HP OmniBook Ultra 14 review: a solid entry for AMD

HP continues to rotation retired caller user laptops nether their OmniBook brand, which replaces its erstwhile Spectre, Envy, and Pavilion lineups. The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 was 1 of nan first, and it’s a coagulated replacement for nan Spectre x360 14. Now, I’m reviewing nan OmniBook Ultra 14, which doesn’t person rather truthful clear a pedigree.

The OmniBook Ultra 14 shares immoderate creation cues pinch its convertible 2-in-1 cousin, which I judge is simply a first for a clamshell laptop. It’s a well-made laptop that leverages its AMD Ryzen AI 9 chipset for awesome capacity and has amazingly bully artillery life, but it’s not rather bully capable to make it onto our database of nan champion best laptops.

Specs and configurations

The OmniBook 14 Ultra has respective configurations, pinch a $1,350 guidelines exemplary featuring an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 chipset, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 14.0-inch 2.2K IPS show (the only option). Right now, that configuration is connected waste for $1,050. You tin upgrade to 32GB of RAM for $100 and adhd successful a faster Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 for an further $150. Upgrading to a 2TB SSD is an further $180, making nan high-end exemplary $1,680 ($1,380 connected sale). That’s nan exemplary that I reviewed.

If you tin get nan laptop astatine its waste price, past that’s a beautiful charismatic entry-level price, and it’s besides a decent worth for a very nicely configured laptop. It’s astir nan aforesaid value arsenic nan Intel-based OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 2-in-1, though that laptop has a overmuch amended OLED display. Another AMD laptop that I reviewed, nan Asus ProArt PX13, is simply a batch much costly starting astatine $1,700, but that includes an OLED show and a discrete Nvidia GPU.

Design

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The first point I noticed astir nan OmniBook Ultra 14 is that it shares nan notches successful nan rear chassis and show bottom, 1 of which houses a USB-C larboard for plugging successful powerfulness aliases an accessory and keeping nan cablegram retired of nan way. It’s truthful some a creation and functional statement. The chassis sides are besides reasonably rounded and debar a crisp separator connected nan thenar rest, making it much comfortable than immoderate laptops.

The astir evident comparison is OmniBook Ultra Flip 14, and location are respective different bully 14-inch clamshell laptops to contrast. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i and Zenbook S 14 are 2 of them, some sporting Intel’s latest Lunar Lake chipset.

Aesthetically, these are each charismatic machines and I wouldn’t prime immoderate complete nan OmniBook, aliases vice versa, based connected looks alone.

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The OmniBook Ultra 14 is besides a very robust laptop, pinch a chassis, keyboard deck, and lid that each defy bending, flexing, and twisting. That’s go much of nan norm complete nan past respective years, pinch astir laptops successful nan aforesaid premium value scope boasting nan aforesaid benignant of build qualities. The laptops I mentioned supra are arsenic good, arsenic is nan MacBook Pro 14 that’s considerably much expensive.

One area wherever nan OmniBook doesn’t excel compared to immoderate caller title is successful its size. Its bezels are reasonably ample by modern standards, connected some nan apical and nan bottom. That results successful a chassis that’s a spot wider and deeper than many. It’s besides comparatively chunky, particularly its 3.47 pounds that’s astir half a lb heavier than nan others I’ve mentioned. It’s still reasonably portable, but it doesn’t guidelines retired truthful well.

Keyboard and touchpad

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I’ve been a instrumentality of HP’s keyboards, peculiarly those connected its Spectre lineup, and nan OmniBook lives up to that standard. The keycaps are ample pinch lettering that’s highly visible successful each lighting conditions, which is simply a motion to accessibility. There’s tons of spacing, and nan switches are ray and snappy.

I person nan OmniBook Ultra 14 sitting adjacent to HP’s very akin 2-in-1, and nan keyboards are beautiful overmuch identically good. So, I expect that will beryllium nan creation going guardant — a very bully thing. My favourite laptop keyboard has been Apple’s Magic Keyboard since it sewage free of nan butterfly switches, and nan OmniBook’s is decidedly successful nan aforesaid class.

The touchpad is little impressive. There’s plentifulness of abstraction connected nan thenar remainder for a larger version, and for immoderate reason, HP didn’t see nan fantabulous haptic touchpad it utilized connected nan OmniBook Ultra Flip 14. The mechanical touchpad is conscionable OK, pinch buttons that are a small loud. The show is touch-enabled, which I prefer.

Display

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If nan OmniBook Ultra 14 has an Achilles heel, it’s nan 14.0-inch 16:10 2.2K (2240 x 1400) IPS display. At these prices, I’m utilized to seeing 2.8K (2880 x 1800) aliases sharper panels, and much often OLED than IPS. And, much and much are moving astatine overmuch faster 120Hz refresh rates for smoother Windows animations if thing else. So, I was a spot amazed astatine nan OmniBook’s display, and it’s really a spot little sharp, fast, and colorful than I want to spot if I’m spending good complete $1,000 connected a laptop. It helps pinch artillery life, though, truthful that’s nan use here.

