HP EliteBook 14" 840 G7 Review

The HP EliteBook 840 G7 is a business laptop from a few generations back. It's got a 14-inch screen, a Core i7 CPU, and 16GB of RAM, all packed into a fairly portable chassis. For $300, you're getting a fully functional Windows 11 Pro machine that can handle basic office work and web browsing without much fuss.

The Intel Core i7-10610U is the main bottleneck here. Its performance lands in the 13th percentile, which means it's slow by modern standards. It'll open documents and run a few browser tabs, but don't expect it to handle heavy multitasking or complex spreadsheets smoothly. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics are fine for video calls, but that's about it. Gaming is a non-starter, scoring an 11.8 out of 100.

At $300, the value proposition is simple. You're paying for a basic, functional laptop with a professional OS. It's not a good deal if you need performance, but it's a cheap way to get a Windows machine for very light tasks. Think of it as a budget stopgap, not a long-term investment.

Compared to modern competitors, it's not even close. A new budget laptop will crush it in speed and screen quality. Against its old-school rival, the Lenovo ThinkPad, this HP loses on reliability. The real competition is the used market itself. For this price, you might find a laptop with a newer, faster Ryzen or 11th-gen Intel chip that would be a much better buy.

Only buy this if your budget is absolutely locked at $300 and you need a Windows laptop tomorrow for email, web browsing, and nothing else. Students or business users needing real performance should look elsewhere. For everyone else, saving up a little more for a modern base model is a vastly better idea.