HP EliteBook 1040 G10 laptop review - HP's response to the ThinkPad X1 Carbon

The basic design of the EliteBook 1040 G10 is no different than other EliteBooks, such as the 845 G10 that we recently tested. The silver color laptop looks elegant, with the black keyboard and dark display bezels offering a nice contrast. Particularly on the sides, the display bezels are comfortably small, and even though they are slightly wider on the top and bottom, there is no camera bulge like in several other business competitors. This compromise is okay for us, and the laptop design doesn't look aged at all. Compared to the aluminum case of the EliteBook 845 G10, the surfaces feel minimally rougher and slightly warmer. But fingerprints and dirt are no larger problems here either.

The stability is very good, with both the base unit and display lid being very stiff and resistant to warping. In the direct comparison, we don't see any differences to the EliteBook 845 G10, so the display lid can also be pressed in when it is closed. However, we are still unable to provoke any response from the display in this way even with a lot of pressure. The maximum opening angle is around 170 degrees, and the central hinge is well adjusted.

The case of the 1040 G10 is slightly less wide than that of the 845 G10 but a little deeper instead. The height of both models is the same. But the magnesium case has a positive effect on the weight, which is exactly 1.3 kg (~2.87 lb), so around 160 grams (~5.6 oz) less than the 845 G10. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon uses the same footprint, while being slightly slimmer and also lighter. The included charger adds almost another 300 grams (~10.6 oz) to the weight. Optionally, the laptop is also available with a smaller 38-Wh battery, which would reduce the weight by about 100 grams (~3.5 oz).

Most of the connections of the EliteBook 1040 G10 are placed on the left side of the case. The two USB-C connections support Thunderbolt 4 and can therefore also be used comfortably to connect a docking station. As a business laptop, the device also offers a SmartCard reader, but there is no SD card reader. 

The top edge of the display bezel contains a 5-MP camera that records decent images and also includes a mechanical shutter. Particularly in terms of the image sharpness, there are some visible advantages compared to the regular 720p or 1080p models, and you also won't need an external webcam to achieve a good quality. In addition, there is also an IR camera, allowing you to use face recognition via Windows Hello.

HP hasn't included a point stick in its business models for a while, but the ClickPad works really well. At 12 x 8 cm (~4.7 x 3.1 in), it is sufficiently large, and the sliding characteristics are very good. We didn't encounter any problems with pointer movements or gestures (with up to four fingers) at all during the test. You can also click on the bottom half of the pad, which produces a muffled clicking noise that gives a high-quality impression.

HP doesn't offer any separate power profiles, but the regular Windows power profiles are used instead. We ran the following benchmarks and measurements using the Best Performance profile.

Our test configuration of the EliteBook 1040 G10 is equipped with the Core i5-1335U, which is the weakest processor for this model. It is a current Raptor Lake processor of the U series with two Performance and eight Efficiency cores. Even though the nominal TDP of the U series lies at 15 watts, the processor is allowed to consume a maximum up to 52 watts here. However, this value cannot be maintained and immediately drops, before it levels out at only 15 watts after a short time.

Correspondingly, the results are only good under short load, while the performance drops massively under constant load. But the single-core performance is still decent, and the performance is also good for everyday office tasks overall - although the competitors are overall faster. In battery operation, the maximum consumption is 45 watts, but only 15 watts after a few seconds. This causes the multicore performance to drop by about 26%, and the single-core performance is also affected (-10%). You can find additional CPU benchmarks in our technical section.

Thanks to its modern processor and NVMe SSD, the subjective performance impression of the EliteBook 1040 G10 is very good, and all inputs are implemented without any noticeable delays. In the synthetic benchmarks, it becomes noticeable that it uses only a Core-i5 processor, and most competitors achieve slightly better results. However, this shouldn't matter at all with everyday office work.

In our standardized latency test (with surfing in the Internet, playing a 4K YouTube video, and CPU load), our test unit shows some slight limitations for using real-time audio applications. 

Our test unit is equipped with the 512-GB version of Samsung's PM9B1 SSD. Even though this is a PCIe 4.0 drive that is also connected via PCIe 4.0, the overall performance is more at a PCIe 3.0 level with maximum transfer rates of about 3.5 GB/s. While more should be possible here theoretically, the drive is still fast enough in practice. After starting the laptop for the first time, there are still 415 GB of storage available to the user. You can find additional SSD benchmarks in our technical section.