The folks over at HP had the brilliant idea to stuff a PC inside a keyboard, making me wonder why no one has thought to do this before.
HP’s Eliteboard G1a PC is targeted at business, but I could see it being popular beyond the business sphere as well. The idea is to offer a subtle, minimal PC set-up that reduces clutter — what better way to do that than to put everything inside a keyboard, so you only need one thing on your desk, and only one cable?
Well… two things on your desk, because you’ll need a mouse to go with it. And I don’t think everyone will be able to get away with a single cord, unless you’ve got a monitor that can deliver enough power over USB-C to keep the keyboard PC running. But, with the right set-up, I think the vision can be achieved.
Plus, there are other benefits beyond the desk. Reduced shipping costs and packaging, with a smaller product and fewer accessories needed to go along with it, which means reduced plastic and cardboard overall. On that same note, HP says it used up to 75 per cent recycled plastic in the enclosure and up to 70 per cent recycled plastic in the keycaps, so even the Eliteboard itself is somewhat eco-friendly.
Of course, HP jammed a bunch of AI capabilities into the Eliteboard, which kinda offsets the other earth-forward thinking, given how power- and water-hungry AI datacentres can be. I also have concerns about how repairable the Eliteboard is — hopefully it’s simple to pop it open and swap out whatever parts need to be fixed, but I haven’t gone hands-on with it to find out.
The Eliteboard sports AMD Ryzen AI 5 or 7 series chips, integrated AMD Radeon 800 graphics capable of powering up to four 4K displays at 60Hz, an NPU with up to 50 TOPS of AI performance, up to 2TB of SSD storage and up to 64GB of RAM. The Eliteboard even has stereo speakers, up to Bluetooth 6 and Wi-Fi 7 connectivity, and customers can opt to include a 32Whr replaceable battery.
Overall, the HP Eliteboard seems like a pretty neat idea to me. Sure, it might have a more limited use case than other PCs, like a traditional laptop, but for many business set-ups, having an entire PC inside a keyboard could be a big win.
Images credit: HP