According to my colorimeter, this is simply a simply an mean IPS show — but that’s a bully thing, fixed really nan exertion has improved complete nan past respective years. It’s overmuch brighter than our 300-nit threshold, arsenic astir displays are today, coming successful astatine 382 nits. Its colors are wide capable for productivity usage astatine 100% of sRGB, 76% of AdobeRGB, and 76% of DCI-P3, and accuracy is fantabulous astatine a Delta-E of 0.94. And opposition is bully astatine 1,310:1, besides supra our older modular of 1,000:1 that astir IPS displays transcend today.

So, if you really attraction astir artillery life and don’t request nan bright, move colors and inky blacks that OLED provides, past you’ll beryllium OK pinch this display. But I can’t thief being a small disappointed.

Connectivity and webcam

I was a small amazed to spot conscionable 2 USB-C ports pinch Thunderbolt 4 and a USB-A port. That’s amended than nan Dell XPS 14 that has conscionable Thunderbolt 4, but immoderate 14-inch laptops adhd successful an HDMI relationship and an SD paper reader. Both are missing here. One of nan USB-C ports is successful nan notch, arsenic I mentioned above, truthful that’s convenient. But I’d complaint connectivity arsenic a spot lacking. Wireless radios are afloat up-to-date, which is simply a bully thing.

The webcam is HP’s latest very precocious solution 9MP version, and it will support Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC inaugural including enhanced Studio Effects software, on pinch HP’s ain AI Companion features that will beryllium rolling out. HP uses Poly Camera Pro, and nan webcam itself has immoderate AI intelligence built in. Overall, nan OmniBook will yet return advantage of nan very accelerated neural processing portion (NPU) for much businesslike on-device AI processing.

Performance

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When comparing nan astir caller chipsets, namely nan AMD Ryzen AI 9 that nan OmniBook Ultra 14 utilizes, Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X, and Intel’s Lunar Lake, AMD takes a beardown lead successful performance. The OmniBook is nan 3rd laptop we’ve reviewed pinch nan 28-watt Ryzen AI 9 HX 370, which sits adjacent nan apical of AMD’s latest laptop chipsets and uses 12 CPU and 18 GPU cores to powerfulness done productivity workflows.

Both nan 12-core Snapdragon X and nan 8-core Lunar Lake chipsets are aimed much astatine ratio than sheer performance, and while Qualcomm is faster than Intel successful our comparison group, nan OmniBook Ultra 14 stands apart.

Pick whichever trial you want — single-core aliases multi-core capacity — and nan Ryzen AI 9 consistently outperforms nan competition. This is capacity I’m utilizing to seeing from Intel 45-watt Meteor Lake chipsets, only from a portion that burns conscionable 28 watts by default. The Ryzen AI 9 uses a operation of Zen 5 and Zen 5c cores, pinch nan second being compact but afloat speed, meaning that dissimilar nan different chipsets, location are nary low-power cores that tin resistance down axenic CPU speeds. Note that HP has pushed AI heavy into performance, pinch much intelligence driving nan Smart Sense mounting that is aimed astatine balancing performance, heat, and instrumentality noise.

The Asus ProArt PX13, a much compact but conscionable arsenic powerful machine, has nan action of Nvidia RTX 4050 and 4060 discrete GPUs, truthful it’s a batch faster successful imaginative applications and gaming than nan OmniBook, which is constricted to AMD Radeon 890M integrated graphics. That’s astir nan aforesaid velocity arsenic Intel’s latest Arc 140V and it’s faster than Qualcomm’s Adreno graphics, but not by much.

All of this combines to make for a laptop that will rip done nan astir demanding productivity workflows but won’t beryllium nan champion for video editing aliases moving much than older games astatine constricted graphics.

Battery life

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The OmniBook has 68-watt-hour battery, which is conscionable OK for a 14-inch laptop, but it besides benefits from a comparatively low-res 14.0-inch 2.2K (2240 x 1400) IPS sheet constricted to a 60Hz refresh rate. Every laptop successful this comparison group has a higher-res display, and immoderate are OLED arsenic well. As mentioned above, though, nan AMD Ryzen 9 chipset isn’t aimed astatine efficiency, and nan 2 different laptops we reviewed pinch nan aforesaid chipset didn’t do that good by comparison. So, I wasn’t expecting much.

I was pleasantly surprised, though. In our web browsing and video looping tests, nan OmniBook Ultra 14 was much competitory than I imagined it would be. In fact, it did amended than nan OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 pinch Intel Lunar Lake, though that people was held backmost by its OLED display. The OmniBook Ultra 14 didn’t do arsenic good successful our demanding Cinebench R24 multi-core rundown. And nan Apple MacBook Air M3 did nan champion all-around.

Is it worthy it?

The OmniBook Ultra 14 is simply a coagulated typical of HP’s newest brand. It’s well-built, offers awesome capacity and decent artillery life, and it has a awesome keyboard. It’s not, though, arsenic awesome arsenic HP’s OmniBook Ultra Flip 14, contempt being priced similarly.

To statesman with, nan OmniBook Ultra 14’s show conscionable doesn’t impress. It’s only an OK show wherever truthful galore others are great. Sure, that immunodeficiency successful artillery life, but HP could person opted for a higher-res type that would person offered akin benefits. And nan OmniBook isn’t rather arsenic bully of a thin-and-light ultrabook, which is what it’s chiefly going up against.

Overall, it’s a bully device, of course, but I would only urge it while its connected discount. You’ll get somewhat amended artillery life, performance, and displays retired of immoderate of its competitors successful nan aforesaid value range.