HP's business convertible is a solid if unimaginative effort that ticks as many office boxes as it can (minus the Copilot button -- because this first launched in 2023). It'll hold its own at home, if you want it to, but unless the IT department is footing the bill, we'd suggest finding something a little sexier elsewhere.
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It might seem that this review of the HP Elitebook x360 1040 G10 (to give it its full title — we’ll stop that now) is a little late. It launched in various markets in mid-to-late 2023 but Stuff has only had it since about halfway through 2024. So yes, it’s late but not as late as its launch date suggests.
Better late than never, right? As it happens, the delay is advantageous. The Elitebook x360’s price has dropped a touch since launch, which works in its favour since it was somewhat overpriced when it first showed up. It might even be overpriced now but it’s less so than it was.
Silence is golden, duct tape is silver
You’ll find HP’s notebook kicking around online for about R38,000, though our model is specced a little higher than those are. The reason it struggles at this price point is because it’s aimed squarely at the business world. It competes directly with the Lenovo X1 Carbon and its ilk. As such, the Elitebook x360’s design can seem somewhat… uninspired.
The keyboard is backlit (if you want it to be) but every other aspect is as predictable as you could want from a laptop. Perhaps it’s because this should be used by CEOs and other people too important to figure out a new layout every time a new computer magically turns up on their desks.
All of the major boxes are ticked. The 14in touchscreen display is designed for long work hours, the trackpad is large enough to let fingers wander distractedly during interminable meetings, and the keyboard won’t make too much noise if you’re tapping away in the boardroom. The silver chassis is… actually, we were expecting that to feel better. HP reckons it’s mostly recycled magnesium but it feels a little plastic to us. Either way, the machine is lightweight throughout.
The ‘x360’ in ‘Elitebook x360’ is also pretty meaningful. There’s a fancy hinge that lets this one operate in an A-frame orientation or as an oversized tablet, in case you’re the greeter at a snooty hotel. That means you’ll be able to set it up for impromptu presentations with little effort, even if there’s no projector handy.
Business casual
Internals offer a better experience, even accounting for the fact that the Elitebook x360 launched in 2023. Our review model arrived with a 13th-gen Intel Core i7-1355U, a 1.70GHz chipset that chews up office work for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It’s helped along by a 32GB allocation of RAM. The Elitebook we used also included a 1TB Samsung-made solid-state drive. There’s very little that can slow it down, provided it’s used as intended.
That means avoiding gaming. For such a pricey machine, there’s no third-party GPU installed. Intel’s Arc system handles that side of matters but you’d think a notebook with a ‘1040’ in the title might have something by Nvidia inside. Turns out, that’s there for a whole other reason. Just as well. GTX cards aren’t terribly powerful anyway. Windows 11 does the job well enough if you’re intent on being the most productive office worker in the performance review queue.
A basic set of ports — a full-sized HDMI, a pair of USB-As, a pair of USB-Cs (one for power), and a SIM card slot (yes, really) — sit alongside the Windows Hello video biometric system and a fingerprint reader tucked away under the arrow keys. It’s all very businesslike and all very boring.
That’s what success looks like
Boring generally goes hand in hand with results, unless you do crazy things for Red Bull for a living. Even then, there’s tons of planning and prep and (blegh) mathematics before they’ll let you backflip a dune buggy over an active volcano. That work tends to take place on a machine like this. The 14in 16:10 display is all about going over spreadsheets but it will, along with the integrated Bang and Olufsen speakers, transition well to a multimedia machine.
There’s plenty of highly specific grunt under the hood, even with the one-year-old chipset handling matters. The double helping of RAM (usually the Elitebook x360 features 16GB of the stuff) is a definite bonus, letting you open bigger spreadsheets than anyone else on the Zoom call. And, since there are no heavy graphics workloads to deal with, HP’s workhorse makes little noise. You’re more likely to annoy with constant hemming and hawing at production numbers than with fan noise.
HP Elitebook x360 1040 G10 verdict
But, again, you’ll pay around R40k for one of these. That’s not an issue if the company is paying for it but it’s harder to recommend if the money comes out of your own pocket. The same price will buy a substantial MacBook or MacBook Air with one of Apple’s M-class chipsets. Those are arguably better-rounded work machines if you’re after something that operates as well at home as it does in the office. But as Windows-based convertibles go, HP’s Elitebook x360 is a lean, mean, presentation-giving machine.
