Customer Ratings & Reviews

I LOVE THIS LAPTOP! I walked into Best Buy thinking I was only going to spend $800 on a laptop for school. I am an avid gamer though and I always wanted to PC game without fully committing. The expert in the laptop area really sold me on this laptop. I haven’t had an HP since 2008. From what I know - HP was great but they’ve gone really down hill in the last decade. The expert I talked to sold me and after I spent $1700 ahaha I felt tricked, had anxiety about the purchase. I was sad because I felt like I didn’t do enough research but in the end - it was the best thing I could have bought. The graphics are amazing. It’s fast. I mainly use it for school but I also run games through Xbox with it. It’s so nice. The only issues I would say are that I wish the battery life was longer. The speakers aren’t super loud. & the fact that I can’t add RAM are sad - but I honestly knew about the RAM before I bought it. I usually use headphones if I’m gaming or watching a lecture and I keep my charger close by - so they’re not huge issues. You also cannot use the full graphics card unless you hdmi it to a monitor. I just bought the Samsung odyssey g8 and it’s an amazing pair. I wanted a monitor and smart tv built in. Monitors don’t usually have speakers and I like to watch tv so it’s amazing. Never thought I’d spend $1700 on a laptop and $1200 on a monitor but my setup is amazing. Overall this laptop is amazing and if you game but primarily game on console - this is the laptop for you. I have a PS5. An Xbox Series X and a Switch, this is a wonderful addition to my gaming lifestyle and does everything I need and more for finishing my bachelors. I did get roped into buying Microsoft 365 instead of the actual full Microsoft programs but it’s fine. I’ll pay the money each year. If you buy the full word, PowerPoint, etc - you don’t get updates so be aware. Also have been paying for Xbox ultimate and I don’t use it a ton but it’s honestly fine because I like to have access to the catalogs when I do (: Enjoy your new laptop babes xoxo

After 2 weeks of use, I would say it works well. I bought the laptop mostly for work (ArcGIS) and it responds quickly, much better than Parallels on my Mac. The only issue was the fan was always on and kind of distracted me. And the build quality needs to improve, especially around the camera. Every time I lift the lid from the camera area, I feel like the layers are gonna fall apart (cracks in between).

