1. The list in brief
2. Best battery life
3. Best business laptop
4. Best convertible laptop
5. Best performance
6. Best convertible
7. How to find the right laptop
8. How we test
9. Why trust Laptop Mag
The best HP EliteBook business laptops are built to last. Whether you're an IT manager buying for thousands of employees or an enterprise user wanting to simply upgrade your gear, HP has a business laptop for you. In general, these machines have sleek aluminum designs, excellent keyboards, and tons of premium security features, like an optional Sure View display, an IR camera, and a sliding webcam cover. In fact, HP EliteBook business laptops are so good that they often feature on our best laptops and best business laptops pages.
Not sure which HP EliteBook business laptops is best for you? Read on for our top picks.
The Quick List
Best battery life
The battery runtime on the HP Elite Dragonfly G3 will knock you off your feet. According to our in-house testing, it lasted an amazing 14 hours and 20 minutes. The average laptop lasts about 10 hours, which is markedly shorter.
Best all-purpose business laptop
The 1080p display is good for work and play. There are plenty of ports, which means you don't need any dongles, and you'll find a spattering of default and optional features to make your work experience more secure and efficient.
Best budget HP EliteBook laptop
The HP EliteBook 830 G7 and EliteBook 840 G7 both deliver a solid 1080p display, fast performance, a bevy of security features and a comfortable keyboard — everything you need to finish projects at work or relax after you clock out.
Best overall performance
The HP EliteBook 845 G7 is a lightweight, slender 14-inch powerhouse with a lovely FHD display. Whether you’re working from home, returning to the office, or traveling the world, the HP EliteBook will win you over.
Best 2-in-1 convertible laptop
Not only does the Elite Folio have the endurance of an Olympic champion, but it breaks records like one, too. The Elite Folio is the world’s first business convertible with a spectacular pull-forward mechanism.
Best Battery Life
The battery runtime on the HP Elite Dragonfly G3 will knock you off your feet. According to our in-house testing, it lasted an amazing 14 hours and 20 minutes. The average laptop lasts about 10 hours, give or take, so we were taken aback to see that the Elite Dragonfly G3 survived an extra four hours.
The Elite Dragonfly G3 comes with 12th Gen Intel Core i5 and i7 processors, and a minimum of 256GB of SSD storage and 16GB of RAM. The cheapest Elite Dragonfly G3 you can get is about $1,900, but the total could climb to $3,999 if you need 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, 5G support, and a 12th Gen Intel Core i7 vPro processor.
Best of all, the Dragonfly G3 actually has a good webcam. It has a 5MP shooter, which is much better than the not-so-great 720p and 1080p webcams that continue to plague the laptop market.
See our full review of the HP Elite Dragonfly G3.
best business laptop
The Envy and Spectre series tend to get all the praise, but many of their best characteristics can also be found in HP's business laptops, especially the flagship EliteBook x360 1040 G7.
It flaunts an attractive metal chassis, boasts lightning-quick performance, and lasts for more than 15 hours on a charge. The 1080p display is a good one for work and play, plenty of ports mean you don't need a dongle, and a spattering of default and optional features make your work experience more secure and efficient.
The sky-high price means the 1040 G7 is only meant for the high-rollers; execs making the six-figure salaries, invaluable researchers working long nights, and the paper pushers with a Fortune 500 company attached to their LinkedIn profiles.
See our full HP EliteBook x360 1040 G7 review
best budget laptop
The highlight of these laptops. the EliteBook 830 G7 and EliteBook 840 G7, are their sleek aluminum chassis, which smartly blends form with function. Looking past the frame, these two EliteBook models get you a solid 1080p display, fast performance, a bevy of security features and a comfortable keyboard — everything you need to finish projects at work or relax after you clock out.
At the right price, I'd consider these models over the ThinkPad X1 Carbon, our long-standing best business laptop. It ultimately comes down to pricing — if you can find these on sale for less than their rivals, then don't hesitate to snag them for your workforce — they'll be happy with their new systems, trust me.
See our HP EliteBook 830 G7 and 840 G7 review
Best HP EliteBook Performance
The HP EliteBook 845 G7 is a lightweight, slender 14-inch powerhouse with a lovely FHD display. At $1,419, it’s a bargain due to its speedy performance and ability to handle anything you throw at it. Whether you’re working from home, returning to the office, or traveling the world, the HP EliteBook will win you over.
The EliteBook was released without much fanfare but its snappy performance, picturesque display, and well-distributed lightweight chassis make this a great buy. I’d snatch one up while it’s still flying under the radar.
See our HP EliteBook 845 G7 review
Best HP EliteBook convertible laptop
The HP Elite Folio is packed with innovative, solution-solving tech — not gimmicks — that substantiates its $2,000 price tag. It also gives the Energizer Bunny a run for its money; it lasted a jaw-dropping 16 hours and 21 minutes on a charge.
