was the main goal of HP’s Imagine AI event, where it launched its flagship Copilot+ device – the OmniBook Ultra 14. In reality, the spotlight was really on the independent software vendors who will actually drive the migration toward the next generation of PCs.

HP brought out a string of independent software vendors (ISVs) who are developing solutions that will take advantage of the new processing power on AI PCs to run workloads locally. 

The focus was firmly on demonstrating how the AI software ecosystem is well on its way to becoming mature enough to merit businesses considering AI-ready devices in their upcoming hardware refreshes to take advantage of these new capabilities.

In an ISV panel discussing how CIOs can deliver on the promise of AI, Fred Balsinger, group program manager of Windows Silicon at Microsoft, said models were previously too large and cumbersome to consider running them at the edge, but the rate of innovation in the industry has changed this reality.

“But recently, [with] the speed at which the AI industry has been evolving, we’re learning how to get those models just so much smaller. We had techniques around formatting the machine learning models, around quantizing them, around the weights, how we can actually get them small enough,” he explained.

“Now we’re at a point in the industry where we can have truly meaningful models and we can run them on the edge.”

Balsinger broke down why organizations would want to be able to run AI workloads locally, and where he sees where PCs equipped with AI accelerators can truly add value for enterprise.

Local models bring new security for AI tools

One area in which businesses will be able to derive new value from AI-enhanced PCs, according to Balsinger, is security.

He noted that by running models on the device’s neural processing unit (NPU), enterprise users will no longer have to worry about their data leaving their machine, a common concern around using AI models in industries with particular concerns around data protection, such as healthcare or finance.

Speaking to ITPro, Rachel Cossar, CEO at AI communication coaching service Virtual Sapiens, said this was always a core concern for her organization, which gives real time feedback on how a user is presenting themselves in meetings.

“There are multiple levels of trust that you’re trying to establish. One of the biggest ones for us is that your likeness will never leave your device. We found that people are understandably very sensitive about that, they don’t like the idea of having their image and their video wandering around the ether.”

Running models locally, therefore, presents Virtual Sapiens with a convincing proposition to risk averse users where it can ensure their private video never leaves the device. 

Cossar noted local processing was always in the company’s vision due to these security considerations, but hardware limitations had constrained the company’s ability to deploy Virtual Sapiens as widely until this point.

“We actually have always envisioned using local, on-device processing. We made that decision from a security perspective as well as an economic one, but it’s been a struggle,” she explained.

“It’s been a struggle to meet consumers where they are with their devices because we’ve been eating such high levels of GPU/CPU. This gives us a much more efficient option to run seamlessly and smoothly for our users while they’re doing other things.”

NPUs will free up other processors 

Balsinger highlighted this new availability on board AI accelerators can provide, and how important this will be for ISVs to drive AI innovation further, while avoiding exorbitant cloud hosting costs.

“Introducing a new processor allows them to take some of their workloads that typically compete for resources on a GPU, for example, move it over to the NPU, all of a sudden, the rest of the system is more available to the software. So now you can more efficiently use a machine while relying on the NPU to inference in a more effective way.”

Manuel Terrazza, CEO and founder of Loccus.ai, an audio deepfake detection tool that uses AI to provide an authenticity score to indicate the likelihood of the audio being an impersonation, told ITPro the inclusion of NPUs on new devices was the ‘perfect match’ for the company.

“What we’re doing with HP is to leverage the whole power of the NPU to add a layer of protection in voice communication channels. It’s the perfect combination of very powerful knowledge but running locally very close to the edge. From privacy, real time experience, and an efficient inference process, it's the perfect match.”

Terraza added that since transitioning from a cloud hosted model, he was pleasantly surprised to see the efficacy of the detection tool did not suffer when using smaller models running locally.

“The whole process of adapting our models to run on the NPU surprisingly showed us there is no compromise in accuracy,” he explained.

“In reality, we kept the same address and, because we are running one model on the NPU, we can even get faster inference processes and a more  real-time experience. Right now we get a score every second, so we just need one second of volume to provide a score without any compromise in accuracy.”

Living up to the personal computer name

HP has already introduced a number of AI software features that will be included for free with its devices and leverage the new NPUs. These include live captions for translating speech in real-time, Poly DirectorAI smart video conferencing solution, or its AI Companion chatbot.

These features by themselves will not drive every business to overhaul their hardware, HP admitted, but the flexibility they can offer will make these systems truly personal to every user.

Speaking to ITPro, Guayente Sanmartin, SVP and division president of commercial systems & displays solutions at HP, said she doesn't think there will be on ‘killer app’ that will force businesses to make the switch, but the power of theses devices will be their ability to personalize the experience to whatever use case the enterprise needs them for.

“I don’t think there is going to be the killer or unique app that is going to work for every company and every worker. For every persona there are going to be different use cases.”

“Now, these AI PCs are going to be able to personalize the experience for you and me differently, so the way I’m working is different to you, the tools that I work [with], how I work, [whether] I do multitasking or not, the PC will adapt to the way you work,” she asserted.

“That is what I think is the big difference, it’s not their specific use case, it’s the personalization of your work style”.

HP has launched the most powerful AI PC available on the market, the OmniBook Ultra 14, as it revitalizes its computer portfolio ahead of what it expects to be an oncoming wave of demand for AI compute at the edge. 

Unveiled at HP’s Imagine AI event in New York, Alex Cho, president of personal systems, touted the device as the “most powerful AI PC in the industry”, with an AMD-based neural processing unit (NPU) that boasts an impressive 55 trillion operations per second (TOPS).

Cho said the OmniBook 14’s AMD-based chip notches a 45% increase in compute power over Apple’s M4 chip, the current benchmark for mobile processors, and twice the performance of the previous M3,

Notably, 55 TOPS would surpass the peak performance levels AMD said was achievable with its Ryzen AI 300 series processors, which Cho explained was the result of a special partnership with the chip manufacturer.

“We are doing a lot more curation of the stack. I said that back in Palo Alto, we are curating the stack from silicon, bios, OS, applications, IO, etc. and doing that deep coengineering with [AMD] allowed us to deliver a level of performance that is above the rest of the industry,” he said. 

The OmniBook will head up HP’s consumer product line, while its flagship enterprise device, the EliteBook Ultra G1q was launched at Microsoft’s Surface Event in May.

The EliteBook will sport Qualcomm’s latest 12-core Snapdragon X Elite processor, which features a 45 TOPS NPU, although Alex Thatcher, senior director of cloud client and AI experience at HP, told ITPro this number edges closer to 75 TOPS when you include the GPU.

Both these devices will also look to challenge the MacBook lineup’s stranglehold on the best battery life of any laptop. By allowing AI workloads to be offloaded to the high efficiency NPU, HP can free up the CPU and GPU for other tasks, with HP claiming the EliteBook Ultra will offer 26 hours of run time.

OmniBook Ultra 14 launch marks the next step in HP’s device refresh 

HP announced a total rebrand of its entire PC lineup in May, doing away with its Pavilion, Dragonfly, Spectre, and Envy models in favor of a simplified roster of products targeting consumers and enterprise customers.

Its new PC offering is split into two product lines, Omni devices for consumers and Elite products for businesses. Laptops in these lineups will be known as either OmniBooks or EliteBooks, while all-in-one systems have become OmniStudio and Elite Studio. Finally, traditional desktop PCs  will now be OmniDesk and EliteDesk.

For each of these product categories, HP will offer a number of different tiers which cater to different needs and price points. The Ultra and X labels are reserved for the more premium devices with the most high-end components. 

From there, each line will have a number of different skews denoted by odd numbers for the consumer side, and even numbers for the commercial portfolio.

Speaking to ITPro, Guayente Sanmartin, SVP & division president of commercial systems at HP, outlined the reasoning behind this overhaul, stating the goal was to streamline its device ecosystem to better reflect HP’s core values and mark what it sees as a new era in personal computing.

“What we have done is simplified the branding as a way to ensure that the HP values were properly communicated…and the objective was starting this new era where HP has a lot of AI agility,” she said. 

Expanding on these values, Sanmartin said first among these is reliability, noting HP is primarily a brand built on trust, and that within its sub brands it tries to communicate slightly different values depending on the personas they are trying to serve.

In terms of the commercial lineup, which Sanmartin heads up, she explained consistency was central to their value proposition. Citing Alex Cho’s comments earlier that day, she reasserted that no one spends more time with an employee from a device perspective than HP, and so getting these experiences right is imperative for the company.

HP is bullish on the value AI PCs can unlock for businesses

This overhaul is a declaration of intent from HP, indicating it’s bullish on widespread adoption of AI PCs moving forward, as software vendors catch up on building tools that can leverage these local AI accelerators and end users get a better understanding of the value they provide.

Sanmartin said she expects an explosion of demand for AI computing at the edge over the next few years, noting HP’s projections indicate that within three years time 50% of all PCs will be AI PCs, and HP wants to be at the center of this new market.

Explaining where HP expects to separate its AI PC lineup from its competitors like Dell and Lenovo, is by focussing on the user and maximizing the impact of the use cases these devices will serve, highlighting three pillars by which it hopes to show it is leading the field.

“I think we are going to be differentiated in performance, differentiated in our capacity to personalize the device more… and the third thing is privacy and security… we are a trust partner, a partner you can trust on ethics, sustainability, all of this is our differentiation”,

Providing an example of this approach, Thatcher noted the company’s decision to take the time to totally redesign the EliteBook Ultra, instead of taking the easier path of building on an existing chassis.

“When we did our Qualcomm device we didn’t just take an existing chassis and put a board in it we did a completely ground up design, and the benefit of that is you see it in the battery life. That’s why we get 26 hours of battery life.”

HP has signed a multi-year global partnership deal with graphic design platform provider Canva to deliver enhanced design-to-print capabilities and services.

The collaboration aims to streamline the design-to-print process to help Canva’s global user base more efficiently create designs, produce visual content, and print locally.

The pair said the fully integrated system will benefit both HP print service providers (PSPs) and the global Canva community, enabling users to “design anything and print anywhere” without compromising on quality.

Founded in 2013, Canva has grown to include more than 185 million users – including 95% of the Fortune 500. In 2017, the firm launched Canva Print, which allows users to design and print a range of products such as business cards, brochures, flyers, marketing collateral, and more.

With the new HP partnership, users will now have expanded access to professionally printed products from HP’s PSPs around the world. Canva said it’s also gearing up to broaden its print service to 150 countries by 2026 to enable shorter turnaround times and localized operations that significantly reduce its carbon footprint.

