HP - OmniBook Ultra - Copilot+ PC - 14" 2.2K Touch-Screen Laptop - AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 - 32GB Memory - 1TB SSD - Meteor Silver

The Specs - CPU - AMD Ryzen Ai 9 365 Processor (50 TOPs of NPU) Graphics - AMD Radeon 890M RAM - 32GB LPDDR5X running at 7500 MHz Display - 14” 2.2K (2240 x1400) ips display with a 16:10, 300 nits peak brightness, 60hz panel Storage - 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD Network Communications - WiFi 7(802.11be) (2x2) + Bluetooth 5.4 Battery - 68WHrs, 4-cell Li-ion Ports - Right Side - 2 USB-C (40gbs) ports Left Side - 3.5mm headphone jack, USB-A (10gbs) The ports are sufficient but it would have been nice to have USB-C ports on both sides for versatility and I think HP should have included an HDMI port or SD card slot. Weight and Power brick - The unit comes in at approximately 3.4lbs (3.366lbs) and once you add the power brick, total weight is approximately 4lbs (4.002lbs). The power brick itself looks and feels like quality materials were used and gives you approximately 9ft 5in of distance from a power source. The cords are awesome and are perfect in my book. Feels nice, easily moveable, flexible and has a nice soft texture to it. Unboxing Experience - The HP box looked great and opening it was straightforward and efficient. The presentation of the laptop inside its box, the unwrapping, and the initial unveiling retained the natural excitement of receiving a new laptop and wanting to use it. The unit itself was light and felt well built. The unit did not have a slippery feel to it and had a more slightly textured aspect to the finish. Opening the laptop was a little stiff and would not fulfill a windows user's dream of one handed opening. First impressions - I like the laptop and think the size is perfect. Picking it up feels good and the laptop doesn’t really have any flex on the unit (screen, body, keyboard) and as its light, it's easy to grab with one hand to move to another location confidently. The keyboard and trackpad are great. The keys, to me, are a perfect blend between mushy and clicky and the layout is very comfortable. The letter print on the keys are big and look great. The trackpad is responsive and the clicking aspect is good. Overall, I’d label it above average and a great experience. System responsiveness is excellent. There are no complaints as the laptop is smooth. During everyday tasks such as opening and using office documents, surfing zillow for dream homes, checking in on facebook, and opening a ton of tabs in a web browser for comparison shopping, the laptop is a pleasure to use. Fans stay silent but the system can get slightly warm. During normal use with this laptop, you definitely can use it in any setting (counter, desk, on lap, on lap with pillow) without worrying too much about ventilation or excessive heat. Fans and heat can be a little loud if you do use the laptop for anything such as gaming or more intensive productivity tasks. The fans can be noticeable but not in an embarrassing way. Macbook users may raise an eyebrow at you in a library. Heat wise, you are looking at approximately 86F around the middle of the keyboard (T, Y, G, H, keys) while doing most tasks with approximately 31 decibels. In games or more taxing productivity tasks, those temps will hit around 101F or more with fans hitting around 36 decibels. The heat becomes a little noticeable on the keyboard after 5-10 minutes of intensive tasks. On the bottom of the unit, I registered 107F as a high which was around the center where the vent holes were. I ran CPU-Z stress test, and played Kingdom and Castles (a sim like game) and fan noise maxed out at around 46 decimals with temps registering the same high as before. The screen situation is its biggest let down. Why HP decided to release this awesome laptop but then intentionally cripple it with a poor display panel (2.2K at 300 nits) that has a 60Hz refresh rate is beyond me. Having one of choices would be okay but all three (lower resolution, low brightness, low refresh rate) I think is a tragedy. One might overlook this display issue but at this price point ($1500) the word dull or drab I think is appropriate when comparing what other manufactures offer. On a positive note, the screen is a touch screen The web camera quality is pretty good for a windows laptop I’d say. The image looked “enhanced” and you would still want to pay attention to angels and the light in the room in order to look your best. The audio quality is, I think, sufficient. In comparison mode you might think the sound being produced isn’t as good as it could be but it certainly isn't bad. There wasn't any battery drain during sleep mode when I tested it. There were a few times in which I’d close the lid overnight and come back in the morning and it was at the same percentage as I had left it at. HP did a fantastic job I think in that regard. For a battery test I ran basemark web 3.0 (full screen brightness, using the balanced plan and not altering any other system settings) to get a feel about how long this machine could last in more demanding situations. I got 4hrs. 27min. This obviously is a much more draining task than just doing light web browsing, listening to music and some productivity tasks. I was pretty surprised by the result and have no doubt that this laptop would easily make it all day with normal workloads. Also something I think is worth mentioning is that fact that the fans never kicked on during the test. I found the HP software a little bit on the bloated side. I counted at least 8 different HP branded software apps that perform some sort of functions and enhancements. It does offer an OMEN hub which I didn't care for but does offer some info on your system. Definitely not as good as something that Asus offers. In conclusion - This laptop is great and I really want to love it. I found myself liking it the more I used it. It has a perfect size, great keyboard and the power it has is fantastic. I was amazed that under load, the fans were not louder. I do find it really hard to shake the display choice HP went with. For a laptop, the screen in my book is very important and HP didn't seem to care about it. At $1499, I think there are some shortcomings when you compare this to other products. To name a few, you don't get great port selections, the power cord can only plug in on one side, the keyboard gets a bit warm during normal use and almost hot during intensive tasks and I am disappointed, mainly on principle, that HP didn’t offer a better screen for this laptop. Other than that, it is a great laptop in so many areas.