Not only does the Elite Folio have the endurance of an Olympic champion, but it breaks records like one, too. The Elite Folio is the world’s first business convertible with a spectacular pull-forward mechanism. The feature lets you transform the display into a digital easel so you can get your Bob Ross on. The Elite Folio comes with an awesome stylus — a plus for users who have an affinity for digital note-taking and doodling.
See our full HP Elite Folio review.
How to Choose the best HP EliteBook business laptop
Do your intensive daily workloads require more RAM than the average Joe? Are you a video editor who needs extra storage? Are you a power user who wants a beefy GPU? Sorting through the best laptops to fit your lifestyle is a tricky business.
To make your shopping process a little easier, our Editor-in-Chief Sherri L. Smith has put together some tried-and-true guidelines to help you choose the best laptop.
Budget: What you get for the money.
You can find decent Windows laptops and high-quality Chromebooks for under $500. However, better mainstream laptops usually cost more than $700 and premium Ultrabooks can run over $1,000. The best gaming laptops can cost $2.000 and up, but you can play the latest titles at decent frame rates on gaming laptops under $1,000.
Screen Size: 12 to 14 inches for Portability
Knowing a laptop's screen size tells you a lot about its portability overall. If you want to use your computer on your lap or carry it around a lot, go for one with a 12, 13 or 14-inch display. If you want to use the computer on tables and desks and won't carry it around much, a 15-inch model may give you more value. Some gaming rigs, media machines and workstations even have 17 or 18-inch screens, but those are hardest to carry.
2-in-1 or Clamshell?
More and more of today's laptops are 2-in-1s with screens that either bend back 360 degrees or detach so you can use them as tablets. If you like the idea of using your laptop in slate mode for drawing, media consumption or just using it standing up, a 2-in-1 could be for you. However, you can often get better features or a lower price by going with a traditional clamshell-style laptop.
Battery Life: 8+ Hours for Portability
Unless you only plan to use your laptop on your desk, battery life matters. Even within the home or office, having plenty of juice enables you to work on the couch or at the conference table, without being chained to the nearest outlet. For the best portability, we recommend getting a laptop that lasted over 8 hours on the Laptop Mag Battery Test. The longest-lasting laptops endure for over 10 hours.
Specs: 1080p / Core i5 / 8GB Are Best Bets
You can spend a lot of time delving into specs, but here are the key components to think about. If you just want really good mainstream performance, go for a Core i5 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 1080p screen.
How We Test the best HP EliteBook business laptop
We put each laptop through extensive benchmark testing — both synthetic and real-world — before they end up in the hands of our reviewers. We evaluate each aspect of the laptop, including its performance, battery life, display, speakers and heat management.
In our benchmark testing, we use a Klein K10 colorimeter to detect the brightness and sRGB color gamut of the laptop's display. For performance testing, we run the laptop through a gauntlet of benchmarks, including Geekbench 4.3 and 5.0 and 3DMark professional graphics tests.
To determine real-world performance, we task the laptop to convert a 4K video to 1080p resolution and to duplicate a 4.97GB multimedia file. Our real-world graphics test is the Dirt 3 benchmark with medium settings at 1080p resolution.
We also run heat tests by playing a 15-minute full-screen video and measuring temperatures in different areas of the laptop. Last but not least, our battery test consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. For MacBooks and premium Windows 10 laptops, a runtime of over 9 hours is considered a good result whereas gaming laptops and workstations that can stay powered for longer than 5 hours deserve praise.
These tests are complemented with extensive hands-on testing from our reviewers who critique everything from the laptop's materials to the feel of its touchpad.
See this page on How We Test Laptops for more details on our benchmarking procedures.
Why Trust Laptop Mag
Laptop Mag reviews over one hundred different laptops every year, from paperweight ultralights to everyday workhorses to lumbering gaming notebooks that scorch the frame rates of even the hottest AAA games. We're not just experts in the laptop field, as we go one step further by meticulously testing smartphones, tablets, headphones, PC accessories, software, and even the latest in gaming.
We are 100% independent and have decades of experience to help you buy with confidence. In fact, Laptop Mag has been testing and reviewing products for three decades, and we continue to deliver trustworthy reviews you can rely on.
Our experienced team of writers and editors scour the available information about the laptop and put it through its paces to determine which is best for you. But before they start, the testing team subjects each system to a rigorous regimen of synthetic and real-world tests to see how a system handles the type of work and games you’re most likely to throw at it.
Our editorial trustworthiness is enforced by one of the world's largest technology publishers, Future Publishing. As a company, we have unrivaled experience across every tech sector — and we're the group's specialist for all things mobile tech.