HP’s PrintOS Site Flow software will work to automate production and shipping processes to PSPs, streamlining print jobs with features such as auto-scheduling, color consistency, security, and barcode tracking. Additionally, HP’s PrintOS Suite will equip the Canva Print Operations team with tools that can identify, connect, and manage a global SKU catalog across PSPs.

"We're excited to partner with HP to accelerate the expansion of Canva Print,” commented Jim Towle, Canva’s head of print and partnerships. “HP’s innovations in cloud software, quality management, and digital print have been at the center of our Canva Print expansion.

“With our teams working closely on new products and additional PSP locations, we can expand our world-class print capabilities and make it easier than ever for our global community to bring their designs to life.”

The move follows hot on the heels of the recent launch of Canva Enterprise, Canva’s new subscription service for large organizations. As part of the collaboration, HP said it will implement Canva Enterprise to help its global marketing and sales teams create and publish visual content.

“We've been incredibly impressed by the power of Canva Enterprise and look forward to boosting our team's design productivity by removing bottlenecks that stifle creating visual content at scale,” said Haim Levit, senior vice president and division president of HP Industrial Print. 

“Combined with the latest innovations in HP software, we are leading the industry forward, allowing users to design and print more sustainably.”

The pair said that the focus on localized production will ensure high-quality design materials with a reduced environmental impact, while the collaboration will also drive strategic value and customer growth for both businesses.

“Canva is leading the way in empowering global teams to collaborate and create high-impact visual content at speed,” commented Chris Knighton, global sales director at HP Industrial Software. “HP PrintOS will accelerate onboarding and ramp of new print volume to our integrated network of HP Print Service Providers, delivering the widest range of print to Canva users in every corner of the world.”

Nearly 70 leading US software companies have agreed to join a voluntary pledge drawn up by CISA urging developers to incorporate secure by design principles into their products.

CISA director Jen Easterly said she has seen real change in the software ecosystem since the initiative’s announcement in April 2023, and on 8 May CISA announced the first round of commitments from high-profile companies at the RSA Conference in San Francisco. 

Easterly said the goal of the project is to promulgate better built in security to counter both the ongoing “scourge of ransomware” as well as a concerning rise in state-sponsored threat campaigns focussed on disrupting critical national infrastructure.

“[Nation-state threat actors] are burrowing into our critical infrastructure not for espionage, not for data theft, not for intellectual property theft, but specifically to launch disruptive and destructive attacks in the event of a major conflict”.

Easterly said this threat was “different in kind” to anything she has observed over the course of her career, and it is why the US government is prioritizing cyber resilience and implementing secure by design principles across as many digital products as possible.

The pledge consists of seven goals each with core criteria that defines what the manufacturers are pledging to work towards, which include examples of how they can demonstrate measurable progress towards achieving these targets.

Similarly, the pledge sets out a number of means by which the signees can demonstrate quantifiable progress towards their goals, but will give the companies some discretion to decide how best they can go about demonstrating their progress.

The first round of commitments included major players signing up to the pledge including Microsoft, IBM, AWS, CrowdStrike, GitLab, Sophos, Lenovo, NetApp, and HP.

Easy wins to bolster cyber resilience across the board

First up is increasing the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) across software products, which it describes as the best defense against popular password-based attacks such as credential stuffing.

Companies that sign on to the pledge will be asked to take efforts to reduce the use of default passwords in their products, suggesting they switch to random, instance unique passwords or requiring the user create a strong password as soon as they begin the product’s installation process.

Within one year of signing the pledge, companies will also be expected to demonstrate the actions they have taken to significantly reduce the prevalence of one or more vulnerability classes in their products.

By eliminating vulnerabilities by class, CISA argues companies can prevent these flaws at scale which could significantly improve the efficiency of their efforts to keep their products secure.

The pledge wants software manufacturers to take ownership of the security outcomes of their customers, even after the product has been shipped. 

As such, it targets increasing the installation of security patches by asking companies to make it easier to install the updates. This could be achieved through introducing automatic update mechanisms or by providing patch support, for example.

Timely vulnerability disclosure is another important aspect to ensuring companies stay secure. By next year, signees are expected to publish their own vulnerability disclosure policy (VDP) that provides a clear channel to report flaws.

Moreover, the pledge hopes to boost transparency further asking its signatories to commit to demonstrating material improvements in the accuracy of their vulnerability reporting by providing an accurate Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) fields in every CVE record for their products.

Finally, CISA wants companies to get better at recognizing and reporting unauthorized access to their internal systems. It states assenting companies should be able demonstrate a measurable uptick in their ability to gather evidence of cyber security instructions affecting their products.

“The only way we can make ransomware and cyber attacks a shocking anomaly”

The EU received formal approval on its own approach to boosting security postures across the board, the Cyber Resilience Act, in March 2024, which is a legal framework that sets out cyber security requirements for both hardware and software products sold in the region.

The framework targets similar problems currently rife among digital products such as improving the security of the software supply chain, and better vulnerability reporting from manufacturers, but importantly this approach is legally binding and those who fall foul could be prosecuted.

The UK has also introduced legislation looking to eradicate common security issues with its Product Security and Telecommunications Infrastructure (PSTI) act which, like the Secure by Design pledge, wants to get rid of default passwords - but in this case it's for smart devices, unlike software products.

CISA’s Secure by Design pledge does not incorporate hardware, but added that companies that wish to demonstrate progress in those areas are welcome to do so. 

More importantly, the goals outlined in the pledge are not legally binding, and it is not clear if the signatories can pick and choose which targets they want to try to meet, as the agency will have little recourse if they were to take this approach.

Speaking to this concern, Easterly argued that the strength of the approach centers around transparency, where customers will be able to see which vendors are taking security seriously.

“It is a voluntary pledge but the great thing is we have a platform to be able to advance radical transparency and so consumers that have to make decisions about what technology they buy will see whether these technology manufacturers actually took those steps”, she explained.

“I think it is the only way we can make ransomware and cyber attacks a shocking anomaly, and that is to ensure that the technology is more secure.”

The fact the pledge already has 68 high-profile software manufacturers signed on suggests software developers are more than happy to signal to regulators they care about improving the baseline security of their products, and as such could prove to be a useful way of getting industry buy-in without having to resort to the threat of legislation.

HP has launched what it says are the world’s first business-grade PCs designed specifically to protect firmware from quantum-based cyber attacks. 

The manufacturer unveiled the launch of the new device range at its annual partner conference in Las Vegas. 

Under the plans, selected devices will be upgraded with HP’s Endpoint Security Controller (ESC) chip, offering users the “most advanced security that ensures the manageability and protection of sensitive and regulated data”.

This added layer of protection and security works by isolating the chip from the processor and operating system, according to Ian Pratt, global head of security for personal systems at HP.

HP said the added protection for these devices will become “progressively important” due to an expected increase in quantum computer attacks in the coming years.

“Research shows that 27% of experts think there is a 50% likelihood of a cryptographically relevant quantum computer (CRQC) by 2033. When that day comes, the security of existing digital signatures on firmware and software will be in question and digital trust will dissolve,” Pratt said.

Pratt noted that while software can be upgraded for the age of quantum computing, hardware can’t, presenting enterprises with potential long-term challenges. 

“That includes some of the cryptography that protects PC firmware,” he added. “With no cryptographic protections in place, no device would be safe – attackers could access and modify the underlying firmware and gain total control.”

HP noted that the launch of the new quantum mitigation features comes at a critical time for the device manufacturing industry – especially given the pace of development in quantum and the added dynamic of device refresh cycles.

With typical refresh cycles now occurring every three to five years, Pratt said the “migration to post-quantum cryptography must start now”.

“With our 2024 ESC upgrade, the hardware will be in place to protect PC firmware integrity with Quantum-Resistant Cryptography, providing a secure foundation ahead of upgrades to software implementations of cryptography on PCs in future.”

HP move comes amid rising quantum security concerns

Concerns over the potential security risks associated with quantum computing have been rising in unison with the growth of the industry. 

The Dutch government has issued guidance on the matter in the form of its Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) migration handbook, which called for critical national infrastructure providers to begin efforts to migrate to PQC.

Similarly, the US government has outlined recommendations around migrating to quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms for firmware signing.

This guidance recommended using quantum-resistant cryptography from 2025 onwards, with a mandatory requirement for these standards by 2030.

HP has unveiled a host of new AI-focused features to its Amplify Partner Program aimed at helping partners drive new opportunities and sustain long-term growth.

Announced at the company’s Amplify Partner Conference this week, the additions include the industry’s first role-based AI partner training and certification program, as well as a new Growth Play for AI Data Science initiative designed to reward partners for investment in areas beyond their specialization.

From May, partners will have access to the HP University-powered Future Ready MasterClass, which promises a broad range of topics to help partners educate and advise customers on AI products.

HP said it is developing the first set of training modules with chipmaker Nvidia and plans to work with more of its Alliance Partners for further releases to help partners stay ahead of the rapidly changing AI landscape.

“Designers, engineers, and creatives need the latest tools and capabilities to harness the potential of AI for their everyday workflows,” commented Bob Pette, vice president of enterprise platforms at Nvidia.

“Our work with HP will help empower their partners to utilize HP products and solutions, powered by NVIDIA, to cater to customer AI needs across the entire channel ecosystem.”

HP Amplify Growth Plays

May will also see HP Amplify commercial partners gain access to a new initiative called Amplify Growth Plays. Built around HP’s growth categories, the program has been designed to reward participating businesses with tailored benefits to help drive incremental partner profitability.

HP said its latest Growth Play will focus on AI and data science, and will reward partners with tailored benefits for investing in strategic focus areas that lay beyond their specializations.

Other Growth Plays that will be available include Digital Services, Video Collaboration, and Active Care Services.

Streamlined partner schemes

Additionally, HP revealed it is simplifying Amplify’s partner membership architecture in a bid to increase access to its expanded product and service portfolio. From May 1, the program will feature a new “tailored approach” and a two-track structure that includes Synergy and Power tracks.

As part of the changes, the Power track will include new Power Elite and Global Power Elite distinctions in a bid to reward and provide fresh revenue opportunities to partners operating on a large scale.

Elsewhere, HP also revealed it is extending its partner sustainability assessment and training initiative, HP Amplify Impact, to distribution partners and almost 50 new countries.

