HP Omnibook X review: Sleek, capable, and a little boring

HP’s first laptop with Windows AI features Copilot Plus is called the Omnibook. It’s a new brand name — around the turn of the millennium it was used for business laptops — but after a 22-year hiatus, Omni is now being reintroduced as a name for consumer computers. It replaces the Pavilion series in particular.

The 14-inch Omnibook X we tested today starts off strong. Equipped with Qualcomm’s 12-core Snapdragon X Elite, the Omnibook X is fast enough for office work and day-to-day tasks. The battery life is good as well, which isn’t all that surprising, as Snapdragon processors are known for being more power-efficient. That said, it does get hot on the underside, making it difficult to hold in your lap. Despite a few nitpicks, this laptop generally leaves a favorable impression. Read on to learn more.

HP Omnibook X: Fast enough

It’s still going fast, though. These new Snapdragon-based laptops are on par or better than Intel Core Ultra and AMD’s latest low-power Ryzen processors for laptops, or the Apple M3 in a Macbook Air. The graphics circuitry isn’t as sharp as what’s in those three, but this isn’t a gaming PC, so it does what’s expected of it with no problem.

And above all, it’s the powerful NPU part you want, 45 tops neural performance for AI operations. It provides both faster processing in many creative applications and enables new features such as localized AI for both language models and image generation. It’s also more energy efficient than before.

I’d like to see more applications that can utilize it and that’ll come eventually. At the moment, Copilot Plus itself isn’t revolutionary, but with image generation, live captioning of both streamed film and video meetings, webcam effects, and the upcoming Recall feature, it’s well on its way.

HP Omnibook X: AI assistant

HP has its own AI Companion pre-installed. It’s a digital assistant that can summarize texts, search for information and create text-based content, as well as catalogue documents and make them smartly indexed for searches. It works well and is useful, but I don’t know if the chat function itself does much more than what I can already do with Copilot.

Windows 11 for ARM works fine, as far as the occasional USB accessory whose drivers and support software are not compatible, so be prepared for that if you want to buy a webcam or USB microphone, for example. The built-in 1440p webcam looks good enough that the need for it is minimal, and the voice recording with microphone also gets a pass.

Of previous HP laptops, the Omnibook X is most like a Pavilion, with good build quality but not so much luxury detail. Its dark grey aluminum surfaces give a sober impression, and with a tapered design to the sides and rounded edges, it’s comfortable to grip. The narrow edges leave the computer’s single USB-A port with a door that needs to be opened. It feels a bit unnecessary just to make it look nice.

More ports in general would have been nice. Now you get two USB-C and one USB-A and one for headphones. The USB-C ports are fast, with USB 4 speed, and both support screen output. Wireless connectivity is best with Wi-Fi 6e. Good enough, but Wi-Fi 7 would have been preferable.

HP Omnibook X: Colorful but dim

The screen, a glassy IPS panel with 1400p resolution, has a touch function that allows you to use the active stylus pen on it. However, none is included. The screen has good colors, well above SRGB in color gamut and high accuracy. Unfortunately, the brightness is lower than other competitors in its class, so there may be problems with sunlight when used outdoors. It also means HDR mode isn’t an option, and there’s no support for it. But for indoor office work, it’s very comfortable to rest your eyes on.

The built-in speakers get a pass, but there’s a lack of warmth in the tone so it’s not fully enjoyable to play music on them, but I’m also really picky.

As with all Snapgdragon X laptops, battery life is impressive, but with a 59 Wh battery, it’s a little behind the best I’ve tested. With moderate mixed use over the course of a working day, the Omnibook was able to cope fine, so it’s definitely not under-performing.

The new Snapdragon computers are impressive in many ways, and Windows is finally ready to run on ARM for most users. The question is whether the HP Omnibook X is a good choice in a wide range of good competitors. It’s hard to really see why, although it’s mostly high quality on offer. With a price a couple of thousand higher than several equivalent competitors, it’s not possible to put top marks.