Meet The Amazing HP Elitebook 1030 G3

It’s not every day that you get a sleek, 13.3-inch premium machine in your lap capable of withstanding military-grade torment. On top of its wicked durability, HP EliteBook 1030 G3 offers an exquisite keyboard, a pair of intense Bang & Olufsen speakers and a blazing-fast SSD.

It has a solid battery life and a remarkable display. All things considered, the EliteBook 1030 G3 is one of the best business laptops.

Design

The EliteBook 1030 G3 is a 2-in-1 with a petite, aluminium chassis lathered in a grey-silver hue. Its lid is home to a glossy HP logo and a two-tone line that runs across the lip.

The sides of the laptop have a glossy sheen, while the hinge is stylishly cut outward and has an EliteBook logo in the center. When I folded it into tablet mode, I noticed that the lip of the laptop actually has magnets that connect to the underside, so working in tablet mode feels more comfortable and stable.

The interior of the laptop is tight and compact, sporting a backlit keyboard with two Bang & Olufsen speaker vents on either side of it. There’s a decent-sized touchpad with a fingerprint reader just to the right of it. The bezels on the display are also relatively thin.

The EliteBook x360 is one of the lightest premium laptops among its competitors.

Ports

The EliteBook 1030 G3 thin design is light on ports, but it still has room for USB Type-A and an HDMI.

On the left side sits one USB 3.1 port with always-on charging, a headphone jack, the power button and a Nano SIM card slot.

The right side has an HDMI 1.4 port, a security lock slot, two Thunderbolt 3 ports and a volume rocker.

Security and Durability

Don’t let its attractive looks fool you — the EliteBook 1030 G3 passed 12 MIL-STD-810G durability tests. That means it can withstand multiple drops from 30 inches, vibration, shock, high and low temperatures, temperature shock, dust, high altitude, humidity, sand, an explosive atmosphere and an entire freezing and thawing process. In other words, it’s a complete badass.

For security, the EliteBook comes with options that include Intel vPro (remote management), a fingerprint reader, an IR camera (Windows Hello) and HP Sure View (a privacy panel). HP also includes a self-healing BIOS software dubbed Sure Start.

Display

The EliteBook x360’s 13.3-inch, 1080p BrightView screen is stunningly bright and covers a solid range of color, and the Sure View panel is even brighter. BrightView is basically a glossy display, while Sure View is a privacy panel that, when turned on, brightens the corners of your screen to prevent visual hacking, which means it needs to be brighter than a regular display.

The EliteBook x360’s display covers 115 percent of the sRGB spectrum (112 percent with Sure View panel).

Keyboard, Touchpad and Stylus

The EliteBook’s stylishly carved keys feels naturally springy as your fingers glides across the keyboard.

The keys travel at 1.4 millimeters, which just barely lands out of our 1.5- to 2.0-mm travel comfort zone. It does require a solid 71 grams of actuation force.

The stylus has three customizable buttons and charges via USB Type-C. It also comes with three replaceable tips.

The 4.3 x 2.5-inch touchpad gives users plenty of room to move around its soft surface and was continually responsive to Windows 10 gestures like two-finger scrolling and three-finger tabbing.

Audio

Don’t be fooled by this 13-inch body. The EliteBook x360’s Bang & Olufsen speakers delivers heavenly music to your ears.

From detailed bass guitar to kick drums and synths, you can feel the depth of every beat flow through its speakers.

It helped that the Bang & Olufsen Audio app has presets for Voice, Movies and Music as well as a full equalizer.

Performance of the HP Elitebook 1030 G3

The EliteBook x360 can certainly pack a punch. It can tear through 30 Google Chrome tabs, a 1080p YouTube video and the classic Candy Crush Soda Saga, thanks to its 1.9-GHz Intel Core i7-8650U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and Intel UHD 620 GPU.

Battery Life

You’ll have no problem getting through your workday with the HP EliteBook 1030 G3. After continuously surfing the web over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the battery lasted 9 hours and 39 minutes, which is over an hour past the 8:36 premium laptop average.

Webcam

The EliteBook 1030 G3 webcam is so sharp that it can identify the layers of hair on your head.

Despite some saturation, it’s got a good contrast. Overall, it’s a pretty decent webcam.

Heat

The EliteBook 1030 G3 remained relatively cool under pressure on our heat tests. After streaming a 15-minute HD video, the underside measured 97 degrees Fahrenheit, which isn’t far off from the heat comfort threshold.

Software and Warranty

HP packs a ton of its own software on this machine, including HP Recovery Manager (performs maintenance and creates recovery data) and HP Support Assistant (automatically updates HP device drivers and troubleshoots hardware issues). There’s also HP JumpStart (Windows 10 tutorial), HP Sure Click (web browser security), HP ePrint (monitors printing status), HP Workwise (connects laptop with mobile device) and HP PhoneWise (controls mobile texts and calls with laptop).

Order Yours Today!!

Discover:
– the next laptop in the 1030 series here
– PC Mag’s review about the 1030 G3 here