"HP’s Amplify Partner program stands out as an industry-leading partner program – the only channel program in the industry to go beyond performance-based models – encompassing capabilities, collaboration and unrivaled performance,” commented Kobi Elbaz, SVP and general manager of Global Channel, Sales Innovation and Operations at HP.

“Partners are essential to unlocking growth opportunities and serving customers and we aim to provide the right program, the right training, and the right growth opportunities and benefits to make it easier to sell our world-class products and services.”

Business leaders in the UK need to do more to emphasize the potential benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) for employees, according to new research from HP. 

HP's new Work Relationship Index, which surveyed more than 15,000 respondents across 12 countries, found that only a quarter of UK office workers have a healthy relationship with work, with many becoming increasingly deflated in their roles.

Running parallel to this is the fact that many are deeply skeptical of the improvements AI could bring to the workplace, despite efforts among leaders to hype up the technology. 

Only four-in-ten respondents told HP they think it will make them more productive, compared with 58% globally.

Fewer than half, the study found, believe that AI will allow them to offload repetitive or tedious tasks while just 46% of British workers think the technology will make their job more interesting.

By contrast, business leaders in the UK are more optimistic about AI, with 69% thinking it will make their job easier. But while 72% of business leaders think their employees will have a better work life balance, just 43% of desk workers believe the same.

HP said the research highlights a growing disparity between senior leadership and workers on expectations of the technology. 

Dave Shull, president of HP workforce solutions, said leaders must reiterate the potential benefits of AI in terms of the productivity boosts it could afford staff long-term.

"AI represents a significant opportunity to transform our work dynamics and unlock a more positive and productive environment for all," he said.

"To foster greater understanding and acceptance of AI – and ensure employees know how to reap its benefits – business leaders must take the initiative to educate employees on AI’s potential and spearhead its effective integration."

Education on the topic of AI, HP said, will be a critical focus for many enterprises moving forward. At present, there are preconceived notions about its potential impact on the workforce, and many workers already lack appropriate knowledge on the technology.

Four-in-ten said they're unsure of when to use AI in the workplace, and both business leaders and employees want to see more training - 72% and 64% respectively.

"In an evolving work landscape where businesses are striving to unlock heightened engagement, retention, and productivity, as well as keeping their employees inspired, the strategic integration of AI emerges as a potent force for transformation," said Stella Low, chief communications officer for HP.

"Knowledge workers around the world are looking to senior leadership to show them how to navigate the AI terrain effectively: the stage is set for business leaders to seize the opportunity to both empower their employees and drive success."

The findings echo another recent survey from social enterprise Code First Girls which found that British workers are skeptical about the effects of using AI at work.

While more than eight-in-ten British workers are using ChatGPT in their workplace, around one-quarter are worried that the use of AI will drive women out of the workplace.

With a monitor on every desk and home office, there is less demand for big-screen laptops these days, but there are still times when you need a 17-inch display, like the one found on the HP Envy 17. Though the rise of 16in 16:10 laptops has reduced the need for anything bigger, a 17.3in screen still offers the best way to view spreadsheets, graphic design work, and or video editing.

HP Envy 17: Design

An all-metal chassis came as a surprise on the HP Envy 17, given its price. But most of the laptop, sans its plastic base, is made from recycled aluminum. Unfortunately, that does weigh it down at a rather heavy 2.4kg, but it is a very solid machine.

You can't really describe a 17.3in laptop as petite, but the HP Envy 17's dimensions (396 x 258.6 x 19.6mm) do a good job of making it comfortable to handle. Easy to slip into a backpack, effortless to carry.

The base and, more importantly, the lid, which, incidentally, only angles back to 140 degrees, are impressively stiff and resistant to all but the most brutal bending attempts. The matte silver finish and rounded profile make for a smart and discrete machine impervious to fingerprints.  

HP has given the Envy 17 a decent array of ports with two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right along with an HDMI 2.1 video output and a 10Gbit/sec USB-A port. On the left side, you'll find another two 10Gbit/sec USB-A ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a full-sized SD card reader.

Given that you have to use one of the Type-C ports to charge the Envy 17 it would have been better to have one on either side to attach the 90W charger but that is a minor niggle.

Wireless connectivity comes courtesy of an Intel AX211 card which supports both 6Ghz Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 so you can take full advantage of the increased bandwidth of the former and reduced audio latency of the latter.

HP Envy 17: Keyboard, touchpad, and webcam

There's much to like about the keyboard. First, the large, bold, white keycap graphics are very easy to read, and there's a two-stage white backlight. The numeric keypad comprises full-width keys, while the left and right cursor keys are similarly full-sized, but the up and down keys are half-height.

The keys themselves are made from soft-touch plastic and feel very pleasant to the touch. Combined with a crisp and precise 1.5mm of travel, it makes for an enjoyable typing experience. There is a little give in the keyboard deck in the middle, but it's nothing excessive and didn't get in the way of our work rate.

At 125 x 80mm, the touchpad is relatively small for such a large laptop, but the surface is perfectly smooth and reacts well to taps, swipes, and all the other Windows gestures you care to try. The click-action on the lower half of the pad is precise and sharp and not overly loud. 

Sitting above the display is a 5MP webcam that can shoot video at up to 1080p 30fs and has a physical privacy shutter. It also supports Windows Hello facial recognition. The video feed from the camera is impressive, with surprisingly little noise and good color balance, even in low-light environments. The mic array does a good job, too, picking up what's being said with little echo or distortion and good background noise suppression. 

HP Envy 17: Display

The Full HD IPS display fitted to our review machine was a pretty basic but competent affair: It's fully laminated and has a high-gloss finish. Maximum brightness is a reasonable 300cd/m2, while the contrast ratio is a good 1,361:1, helped by the low black luminescence of just 0.22cd/m2.

A 17.3in 1,920 x 1,080 screen will never be the last word in sharpness with a pixel density of 127dpi compared to the 4K model's 254dpi. Look closely at the FullHD screen and you can discern the pixel structure. That said, we didn't find it to be an issue in everyday use, the display being significantly crisper than on the FullHD 27in HP 27 All-in-One we tested in 2024.

Gamut volumes were solid if unspectacular, with 99.6% sRGB, 68.8% AdobeRGB, and 70.5% DCI-P3. There are no options to change the display color profile, which was hardly unexpected given the absence of wide gamuts, and the Delta E variance against the sRGB profile came back as 2.21. 

That's a reasonable score and good enough for anything other than highly color-critical work, which is not a task the Envy 17 is really targeted at. Out of the box, the Envy 17's display recorded a gamma of 2.19 and a visual daylight temperature of 6542K, which is close to ideal.

Given the basic specification of the display, it doesn't have anything in the way of HDR capability. The only refresh rate options are 60.06Hz and 40.04Hz, so motion fidelity is as mediocre as expected, with evident smearing and ghosting in test animations. The Envy 17 may have a discrete Nvidia GPU, but it's no more a gaming machine than any other basic productivity laptop.

HP Envy 17: Specs and Performance

The first thing to note is that the Nvidia RTX 3050 GPU inside the Envy 17 is tuned down with a maximum TGP of 40W. It also has just 4GB of vRAM. That's a combination that does not make for high levels of performance.

In the ITPro 4K multi-media benchmark, the Envy 17 scored 251 points, which is better than many slim and light laptops we've tested, like the Asus Zenbook S13 and M2 MacBook Air, but seriously adrift of the Core i7-1360P powered Dell XPS 13 Plus which scored 352.

That's the problem with the Envy 17's U-series i7 chip; it's designed for efficiency rather than power, with only 2 of its 10 cores being performance rather than efficiency compared to 4 of the 12 in the i7-1360P. Both processors have the same 5Ghz maximum turbo frequency.

The industry-standard PCMark 10 Office and 3DMark Time Spy benchmark produced scores of 5,174 and 3,815 compared to  5,698 and 1,992 from the XPS 13 Plus. That suggests that the Envy 17 should be able to show the Dell a clean pair of heels when it comes to graphics jobs. And so it proved. 

The Envy 17 has a 55Wh battery, small for a laptop with a discrete GPU. In our standard video run-down test using the VLC video player the Envy 17 lasted just seven hours and 18 minutes, which is seriously short of HP's claim of "up to 11 hours 45 minutes". 

We never once managed to get through a full day's work without plugging the Envy 17 in, which was a bit of a bind. If the Envy 17 were a tightly packaged superlight machine, we'd be more forgiving of this failing, but there is certainly enough room for a physically larger battery inside the chassis.

HP Envy 17: Is it worth it?

Currently, the Envy 17 can be had for as little as $799.99, which is a significant drop from the $930 it was offered at last year. Naturally, there will be better value for money buying in bulk, but it can't be ignored that this is a surprisingly good deal.

The mass release of AI PCs and the changes branding changes across HP may have cast a shadow over models like the Envy but we believe it is still worth considering.

It may have that throttled Nvidia GPU and U-series i7 processor, but it still can chew through even the most demanding graphics tasks faster than any machine relying on an integrated GPU. The relatively poor battery life is a serious mark against it, though.

HP Envy 17 Specification

With the exception of Apple's colorful 24-inch iMac, All-in-Ones are mundane and functional items bought for value and convenience rather than performance or style.  Previous Windows All-in-Ones that we've looked at include Acer's C24 and MSI's AM241, perfectly effective workaday tools but utterly devoid of inspiration and cursed by low-rent displays and speakers: Call center fodder, nothing more.

HP's new All-in-One 27 (officially called the cr0014na) is a cut above the Acer and MSI machines. If not quite up to iMac levels of desirability and capability, it looks, feels and performs like something you might buy yourself rather than have to endure because the IT department got a good deal from the manufacturer.

A "good deal" is actually what I'd call HP's pricing of this 27-inch AiO. The usual price is £899 inc VAT, but it's currently on offer for £820 inc VAT or £683 ex. VAT. The HP may not match the iMac for looks or performance, but it doesn't have to because it's £600 cheaper.

HP All-in-One 27: Design

By the standards of Windows All-in-Ones, the HP 27 is a looker thanks to its all-white livery and silver stand. If you look closely at the body, you'll see it has a flecked finish not unlike that used on Philip's new Evnia gaming monitors. It's a good look, and we like it a lot. 

At 32mm thick in the middle, it's much thicker than the iMac, but the top and side bezels are a mere 7mm thick, and the chin at the bottom is not excessive at 24mm. The whole thing feels very solidly built, and at 6.72Kg it's not too difficult to move around.

