HP EliteBook 1040 G11 Review: A Road Warrior’s Secret Weapon
As a business-oriented machine, HP obviously doesn't load down the EliteBook 1040 (nor any of the other Elitebooks) with an excess of bloatware. In fact, the only pre-installed software on the systems beyond Microsoft's own Windows-related applications is the MyHP system configuration tool and the Wolf Security package. Let's look over MyHP first.
HP's EliteBook Pre-Loaded Software: MyHP & Wolf Security
HP's EliteBook Pre-Loaded Software: MyHP & Wolf Security
This is the screen that greets you when you open MyHP. From here you can go to any of the five pages in the app as well as find easy access to a few helpful functions and information resources. There's nothing unique on this page per say -- everything here is either a shortcut to a Windows menu or an HP website.
However, what some of the tiles are of questionable utility. For example, the "Video Control" tile takes you to another page that simply directs you to the Windows Store so that you can download a third-party application to manage your webcam. Meanwhile, the "Programmable Key" tile brings you to a page where you can bind a unique function to a single key combo on the keyboard: Fn+F11. We're glad to see key retasking, but why is it a single button combo? If you were going to go to the trouble of making this feature, why not expand it to other parts of the keyboard?
On the battery page, you're presented with a few statistics about the system's battery. There's nothing here particularly shocking, but we were surprised to find that there is no way to manually manage the charging of your battery. Sometimes, HP's battery manager will enable "smart charging" and only elect to charge to 85%. Other times it will go all the way to 100%. You can enable "Maximize battery health" to force the machine to never go above 85%, but we wish there was more transparency as to how the "Optimize battery performance" setting actually worked.
On the Performance Control page, you can select between "Smart Sense" and "Performance" modes. We ran several benchmarks in one mode and then the other and there was no meaningful difference in sound level nor in performance, so we're not actually sure if this setting has much impact on the particular configuration we tested. The tooltips claim that 'Performance' mode will ramp up fan speeds more aggressively to offer improved performance, but this system is limited more by power limit than by thermals.
Finally, on the Support page, you can see your machine's model number and serial number, when its warranty expires, and use a variety of options to get help with the system. There are automated diagnostics including both software and hardware check-ups, and you can also chat with either an AI bot or a real person via text or speech if you need to. It's pretty nice to have these functions built right into a bundled application, and it's even better that this app doesn't require a dozen support apps to work.
The other bit of pre-installed software is HP's Wolf Security package. This seems to be a straightforward, almost "old-school" anti-virus solution with a few other tricks up its sleeve. We didn't deeply investigate Wolf Security, but aside from malware protection the app also offers help with system file corruption and "Application Persistence", preventing malware or attackers from breaking your vital software tools.
Of course, like any vigilant anti-malware suite, Wolf Security can be a little bit overeager. On this machine, it popped up a warning about every single executable file we opened from File Explorer. It's true that regular users probably won't be doing this often and we expect that this is ultimately a good thing, but it's just another indicator that this is a business laptop, not necessarily intended for enthusiasts or general consumers.
Now, let's get to the benchmarks and see how this baby burns, shall we?
ATTO Disk Benchmark
We'll start off the barrage of benchmarks with ATTO. The ATTO disk benchmark is a fairly quick and simple test which measures read/write bandwidth and IOPS across a range of different data sizes. While we don't typically compare these results across multiple machines, it's useful to gauge whether a particular notebook's storage subsystem is up to snuff.
The WD SN810 SSD in this machine puts up a performance approximately equal to its rated specs. This is an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD intended for read-heavy workloads, and that shows in the benchmark. It's plenty speedy for a machine like this, and certainly a much better choice than a SATA or UFS drive.
Speedometer 3.0 Browser Benchmark
We use BrowserBench.org's Speedometer test to take a holistic look at web application performance. This test automatically loads and runs a variety of sample web apps using the most popular web development frameworks around, including React, Angular, Ember.js, and even plain-Jane JavaScript. This test is a better example of how systems cope with real web applications in comparison with a more compute-focused JavaScript test like JetStream. All tests were performed using the latest version of Chrome.
This is a pretty strong result out of the gate for the EliteBook 1040 G11. It falls behind the MSI Prestige laptop with the same SoC, but that machine was a larger and thicker system with, critically, a much higher power limit. While the Core Ultra 7 165H has a nominal TDP of 28W, system vendors are free to configure the power limits however they like, and HP has chosen a conservative PL1 value of 48W for this machine. We'll see the results of that in coming benchmarks more than this one, though. Speedometer responds well to short-time boosts, so the EliteBook isn't far behind its higher-powered cousins.