The HP Omen Transcend 14 is a new player in the world of 14 inch gaming laptops. The challenge is how do you get a great performing laptop, in a minimal size, and one that won’t turn into a jet engine/heater when hardware is pushed. With the Transcend, there were some great, and some okay/good to one bad feature. Out of the box you get the laptop, a 140 W USB-C power adaptor, and inserts. On my test, I was at about 15% battery life, plugged in the plug, ad had about 65% in about 30’ish minutes, so their claim of 50% in 30 minutes is pretty on point. I never heard of a laptop fast charger, so it was a pleasant surprise. The laptop has a nice aluminum body. I do prefer it over plastic, but it’s still a fingerprint magnet. After one day of use, it has smudges on either side of the touch pad, and on the outside from me holding it to move it to my bag and around the house. I wonder if the white color has this problem. The design of the laptop is almost muted. There’s nothing that screams it’s a gaming laptop. The cover simply has the OMEN branding, and that’s it. There isn’t any RGB lighting on the exterior. You can even turn off the keyboard RGB lighting in the Omen gaming hub. I like this fact. When I’m home and playing in low lighting, I can turn RGB lights on, so that’s a plus. In terms of ports you have a USB-C on the back which is for charging, and a HDMI 2.1 right next to it. One of the biggest disappointments is that you can’t fully use the RTX 4060 on it’s own. On the Omen gaming hub, you have the option of using the integrated graphics card for battery life, or a hybrid for when you need that extra bit of juice. I would have liked to see a way to use the GPU on its own. So using the HDMI 2.1 port to an external monitor is the only way to use the RTX 4060 on its own. The drawback is of course unless you have a OLED gaming monitor, you won’t have that lovely screen to look at. The ports in general were placed well, I would have liked to see one more USB-C port. You get 2 USB-A ports on the right side. I’m glad that companies haven’t completely abandoned the good old USB-A yet. You have 1 USB-C on the left side and a headphone jack. I do appreciate that you have a headphone jack. Unfortunately for me, all my gaming headphones are wireless, so I think in the next iteration, they can remove it and add another USB-C. Considering that this laptop touts the Intel Core Ultra 7 which is more AI focused, I’m surprised that there isn’t even a micro SD card slot for content creators. I get that you can plug in an external HDD or any other alternative, but it just detracts from the whole portability aspect. The hinges on the laptop seem sturdy, but there is some wobble on the screen when opened. One of the key selling points on the Transcend 14 is the OLED screen. It’s a 2.8K OLED. I didn’t even know they made a 2.8K. The screen is absolutely gorgeous. As with most OLED’s, you get the dark distinct blacks, and bright colors throughout. I tested with a few games and a few movies. With movies is where it really shined. The only caveat is that the screen is glossy. I think this is the only laptop I have with a glossy screen, or THIS glossy. In a dark room with the keyboard RGB lights on, it’s a bit distracting, but you can always turn them off. You also have a high refresh rate, but you’ll have to go into Windows setting to set it to 120hz. The screen is also bright. At 500 nits, you see the colors pop. All in all, a great screen. The Hyper X speakers are great, but not excellent. As in most cases, you’ll probably use headphones when gaming or watching a movie, but when it needs recharging, it’s time to get some life out of them. I would say they sound great, but not the greatest bass. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, and it’s not super clicky, so you can remain incognito when out and about at your favorite café. The touchpad is large and responsive. You get multitouch gestures like with just about every other modern laptop. The surface area is responsive. I do wish there was a way to disable it when using a mouse so you don’t accidentally touch it when typing. (Minor gripe). Just about everybody will use a separate gaming mouse so the touchpad becomes a secondary means. The one impressive thing that I found is that even when on performance mode, and hybrid GPU, I don’t hear the laptop turning into a jet engine. There are vents on the back of the base of the laptop, and vents underneath where you can see two of the fans. For most of the my testing, the laptop stayed cool. Even when I cam close to ultra settings on my games test, I didn’t feel the laptop turning into a heater. That’s either a result of great engineering for the cooling and or the fact that you can’t use the RTX 4060 at full blast. I think it was a conscious decision to help maintain battery life and prevent overheating. One of the biggest flaws is that you can’t add more RAM. I guess in a small package, you get limited spacing. Most games still don’t require 32 GB of ram, but this fact does limit the future state of this laptop. The webcam is a good 1080p webcam. You have the option of using Windows hello which I like a lot. The image from the camera is still grainy, and the video recording is limited to 30FPS. Even setting the flicker reduction to 60 hz, doesn’t change much. It’s good enough for virtual meetings or something basic, but for streaming, a nice 4K camera is recommended. The mic is also just good. You get a bit of that echo effect, and once again, it’s good for meetings, but beyond that, your gaming headset mic is probably much better in terms of quality. In my actual gaming tests, I immediately saw some of the shortcomings with the laptop. I couldn’t run any of the 2 modern games from 2023 at ultra settings without losing framerates and stability. On high settings, I was able to get a range from 50-60 fps. Once I turned ray tracing on, I needed to adjust a lot of the settings to make up for the difference in stability. I tested a game from 2015 on ultra high, and I couldn’t get more than 78 fps during a benchmark test so yeah. I love seeing ray tracing in action, but sometimes you just want a great performing game with smooth playability. I mean, the games looked great on high settings with ray tracing, but couldn’t get ray tracing and ultra in the same settings. My other laptop that has a 4070 with 32 gigs of ram, and a mux switch was able to handle the games on ultra with ray tracing, but it sounded like a jet engine was about to take off on the runway, so there’s that. I’m just as happy playing on a quiet laptop that doesn’t turn into a room heater with graphics that still look on par. On a side note, I played a flight simulator, and that’s where I saw the oled screen really shine. In the night time settings, you could see the beautiful color detail against the blackness of the night sky. I had the settings at ultra, and the 4060 handled it pretty well. There were some few occasional frame dips, but nothing that really took me out of the game. All in all, HP’s Transcend 14 is a nice start into the world of 14 inch gaming laptops. The design engineers and hardware engineers have found a nice way to minimize the footprint of the laptop while achieving good cooling and low fan noise. Some of the decisions to include or omit certain ports was a bit of ahead scratcher, and the lack of a mux switch (Mux switch = let’s you use the gpu only) is another missed opportunity. The screen is excellent. The overall build quality is almost top notch. All in all, a great 1st gen entry. For 2025’s HP Omen Transcend 14, I hope to see some more post purchase upgrade options.