The stand connects to the PC by way of a bespoke quick-release bracket, and there is nothing in the box to facilitate attaching the body to a VESA mount, so you'll need to buy an adapter like this. The stand doesn't offer much adjustment with no rotation or pivot, just tilt between -5 and +20° and 100mm of height adjustment. The top of the impressively small base is coated in a felt material, which stops things sliding off and offers a soft surface if you want to put your phone screen down on it. 

The HP has a wide range of ports with a single Type-C and two Type-A ports supporting 5Gpbs data and another two Type-As running at v2.0 speeds. The Type-C port does not support video output, for that, you must rely on the HDMI 1.4 output. A 3.5mm audio jack and a Gigabit RJ45 Ethernet port round things out. The only control on the cabinet is a small on/off button in the bottom right corner of the back.

We only have one issue with the design: all the ports are on the back toward the bottom and spread on both sides of the stand bracket. If you continually swap out USB dongles or cables, you will soon start to curse the absence of side or front-mounted ports.

For wireless comms, you get 2.4/5Ghz W-Fi 6 (6Ghz would have been a stretch at this price point) and Bluetooth 5.3, which is handy if you plan on listening to music wirelessly, thanks to its improved support of low latency audio streams.

According to the specification sheet, there are two expansion slots inside, one for an SSD and one for a WLAN card. As there is no way to access the internals, we can't tell you if those two slots are in addition to the ones already occupied by the SK Hynix SSD and Realtek wireless card. We would guess that they are not and that the contents of those slots and the two SODIMM RAM mounts must be specified prior to purchase.

HP All-in-One 27: Accessories

The peripherals that ship with Windows all-in-one PCs are usually pretty grim, but the keyboard and mouse HP has bundled are not too shabby. To start with, they are all-white to match the main unit, so they don't look cheap. Secondly, they are wireless and connect to a single 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi dongle, making setup and connection a cinch and keeping your desk cable-free.

The mouse is a large, chunky, ambidextrous affair with a positive click-action and a well-calibrated scroll wheel. It's battery-powered, but HP bundles a Duracell AA for it along with a brace of AAAs for the keyboard.

The keyboard is also on the bulky side, but the typing action is good, the layout is faultless, and it has a numeric keypad and full-sized cursor keys. As a typing tool, it gives surprisingly little away to the Cherry keyboard we use, though it is rather noisier and lacks anything in the way of a backlight.

The HP 27's party piece is a concealed tiltable webcam that retracts into the top of the cabinet. It's a good quality 1080p affair that captures a sharp and colorful image even in low light and supports Windows Hello facial recognition.

The camera is mounted on a swivel, so you can adjust the vertical angle to around 20° below the horizontal, which is handy if you want to use the camera while the stand is at maximum height.

HP All-in-One 27: Performance

The HP 27 is built around an Intel Core i7-1355U processor, a 10-core, 12-thread component with a maximum clock speed of 5GHz. Accompanying that, you get 16GB of dual-channel but rather slow DDR4-3200MHz RAM, a 512GB SK Hynix SSD, and Intel's integrated XE graphics solution.

The HP 27 scored 5,657 in the PCMark10 benchmark and 170 in ITPro's in-house 4K multi-media benchmark. Those numbers are broadly what you should expect from a high-end ultra-compact laptop like the Asus Zenbook S 13. 

The Cinebench R23 scores of 1,709 single core and 6,799  multi-core were also similar to the Zenbook S 13 and highlight the main drawback of this U-series i5 chip: It only has two performance cores. That means it is enough power for everyday computing, entertainment, and admin tasks, but not enough for more demanding tasks or gaming.

While the HP may be short of out-and-out grunt, it runs quietly, even under heavy stress. Using the FurMark and Prime 95 apps to put the maximum stress on the CPU and the GPU, the cooling fans were inaudible unless we put an ear right up against the rear of the cabinet. Of course, part of the reason was that the CPU utilization dropped to 60% after a few minutes and then stayed there.

The SK Hynix SSD turned in solid rather than spectacular results with average read and write speeds of 3820MB/s and 2,415MB/s, respectively. Those are more than adequate speeds for general home or office usage.

HP All-in-One 27: Display and Audio

The display is not the sharpest you'll ever see. A 1,920 x 1,080 matrix combined with a 27-inch diagonal results in a lackluster 81.6dpi perilously close to a third of the 218dpi the iMac offers. Look closely at the HP 27's display, and you can discern the pixel structure. Things improve when you increase the Windows scale to 125% or 150%, but the HP 27 is still not an ideal choice if you want to look closely at big spreadsheets or pages of small copy.

In other areas, the HP 27's IPS panel makes a much stronger case for itself. Our colorimeter recorded the maximum brightness at a healthy 327cdm/2, though the contrast ratio turned out to be 1023:1, a little low thanks to a rather high black level luminance of 0.32cd/m2. There is plenty of color available with gamut volumes of 107.5% sRGB, 74.1% Adobe RGB, and 76.1% DCI-P3.

Measured against the sRGB profile, the Delta E came in at 2.06, which is a commendable result for what is, at the end of the day, a budget IPS display. Anything at or below 2 means the screen is good for color-critical work just as long as you don't require wide gamut support.

Watching our usual slate of test videos on the HP 27, the screen was nicely saturated and impressively colorful, though there is no support for HDR content. Given the mundane 60Hz refresh rate, motion handling was poor, but as this is certainly not a gaming rig, we can let that slide.

Out of the box, the panel's gamma was 2.24, and the visual daylight temperature 6496K, both close enough to the ideals of 2.2 and 6500K to be practically perfect. We expected the 2 x 2W speaker system to be pretty poor, but we could not have been more wrong. There was ample volume (73.5 dBA as measured against a pink noise source at a 1m distance) and plenty of bass combining to create a detailed, punchy, and melodic soundscape. 

HP All-in-One 27: Is it Worth it?

When we pulled the HP All-in-One 27 out of its box, we expected another dull-as-dishwater Windows AiO that could only justify itself in the most brutally pragmatic fashion. Imagine our surprise then when it turned out to be a rather stylish and practical answer to the computing needs of many home and office users.

The main issue is the FullHD 27-inch screen. If you plan on looking at small text, 81.6dpi is a bit on the low side. Sadly, HP doesn't make a QHD version of this model, but there is a 23.8-inch version identical in all ways apart from the screen size, which gives a sharper 92.5dpi. At £779 inc VAT, it's not a lot cheaper, though.

Resolution aside, the display is good, while the speakers are excellent. Performance is also more than acceptable given the tasks the HP 27 is likely to be employed in, and the peripherals it ships with are better quality than you might expect. 

For the asking price, it's hard not to see the HP 27 as good value and the perfect PC for anyone wanting a simple, compact, capable, and stylish one-box solution to their general computing needs at home or at work. 

HP All-in-One 27 specifications

Global shipments of AI PCs are set to surge across 2024 and account for nearly one-quarter of all PCs, according to new analysis from Gartner. 

Research from the consultancy shows that 54.5 million AI PCs will be shipped by the end of the year, accounting for 22% of all devices. Similarly, generative AI smartphones will also surge in popularity across 2024, Gartner said.

The increase in both AI PC and smartphone shipments marks a sharp rise on the year prior. Combined, 295 million AI PC and smartphone units will be distributed by the end of the year, up from just 29 million units in 2023.

Ranjit Atwal, senior director analyst at Gartner, said the heightened interest in AI PCs in recent months means these devices will “eventually become a standard requirement for technology vendors”.

However, Atwal said the scale of AI PC roll-outs by key industry vendors means many will face acute challenges in differentiating product lines.

“This ubiquity will pose challenges for vendors in differentiating themselves from competitors, making it harder to create unique selling points and drive increased revenues.”

Gartner’s research also found that the integration of AI into PCs is not expected to drive end-user spending beyond anticipated price increases, adding that business device purchasers will “demand compelling reasons to invest”.

“It will take time for software providers to harness the power of on-device AI and clearly demonstrate its enhanced benefits,” the consultancy said.

Crucially, the surge in AI-powered devices comes amid a period of tentative recovery for the global PC industry. The market, which experienced a significant downturn amid curtailed post-pandemic spending, returned to growth in the fourth quarter of 2023.

The rebound followed eight consecutive quarters of decline. Gartner said it expects overall PC shipments to reach 250.4 million units in 2024, marking a 3.5% increase from the year prior.

On-device AI will play a key role in helping to “rejuvenate the marketing of PCs through 2024 and help sustain existing anticipated replacement cycles”, the consultancy noted.

Will AI PCs be a flash in the pan industry fad?

AI PCs have rapidly become the latest industry buzzword, with a host of major device manufacturers, including HP, Dell, and Lenovo, all signaling their intention to ramp up production of AI-supported devices in the last quarter alone. 

In December 2023, Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger suggested that AI PCs will be the “star of the show” in 2024 amid growing interest from both consumers and enterprises alike.

Gelsinger’s optimism on this front has been matched by other industry execs, with HP chief executive Enrique Lores insisting that the emergence of generative AI will create a "new kind" of PC.

But beyond the industry hype, analysts are also confident that AI PCs will become an increasingly important piece of kit in the enterprise arsenal moving forward.

Previous research from Canalys aligns closely with that of Gartner, with the consultancy suggesting that these devices could herald a “watershed moment” for the PC industry and “reinvigorate the market” after a record-breaking slump.

Canalys’ study predicted that 19% of all PCs shipped globally in 2024 will be AI capable, and moreover, it expects that 60% of all PCs will be AI capable by 2027.

The HP Envy Move is a bit of a mixed bag in that it is a great PC, but not necessarily something you would think of as a work machine. It's an all-in-one with a handle on the top and a kangaroo-style pouch on the back for a wireless keyboard and trackpad unit. The idea is that you can move it from room to room, office to kitchen, for example, where it will be used in different ways. 

However, it feels like a hard sell for IT decision-makers and the likelihood is that dedicated home workers will have to make their own purchases as it appears to have more appeal as a lifestyle device than a work one. 

HP Envy Move: Design

Home working during the pandemic played a big role in the design of the Envy Move with HP taking feedback from customers as inspiration. That is the reason the machine has a kangaroo-style pouch on the back of the monitor for the keyboard and a rubber handle at the top of its 23.8in all-white monitor. The retractable feet make it easy to just sit down on any flat surface. However, the machine isn't completely 'portable'. To clarify, it's for moving around the home or office – you can't carry this on your commute, it's too heavy and conspicuous, and there is no protection on that display, so you'll break it. 