The OmniBook Ultra is a small yet powerful business/college laptop. With a powerful AMD Ryzen AI 9 processor and one of the latest integrated GPUs – AMD Radeon 880M, there is no surprise that this laptop runs like butter. From bootup, multitasking, and even some light gaming, this laptop will do it all. In this review, I will cover the pros and cons of the HP OmniBook Ultra. *TLDR at the bottom ========= IN THE BOX/SET-UP: So, what’s in the box? The laptop comes neatly wrapped in a soft cover. While it is not a laptop case, the soft cover can be used for protection from scratches and dust. A 65W USB-C charger is included. The braided cable is a nice touch. Finally, there is some documentation included. The setup is straightforward. It is your typical Windows 11 out-of-the-box experience. Once you get through that, you will be greeted by the Windows 11 desktop. There are some bloatware applications like McAfee and some expected HP apps that one may not ever use but overall, I do appreciate that the computer did not come preinstalled with a lot of bloatware. ========= DESIGN/SPECS: The OmniBook is lightweight and sports a sleek meteor-sliver color. The keyboard is matte gray which blends in with the chassis well. The keyboard is comfortable and ergonomic. I have been using the OmniBook for a couple of days now and I have not experienced any discomfort while using the keyboard. The trackpad is large, which is pleasant to see as this computer will likely be used as a business or college laptop. As a former college student, a bigger trackpad is always better to have for school. Speakers are located to the left and right of the keyboard. The screen is a glossy IPS touchscreen with 2.2k resolution. One major downside to having a laptop of this size is the lack of ports for your USB devices or other accessories. There are only 2 USB-C thunderbolt ports, a USB-A 3.1 port, and an AUX port. The major selling point for this OmniBook is the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor which is a fantastic processor for a laptop. Seriously, it is fast! The OmniBook has an AMD Radeon 880M integrated GPU which is a great business laptop. The OmniBook also contains 32GB of RAM for those multitaskers and a standard 1TB SSD. ========= PERFORMANCE: Now for the exciting stuff. I was able to use this laptop in a variety of situations these past couple of days. I work in IT and was able to stress test its business capabilities there. I played some games from the cloud and local installs. Finally, I ran several benchmark software. I will first cover the benchmark software. The first one I ran was 3D Mark. This was used to test out the computer’s gaming capabilities. While this is no gaming computer by any means, one can still use the OmniBook for light gaming. PC Mark was used to test out the computer’s capabilities with modern office applications like Word, video conferencing software, web browsing, data processing, etc. Cinebench was used to test out the computer’s CPU rendering performance, and finally, CanYouRunIt was used to see how many of the top 9000+ games can the computer run. The scores for these benchmark applications can be seen below. 3D Mark Graphics Score: 3214 CPU Score: 8752 TimeSpy Score: 3551 PC Mark Overall Score: 5872 *Individual scores for a specific application in PC Mark image Cinebench CPU (Multi Core): 14136 CPU (Single Core): 1927 CanYouRunIt CYRI Score Min: 78% CYRI Score Rec: 42% *This score is the percentage of games your computer can run at the minimum and recommended requirement levels. These benchmark scores tell you that the OmniBook is an excellent laptop for the office employee or college student who needs that extra RAM or processing power. I can attest to this by saying this laptop handled every little task I threw at it. I work with virtual machines, IDEs, and other IT-related software that mostly runs on a web browser. Everything ran smoothly and quickly, and it stayed that way. From bootup to opening applications, and VMs, and playing around with CoPilot’s capabilities, it all was handled incredibly well. The OmniBook was built for the creatives and the technical users. On the other hand, the OmniBook’s gaming capabilities aren’t the best. But that is not to say you can’t play games on this laptop. I played games from local installs and the cloud (XBOX game pass) I was able to play a variety of games from FPS like Destiny 2 to survival games like the Dead Space Remake. I did find that the games that were cloud-based ran significantly a lot better than local installs. Dead Space was one of the cloud-based games and while I was only able to run it at a max of 30FPS, the computer handled it well. A local install of the game I played on the computer was Destiny 2. I did have to substantially lower the graphics to the lowest setting for the game to be playable. It’s an FPS so ideally, I wanted at least 60FPS which I was able to get consistently by setting all graphics settings to the lowest. Granted it did not look good at all, but the game was playable. At the end of the day, I would not use this computer for gaming but if it is all you have, it is fully capable of handling most popular games at the minimum requirements. ========= FEATURES/OTHER NOTES: - One of the big selling points is the AI CoPilot part of this PC but honestly, I rarely used CoPilot, let alone, clicked the CoPilot button, I am still quite not sure what Microsoft is trying to do with their built-in AI (it’s still early to tell) - Built-in speakers are