There is something befittingly purposeful about this form factor, which the boffins at HP have put together. The HP Eliteboard G1a isn’t just any other computer, but — and there’s no better way of putting it — a PC inside a keyboard. It is easy to see what HP is trying to achieve, and to an extent, those objectives may well have been met. The conundrum, though, is dual-pronged. The target demographic for this remains a bit fuzzy (though I’d love this sort of convenience on my desk and backpack), and the Eliteboard G1a being a first generation innovation, commands a pretty penny price tag.
The proposition is simple. Everything that constitutes a computer, except a display of course, sits inside the keyboard. Much to HP’s credit, it isn’t much thicker than most desktop keyboards available today. Mind you, the physical footprint is almost identical to what you see and feel in a typical keyboard with a number-pad on the side, to pack in base configurations with either an AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 or Ryzen AI 5 330 processor with AMD Radeon graphics, 16GB memory and 512GB solid-state storage. The former chip option is priced at ₹1,45,714 while the latter variant costs a little lesser at ₹1,35,714 in India. On paper, these specs seem powerful enough even for laptops, and that’s exactly the case. But there are caveats.
For the Eliteboard G1a to work as intended, you’ll need to connect this to a display. Just any display, is the convenience HP is attempting to pitch. For the purposes of this review, HP shared their gorgeous ultra wide curved 34-inch Series 5 Pro 534pm display with a pop-up and tillable webcam. The idea nevertheless remains that any existing computer screen, a TV or an external display can be repurposed for the Eliteboard G1a. That makes this keyboard PC form factor workable as a desktop, and quite convenient to carry around as well. The Mac mini proposition, from Apple, in a way (though that’s where the already disparate similarities end).
HP shared with us an Eliteboard G1a iteration running the Ryzen AI 7 Pro 350 processor, a neural processing unit (NPU) for AI compute at up to 50 TOPS (or trillion operations per second), the Radeon 860M graphics (capable of four 4K displays daisy chained), 32GB memory and 512GB storage. For the most part, this is incredibly fun to use, and holds up well for typical workday tasks and catching up on Formula 1 or football streaming. in a way, this config is powerful enough to hold up to any non-gaming usage scenario you may send its way. It feels a bit weird to hear your keyboard, in the sense that the cooling fan becomes apparent as the warmer air is ejected from the wide cooling vent towards the front. But at no point does any heat transfer to the key surface.
Great as a desktop, and thanks to a built-in battery (HP didn’t really not miss out on anything here), very much portable between displays without needing to be shut down. And can also be carried about (it’s basically a keyboard and a mouse) in a bag or backpack (HP thoughtfully bundles a neat sleeve for the Eliteboard G1a, but not the mouse). Elaborating on the battery for a moment, this 32-watt pack is good enough to power the Eliteboard G1a for as long as 4.5 hours in my tests. That is extremely convenient if you’re hot-desking with an older display plugged in (one that doesn’t deliver power return).
Solving an avoidable conundrum
This holds true till the inevitable moment the Eliteboard G1a inexplicably decides to sabotage the experience (keep reading, this riddle gets solved eventually). There are more than the occasional moment when the Eliteboard G1a would be absolutely unresponsive for a few minutes at a stretch, including not even bothering to show signs of life to something as simple as opening the file explorer or trying to switch to another Edge tab. And then everything would suddenly spring into life, at some point. Cue, repeat, sometime later, though difficult to put the finger on a window of time. Multiple layers of troubleshooting later, it remained nigh impossible to identify the real cause. It certainly isn’t the powerful hardware, and my suspicion was clutter.
Clutter remains a concern, and more than it being a cursory unease, the ripple effect is more than clear. As many as 17 HP apps and software pieces are preinstalled on this device. Added to that is Microsoft’s own clutter, which includes Bing, Copilot, Recall, Whiteboard, Reality Link, Phone Link, ClipChamp, Start Experience app and a number of other apps, that you’d likely never use. But everything plays a part in slowing things down, which is more than apparent with this power package and form factor. Many of these are also in the startup apps list by default, meaning you’re off to a sluggish start anyway.
Eventually, found the primary culprit—HP’s own Smart Resource Optimiser, which is found in the HP app. While HP’s pitch for this feature is an expected performance improvement of between 37% and 67% for foreground apps on AMD systems (oddly specific percentages quoted by HP), toggling this off immediately sparked the Eliteboard G1a’s performance into a new level of enthusiasm. Ever since this was turned off, all apps and Windows in general have been very responsive, with no sluggishness or momentary periods of inexplicable inactivity. Keep this toggle off.
While the overall design of the HP Eliteboard G1a is as perfect as this form factor in its first generation can be, it is worth pointing out that the two USB-C ports (particularly relevant for the ‘detached cable’ variant being assessed here) are too close to each other. Any usage of USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port (this is rated at 10Gbps) which I used to connect to the HP display renders the adjacent USB-C 4.0 (rated at 40Gbps) mostly irrelevant for any accessories being attached — you’ll be lucky to connect an external drive if the connector is thin enough, but nothing beyond that. Not even a mouse dongle to get the pairing going. You must factor in the purchase of an adapter dongle for this. And that’s just where we are with this era of computing. Dongles are the way.
