My main driver is a HP Elitebook 845 G9 (so the 14" version) running Arch. I have been using it for the past six months to do mostly backend development in Python.
Pros:
- Performance is really good, I haven't run benchmarks but day to day I see no difference with my beefy Zen 3 desktop. It completely replaced my desktop computer, except for games.
- Almost everything works out of the box on Linux. I think the fingerprint reader does not work, but I wasn't going to use it anyway.
- Issues tend to be fixed via either kernel updates or BIOS updates. I used to have to reboot it daily at the beginning for one reason or another (did not wake from sleep, wifi card stopped working...), now I rarely get any problem.
- Easy to open and every component is user serviceable. They have official disassembly guides on Youtube and sell spare parts.
- Suspend works reliably (which is not a given these days, even on Windows).
- Key travel is short but the tactile feedback is strong enough that I don't feel like I'm missing too much on this front.
- The 16:10 aspect ratio of the display is a game changer. My SO has the G8 with a 16:9 ratio and the difference is night and day.
- Enough connectors to not have to carry dongles.
Cons:
- The GPU still crashes from time to time, roughly once a week. This requires a reboot.
- The only version available in my region has a 38Wh battery which gives only ~6 hours of life. I will be swapping the battery for a bigger one at some point.
- The non-LPDDR5 means that the battery life when sleeping is not amazing, it tends to lose ~10% overnight.
- Power consumption is good but not on par with the best laptops at ~5W idle.
- I chose the matte low-power display, color is good, viewing angles are good but the ghosting is atrocious. It's the first time I get a device where ghosting is distracting.
- The NVME drive the laptop shipped with died on me after a few hours of use. I swapped it with another drive I had available, no problem since.
- Firmware updates are only officially available for Windows but the Windows binary can be used on Linux with a bit of command-line-fu.
- The trackpad is large and good but the push to click only works on the bottom half as opposed to a typical Macbook where the whole surface can be pressed down.
- USB-C ports for charging only on the left side.
- Arrow keys are half-height, I hit page up/page down all the time while trying to press arrow keys. Super annoying when using the command line.