At 4.1kg, you might even end up with some muscle gains if you move it about quite regularly – this is a desktop PC, after all – and it isn't compact enough to fit everywhere, but it slots in most spaces like a small desk, a kitchen counter, the floor in your workout space. The monitor is 14.4in tall and 21.7in wide, so it is slightly more compact than a standard desktop monitor. The downside though is that it isn't adjustable, and there's no tilt or slider to lift the screen up or down – very much a one-size-fits-all affair. 

The overall look, however, is very smart, with minimalist bezels, a nice mesh bar at the bottom, a snazzy HP logo in italics on the back, and buttons hidden on either side of the monitor. There is also a webcam slider right at the top. Bear in mind that the retractable feet stick out more at the rear – by about 3in – so it won't sit right at the back of your desk. 

There are ports galore on either side of the monitor, with a USB Type-C, USB Type-A, an HDMI slot, plus a nifty security slide for the webcam. You also have support for WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 and it has Windows 11 Home preinstalled. The webcam itself is worth noting; it records video at 1440p and this means its detail and color accuracy are far better than the standard offered by 1080p – so you'll look better in your virtual meetings. 

As the main idea is to give home workers a multi-faceted PC that can go anywhere in the house, from a design perspective the Envy has nailed that part. We found it easy to use in all its intended guises.

HP Envy Move: Display, Keyboard, and trackpad

The monitor on the Envy Move is strikingly beautiful. Its 23.8in display is packed with color and also offers a very responsive touchscreen experience. And, that QHD panel with the 2560 x 1440 resolution, makes working across multiple windows a lot more comfortable. An extra benefit here is that the Envy Move also makes a good second screen for your laptop.

In our colorimeter tests, the Envy Move offered up 96% sRGB color gamut coverage and around 70 DCI-P3. That was higher than the vastly more expensive Apple Studio Display for coverage (94.7%). 

Photo editing – professionally – is a stretch too far, but the color representation is good enough for some graphic design. Everything from a streaming site to a social media feed looks bright and beautiful. More pertinent to us here at ITPro is the white balance which helps you read your spreadsheets without straining your eyes. We measured peak brightness at 311cd/m2, which also helps. 

The trackpad and the keyboard are one, with the former making up the right-hand side of the keyboard. It makes sense when you realize there isn't any extra room in the pouch for a mouse – you can't even fit the power cable in there. However, the small space allocated to the trackpad is somewhat annoying, especially given the size of the screen – you literally can't scroll up from top to bottom with one swipe. 

Thankfully the keys are nice and punchy, with a good amount of travel. Typing is comfortable and you can pick up a decent speed. We found we had gotten used to the trackpad position after a day or two, with the left click action easy enough. Right-click and long scrolls are a little more cumbersome though and a wireless mouse would be a lot easier. 

HP Envy Move: Specs and performance

The Envy Move is powered by a modest 13th Gen Intel i5 chip (i5-1335U) with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. There are no other configurations here, but that shouldn't put you off because it is, from our experience, still quite nippy. 

With the main point of the Envy Move being adaptability, its speed is a key factor and we found no lag when it came to switching modes, or multiple tabs and applications. Its GeekBench 6 CPU scores also backed this up: 2,123 for single-core and 6,005 for multi-core. While that is nothing on a M2 Mac Mini or even a MacBook, it is still very quick. 

Our only concern here is battery life, which isn't great. Off the mains, the Envy can last for a round 4, depending on the tasks. That will no doubt decrease with age, but it isn't a big issue as you'll largely use it in places near a power socket. 

HP Envy Move: Is it worth it?

The answer here is complicated. As a device with many different use cases, the HP Envy Move is very much worth $899.99. The display is great, the design is innovative and the processor is snappy. It's hard to find fault in the build. For those who work from home, and families that want an adaptable PC – presumably those in smaller premises – the HP Envy Move is more than enough. 

However, we can't recommend this specifically for work purposes. There aren't enough real standout business functions and the idea that a business would sanction such a purchase is laughable. A business machine with so much to offer your home life feels very low on the priorities of an IT manager. Reliability and durability are the main concerns for most businesses, so if you have bosses who see this as a must-have work device then you're super lucky. 

HP Envy Move 23.8in specifications

AI PCs have rapidly emerged as a key industry buzzword in recent months, with leading stakeholders going so far as to describe AI-capable devices as the “future of computing”. 

Intel chief executive Pat Gelsinger made this bold statement at the chip giant’s AI Everywhere conference in December 2023, suggesting that AI PCs will be the “star of the show” in 2024 and beyond, providing users with vital AI-powered capabilities aimed at boosting productivity.

Given Intel has a vested interest in promoting this viewpoint as a major manufacturer, Gelsinger’s comments are hardly surprising. However, they do highlight what has been a rapid shift in focus across the industry in recent months.

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, but its use has typically been limited to cloud-based environments. Generative AI-infused hardware is the obvious next step in this evolutionary path.

Industry analysts seem to agree on this, with many bullish on the prospect of AI PCs in coming years. Recent research from Canalys, for example, noted that the emergence of AI-capable devices marks a “watershed moment” for the PC industry, and one that is likely to “reinvigorate the market and transform user experiences”.

In 2024, Canalys predicts that 19% of PCs shipped globally will be AI-capable. This initial, tentative flow of AI PCs into offices worldwide will rapidly develop into a torrent over the course of the decade, however.

By 2027, the consultancy expects 60% of PCs shipped globally to be AI-capable, with much of this growth initially driven by commercial adoption in 2024 onwards.

AI PCs could be a silver bullet for sluggish industry growth

The emergence of AI PCs and heightened business interest in this new frontier comes at a perfect moment for the PC industry, which has experienced a significant deceleration over the last two years. 

Research from Canalys in January 2023 revealed the global PC market witnessed a “record decline” in the last quarter of 2022 - the biggest decline since the consultancy began tracking shipments in the 1990s, no less.

The market also experienced two consecutive quarterly declines of over 30% in 2022, highlighting the fact this wasn’t just an abnormality; both businesses and consumers curtailed spending on this front due to deteriorating economic conditions.

Major manufacturers, including Dell, Lenovo, and HP, were among the worst hit by this decline, with all three recording extremely concerning nosedives in shipments across 2022 and early 2023.

But AI PCs could offer a much-welcomed reprieve for struggling manufacturers, presenting them with a prime opportunity to capitalize on new revenue streams and to overcome a record-breaking slump.

The aforementioned firms have all signaled their intention to pounce on the AI PC craze in recent months, with HP in particular viewing this as a key battleground with industry competitors.

In October 2023, HP chief executive Enrique Lores told attendees at the firm’s ‘Imagine’ conference in Palo Alto that the “age of AI will create a new kind of PC”.

Speaking to ITPro at the time, Alex Cho, president of personal systems at HP, said the confluence of AI and the era of hybrid work has created the perfect conditions for the rise of this new type of device and a new era of computing.

In providing more powerful, AI-infused devices, businesses can supercharge productivity and reap long-term rewards.

“Tomorrow, everyone will experience the full potential of AI, as the PC goes from personal computer to the personal companion,” he said.

More recently, CES 2024 offered a glimpse into this current industry focus, with the consumer electronics conference utterly saturated with AI device announcements.

Dell, for example, unveiled a laptop that included a dedicated Windows Copilot key. 

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s decision to make the biggest change to its keyboard setup in more than two decades underlines the long-term intent here.

Much like its core product offerings, AI tools will be woven into the very fabric of the devices we use in years to come, and it’ll all be at the click of a button.

The global PC market is expected to rebound in the fourth quarter of 2023 as the beleaguered industry begins a return to growth. 

Worldwide PC shipments totaled 64.3 million in the third quarter of 2023, according to analysis from Gartner, marking a 9% decrease compared to the same period last year and the eighth consecutive quarterly decline. 

However, the consultancy said that there is ample evidence that the lengthy slump has finally “bottomed out” and that a return to growth can be expected in the coming quarters. 

Mikako Kitagawa, director analyst at Gartner, said heightened demand in several industries points to a revival for the market, but warned enterprise demand is still lagging.  

“Seasonal demand from the education market boosted shipments in the third quarter, although enterprise PC demand remained weak, offsetting some growth,” he said. “Vendors also made consistent progress towards reducing PC inventory, with inventory expected to return to normal by the end of 2023, as long as holiday sales do not collapse.”

“There is evidence that the PC market’s decline has finally bottomed out,” Kitagawa added. 

Major suppliers still feeling the pinch

The global PC space remained largely unchanged in terms of market share during the last quarter, Gartner found, with several major suppliers reporting poor results. 

Apple's shipments declined sharply compared to a year ago, the consultancy said. 

This was, in part, due to its shipment volumes increasing significantly across Q3 2022 after supply disruptions eased in the wake of the pandemic. 

Dell also reported a sixth consecutive quarter of shipment decline. This continued decline was largely influenced by weak enterprise PC demand. 

Other major suppliers, such as Lenovo and HP, did report promising results during the previous quarter, however. 

Although Lenovo recorded yet another year-on-year decline in shipments, this was limited to a single-digit decrease, Gartner said. 

The promising results from Lenovo come amid a period of heightened optimism for the supplier, which anticipates a return to pre-pandemic sales volumes in the coming year.  

In August, the firm said it believes it is “well-positioned” for a year-on-year recovery in the latter part of 2023 and early 2024. 

HP was the only vendor to report year-on-year growth during Q3 2023, Gartner said, with shipments increasing across all regions. 

“The good news for PC vendors is that the worst could be over by the end of 2023,” said Kitagawa. 

“The business PC market is ready for the next replacement cycle, driven by the Windows 11 upgrades. Consumer PC demand should also begin to recover as PCs purchased during the pandemic are entering the early stages of a refresh cycle.”

Looking ahead, Gartner projects that the global PC market will experience 4.9% growth across 2024 across both the business and consumer segments. 

Hybrid work is forcing us to think differently about not only the way we work but also the devices we use for it. Foldable PCs, for instance, are the tech industry's answer to the challenges of remote work, bundling the capabilities of the tablet with the laptop and the traditional PC. These are work machines flexible enough for the home, the office, and anywhere else you can get a Wi-Fi signal, whether that's a coffee shop or a cupboard. 

This is not the PC's final form, however – at least not according to HP, which sees a new transformation on the horizon, led by artificial intelligence (AI).

"The age of AI will create a new kind of PC," HP CEO, Enrique Lores, said on stage at his company's new Imagine event in Palo Alto. According to Lores and several other HP executives speaking at the event, AI will take the personal computer and turn it into a personal companion, creating a truly useful workplace assistant rather than replacing the average worker. The idea is both futuristic and realistic: the rise of AI coincides with the normalization of hybrid work, which has already brought change to our devices. 