I could not recommend this laptop more. Not only is this laptop a BEAST for gaming, but it also was able to easily handle heavy engineering programs for my Masters in Mechanical Engineering such as ANSYS, Abaqus CAE, Inventor Professional, and other advanced engineering programs. Moreover, battery life was surprisingly great compared to other gaming laptops. Obviously it had to be plugged in when running major programs, but for occasional engineering programs and day to day school, it would last me a full 10 hours.

Amazing device very powerful for gaming but if you are using it to edit high-quality camera footage, it will run slow

Amazing laptop does everything I want on it if you are willing to go the distance you can probably play anything on it!

HP's newest laptop joins the growing segment of portable laptops in the 14-inch category. From a glance, HP has come out swinging and for the most part, they do land some serious blows. Quick speck glance: 14-inch 120hz VRR IMAX, EyeSafe Certified OLED Panel 2880x1800 Resolution Intel Ultra i7 Processor with support of Intel AI Boost RTX 4060 (65w) 16GB of Soldered LPDDR5X Ram 1TB NVME Drive that can be upgraded Omen Tempest Cooling Technology 140w Compact USB C Charger with quick charge from 0% to 50% in 30mins. Four Zone RGB Keyboard Designed it’s a good-looking laptop, and as for the build quality, it’s a solid aluminum build. Overall I like the design style HP went with. There is a decent amount of port selection. You get x2 USB C Thunderbolt, a full-size HDMI port, and x2 full-size USB A ports. The keyboard does have this translucent look to it that you either hate it or love it. I do like the looks of it but with the darkened keys it does make it hard to see some of the keys. The RGB is divided into 4 zones for RGB color customizations. As for the typing experience the travel depth is decent, but the keys just feel slippery, which I end up making more mistakes. For gaming, they should be fine. As for the built-in speakers, they do sound nice but overall volume output could use a boost. There’s not much to say about this beautiful display that hasn’t been said about good-quality OLED displays. I believe this might be the first OLED panel to support VRR which leads to smoother gameplay. Compared to my Asus Zenbook which has an OLED panel the Omen 14 has a brighter panel that you can tell right away. For the Asus, I would need to increase the brightness to around 65% for it to get as bright as the Omen which is around 50%. Battery life is where HP ends up stumbling. In balanced mode I was able to get right around 6 hours of battery of mixed usage of browsing the web, watching YouTube and Netflix videos. I had high hopes with Intel's latest chips but so far they’re not as efficient with battery life even with the AI capabilities. One of the games I downloaded right away to see how capable the Omen 14 Transcend is was Forza Motorsport. This game is GPU extensive; even with high-end cards like 4090, it’s brutal. This is one of the games that is confusing at first to adjust the settings and depending on some settings you end up with poor performance. With everything max at the internal resolution it was barely reaching 30fps. After tinkering with it for a while, I found a good compromise between quality and performance with a near-constant 60+ fps in performance mode, with balanced mode hovering around 50+ fps for races that have intensive effects like heavy rain with the daytime set in the evening The only time I did experience some dips was when multiple cars were present in the screen, like at the beginning of the race or passing multiple cars that would end causing some frame dips. I was impressed with the CPU temps staying below 90c in performance mode, and balanced mode same settings hovering around low to mid 60c. GPU temps were even much lower usually hovering around 65c in performance mode with balanced mode right around 55c. All while the majority of the heat is around the top row of keys going towards the back of the laptop, with no side vents you don’t have to worry about having your hand being warmed from the blast of hot air from the right side since all of the hot air is being pushed out from the rear vents of the laptop. For less demanding races without intensive graphical effects like weather effects expect even lower temps and higher fps. I’m sure of could have achieved higher fps by dropping the quality even lower and the resolution, but I’m satisfied with 60fps. The dips weren't significant enough for me to noticed. I think it’s a good compromise that gives you a good gaming experience. As for fan noise, they were around 50db in performance mode and balanced mode coming in right around 45db. It’s still loud but tolerable in my opinion. If you tend to game with headphones on you won’t notice the fan noise at all. For less demanding tasks you barely will hear the fan noise at all. Forza Motorsport Graphics Settings: Dynamic Render Quality: High Resolution: 2560x1440 Nvidia DLSS: Balanced Performance Target: unlocked frame rate Anisotropic Filtering: 16x Raytracing Quality: Full reflections + RTAO RTAO Quality: Medium Shadow Quality: Medium Cebemap reflection Quality: Medium Car Model Quality: High Car livery Quality: High Windshield Reflection Quality: Medium Mirror Quality: Medium Track Texture Quality: Medium Particle Effects Quality: Medium Motion Blur Quality: High Lens Flare Quality: High VRAM Usage: 5,888/7,972 MB Overall I’m very happy with the Omen 14 Transcend it’s a good-performing laptop that is not going to run everything at max settings, but if you take the time to adjust the settings you can achieve some great results without having to sacrifice too much quality, especially for this gorgeous OLED panel. As I said before battery life is a disappointment, I did expect more from the Intel Core Ultra 7 1555H. It’s a powerful CPU but hopefully, with a couple of updates, it can be optimized to increase battery life. Technology has come a long way to see this type of performance on a thin laptop that years ago would have been held back by thermals, or weak CPU/GPU chipsets to keep it from burning itself up. If you’re looking for a thin light portable laptop that won’t be a burden to carry around, but can still game with an ok battery life the HP Omen 14 Transcend is worthy of consideration.

Ive had my computer for a couple of months now and its a prerty good gamkng laptop it gets what you throw at it

This laptop is amazing. The keyboard light up feature is very nice. The Intel core ultra seven very efficient for what I needed to do would recommend to anyone looking to get into the cyber field.

good laptop, compact light weight and powerful. better than other's

Awesome laptop awesome price . Games music web stream video Hp omen 5 star Best Buy 5 star

The 14” Transcend is a powerhouse of a portable gaming laptop with a clean, high-end aesthetic. It has an all-aluminum metal exterior with smooth rounded edges that is quite thin at a little over 0.5 inch, and it weighs just over 3.5 lbs. While the black matte finish picks up and holds onto fingerprints easily, it’s also available in white which may not show them as readily. There are also a few different build packages, and this is the mid-range configuration. This build runs on the 115H Intel Core Ultra 7 Series processor with 16 cores, 4.8 GHz max, and 24 MB of L3 cache. It comes with a 1 TB Gen 4 NVMe SSD pre-installed and 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM soldered to the motherboard (not upgradable). The discrete GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 with 8 GB GDDR6 RAM. These specs are decent for gaming at mid to high quality settings and would work for non-gaming applications as well, though I personally find the screen size a bit cramped for creative work like video editing software. Interestingly, there is no MUX switch option to use only the discrete GPU, just hybrid or integrated graphics mode are available, though this omission helps to extend its battery life. On a full charge, during casual use for web browsing, work, and watching streaming video content, I was able to get just under 4 hours of use on battery power in 'hybrid' mode. While gaming this was cut down to 1 to 1.5 hrs depending on the quality settings. The laptop handles itself well for most games but may feel a little sluggish at ultra video settings. In first-person shooters like Counterstrike 2 I was able to achieve 100-120 fps consistently without running into performance issues like stuttering and frame drops, though in RPGs like Path of Exile the framerates generally ran between 60-80 fps without exceeding that threshold. On the right-hand side of the laptop are two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 ports in the back corner with one featuring sleep charging. On the left hand side is a Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) port and combo mic/headphone jack. Along the back is a second USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port and HDMI 2.1 output port. The HDMI and Thunderbolt ports can both be used to connect external displays. As well, both USB-C ports can be used for charging with the 140Watt adapter or with Power Delivery chargers. Allegedly, you’ll get better charging performance out of the port located at the back of the laptop where it’s neatly out of your way, however, in my testing, I was able to get about 50% charge in just 30 minutes using either port. On the underside, two rubber feet span the width of the laptop at the front and back and two exhaust fans cool the device off during heavy usage. While the grille vent appears to cover a large portion of the base, the intake cutouts are only located above the fans and vent out the back of the laptop. The fans do a great job at keeping the laptop cool during heavy usage and aren’t super loud either, which means you can actually use the onboard speakers during gameplay and still hear them. The stereo speakers are positioned on the bottom towards the front corners and while the sound quality is pretty good, I feel they sometimes sound a little muffled. For that reason I prefer using headphones with this laptop. The edge-to-edge OLED screen has a 14” diagonal with thin bezels, 120Hz max refresh rate, 500 nits max brightness (HDR), 2 ms response time, and max resolution of 2880 x 1800 (2.8k at 16:10 aspect ratio). The screen quality is the standout feature with deep, true blacks, and vibrant saturated colors across 100% DCI-P3 or 99% sRGB colorspace. While the glossy finish makes glare and reflections worse in bright lighting, it’s not an issue in a darker environment, plus it’s easy to overlook that in favor of the fineness in detail, sharpness, and accurate colors of the 240 PPI display. As tempting as it is to tap the screen though, it is not touch-capable. Connectivity-wise, it supports WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 for super-fast connections to external wireless devices like headphones and mobile devices and when used with headphones experiences lag-free syncing with video content. Download speeds were fast and reliable providing an excellent and smooth online/networked gaming experience. It has a 1080p front facing webcam with dual-array noise canceling mics, perfect for streaming, video chat, and meetings. The full-sized RGB-backlit keyboard has 4 customizable lighting zones and the keys are all edge-lit for easy visibility and a cool gamer aesthetic. The keys are responsive but have a high actuation force albeit with a soft landing, so they don’t make a lot of noise and snap back pretty quickly. The trackpad is generously sized and responds to multi-touch gestures, but the buttons take a beat to disengage, so alternating left and right mouse clicks very quickly isn’t possible. I strongly recommend using an external mouse. One feature I found interesting was in the ability to create custom key assignment for macros in the OMEN Gaming hub. This is not only useful for executing quick actions or a sequence of keystrokes while gaming, but also has general utility for other applications like automating repetitive work tasks or creating shortcuts. You can also enable some on-screen overlays with stats like CPU temp, framerate, and RAM usage. I was unable, however, to toggle on NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience in-game overlay. Overall, the Transcend 14 is a powerful lightweight gaming laptop with a gorgeous OLED display that delivers a satisfying gaming experience and excellent visuals for content consumption. It’s fast, responsive, and ultra-portable making great for on-to-go work or play.

Let me start with this the build quality on this laptop is amazing. It’s thin, it’s light, it’s quiet and has great performance. It has an amazing looking screen. In most cases I would say this is the perfect laptop but it has a couple of flaws that really drag it down. Let me start with the negatives and we will end on the positives. The first is the speakers, and let me say they are not good if you are in a quiet environment they are not bad but if you start some games and the fans kick on it can be hard to hear, and the kicker is the fans never get too loud unless your really trying to max out the laptop. The next issue I had is the screen reflectivity it’s not great, it can be hard to see if you have a light source in front of the screen. I have trouble using it in my kitchen because the sunlight causes massive glares. The screen gets decently bright and in darker environments it looks great. But it can be hard to use in very bright areas. The last issue is the battery life and yes I know this is a gaming pc, and that is true but that is where the small size of the laptop I think affects this one over a bigger one. They have to cram so much and think about the thermals that it ends up with a smaller battery where you do feel how fast it drains. Doing work related tasks or just watching media I was able to get about 5 hours of battery life. Now let’s go on to the positives, the size and portability is awesome it’s a big enough screen that you can comfortably work or watch but small enough to fit in a backpack, it’s also pretty light so you don’t feel like your carrying a brick around. The screen is amazing the colors and picture quality looks great. I ditched my tablet to start watching movies on here because it looks so good. And the last thing is performance this thing is powerful for how small and compact it is. Very game I tested played great, it’s not a very loud laptop also which is great. If you are someone that tends to just use your laptop at home and it’s somewhat dark in your house this is definitely the laptop I would recommend.

Amazing unit. Handles most if not all games without any issues. Throne and liberty PVP and overwatch played on the best quality.

Bought it for Archie school in the fall and I has handles every single heavy software that I have thrown into it

For the price i thought this would be a great streaming and photography edit laptop. Perfect birthday gift. Something i could use for my photography business on the go. Turns out i was wrong, the specs and features looked great on paper. Only to get it home and set it up. It was slow, kept shutting off and ran extremely hot. Thinking it was a faulty laptop, i returned it the next day to get a completely new one. Only to have the same thing happen, even with all the updates, the laptop ran hot and the side of the laptop burned my finger. I was totally disappointed with this product. Spent hours setting it up, only to jave the same issues. I returned it, got something way cheaper and got my money back. Its a gaming laptop, and i wasn't even using it for gaming.

So far I love this computer. The OLED screen makes it so everything runs smoothly.

Love this laptop overall, I wish I wouldve got the larger screen size however; this was perfect for me!

The HP Omen Transcend 14 gaming notebook is among the premium class of laptops that provide a very good gaming experience. The model reviewed here came with the Intel Core Ultra i7 processor with 16 GB of memory, 1 TB of NVMe storage and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 graphics card (you can go up to an i9/32Gb/2TB/RTX 4070). In all configurations you'll get one Thunderbolt 4 port, a USB-C and two USB-A ports, a combo audio jack, and an HDMI port, which is more than reasonable for something with a profile as thin as the Omen. Also included is Intel Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. In addition to its impressive performance, the HP Omen Transcend 14 is also incredibly portable. Weighing only 3.6 lbs and measuring just 0.7 inches thick, it's easy to take with you wherever you go. Whether you're gaming on the go or setting up at a friend's house for a LAN party, this notebook won't weigh you down. Keyboard has a good feel with decent travel and solid feel with no flex. The touchpad is oversize for a gaming laptop and works well. There's a bit of a wobble in the display, however overall build quality is solid -- no complaints there. I found the understated styling very much to my liking. If you choose not to illuminate the RGB keyboard, it looks like any other premium notebook. The sound quality of the built-in speakers is good, though not exceptional. Another great trait of this gaming notebook is its low noise and low heat output. Even during intense gaming sessions, the fans remain relatively quiet, ensuring a distraction-free experience and not raising the ire of anyone who might happen to be nearby. Additionally, the notebook stays cool even under heavy load, proving its cooling system is quite efficient. With 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB NVMe storage, this notebook offers ample space for all your games and files, which is a good thing as neither component is upgradeable as they are soldered into the mainboard. For me though, the standout feature of this gaming notebook is its 14-inch 2.8K OLED display. The display is absolutely gorgeous. With a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels, it offers stunning visuals that are crisp and vibrant. The display also boasts an impressive 0.2ms response time, ensuring smooth and lag-free gameplay. The screen supports variable refresh rates from 44-120 Hz. While there are many positives about the HP Omen Transcend 14, there are a few potential drawbacks to consider. The first is that the Omen is slightly slower than some other notebooks with this GPU as the RTX 4060 in the Transcend has its power draw limited to 80w TDP (the mobile 4060 has a max TDP of 115w). HP states this is due to the thinner and lighter frame, but my conclusion is that this has something to do with the relative quietness and the lower heat output of the Transcend 14 compared to its competition. I don’t believe it’s enough to change your gameplay experience, but you may see a few FPS less than some of the Omen's competitors in a benchmark test. For example, playing Cyberpunk 2077 with Ray Tracing Low preset and DLSS set to Performance, framerate was around 45 FPS, which for me is fine in this type of game. Ultra preset w/o RT yielded almost the same results. To run Cyberpunk at 60 FPS required medium/no RT preset. Tweaking with custom settings may yield better results, but for me, I didn’t have any problems with the gameplay experience using any of those settings, as the graphics were still amazing, but what works for me may not satisfy everyone. That’s going to be the case with any notebook with an RTX 4060. If you want better, you’re going to have to spend more for something with an RTX 4070. An older game, Far Cry 6 maintained 60 FPS and above at the highest preset. Helldivers 2 was able to run at 60 FPS using the Ultra preset and customizing a few of the settings. I found the battery life was “OK” for a fairly high-powered ultra-portable. HP claims the 6-cell, 71Wh Li-ion polymer battery offers up to 8 hours and 15 minutes of gameplay (or up to 13 hours of video playback). I didn’t tweak it for maximum battery life, and I didn't run the battery down to zero, but I did run a 1 hour 40-minute video at 2K resolution. The Omen’s battery went down from 100% to 79%, which to me extrapolates to around the 8-hour mark -- far short of HP’s claims. Again, tweaking the setting may yield better results. On the plus side, support for fast charging means the Transcend 14 can recharge up to 50% of capacity in as little as 30 minutes. Overall, my experience with the HP Omen Transcend 14 has been a very positive one. The powerful hardware, stunning display, and portable design makes it a standout choice for gamers on the move, and the minimalist design and high portability makes it an effective work and travel laptop. Whether you're a casual gamer, a hardcore enthusiast, or you need top-shelf hardware for creative tasks, the Omen Transcend 14 notebook should be on your short-list to check out.

