HP hasn’t changed much for the 11th generation of its EliteBook 845 14-inch business laptop. The familiar benefits – sophisticated chassis, excellent keyboard, plenty of ports, extensive support options – make it an excellent choice for the desk. Thanks to matte or glossy displays and optional LTE modems, it’s also a competent traveling companion. The normal 1080p display with 400 nits brightness offers decent picture quality and is very energy efficient. The optional 500 nits, 120Hz WQHD display offers better picture quality, but battery life suffers. There’s no PWM flickering, so we think it’s overall a better screen for productive tasks compared to OLED options on some rivals like Lenovo ThinkPad models. HP also offers a SureView panel with 800 nits of brightness, but we can’t recommend this option because the built-in privacy filter seriously affects overall image quality.
The EliteBook 845 uses AMD processors, but still from the Ryzen 8000 series (Zen4). The advantage is that HP can use expandable RAM, while new Zen5 processors like the Ryzen AI 9 HX370 are still limited to soldered RAM for now. The performance of Zen4 chips is still good, so it’s not a major issue, but you need to make sure you choose the right processor. Our review model was equipped with the Ryzen 7 Pro 8840HS, which offers high multi-core performance thanks to power limits of 51/41 Watts, but it is a challenge for the cooling solution. There is only one fan, which turns on quickly and is very audible under high workload. A U-series CPU like the Ryzen 7 8840U has lower multi-core performance due to lower power limits (30/25 Watts), but it’s still more than sufficient for the majority of office tasks. The big advantage is that the cooling unit is less stressed and the device is much quieter. If you don’t need the extra multi-core performance, you should definitely choose a U-series chip.
For more information, including benchmarks and measurement results, see our full review of the HP EliteBook 845 G11 at .
