HP EliteBook 865 G10 review: Why isn't the series being refreshed like HP Spectre 16?

Following our news about the excellent HP Spectre x360 16 – a demonstration of how to refresh a series and exploit the potential of the Core Ultra processors – we have to talk about HP’s EliteBook series of all things in a completely different light: how to neglect a high-end range and leave potential on the table. This is because, besides updating the processor, HP hasn’t made any noteworthy changes or improvements even though it would have been wise to do so. 

For the new EliteBook 16, HP has replaced the AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 6850U in the previous model with a Ryzen 9 PRO 7940HS. And with that, we have already covered most of the improvements made to this year’s edition of the 16-inch business laptop.

Has HP fixed the sluggish single-channel RAM? Nope. That said, the laptop can be configured with dual-channel memory, but our review unit was still shipped with single-channel RAM. This drastically limits both application performance and particularly the 3D performance of the integrated AMD Radeon 780M.

Has HP finally reworked its Sure View privacy filter? Nope. When enabled, it instantly makes the display so dark that even the direct user won’t enjoy working on it. This screen still has a terrible viewing angle and a minuscule sweet spot even with the feature disabled. The overlay filter even managed to deliver almost worse results than on the predecessor, for example in brightness distribution (a poor 47%).

Of course, it's possible to equip the HP laptop with another display. This option doesn’t come with the filter but “only” goes up to 400 nits. So why can’t we simply have a 1000-nit display without Sure View? Needless to say, the privacy filter can be very useful for a certain group of users, but it unfortunately leads to significant disadvantages for the general viewing experience.

The EliteBook high-end business range deserves more care and attention from HP than just a simple processor upgrade. We received our review unit directly from HP, meaning it was their choice to once again send us a configuration with single-channel RAM and a Sure View display. If we had been given a model with a 400-nit display and dual-channel memory, our rating would certainly have been higher. But we still need to evaluate the review sample and can only advise potential buyers to get the “right” configuration. 

Until now, we’ve mostly talked about the things we don’t like about the new EliteBook. But the business laptop also has many advantages going for it. Read our in-depth review of the HP EliteBook 865 G10 to find out what these benefits are and how you can perhaps get around potential drawbacks and end up with a fantastic EliteBook.