An example of this is the HP Move all-in-one PC; this is a product that tells us that work and life are far more intricately woven than ever before. The Move is comprised of a 23in display and a wireless keyboard that has a touchpad incorporated on the right of the keys. It's 'movable' because there is a handle on the back and there are two retractable pins at the bottom of the display that switch to little feet when the Move is placed on a desk or even the floor. There is also a kangaroo-style pouch on the back for its wireless keyboard. 

It's pitched as an all-in-one PC for work purposes, but it's actually more than that. In its video presentations, HP showcased the Move's different use cases, such as a portable fitness trainer, or family entertainment center. The idea is to have a device that you take anywhere in the home and not only will it fit the space, it will have some sort of use for whoever needs it. In many ways it sums up hybrid work and what we now consider life; we do more from home and we expect our devices to be flexible enough to continue doing so.

These 'hybrid' devices are also infused with AI capabilities. In the Envy Move, for example, the sound can go up or down depending on what it's being used for. It recognizes if the user is working 2ft away or watching 6ft away. But this is merely the start; HP is looking to take that further and the company suggests that AI will make the PC far more personalized and accessible. 

"Nothing has gone from early promise to mass adoption quite like AI" 

As president of personal systems at HP, Alex Cho is well-positioned to talk about the PC's journey toward an AI-powered overhaul. During the first general session of HP Imagine, Cho waxed lyrical about AI's potential to make a truly personal computer. 

Cho sees the coming AI revolution as a huge opportunity to fundamentally change the PC for the better. He excitedly described a world where the keyboard and mouse were left behind and replaced with the advancement of language models and sensors that recognize gestures or biometrics. 

"We're a big believer that computing should help people and integrate [into] how they live and work versus people having to adapt to computing," Cho told ITPro. "It's really a mission of ours, it's a philosophy, and I think AI helps do that much more.

The form factor is simply too early to predict and visualizing it is also complicated. But voice and gesture recognition are clear areas of exploration here, as they have been AI research subjects for years, and are already a common feature of most modern devices. What's more crucial, however, is the explosion of generative AI and tools like ChatGPT. 

"Nothing has gone from early promise to mass adoption quite like AI," Cho said. "It changes how we explore and live, and unleashes our creativity. It makes possible how we live our hybrid lives today. Tomorrow, everyone will experience the full potential of AI, as the PC goes from the personal computer to the personal companion."

Whatever form our work machines take, it's quite clear that AI will be a driving force of the transformation.

PC shipments in the United States declined by just 6% year-on-year during the second quarter of 2023, which Canalys said shows signs of a “significant improvement” compared to previous quarters. 

Analysis of Q2 shipment statistics from the consultancy found that PC shipments declined to 18.2 million units. 

Desktop devices, including desktop workstations, saw a steep decline across the quarter, with shipments falling by 12% to 3 million units. 

The US tablet market also faced a “similarly modest decline” at 5% while notebook shipments were down 4%. Canalys said the decline in the notebook market was “bolstered by the return of Chromebook demand in the education sector”. 

Meanwhile, comparable spending habits among consumers and businesses showed positive signs moving forward. 

PC shipments to the commercial sector were down just 4%, while the consumer sector recorded a larger drop of 10%. 

Ishan Dutt, principal analyst at Canalys said the recent statistics paint a positive picture for the market looking ahead to Q3 and Q4. 

“Despite undergoing another year-on-year decline, the US PC market showed promising signs of improvement in the second quarter,” said Dutt. 

“The long-term outlook for PCs in the US remains positive,” he added. “As macroeconomic pressures subside, the strong fundamentals around post-pandemic PC usage behavior and the larger installed base across all segments will be a boon to the industry.”

The outlook for the broader PC market remains positive, Canalys said, with Q3 stats expected to show a rebound. 

“Although businesses and consumers are likely to exhibit some caution in spending on PCs in the short term, the industry can now look forward to further improvement in the US,” Canalys said. 

The consultancy expects an “even smaller shipment decline” of just 4% in Q3 2023, which could be followed by a 12% increase in growth across Q4. 

“Beyond that, the market is forecasted to grow 9% in 2024 and 12% in 2025,” the firm added. 

PC shipment market rebound

The analysis from Canalys could calm growing fears among major PC vendors, all of which have experienced acute challenges across 2023 amid challenging economic conditions.

In January, research from Gartner revealed that the global PC market witnessed a “record decline” in shipments. 

The total number of shipments across Q4 2022 stood at 65.3 million, marking a 28.5% decline and the sharpest dip since the consultancy started tracking shipments in the 1990s. 

Hesitancy and reduced spending power among both consumers and businesses alike compounded the situation further in the months following this research, with major vendors such as Dell, Lenovo, and HP all recording sluggish sales growth.  

The market experienced two consecutive quarterly declines of over 30%, alternative research from Canalys found. 

Vendor optimism rising

Positive signs have been rumbling away in recent weeks, however. In August, Lenovo recorded a 24% dip in revenue across the first quarter of its financial year. 

While the earnings report raised concerns of a steeper decline, the firm retained a positive outlook for the coming quarter and highlighted what it believed to be a “return to stability” in the market.  

“The group’s PC business is stabilizing and well-positioned for a year-on-year recovery in the later part of 2023,” Lenovo said at the time. 

The PC manufacturer also suggested that while the global PC market was “regressing to pre-COVID levels”, the broader market will return to “structurally higher levels” than pre-pandemic conditions long-term. 

The world of work has changed dramatically over the last decade, with an ever-increasing focus on digital-first delivery, which has brought with it new benefits and challenges. 

In 2023, many businesses now enjoy a hybrid work setup, with employees working from home some days while spending others in the office carrying out tasks that can’t be done remotely. Others operate on a fully remote model, having abandoned the traditional office.

No matter what their setup is, all companies are under greater pressure than ever to set out clear sustainability goals, reflected in investment decisions, energy efficiency, and reduced waste when it comes to day-to-day operations, as well as software and hardware.

Technology brand HP has been at the forefront of research around hybrid working, which has recorded the pain points employees and employers have felt as they adapt to this new way of working. While personnel practices and software can be modified and updated as needed, it is clear that investment into hardware must to be carefully considered before a purchasing decision is made to ensure it meets all of the business’ needs in a hybrid environment.

Printers are an example of core hardware that have been adapted over time to not just meet the energy efficiency needs of companies but continue to play just as important a role as in the ‘traditional’ office.

In a recent interview with Mopria Mike Scrutton, director of print technology and strategy at Adobe, stated that printed documents continue to play an important role in information sharing, even as digital and virtual environments are embraced.

“Compared to the [screen and whiteboard] trends seen at CES, paper complements them rather than replacing them, and vice versa,” he said. 

“In the same way you can look something up on a smartphone or tablet and then return to a bigger screen to continue your task, so a printed sheet can be used to refer to information, an idea, or be transported outside the room. Or indeed be used to bring information into a space.”

If you run a large business, it’s likely that physical documents still play a large part in some aspects of your weekly business processes. This could be in the form of sensitive contracts or briefings for important clients.

Businesses that fail to invest in printers may find themselves relying on costly third-party printing services when they face a sudden need for printed content. Additionally, many businesses have an existing printer setup that may be in need of replacement.

This could be an ideal opportunity to take stock of how vital printing is to a company’s individual needs. For example, a business that has moved largely to the cloud since it last purchased printers could benefit from buying fewer, smaller units when it next invests in new hardware.

Whatever the business, printers need to be reliable, interoperable, and compatible with scaling ambition to fit into today’s fast-paced work environment.

Guilt-free, green documents

No matter the size of a company, sustainability is an important factor to place at the very center of its business strategy.

Customers feel better buying from a business they know has clear sustainability objectives, and proper planning around environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy helps employees feel proud of where they work.

ESG targets can only be met if businesses take a holistic approach to internal change, and reassessing all hardware, including printers, is included in this.

Having the right printers to hand can be cheaper and more sustainable than not having any at all - it’s all a matter of strategy.

If a business under-invests in printer hardware, it may be saddled with poor-quality products that are wasteful with materials and have a disproportionately negative impact on the environment.

Conversely business professionals are understandably reluctant to over-invest in printer hardware that’s impractical for their needs. Buying the right-sized printer, from a trusted manufacturer with clear sustainability goals is a must.

Printer manufacturers recognize these concerns and have heavily invested in developing products that provide effective printer hardware and software that is more environmentally ethical than ever before.

HP’s TerraJet cartridges, for example, run at 27% lower energy cost than preceding products, and come with 78% less plastic in their packaging and manufacturing. This new toner comes as standard with HP’s latest Colour LaserJet Enterprise 5000/6000 printer series.

Enterprises that make use of HP's managed print services can also use its two-tone cartridges, which require less metal at the point of manufacturing.

While the business world has not eclipsed its need for printers, it does demand more from its hardware than ever before with regards to efficiency and ethics. 

Enterprises that make the right choice when it comes to printers can set themselves up for the future and save at the same time. 

Hybrid work and printing can go hand-in-hand

In a similar fashion, embracing printing does not have to come at the expense of those working in a remote or hybrid environment.

With the right hardware approach, companies can ensure workers get to enjoy the benefits of modern work patterns at the same time as having access to printers when they need them most.

The HP Global Hybrid Work Study revealed that 60% of British workers feel hybrid work has improved their productivity, and as many as 89% indicated that hybrid work provides a foundation for a better work-life balance.

Whatever the setup, every business needs to ensure that employees are able to deliver excellent printed content as and when it is required.

“Flexible work arrangements are here to stay with companies of all sizes using it as a way to attract and retain top talent. However, distributed workforce productivity is top of mind for businesses,” says Xavier Garcia, global head and general manager of office print hardware at HP.

Printing as a first line of defense

The widespread digital transformation of the corporate world has come with downsides, including increased vulnerability hacking, malware, and ransomware attacks.

As the number of connected devices has increased, so has the attack surface. It’s more important than ever, therefore, that networks and devices on them are as secure as possible.

If an organization’s printer is compromised, attackers can intercept sensitive data from documents that passed through it and leverage this for extortion or sell it directly on the black market.

From factory floor to office floor, IT managers need assurances of a secure supply chain. Even printer cartridges can be tampered with by threat actors, prompting companies such as HP to introduce extra security layers for added peace of mind. 

