HP EliteBook 845 G10 review: Business laptop impresses with AMD Ryzen 7 7840U and unbeatable price

In a direct comparison of the two EliteBook 845 models, you notice right away that HP uses different top covers here. Our Campus variant has a recess at the top and does not have rubberized feet. When you open the screen (from about 135 degrees) the entire rear edge rests on the surface. The lid feels a little smoother and cooler, but there are no differences in stability. The internal structure also differs slightly, as there is no additional cover for the M.2 2280 SSD.

Basically, the ports of the two 845-G10 models are identical, but our low-priced variant does without the SmartCard reader and the SIM card reader. Otherwise, the range of USB 4.0 and regular USB-A ports is still very good.

The WLAN module is identical to the last test unit, but our variant does not offer a built-in WWAN module and the necessary antennas are not on board either.

A direct comparison of the two configurations reveals that the keyboard is not 100% identical. The keyboard of our variant is minimally louder and the keys also seem slightly more clattery. Nevertheless, the keystroke itself feels identical and you only notice these differences in a direct comparison when you test both devices side by side. Overall, we can give the all-clear: the keyboard is slightly weaker than in the high-end configuration, but still very good.

Compared to the previously tested variant with the Ryzen 9 Pro 7940HS, which had a maximum of 51 watts at its disposal, the power limits of the Ryzen 7 7840U are now lower. In both the Best Performance and Balanced modes, the processor treats itself to 30 watts for short bursts and 25 watts permanently; in Best Energy Saving mode, these figures are 27/22 watts. We would have liked to see a somewhat wider spread here. On the other hand, we anticipate that fan activity will be significantly reduced thanks to the lower power limits. The following benchmarks and measurements were carried out in Best Performance mode.

Basically, the differences between the Ryzen 7 7840U and the Ryzen 9 Pro 7940HS are not all that large because the HS processor offers a higher base clock and a 100 MHz higher maximum clock of 5.2 GHz, while the 7840U has a maximum of 5.1 GHz. Both chips use eight Zen4 cores, which means that up to 16 threads can be processed simultaneously. The cache size is also identical, so the performance advantage of the 7940HS is only due to the higher power consumption. In principle, HP could achieve the same performance with the 7840U.

As expected, the single-core performance of the two chips is virtually identical; only in the multi-core tests does the 7940HS have an advantage of around 20%. The Intel competition can only keep up in the multi-core tests in short tests such as Cinebench R15, but falls much further behind under prolonged loads. The MateBook X Pro with its Core i7-1360P is a good example here because the performance is only comparable thanks to consumption rates of up to 64 watts. At 30 watts, however, the Intel processor is around 20% slower than the Ryzen 7 7840U at 25 watts. Only in the single-core tests do the current Intel chips have an advantage, but they also consume more power.

On battery power, consumption drops more quickly from 30 to 25 watts, which is why multi-core performance is slightly lower (~15%), but single-core performance remains identical. Further CPU benchmarks are available in our tech section.

The EliteBook 845 G10 performs very well in the synthetic tests and the subjective performance impression is also very high. There is also no noticeable difference between the two configurations here. No stability issues were observed during testing.

Our test configuration is equipped with the 512 GB variant of the WD SN740, which is a fast PCIe 4.0 drive that achieves transfer rates of up to 4 GB/s. There are of course even faster drives, but these confer no additional advantages in everyday life. Performance also remains stable under prolonged load. Further SSD benchmarks are listed here.