decent, but I recommend using external speakers or headphones - Bezels are a little too much for my liking but overall, not too bad - The 400 nits screen brightness doesn’t feel that bright - Fans are a little on the louder side - A MediaTek Wi-Fi 7 card is installed in the computer for Wi-Fi 7 support - Camera quality is surprisingly good and the built-in studio effects along with the HP Enhanced Lighting app do improve your camera/video quality considerably - 1 free month of XBOX Game Pass Ultimate is included with the device. ========= CONCLUSION/TLDR: Overall, this is an exceptional business/college laptop for those who are technical or creative. In the past couple of days, I was able to stress test this laptop to its max with various tasks. From running Virtual Machines, various heavy web apps, and IDEs, I was able to test its office capabilities. And as expected, the machine handled it all well. The 32GB RAM allowed for multitasking like never before and the processor was able to handle everything I threw at it. Gaming on this laptop can be hit or miss. If you care about graphics over performance, certainly look away, all the games I had played were set to lower graphic settings. But the performance for most of these games was decent. I do recommend running cloud-based games over local installs. To sum it up, the HP OmniBook is an excellent laptop for the business/college folk who need that extra processing power. If you are a normal user or gamer looking for a gaming laptop, I would suggest looking for something else, otherwise, this is a powerhouse of a laptop that will handle any(office) task incredibly well. I wholeheartedly recommend you try the OmniBook Ultra out!

The HP Omnibook 14 is a remarkable blend of performance, portability, and design, making it an excellent choice for both professionals and students. Here are some key highlights: Design and Build Quality: The HP Omnibook 14 is made out of a full metal body giving it a sleek and modern feel. One downside to this design is that mine came out of the box with a small indentation on the metal speaker grill on the bottom. Overall, the design does feel and look premium, and overall, it is lightweight. This makes in an ideal laptop for people who are always on the go. Display: The display is a 14 inch 2.2K touch screen display. This screen size is ideal for a compact and on the go laptop. If you are using this as a stationary computer, then it might be slightly smaller than you would like. It can easily be plugged into an external monitor at home and is plenty big for outside of the house/office. The 2.2K display in a smaller display means that text and graphics are extremely crisp and clear. From my experience this is one of the higher resolutions for laptops of this size and price. Have a touch screen is convenient espcieally for college students who might want to draw or take notes on the screen. Performance/AI: The main premise of this laptop is AI. Power the AI is a Ryzen AI 9 and radeon graphics. It also has 32 gbs of built in memory and 1TB of storage. These specs are plenty for what most people will do with this laptop and they are purposefully built for the built in AI system. It is running HP AI companion which is in Beta form but from my testing it works well. I cannot wait to get more time with it and learn how I can use it in my personal and professional life. Windows 11 has also been updated with tons of built in AI features that work great along with this laptop. Connectivity: Due to the slim and sleekness of this laptop peripherals are somewhat limited. However, it does have 2 USB-C ports, a standard USB-A port, and a headphone jack. Since one of the USB-C ports is used for charging it is convenient that a second is provided. With the advancements in wireless technology, I think that is everything that is necessary and if you want more you can always use a dock. It has the latest in wireless with brand new Wi-Fi 7 (2x2) and a Bluetooth 5.4 wireless card. To use the USB-A port you have to pull down a small cover to insert the USB. I found this to be somewhat difficult, but I understand it was designed this way to keep the profile of the laptop slim and sleek. The keyboard is backlit with very nice keys to type on. They are perfectly spaced and have just the right amount of travel. The trackpad is oversized and has great feedback. It is premium feeling and one of the better trackpads I have used on a PC. This PC has multiple ways to sign in. Two of my most used are the fingerprint scanner and facial recognition. I have used laptops that have one or the other, but I think this might be the first that had both. They both work well and are extremely reliable and fast to sign in. The webcam has a built in privacy cover which gives piece of mind. Battery Life: Battery life is another area where this laptop shines. With its power-efficient components, you can expect all day battery life. Although the exact number of hours can vary depending on what you are doing the battery is long lasting. If you do run out of battery it can be easily juiced up with USB-C charging. I recommend putting it to sleep if you want to conserve battery while you are not using it. Conclusion: Overall, the HP Omnibook 14 is an excellent laptop and has the latest advancements in AI. It is well-suited for anyone needing a reliable and efficient machine for everyday tasks, making it a worthy investment. If you're in the market for a versatile and high-performing laptop, this should be on your shortlist.