This premium HP EliteBook delivers more power without added weight

Intel Lunar Lake was a great platform for ultrabook-style laptops when it came out. However, it was never a performance oriented processor series, as Intel basically concentrated everything on making a CPU that would be as efficient as possible. No wonder then that the old HP EliteBook X G1i was not a great performer - more than good enough for basic tasks for sure, but it was not a performance laptop. Instead, it was more for optimized for mobility (1.2 kg). If customers wanted performance, they had to buy the much heavier AMD model, the HP EliteBook X G1a (1.5 kg).

The new HP EliteBook X G2i that we recently reviewed changes the state of being. This 2026 generation EliteBook laptop not only features a completely new design, but it also brings a new platform, Intel Panther Lake. With Panther Lake, the Intel variants closes the performance gap to the older AMD model, while still delivering the same great battery life (around 18 hrs) and weight (1.2 kg) as the old Intel HP laptop.

Overall, the CPU performance has increased by a whopping 32 percent compared to the Lunar Lake equipped predecessor, which means that unlike the 2025 variant, the HP EliteBook X G2i is also a capable development machine. The older AMD model still wins when it comes to sustained multicore performance, but when you average out all the benchmarks, the EliteBook X G2i is about three percent faster than the older Ryzen counterpart.

In the end, we came out impressed after our review of the EliteBook X G2i 14 - which is also a testament of the great platform that is Intel Panther Lake.