In addition to security concerns, reliability, and downtime loom large over devices in the modern workplace. Keeping up with any industry in near real time means being able to produce mission-critical documents at a moment’s notice and with no privacy concerns.

As critical pieces of office hardware printers need to be ready at a moment’s notice, and quick to fix when they run into an issue.

Problems that persist for an hour or more could be the difference between a missed deal, or a vital contract signing being pushed back by at least a day.

With the right approach to hardware, business leaders can avoid production pitfalls at the same time avoid falling behind on security. Knowing your own needs, and how best to fulfill them through trusted brands, is key.

The same applies to challenges in sustainability, productivity, and work patterns. When businesses recognize hardware investment as key to achieving long-term goals rather than a remedy to immediate issues, they can achieve success without having to make sacrifices.

The HP Spectre x360 is back and this time it is gunning for the creatives with an intuitive stylus and a remarkably vivid display. There have been quite a few variations of this laptop over the last few years, but this here is the 'ef0046na' model – the latest one. 

It starts at $1,399 and looks largely the same as the previous model. However, there is an upgrade inside with an Intel i7 chip and 13.5in OLED display. The latter is also a touch screen and the whole device flips into tablet mode, which again, underlines its main target audience – creative folk. 

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) 2023 review: Design

This is a PC brand that shares its name with the bad guys from the world of James Bond, but it's the type of stylish laptop that 007 himself would be proud to carry; it's sleek, smooth, and undeniably cool. From its neatly rounded edges to its elegant gold accents, it is a fashion statement as much as it is a work machine and, what's more, it comes with a rather fetching faux-leather Attaché case. 

You can flip it into tent mode and either use it to stream, present, or doodle with the stylus, which also has its own magnetic space on the side of the display. It is a work of art and it makes the XPS 13 look painfully dull in comparison. If there is one issue with the design, we would prefer a lighter machine; the Spectre x360 is heavy – it weighs over three pounds – and you will feel that extra bulk when carrying it in a rucksack.

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) 2023 review: Display, Keyboard, and trackpad

A 14in display might not be ideal for visual workloads; professionals will understandably use a high-quality monitor for photo editing, graphic design, or even illustration, but the screen on the Spectre x360 is extraordinary. The 13.5in OLED display has a 3,000 x 2,000 resolution that is bold, vibrant, and luminous. What's more, it possesses a real pixel sharpness. 

With our calibrator, the HP Spectre x360 offered impressive results: for gamut color coverage it showcased 100% and 170% for volume – extremely impressive, leaving the Dell XPS 13 Plus and the MagicBook X16 in the dust. But then it gets even better when you check out its Adobe scores – 96% for coverage and 117% for volume. A seriously decent display for the creatives (though it is only 14in). 

That quality remains high when it comes to the chiclet keys which are black and underlit. The keys themselves are slightly punchy, in the best way imaginable with plenty of travel and a soothing clack when you type. The only oddity here is the placement of the fingerprint sensor which is between the arrow keys and the right-sided Alt button. That feels like a very unnatural place for that to go. 

There are no such faults with the nicely sized trackpad, which has a decent click action and wide range. There's also plenty of room on either side of it for palms to rest. This was comfortable to type on and perfect for both work and fairly long casual use. 

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) 2023 review:  Specs and performance

Our review unit for the Spectre came with an Intel Core i7 1255U (12th Generation) chip that was paired with 16GB DDR4 of RAM and 2TB of PCIe SSD storage. We expected a good performance here, and we were not disappointed. In Geekbench 6, the Spectre offered up 2,120 for single-core workloads and a rather impressive 8,129 for multi-core. That's on par with the Dell XPS 13 and not too far off an M1 MacBook. 

In our looped video test, the Spectre lasted 8hrs 56mins which is a good indication that this is a machine suitable for work; under intense use, it basically lasts just beyond a typical working day. Other laptops can hold out for almost 10hrs, like the MacBook Pro, but over 8hrs is on par with the Dell XPS and the Asus Zenbook 14.

Sadly you can only get around 30% charge in 30 minutes, in our experience, which could be better. If you're in a bit of a busy spot and not near a charger for long you can only pray for power-light jobs to work on. 

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) 2023 review: Features

For features, the Spectre has a few eye-catching extras, such as the stylus and the inclusion of HP Concepts, which is a delight; we only really used it for note-taking with the stylus, but there is a wealth of options for creative drawing or design, even some planning. It's very easy to use in that you're not limited to certain tools but also not overwhelmed by endless options and complex capabilities. You can just start getting on with your projects and not be delayed by having to learn too much about the usage.

Another win is the stylus, which is nice and light. It feels very responsive and handles well, though it doesn't charge when you connect it to the side of the display, you need to plug it into the USB charger, which is a little bit annoying, but not a deal breaker. 

Elsewhere, we have the usual rooster of features, such as Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi 6E, and Windows 11 Home. However, connectivity could be better with just an audio jack, a MicroSD slot, a USB Type-A (3.2), and two Thunderbolt 4 connectors. For power and connecting to monitors. We do miss those HDMI slots.  

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) 2023 review: Price

As good as the HP Spectre x360 is, there is no getting away from the hefty price tag. A starting point of $1,399 is a lot for businesses to consider when there are many cheaper alternatives – even from a creative point of view, Asus' Zenbook range is much more affordable. 

However, this is a top-of-the-range laptop, it compares well to the Dell XPS and the MacBook. Its OLED display is brilliantly bright, its keyboard is slick and that stylus is a joy to use. Plus, there's a decent chunk of power with the Intel i7 chip. Battery life could be better, but aside from that this is 360 degrees of awesome. 

HP Spectre x360 (14-ef0046na) specifications

A lawsuit against HP alleging the company defrauded investors is set to continue after a US appeals court reversed a ruling which dismissed the case. 

The case was previously dismissed amid claims that complainants had filed a legal challenge too late. 

However, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the decision on Tuesday, potentially paving the way for a renewed challenge. 

Complainants in the case argue that HP misled shareholders by making “fraudulent statements” about its printing supplies business in 2015 and 2016. 

A key element in the case is that HP unveiled plans to reduce product inventories across distribution channels in June 2016. 

The firm said at the time that this move would reduce revenue from printing supplies by nearly $450 million across two quarters in that year. 

However, in September 2020 the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued HP with a $6 million fine over these sales practices. 

 The SEC said at the time that regional managers had incentivized staff to “accelerate sales” and offer discounted supplies to HP-linked resellers, meaning that the company cannibalized sales from affiliate distributors. 

“During the period relevant to this case, HP sold its supplies through a ‘push model’. Under this model, HP offered incentives to ‘Tier 1’ distributors to purchase printing supplies,” legal documents read. 

“Those Tier 1 distributors, in turn, sold to ‘Tier 2’ distributors who sold HP products to other resellers or to end users,” read the court documents.

“These sales, offered at a discount, “[cannibalized]” sales from local distributors, who would have to lower prices to compete with marked-down goods from other territories.”

HP investors were not informed of these practices, the SEC noted, which prompted a swift legal challenge just weeks after the SEC settlement agreement. 

In March 2022, a California court dismissed the case, claiming that investors should have lodged a complaint within a two-year time frame of the ‘discovery’ of fraudulent activities. 

However, it was argued that investors could not have known of such activities prior to the SEC ruling.  

“Lead plaintiff Maryland Electrical Industry Pension Fund alleged that HP and individual defendants made fraudulent statements about HP’s printing supplies business,” court documents read.

“The district court concluded that the complaint, filed in 2020, was barred by the two-year statute of limitations, 28 U.S.C. § 1658(b)(1), because the public statements, loss in profits, and reductions in channel inventory at the heart of Maryland Electrical’s claims had all taken place by 2016.”

The successful appeal means that investors could pursue compensation against the California-based firm. 

Darren Robbins, an attorney for the Maryland-based pension fund leading the lawsuit, told Reuters that the decision will help investors seeking a resolution to the dispute. 

ITPro has approached HP for comment. 

HP has unveiled a suite of new PCs at CES 2023 designed to bring innovative new features to benefit hybrid working environments.

Chief among the new features is a new 'multi-camera experience' designed to offer dual video streams and camera switching to help users easily show their faces and an object or whiteboard at the same time, side-by-side or picture-in-picture. HP said the new devices are the first business notebooks to support the simultaneous use of two cameras.

The catalogue of launches sporting the new hybrid work features includes the HP Dragonfly G4, HP EliteBook 1040 G10, and the HP Elite x360 1040 G10 - all of which come equipped with Intel 13th Gen processors, and varying screen sizes between 13.5 and 14 inches.

The company has also added a feature called 'auto camera select' which uses face tracking to detect which camera a user is facing to help keep audiences engaged without having to change the settings manually on their device if they happen to change which camera they use.

HP Keystone Correction helps to share whiteboards or documents by automatically cropping and flattening images from the camera feed. There’s also the HP Be Right Back feature which users can utilise to change their video feed to an image without disrupting their meetings if they need a break.

Smart Sense is also baked in, a feature HP claims will optimise PC thermal performance using AI to adapt to PC usage patterns. The ambition here is that the feature will help to make the devices run quieter and cooler, making them more comfortable to work with.

Through research, the company said that 77% of employees prefer a hybrid model, with this form of working here to stay, although working in a hybrid environment can be challenging.

It added that workers need to have productive workspaces at home, and need the best PC experience wherever they work.

“Hybrid provides us with greater flexibility and freedom in our personal lives, but brings its own set of challenges for people to stay productive and connected to others,” said Alex Cho, president of personal systems at HP.

HP also unveiled two other devices that it hopes will reduce friction in users’ lives through their all-day battery life and powerful camera and touchscreen, in turn supporting the rise in hybrid working.

The first PC is the Dragonfly Pro Chromebook which has been made for users who require continuous, uninterrupted connection to the internet.

The Dragonfly Pro Chromebook is a 14in device with what HP claims to be the first 8MP user-facing camera in a clamshell Chromebook, with the world’s brightest Chromebook touchscreen display.

The second piece of hardware is the HP Dragonfly Pro which the company produced in partnership with AMD. It's been branded the first HP device to have one-touch access to HP 24/7 live concierge support through one of its hotkeys. The other hotkeys are for Control Center access, and the camera, while the fourth one can be customised.

Both of these devices are EPEAT Gold Registered in the US, using ten recycled metals and plastics as well as sustainably sourced and recycled packaging.

