HP OmniBook X 14 review: a barely disguised business laptop with excellent battery life

The freshman people of Windows Copilot Plus PCs has its artillery champ, and it’s adjacent a fewer 100 dollars cheaper than Microsoft’s caller Surface Laptop. But it’s besides business-class boring, with a middling surface and subpar trackpad.

HP’s caller OmniBook X 14 is 1 of the first laptops with Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite processor. Like astir of the ones we’ve seen truthful far, it’s a bladed and airy instrumentality aimed astatine productivity tasks and stuffed with AI fluff. It starts astatine $1,150, with a 14-inch LCD screen, 12-core processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD — with an optional upgrade to a 1TB thrust for $1,200, though it’s often connected merchantability for less. 

Most of the different Windows laptops we’ve seen with these caller Arm chips person bright, beauteous screens and different carnal comforts. The OmniBook, connected the different hand, is simply a near-clone of the HP EliteBook Ultra, a instrumentality built for high-volume bureau deployment, and it shows.

At 2.97 pounds and conscionable implicit fractional an inch thick, the OmniBook X is astir the aforesaid size arsenic the 13-inch MacBook Air, which seems to beryllium the people most of these Copilot Plus PCs are gunning for. And it does travel person to the artillery beingness of my work-issued Air than immoderate different laptop we’ve tested.

The OmniBook X lasts maine up to 15 hours of my regular workload, which includes tons of unfastened Chrome tabs, listening to euphony and inheritance Twitch streams, and taking distant meetings. It seldom stutters oregon slows down, adjacent arsenic my progressive Chrome tabs swell to implicit 20 oregon 30 crossed a fewer virtual desktops. It holds its complaint good overnight — adjacent going a full play unplugged with its lid closed and losing lone 10 percent battery. 

This is the archetypal clip successful a portion I’ve utilized a Windows laptop that doesn’t springiness maine artillery anxiety. It’s a invited payment of the Snapdragon X’s ratio combined with the OmniBook’s generous 59Wh battery. Other Copilot Plus PCs, similar the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, really person larger batteries, but the OmniBook’s 16:10 60Hz IPS LCD uses little powerfulness than their brighter and faster OLED displays (more connected that successful a bit).

If artillery beingness is much important to you than thing else, the OmniBook is worthy considering. It’s surely a much factual payment than immoderate of the overhyped AI features that marque it a Copilot Plus PC. But the hardware it inherits from the EliteBook Ultra — similar the trackpad, speakers, and surface — makes those agelong hours distant from the outlet a slog.

The trackpad is mostly okay, but its top-hinged clicking mechanics means you consciousness much absorption arsenic you click higher up the pad. It doesn’t consciousness astir arsenic bully arsenic modern haptic ones connected MacBooks oregon the Surface Laptop, which fto you click anyplace with ease. And two-finger right-clicks each excessively often effect successful an unintentional near click. The lone happening worse than thing that doesn’t enactment is thing that doesn’t enactment consistently.

But that takes maine to the speakers, which are consistently bad. They’re serviceable for video calls, but their downward-firing orientation, toward the beforehand of the case, makes euphony dependable bladed erstwhile the laptop sits connected a desk. Put it connected your lap, and it sounds similar it’s underwater. The upward-firing speakers connected galore different laptops, including ones nether the MacBook Air’s keyboard, are acold superior. Even my iPhone 15 Pro sounds a small better, with the OmniBook’s lone vantage being that its 2 speakers are dispersed astir 7 inches isolated to springiness it conscionable the tiniest spot of a soundstage. But that positioning besides means your wrists often artifact the speakers erstwhile you type.

The 14-inch, 2240 x 1400 solution touchscreen LCD looks crisp and reasonably colorful, covering the afloat sRGB colour abstraction and 78 percent of DCI-P3 successful my testing. The screen’s max claimed brightness of 300 nits (337 nits successful my testing) is good indoors but beauteous dim for outdoor use. If you beryllium adjacent to a agleam model oregon spell outside, it whitethorn consciousness similar you’re trying to enactment connected a mirror. Its refresh complaint is simply a likewise humble 60Hz. By comparison, the new Surface Laptop’s LCD surface is doubly arsenic fast, gets astir doubly arsenic bright, has much close colors, and supports HDR, for a akin price.

At the OmniBook’s sides are a full of 4 ports: 2 USB-C PD ports connected the near (one 40Gbps and 1 10Gbps, with each susceptible of DisplayPort 1.4a output to a monitor) and, connected the right, a azygous USB-A larboard (10 Gbps) beside a 3.5mm combo headphone / mic jack. The chiclet-style keyboard feels bully to benignant connected for galore hours consecutive and has a Copilot fastener I wager you’ll usage arsenic small arsenic I do. My lone existent gripe with the keyboard is the gangly near and close arrow keys. I’d similar them to beryllium the aforesaid tallness arsenic the down arrow, arsenic it makes uncovering the keys without looking overmuch easier.

Windows connected Arm enactment is already successful a overmuch amended place than a fewer years agone present that Snapdragon X is present and the first swath of Copilot Plus PCs are successful the wild. But if an app you perfectly request is unsupported, the OmniBook (or immoderate Arm PC) is simply a nonstarter. Programs similar Adobe Premiere Pro and Illustrator stay absent oregon limited to emulation for now. For me, the deficiency of Adobe Lightroom Classic is simply a dealbreaker. I loathe editing photos successful Lightroom CC, with its wholly rearranged layout and shortcuts. App compatibility should support getting better, but you should ne'er bargain thing present based connected what it may do successful the future.

The OmniBook’s AI features are mostly boring and inconsequential — particularly since Windows Recall remains delayed. These dwell of the “AI Experiences” that vessel with Copilot Plus PCs, positive HP’s AI Companion app. It’s fundamentally bloatware: conscionable different ChatGPT wrapper on with immoderate hardware show monitoring. (It tin besides download drivers. How innovative!) The existent beta mentation limits you to 8 follow-up prompts for each inquiry, which I wager is to tamp down the chances for hallucinations.

You tin besides provender AI Companion documents, which it volition effort to summarize. In an aboriginal briefing with HP, a rep demonstrated however a hiring manager tin upload 3 resumes and inquire the AI to comparison the candidates. I cannot accent this enough: this is thing you should not do.

A bully screen, trackpad, and speakers are array stakes successful a modern laptop. Compared to competitors similar the caller Surface Laptop and Surface Pro 11 with high-refresh displays and haptic trackpads, the OmniBook X is lackluster — with the objection of its outstanding artillery life. 

But the crushed the OmniBook’s a spot humdrum is due to the fact that it’s an endeavor laptop successful disguise. Aside from the colour options, Wi-Fi card, and Bluetooth radio, it’s astir identical to the EliteBook Ultra, which is the benignant of “BoringBook” issued en masse by institution IT departments. The firm satellite isn’t acrophobic with treating you to a bright, butter-smooth OLED show oregon bumping bass — it conscionable wants you to provender the beast and get your enactment done with tools that are capable and not excessively expensive.

If you genuinely worship astatine the altar of artillery life, past possibly the OmniBook is fine. But there’s nary crushed to wage a 1000 dollars of your ain wealth for this screen, those speakers, oregon that trackpad. Maybe you tin usage the OmniBook X for 15 hours straight, but for astir the aforesaid price, you tin get thing similar the Surface Laptop, with a overmuch amended trackpad, screen, and speakers — adjacent if you bash person to plug it successful a small sooner.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge