A few weeks ago, I was at the HP Customer Wellness Centre in Gurugram, and I saw the new 2026 range of HP laptops in the flesh. Oh, and what a view it was. I still recall running my fingers through the contours of the OmniBook Ultra.
One of these laptops was the HP EliteBook X G2i. It was classy, suave, and had a lot of awe around it. The build quality, the finesse, the keys on the keyboard, the travel, the feedback, that keystroke that you feel when pressing a key, the corners, the thin bezels, everything just made the techie in me feel happy. A few days later, the laptop was at my doorstep.
Now, after about 2 weeks with the Elitebook X G2i, I can confidently say that the performance of this laptop is just as good as its exterior design. This laptop is a productivity powerhouse, and there is simply nothing that it could not handle that I had in store for it. Nothing.
For a change, I also got to experience a 14-inch laptop as my primary device. My daily driver is the larger Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i. Great machine, and extremely capable of tackling all kinds of workloads. The HP Elitebook G2i 14 falls in a similar category, just with a slightly smaller display.
How does it make your life easier, how does it perform in the real world? Let’s find out.
Design
At 1.14 kilograms, the laptop practically becomes invisible in the bag. The lightweight of the laptop also makes it perfect for a lot of situations. I personally travel on my motorbike, and moving around with this laptop was a boon for me. It is so lightweight that you actually feel it while commuting.
The body uses at least 30 per cent recycled plastic and about 85 per cent recycled metal, making it a sustainable choice, if that is something that matters to you while buying PCs.
On the design front, the laptop uses an aluminium alloy chassis. The lid uses some sort of a magnet to stay attached to the body. Hence, the one-finger test was a bit annoying to perform. The bottom panel is easy to remove as it only uses four Philips screws.
The display is a 14-inch 60Hz WUXGA anti-glare OLED panel that works brilliantly. Brightness is at 300 nits, which makes it easy to use indoors even when the rooms are well-lit. Working near a sunny window might be a different story, though. Compared to my current laptop, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Lunar Lake (15.3-inch), it is definitely smaller in dimensions, but the brightness and colour production are on par. Daily work, content streaming, and even gaming on this machine were fun.
The hinge goes all the way almost 180 degrees. The EliteBook G2i also passes the one-finger test. The rubber strips at the bottom of the laptop keep it steady. They are quite wide, more than the recent laptops that I have used thus far.
With a 95 per cent DCI P3 colour gamut, the display is quite good with colours. In fact, a little Lightroom and Photoshop test went quite well on the EliteBook X G2i. Well, this is something expected out of an OLED panel. There is no HDR support, though, and the refresh rate is also limited to 60Hz. Is that a deal breaker? Not really.
This review unit in particular has an anti-glare OLED. There are other options, too, by the way. The top-of-the-line variant goes all the way to a 3K tandem OLED with a 120Hz refresh rate and 100 per cent of DCI P3 colour coverage.
Additionally, the anti-reflective coating is a lifesaver. Compared to the current cohort of laptops on my desk, the HP EliteBook X G2i keep my temper at bay because I can see the whole display for a change, regardless of the amount of ceiling lights or glare from the window.
The laptop also has something called HP Eye Ease.
In terms of connectivity ports, we have a plethora of options.
- 1 x HDMI 2.1(8K 30fps)
- 2 x Thunderbolt 4 ports - USB Type-C (40GBps, DP 2.1 and PD 3.0 support)
- 3.5mm audio combo jack
- Kensignton lock
- USB Type-A port (5GBps)
- USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 (10GBps speeds, DP 1.4, PD 3.0 support)
- 5G SIM WWAN support (optional)
The laptop offers a MediaTek WiFi 7 card and Bluetooth 6.
The laptop also comes with an optional 5G module, which comes in handy if you want to stay connected to the internet at all times.
The keyboard is a highlight in this laptop. Key travel is about 1.5mm. The feedback is good and overall typing experience is excellent. The backlighting has a standard 2-stage progression.
This brings us to the trackpad. The haptic trackpad is exciting. It is very responsive, very smooth in tracking, and is very large in area. The mechanical button in the trackpad is replaced by a vibration motor which tries its best offer a similar experience. There is an option to enable gesture controls too. Very similar to the one we see in Asus laptops. The swiping up and down on the left-hand side of the trackpad changes the brightness, and doing the same on the right-hand side changes the volume. What’s more is that the vibration intensity can also be changed in the settings.
The audio quality is way better than expected. The speaker, when played alongside other laptops, like my Yoga Slim 7i, overpower them. Clarity is top tier and it shows while playing music. Audio quality is on par with the laptop’s weight class. That said, you do start feeling that the speakers are not jaw-dropping good. They are as they should be in a compact 14-inch work laptop.
There are two downward firing speakers at the bottom of the laptop and two speakers located facing up as seen on the chassis at the sides of the keyboard. Speaking audio quality, being a top shelf business laptop, the HP EliteBook X G2i also offers very good noise cancellation built-in, thanks to AI.
Speaking of AI-powered features, we have a 5MP IR camera powered by the Poly Cam Pro application offering features such as AI noise reduction, dynamic voice leveling, auto framing, and background blur. Video quality was actually too good for me to believe at first. Well done HP.
Performance: Core Ultra X7 258H Packs A Mean Punch
Diving headfirst into the specifications, we have got a concoction of some of the best hardware there is to find in today’s laptop market. We have the Intel Core Ultra 7 358H, a 16-core and 16-thread CPU, along with up to 64GB LPDDR5x RAM (9600MT/s) and 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe4x4 SSD. My unit had 32GB RAM and 1 TB storage.
You can opt for lower variants, such as the Core Ultra 5 325 processor, the lowest in the processor options, with 8 cores and 8 threads, or the Core Ultra 7 366H. The latter has the same Max Turbo frequency but with a less powerful 4-core Xe3 iGPU.
The laptop also gets the new 12-core Intel Arc B390 iGPU, which is leaps and bounds better than the older IrisXe iGPU that Intel laptops used to get. I still recall those days trying to render a 1080p video on 4GB RAM. Don’t miss them a bit.
The CPU in this laptop belongs to the new line of Panther Lake processors from Intel, based on the 18A process node made in Intel’s own foundry. The processor also comes along with a brand new NPU offering up to 50 TOPS of AI compute.
Speaking of processors, there is a wide range of options to choose from, starting with the Intel Core Ultra 5 with up to 4.5GHz of max turbo boost and 12MB L3 cache, all the way up to the Core Ultra X7 368H with 5GHz Max Turbo Frequency.
The laptop that came in has soldered RAM, so there is no option to upgrade it, something that the Asus ExpertBook Ultra, an enterprise laptop I used recently, offered.
Gaming: Works Best For 1080p Settings
I have an XBOX Game Pass Ultimate subscription, so testing games was not an issue. I tried games such as Forza Horizon 6, Tomb Raider (2019), Halo Infinite, and Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. The games ran quite well, actually, just not in high settings. 1080p resolution works very well on this system, and it showed.
The laptop is not for gamers, and that is clear as day. However, if you are a regular power user who likes to indulge in a bit of creative work and gaming every now and then, the EliteBook X G2i is a good fit.
Security Features
For starters, we have a fingerprint sensor. We also get a physical camera shutter. The laptop also ships with a TPM 2.0 chip. The software side is stacked as well. The laptop gets HP Wolf Security, offering features such as threat containment and malware prevention.
Battery Life
I got 20 hours of battery life on average. This means that there were days when I got more than 20 hours too. These were especially light work days where screen-on time was much lower than usual. That still counts, though.
What Stood Out?
- Design and build quality
- Weight – one of the lightest 14-inch laptops
- Plenty of connectivity options
- Panther Lake chips are great for productivity
- The Intel Arc B390 iGPU is a huge improvement over the 140V
- Speakers are above average
- On-device AI models can be run easily, given the total compute of 181 TOPS in the Core Ultra X7 258H (9 + 122 + 50)
What Could Be Better?
- Soldered memory – RAM is not upgradable
- The lid has a little bit of flex, which is noticeable
- It is the same everywhere, but it has to be said – the laptop is on the pricier side
Verdict: Should You Buy The HP EliteBook X G2i Laptop?
Using the EliteBook X G2i was a walk in the park. Apart from a few things here and there, such as the subtle flex on the display and the fan noise, overall, there is absolutely nothing that this laptop wouldn’t do for you. Ranging from strict work to video playback, to playing music, to casual gaming, it can do it all. This is not even surprising as Intel’s Panther Lake chips are truly a generational leap over its predecessors, such as Raptor Lake and Meteor Lake chips, in terms of the overall package.
Another impressive add-on in this package is the GaN charger that comes along with the box. The first laptop that I owned with my own money was an AMD-powered HP laptop, and I remember carrying around its boxy adapter everywhere. This one is different. It is a 65W GaN charging adapter that fits literally anywhere.
Last but not least, the build quality is a huge bonus. The laptop screams ‘top-tier’ and using it feels very good. As a 14-inch PC that can quite literally be carried anywhere and put in any kind of bag, purse, or laptop sleeve, the HP EliteBook G2i does its best to justify its price tag.
Starting at Rs 2,50,000, the EliteBook X G2i is definitely among the top choices in its niche.
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