HP also said the freelancer community is expected to grow, with freelancers making up 50% of the US workforce by 2027. This is why it has released these two laptops, targeting freelancers who need power for multitasking and heavy workloads, as well as built-in support and services.

A package of six security vulnerabilities impacting the firmware of HP’s business-focused laptops and desktops and some have been left unfixed for months, security researchers said.

Experts at Binarly presented the package of vulnerabilities at the most recent Black Hat conference in August. More than a month after the public disclosure, the vulnerabilities remain unfixed for several HP devices.

The company has submitted 22 vulnerabilities to HP this year, including a package of 16 high-severity flaws in March that also impacted the firmware of enterprise-focused HP products including laptops, desktops, point-of-sale (PoS) systems, and edge computing nodes.

Binarly began notifying HP of the vulnerabilities included in the package of six that were publicly disclosed at Black Hat 2022 as far back as July 2021.

A wide range of HP devices is affected by the flaws, including HP Elite 2-in-1 PCs, HP EliteBook, HP ProBook laptops, HP ZBook workstations, and HP ZHAN notebooks. Some desktops, PoS systems, workstations, and thin clients are also vulnerable.

The patching status for the affected devices varies by each vulnerability, but a significant number of devices remain unpatched across each of the six publicly disclosed flaws.

HP has published three security advisories (1, 2, 3) that cover each of the six flaws found by Binarly, and the patching status for each device can be found in the dropdown menus.

Firmware vulnerabilities are particularly concerning, for businesses especially, because of the potential significance of the attacks they can facilitate.

If a cyber criminal was able to exploit a UEFI-level vulnerability and install malware at the root of the system, it has the potential to allow a high degree of persistence on the machine and can be difficult to both detect and remove.

Installing UEFI malware or a rootkit would afford an attacker a range of capabilities including the ability to implant a backdoor to the victim’s machine, create new users, remotely control the computer, exfiltrate data, and execute financially-driven campaigns like ransomware, for example.

Binary highlights the devices in its report that have still not received security updates following the public disclosure of the vulnerabilities more than a month ago.

When a vulnerability is publicly disclosed, it means cyber criminals have all the information they need to develop exploits for the flaws. If a device is not patched when a vulnerability is publicly disclosed, a user is then limited in what they can do to prevent an attack.

IT Pro has contacted HP for comment and will update the article if it responds.

Firmware bugs

All of the six vulnerabilities are privilege escalation flaws that can allow for arbitrary code execution in System Management Mode (SMM) which runs at a higher level of privileges that the operating system (OS) and the hypervisor.

“Running arbitrary code in SMM additionally bypasses SMM-based SPI flash protections against modifications, which can help an attacker to install a firmware backdoor/implant into BIOS,” said Binarly.

“Such a malicious firmware code in BIOS could persist across operating system re-installs. Additionally, this vulnerability potentially could be used by malicious actors to bypass security mechanisms provided by UEFI firmware (for example, Secure Boot and some types of memory isolation for hypervisors).”

Each of the individual vulnerabilities can lead to the same outcome but affect different components. They are tracked as:

• CVE-2022-23930 – rated 8.2 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’
• CVE-2022-31644 – rated 7.5 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’
• CVE-2022-31645 – rated 8.2 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’
• CVE-2022-31646 – rated 8.2 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’
• CVE-2022-31640 – rated 7.5 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’
• CVE-2022-31641 – rated 7.5 on the CVSS v3 severity scale - ‘high’

Designs don't really get more simplistic than the HP Deskjet 2710e, with its 7.6ppm 1200dpi print engine and single sheet 12-dpi A4 flatbed scanner. This is an office machine with all the bells and whistles taken off, leaving a faff-free, no frills printer.

However, the budget device is more of a home office buddy – something for little-to-medium printing requirements – despite its 'all-in-one' billing. The 2710e can get through monthly duty cycles of up to 1,000 pages, according to HP, though it's only recommended for a page volume of 50 to 100.

HP Deskjet 2710e review: Design

It's compact design is a big part of the appeal and largely the reason it's so well suited to a home office. At just 425 x 30 x 15.4cm, it is a machine small enough for a little corner or cubby hole. However, take note of the way the unit tapers; there's an extra 42 x 23cm on the end which will take up some desk space. The Deskjet 2710e is, however, one of the smallest all-in-one printers around.

Simplicity has been a hallmark of HP’s setup process over the last couple of years, and the Deskjet 2710e takes the same app-based approach as most of its recent stablemates.

The idea is that you simply turn the printer on, install the two cartridges, and then add the printer to the network from the Windows or smartphone HP Smart app. This has worked brilliantly on other HP printers we’ve tested, but with our test 2710e things fell apart.

We managed to complete the setup process after the fourth attempt – in reality, a point at which many users will have given up or assumed there was a fault with the machine. Three of our attempts were stalled by wireless disconnection at different stages of the process while using the Android version of the HP Smart app.

The same issues popped up on the Windows app on the first two attempts, despite the fact the printer was already connected to the network.

This is unfortunate given that HP highlights wireless network stability as a key feature of the printer, supporting both dual-band and automatic reset if a Wi-Fi signal is lost. While we saw some of this in action when testing the printer, it seems to be missing during the setup phase.

HP Deskjet 2710e review: Performance

You won’t be surprised to hear that the Deskjet 2710e is no speed demon. With our 24-page monochrome document, it took nearly 19 seconds for the first page to hit the output tray, with subsequent pages appearing at a rate of 9.87ppm. This improved to 15.9ppm with the print quality switched from Better to Draft, but the wait for the first page was still over 16 seconds.

Color performance is worse, with the first page taking up to 50 seconds to put in an appearance, and the page rate from there hovered around 5.7ppm. These results put the 2710e behind even its stablemate, the Deskjet 4120 – itself a fairly slow printer.

As for the print quality, it’s fine for the price but nothing more. In Better and Best quality modes you get sharp black text, but the definition isn’t as fine or as consistent as you’ll get from models further up the HP range like the Envy Inspire 7920e, while draft text is greyer with a slightly fuzzy look.

Color business graphics are punchy, but you can see slight signs of banding and dithering on gradients, while text overlaid on a blue or yellow box looks somewhat murky. The output is good enough for casual use or a quick draft for checking and proofreading purposes, but if you’re after professional-quality printing then you’re going to want to spend more.

It's a similar story for mono and colour copying. Speeds aren’t great, at around 20 seconds for a mono A4 page or 34 seconds for colour, and the reproduction is patchy in areas, with the printer delivering thicker, darker text than you’ll find in the original or struggling to match vibrant greens and reds.

The Deskjet 2710e will also print photos, though we found it touch and go working with heavier photo papers, often refusing to feed them in on the first try and waiting until we’d pulled them out and reinserted them. Photo printing speeds aren’t painfully slow, at around 80 seconds for an A5 photo or two minutes for an A4 photo print with quality set to high, but the prints themselves are more usable than impressive. 

Brighter colours reproduce quite well, but softer tones tend to look faded and you don’t get the clarity or detail you’ll find on prints from more expensive models like the Envy Inspire 7224e. The output’s good enough for a quick print of a smartphone snap, but you wouldn’t want to frame it.

As for scanning, there’s little wrong with the scans or the time taken to scan them – roughly 24 seconds for an A4 page at 300dpi. However, the lightweight lid makes it hard to scan, say, a magazine or book without keeping one hand on the lid to stop it slipping or too much light getting in.

HP Deskjet 2710e review: Is it worth it? 

For the minimal fee of £55 ($70), the 2710e is a very affordable machine, however, when it comes to printers, the upfront fee is often sullied by its long-term supply costs. The Deskjet 2710e is just $70 (£55) however HP's XL color cartridges cost £19 and £21 for black and those yield 200 pages and 240 pages respectively. That is almost 9p per black and white page and up to 20p for color.

What that suggests is that a business that is likely to print more than 50 pages per month might be better in the long run with a more expensive printer, one with cheaper running costs, such as the Epson EcoTank ET-1810.

As an alternative, you could look into an HP+ Instant Ink subscription. The Deskjet 2710e does come with a six-month subscription bundled in, however when that runs out you'll have to pay £2.99 for up to 50 pages or £4.49 per month for 100. 

HP Deskjet 2710e specifications

At first glance, HP’s Envy 6432e looks promising. While it’s quite ambitiously priced – particularly when you consider that it has no fax modem or display – it looks great, with a sleek, modern design that stands out amongst the usual squat grey boxes that make up most of the printer market.

It’s reminiscent of HP’s Deskjet 4120e, which also impressed us with its construction. Part of the reason for its slick appearance is the lack of any obvious controls; a mix of power, status and copy buttons are all concealed to the right of the paper tray, lighting up only when relevant. It even somehow manages to include a 35-sheet ADF without appearing cluttered or business-like.

At this price we’d usually expect more than this printer’s 120-page black and 75-page colour in-box cartridges, but the Envy 6432e does qualify for nine months’ free Instant Ink – worth up to 6,300 pages if you use the maximum 700 each month.

After this, Instant Ink subscriptions are reasonable with, for example, 300 pages costing £10 per month. Choose to buy your own cartridges, however, and you’ll be paying 7p per black page, and a wince-inducing 21.6p every time you dare dabble in colour. Compare this, for example, to the Canon Pixma TS8350, which manages 6.2p per page for colour prints and 3.4p per page for mono, and with outstanding quality to boot.

The Envy 6432e looks to offset its lack of display with coloured status LEDs that pulse and glow above the paper output tray. But while these might be amusing, we’d rather have a display capable of helping us set up, use and maintain the MFP. While it was easy to join a network, we spent a fruitless hour trying to work out why the copy buttons weren’t illuminated, before concluding that our sample probably had a fault.

We couldn’t complete our copy tests, but this MFP was underwhelming in most other respects. Its 11.1ppm text speed and 2.1ppm colour graphics speed are far slower than we’d expect at this price. Although it offers duplex printing, it delivered ten sides on five pages at only 1.5 images per minute (ipm). Scans were a little more competitive, but the Envy 6432e still needed 22 seconds to capture an A4 page at 300dpi. Generally, both print and scan quality were good, but not as good as the best rivals at this price.

Overall, the Envy 6432e doesn’t do enough to justify its price. While it looks good, it’s underwhelming in most other respects, and its lack of a screen makes it harder to use than many competitors. If you’re looking for an affordable workhorse for day-to-day printing, then both the Epson Expression Home XP-4100 and the Canon Pixma TS6250 make better options, with more straightforward user interfaces and stronger performance - particularly the latter.

HP Envy 6432e specifications