MAXON Cinebench 2024 3D Rendering Benchmark
Next up is the latest-generation 3D rendering benchmark from Maxon, based on the Cinema 4D rendering engine. It's a purely CPU-based test that doesn't make use of the graphics processor at all, and it scales very well with additional CPU cores. We ran both single- and multi-threaded tests on all of the machines in the charts.
Its low position on the chart might make you think that the EliteBook 1040 G11 did poorly in this test, but it's important to keep in mind that many of the processors higher up the chart are benefiting from more (or more powerful) CPU cores, more capable cooling due to larger chassis, and higher power limits. While the EliteBook 1040's scores aren't outstanding here, they're also not bad; there's not a slow CPU in this set. Still, there are definitely better options if you for some reason need to do intense multi-core work on a mobile machine.
Geekbench 6 CPU Performance Benchmark
Geekbench is a cross-platform benchmark that simulates real-world workloads in a wide variety of tasks, including encryption, image processing, physical simulation, machine learning, and many more. We tested the systems featured here with the latest Geekbench 6 version to get an idea of their overall system performance.
Our commentary here is much the same as on the Cinebench result. Single-threaded Geekbench scores are highly sensitive to core clock rate, and the Core Ultra 7 165H doesn't really boost that high, so the single-threaded speed is a little mediocre. Meanwhile, the tight 48W power limit sharply limits what the EliteBook 1040 can do in multi-threaded applications. Still, though, neither score is "bad" — it's just that raw performance simply isn't a chief consideration with this system.
UL PCMark 10 Productivity Benchmark
The standard PCMark 10 benchmark uses a mix of real-world applications like OpenOffice and Zoom as well as simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity and content creation tasks, including (but not limited to) image and video editing, web browsing, teleconferencing, document creation, and so on. We ran it on all these machines to see which one is the best for creative work.
Here we have a pretty good result for the EliteBook 1040. It falls behind the larger MSI Prestige system with the same SoC for the same reasons we discussed before (better cooling and higher power limit), but still puts up respectable performance regardless. The ASUS Zephyrus machine barely manages to pull ahead of our EliteBook thanks to its powerful Radeon RX 6800S discrete GPU offering it a sizable advantage in the Digital Content Creation score, but loses badly to HP's machine in the critical "Productivity" area. Meteor Lake is quick for tasks like these.
UL PCMark 10 Applications Benchmark
The full PCMark 10 benchmark above uses a mix of actual real-world applications as well as simulated workloads to establish how well a given system performs productivity and content creation tasks. However, because many of those benchmarks are not yet optimized for ARM64, we use the PCMark 10 Applications benchmark to compare against those systems. This test checks performance in the actual Microsoft Office suite as well as in the Edge browser, using the native architecture for each machine.
There are no real surprises here, but it's nice to see the EliteBook keeping pace. The systems with the highest power limits pretty much win the day here, and that puts the EliteBook 1040 toward the lower end of the chart, but it's still within 10% of every system besides the brutish ASUS ROG Strix Scar 17 gaming laptop and its 16-core Dragon Range CPU. Another solid result for HP.
UL 3DMark Gaming Benchmarks
3DMark has a wide variety of tests available. Most of them aren't really suitable for a system like this, as it is decidedly not a gaming laptop. That doesn't mean it's incapable of playing games, though; the integrated Arc GPU is actually quite potent. We chose to run 3DMark Night Raid, a modern DirectX 12 test specifically for mobile parts and integrated graphics, as well as the extremely-demanding Wild Life Extreme 4K UHD benchmark.
In Night Raid, we see the EliteBook comport itself pretty well. This is partially thanks to the relatively light load of the benchmark and partially thanks to the fast LPDDR5X memory that HP outfitted the machine with. The Arc Alchemist architecture used in Meteor Lake has been optimized well for 3DMark, so these parts punch well above their weight in this test, but even accounting for that we're seeing the kind of speed you'd only have gotten from a discrete GPU just a couple of generations ago.
3DMark Wild Life Extreme, on the other hand, is an interesting benchmark that tests a relatively lightweight scene in extremely high resolution: native 4K UHD, in fact. This system doesn't have a 4K screen, but 3DMark runs the benchmark in 4K and downscales it to the screen for output. This is basically a memory bandwidth benchmark, which is why the 256-bit Apple M2 absolutely dominates here, but the EliteBook 1040 holds its own against even the ASUS Zenbook S16 and its Radeon 890M GPU that is miles faster on paper.
All told, the EliteBook 1040 G11's performance is competent but doesn't stand out from the crowd. You're not going to struggle to complete tasks on this machine -- it's snappy and responsive even while multitasking. However, it's also not going to set any records, and it's not suited for heavy rendering or computational workloads. Obviously, this is a machine targeted at road warriors that need to be productive when mobile, and in that capacity, the EliteBook 1040 G11 should server users well.
With all of that in mind, how's the battery life? Well, we'll tell you about the battery life on the next page...