The HP OMEN Transcend 14 came in a simple box containing the laptop itself along with a 140W USB-C power adapter. The build quality seems excellent. It is very light, compact and solid with little to no flex and wobble. Aesthetically, I think it’s a beautiful laptop that can pass as a productivity laptop if you turn off the keyboard RGB lights. The internal components are all first rate. Intel Core Ultra 7 155H with Intel AI Boost Neural Processor and integrated Intel Arc Graphics Samsung LPDDR5 K3KL8L80CM-MGCT 16GB memory SK hynix PC801 NVMe Gen4 1TB SSD nVidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 160MHz External ports are decent. On the left side, there is a Thunderbolt 4/USB-C port and a headphone/microphone jack. At the back there is another USB-C port along with an HDMI 2.1 port. You can use either USB-C ports to charge the laptop but when I tried to use the left side USB-C port for charging, I got a notification that I should charge using the rear USB-C port for full performance. Charging the laptop was also very fast compared to my other laptops. Finally, there are also two USB-A ports on the right side for other expansion needs. The web camera is excellent. Image quality is extremely sharp and has very good low light performance. I think it’s one of the best laptop cameras I have ever experienced. The built-in Windows Camera app also supports features such as automatic framing, eye contact and background blurring which I suspect are enabled with the Intel AI Neural Processor since these features aren’t available in my other computers. This would make a great laptop for video conferencing and work. I got excellent wireless performance and stability with my home network. Link speed is reported to be at 2402/1922 (Mbps) using my TP-Link DECO AX4300 Pro mesh routers. I am also getting full speed with my Xfinity internet service (940.49 Mbps download and 23.68 Mbps upload with 15ms ping). During my use, the laptop has been rock solid. I did not encounter any weird problems. It just works. The 2880 x 1800 OLED screen is gorgeous. Images are bright, crisp and clear and text is super sharp. The colors are so vivid, it makes watching videos and playing games such a great pleasure. The sound is also pretty good as far as laptops go. The sound is clear with a fairly decent soundstage and can get adequately loud but is somewhat lacking in bass as is typical of all laptops. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 comes close to perfection for me. It is the laptop with the fewest compromises that I have owned. I have laptops that are great game machines but are too heavy and big to carry around all the time. I also have light and thin laptops that are easy to carry but they can only play light games. The HP OMEN Transcend 14 is a lightweight, compact, and thin travel laptop that can also play AAA games. With the nVidia RTX 4060 laptop GPU, I was getting 30 to 70 fps at 2880 x 1800 at very high settings when playing games like Baldur’s Gate, Warhammer 40K Chaos Gate, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns. What is even more amazing is that the fan noise is very quiet compared to my other laptops when gaming. You can hear the fans spin but it’s very subdued compared to the jet engines from some of my other laptops. This laptop seems to have the best thermals and fan noise of any laptop that I’ve owned. I’ve been really impressed with it. This laptop also offers an interesting option with its integrated Arc graphics. I’m a big fan of the discrete Arc graphics cards and I was super curious about its integrated versions. You can use the integrated Arc graphics if you want to conserve power usage while still being able to play games. When playing Marvel’s Midnight Suns, I was getting about 21 fps at 2880 x 1800 using the integrated Arc graphics compared to 70 fps with the nVidia RTX 4060. I can get even more performance by lowering the resolution. When using the integrated Arc graphics, I didn’t notice any fan noise. With the new Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, this laptop is also a powerhouse for productivity. Visual Studio 2022 Community with a full workload installed in about 13 minutes and felt very zippy for my software development. Web browsing, watching videos, and general office productivity work (word processing, Excel spreadsheets, and using Quicken for balancing my checkbook) all went smoothly. In my opinion, the only major compromise this laptop has is in future memory upgradability. It only comes with 16GBs of very fast soldered LPDDR5 memory and it is not user upgradable. The advantage of having LPDDR5 memory is that it is usually much faster than user upgradable SODIMM memory. However, LPDDR5 memory is always soldered into the motherboard and is not user upgradable. The internal 1TB SSD is upgradable, however. 16GB is now the bare minimum for me. It is enough for most games and tasks but for more serious software development work, I sometimes would like to have a little more memory when I’m dealing with large datasets. Hopefully, in the future a new memory standard will arrive that will allow super fast memory to be user upgradable in a thin and compact laptop. As for now, I can strongly recommend anyone looking for a new laptop to give consideration to the HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14. It has one of the best displays of any laptop that I’ve ever seen. It’s lightweight and easy to carry when traveling yet powerful enough to do AAA gaming and any productivity tasks you might need. It has the most impressive thermals and fan noise of all my other laptops and is the quietest laptop I have ever used when gaming. The HP OMEN Transcend Gaming Laptop 14 could be the best laptop I have ever owned. For me, it’s close to perfection.