The new year has just begun, but 2026 is already shaping up to be a year in which work will be reimagined with AI embedded in a variety of devices.
One vendor that is looking at the task differently is HP.
The long-established hardware technology company on January 5 unveiled the new HP Eliteboard G1a Next Gen AI PC, which it says is the world’s first full AI PC with a built in keyboard. Unveiled at the CES show in Las Vegas, the Eliteboard is powered by a AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors. safe with it HP Wolf Security for Business To protect it from firmware attacks and threats, HP said.
“We’ve completely redesigned the keyboard for usability, but also for serviceability for IT,” Corey McElroy, vice president of commercial portfolio product management at HP, said in an interview.
The EliteBoard is a keyboard that functions as a computer, so all users need to do is connect it to any display. This signals a change in the way work is done as instead of carrying a laptop around, users can carry a keyboard and connect it to their display at work or at home.
desktop experience
Eliteboard highlights a trend pc market That includes vendors trying to take more control over the desktop experience, said Ishan Dutt, an analyst at Omdia, a division of Informa TechTarget. For example, HP offers conference calling as well as video and audio collaboration products. It gained profit after acquiring PolyA vertical collaboration vendor, in 2022. Dell, a direct competitor in the laptop and desktop market, also sells monitors.
“This is a step in that direction, trying to simplify it in many ways,” Dutt said.
Bob O’Donnell, founder and analyst at TechAnalysis Research, said that while some HP customers may view the EliteBoard as a gimmick, others may regard it as “an effective way for organizations to get a device that they can plug into a monitor.”
“In larger enterprises where they have larger deployments, it becomes a less expensive way to deploy[PCs],” O’Donnell said. “It’s also a space-saving mechanism, simplifying connectivity. It’s an interesting twist on bringing a PC into the environment.”
Hybrid AI and Challenges
The keyboard also reflects the trend toward more hybrid AI environments, where AI is increasingly embedded within PCs and integrated into cloud environments.
“There’s no way it’s going to be all these cloud-based tools and it’s going to be a combination of those two,” O’Donnell said. “What we’ll start to see is a division of labor, where you see some work being done on the device, but some being done in the cloud.”
One challenge with the EliteBoard may be changing users’ mindset about what a PC is, Dutt said.
“It’s hard to do that with something like a keyboard, which has historically been viewed as an assistive device,” he said. “It can be difficult to make it front and center part of what someone considers a computing experience.”
According to HP, the Eliteboard will be available in March.
