HP uses its Imagine conference to announce its latest innovations in PCs, the platforms that run on them, and, more recently, what it’s doing with AI. This year, HP introduced a multitude of new products and services that should help it differentiate against other Windows PC OEMs.

HP Injects More IQ into Its PCs

HP’s new IQ suite of AI tools is the company’s next step in differentiating itself from the rest of the PC ecosystem. HP IQ tools bring AI inferencing on-device by leveraging the hardware’s neural processing unit (NPU) and other compute cores to maximize the user experience and improve latency and security. HP IQ seems, for now, to be targeted towards small to medium-sized businesses, but it’s unclear how many of those customers will use HP’s Workforce Experience Platform (WXP) to manage IQ. IQ’s primary features are the ability to summarize sensitive documents, take meeting notes, and seamlessly connect devices to each other with NearSense.

I haven’t spent much time with IQ, so I will save my extended opinions until I have that opportunity after it launches. (An initial criticism for now: The HP IQ Visor drop-down interface allows you to access its features, but I would argue that some of them should happen almost automatically.) I do hope that HP keeps updating the on-device model — currently OpenAI’s GPT OSS 20B, which requires a minimum of 24GB of RAM today. That’s a premium spec, but perhaps some of the future 8B parameter models, with correspondingly lower hardware needs, will have the capabilities of today’s OSS 20B models. Open source models don’t get updated as frequently as the main frontier models, but I do believe that annual updates will be the minimum necessary for IQ to be competitive.

With HP selling so many accessories, printers, and other devices, NearSense could be a great way to enable seamless user interactions with conference rooms and other people’s PCs. Why e-mail a file to someone when you can just drop it straight to their PC? Also, HP has already recruited the help of Google and Qualcomm to better integrate the Android phone experience into HP IQ. Those partnerships show that HP is thinking bigger than itself for IQ and demonstrates its understanding that working only within its own ecosystem won’t solve people’s workflow problems.

HP is launching IQ on the EliteBook X G2, which has four different models, but it will also be available in the future on machines ranging from the ProBook 4, EliteBook 6, and EliteBook 8 up to the EliteBook X. The HP ZBook 8 and X G2 will also have it.

HP Go Grows to 24 Countries and More Devices

In addition to the introduction of HP IQ, the company further expanded the capabilities of HP Go, the company’s innovative 5G service that automatically switches between carriers based on which one has the best signal. HP is rolling this out with the new EliteBook 6 G2q; this is an updated model of the EliteBook 6 G1q, which was the first laptop to feature HP Go. HP has also added HP Go to more devices, ranging from the Chromebook Plus up to the EliteBook X (including the 4, 6, and 8 series).

Adding HP Go to its full complement of commercial notebooks makes a lot of sense if HP wants to scale. By launching in 24 European countries this summer, it enters a market where connected PCs are more popular thanks to public transit and other factors. This year will be a much better barometer than last year for HP Go’s success and whether its approach is better than the competition’s. In our survey research of IT decision-makers last year, we found that network coverage was still their number-one pain point, alongside better security and business continuity; HP Go addresses all three issues.

HP Enhances the Workforce Experience Platform

HP’s WXP is clearly trying to entice IT admins beyond its existing ability to remotely manage PCs connected via Wolf Connect or HP Go. WXP gained a lot more capabilities this year, finally adding support for printers — specifically the new LaserJet Pro 4000 series. While the WXP does allow the management of PCs other than HP’s, it seemed odd that HP didn’t have printers integrated into the platform until a year into its existence. WXP also added a unified fleet inventory function, which allows admins to monitor PCs, printers, and VMs in a single simplified dashboard. WXP also improved with the addition of enhanced AI remediation, which is designed to help speed up the resolution of IT incidents.

HP Continues to Lean into Security with TPM Guard and Wolf

HP upped the security ante at Imagine with the introduction of TPM Guard, which helps stop physical trusted platform module bus attacks that could compromise a BitLocker key. HP showed off how easily and cheaply this attack could be done on an unprotected machine using a $40 device. TPM Guard helps HP bolster its security posture with the whole Wolf family of security products, which it also updated with a new Wolf Connect module that enhances battery life and accuracy for remote management. HP also mentioned that its new LaserJet Pro 4000/4100 Series and LaserJet Enterprise 5000/6000 Series now feature quantum-resistant cryptography. Considering that printers are an enterprise attack vector, it makes total sense for HP to go down that path as well.

HP’s Workstations Get NVIDIA’s Blackwell

While HP announced 31 different commercial PCs, it also introduced the ZGX Fury and Z8 Fury G6i workstations. Both are powered by NVIDIA’s latest Blackwell GPUs; the ZGX Fury is based on the B300 platform and supports running up to 1T parameter models. HP also talked more about its Z Boost platform, which adds flexibility for users who want to take advantage of idle GPU compute capacity sitting on workstations. Systems like the Z8 Fury G6i support up to four Blackwell RTX PRO 6000 GPUs, which could easily be shared by multiple users or a single user for additional power on a more mobile platform.

HP Continues to Imagine a New AI Era

Although there’s no doubt that HP IQ was the star of Imagine, HP still amply demonstrated that it cares deeply about security. The company has done a great job of owning security with its Wolf branding, something that neither Lenovo or Dell can match from their repertoires. HP also gave updated demos of the Dimension with Google Beam spatial teleconferencing solution, demonstrating its AI-accelerated capabilities. I personally have been impressed by this technology, and it’s clear that HP and Google continue to improve the experience as we near its commercial rollout this year.

Imagine has become HP’s showcase event for AI. Last year was centered on enabling AI developers; this year was about enabling HP’s own capabilities. HP is also working on enabling AI developers with its Z family of workstations with the latest NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs and software suites to support them. I am excited to try out HP IQ on one of HP’s newest EliteBooks and see how well the latest silicon from AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm fares using it.