HP unveiled a new generation of AI-powered business laptops on Thursday, kickstarting a race to leverage artificial intelligence to reenergize the PC market. The sales pitch for the new laptops, which it calls the largest-ever portfolio of “AI PCs,” is designed from the ground up to support new generative artificial intelligence workloads in a hybrid workspace.
“This is not a revolution grounded in speeds and feeds. This is a revolution grounded in use cases, personas, and experiences because what we’re changing is not the technical landscape of the world. We are changing the fundamental proficiency, productivity, and creativity of the world,” said Alex Cho, President of Personal Systems at HP Inc., during the HP Amplify conference in Las Vegas.
The new EliteBook 1040 G11 is pitched as the world’s most advanced business laptop for collaboration. It is portable, equipped with Intel’s Core Ultra 5 or Core Ultra 7 CPUs, offering up to 21 hours of battery life for workers on the go, and available in clamshell or two-in-one designs.
The new Intel chips that power it bring Intel’s Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for AI acceleration, aiding features like Windows Studio Effects and HP’s Smart Sense efficiency automation. It also features HP’s upgraded Endpoint Security Controller chip, which is designed to future-proof the machines against quantum attacks. The EliteBook 1040 G11 (and the Elite x360 1040 G11 which is a 2-in-1 notebook) is expected to launch in April 2024.
HP’s other notebook lineup of PCs getting advanced AI capabilities includes the ProBook and ZBook. The AI-enabled ZBook lineup comes powered by either Intel CPUs or next-generation AMD Ryzen PRO processors, with graphics processing units built by Nvidia to power demanding workloads such as engineering and design.
