The freshman category of Home windows Copilot Plus PCs has its battery champ, and it’s even a couple of hundred greenbacks less expensive than Microsoft’s brandnew Surface Laptop. However it’s additionally business-class uninteresting, with a middling display and subpar trackpad.
HP’s brandnew OmniBook X 14 is without doubt one of the first laptops with Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite processor. Like many of the ones we’ve perceivable up to now, it’s a slim and bright gadget geared toward productiveness duties and filled with AI fluff. It begins at $1,150, with a 14-inch LCD display, 12-core processor, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD — with an non-compulsory improve to a 1TB pressure for $1,200, although it’s continuously on sale for much less.
Many of the alternative Home windows computers we’ve perceivable with those brandnew Arm chips have shining, gorgeous displays and alternative creature sympathies. The OmniBook, at the alternative hand, is a near-clone of the HP EliteBook Ultra, a gadget constructed for high-volume place of work deployment, and it presentations.
At 2.97 kilos and simply over part an inch thick, the OmniBook X is set the similar dimension because the 13-inch MacBook Air, which appears to be the mark most of these Copilot Plus PCs are gunning for. And it does come nearer to the battery while of my work-issued Breeze than any alternative pc we’ve examined.
The OmniBook X lasts me as much as 15 hours of my usual workload, which incorporates numerous revealed Chrome tabs, being attentive to track and background Twitch streams, and taking faraway conferences. It infrequently stutters or slows ill, whilst my energetic Chrome tabs swell to over 20 or 30 throughout a couple of digital desktops. It holds its rate neatly in a single day — even going a complete weekend unplugged with its lid closed and dropping simplest 10 % battery.
That is the primary generation in a age I’ve worn a Home windows pc that doesn’t give me battery anxiousness. It’s a welcome advantage of the Snapdragon X’s potency blended with the OmniBook’s beneficiant 59Wh battery. Alternative Copilot Plus PCs, just like the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x and Samsung Galaxy Book4 Edge, in truth have higher batteries, however the OmniBook’s 16:10 60Hz IPS LCD makes use of much less energy than their brighter and sooner OLED shows (extra on that during just a little).
If battery while is extra remarkable to you than anything, the OmniBook is use making an allowance for. It’s no doubt a extra concrete get advantages than any of the overhyped AI options that produce it a Copilot Plus PC. However the {hardware} it inherits from the EliteBook Extremely — just like the trackpad, audio system, and display — makes the ones lengthy hours clear of the hole a slog.
The trackpad is most commonly k, however its top-hinged clicking mechanism approach you’re feeling extra resistance as you click on upper up the dwelling. It doesn’t really feel just about as great as fashionable haptic ones on MacBooks or the Floor Computer, which allow you to click on any place with relief. And two-finger right-clicks all too continuously lead to an unintended left click on. The one factor worse than one thing that doesn’t occupation is one thing that doesn’t occupation constantly.
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However that takes me to the audio system, which might be constantly malicious. They’re serviceable for video screams, however their downward-firing orientation, towards the entrance of the case, makes track pitch slim when the pc sits on a table. Put it to your lap, and it sounds adore it’s underwater. The upward-firing audio system on many alternative computers, together with ones underneath the MacBook Breeze’s keyboard, are a long way splendid. Even my iPhone 15 Professional sounds a negligible higher, with the OmniBook’s simplest benefit being that its two audio system are unfold about seven inches aside to present it simply the tiniest little bit of a soundstage. However that positioning additionally approach your wrists regularly cancel the audio system whilst you sort.
The 14-inch, 2240 x 1400 solution touchscreen LCD appears brittle and reasonably colourful, protecting the total sRGB colour length and 78 % of DCI-P3 in my checking out. The display’s max claimed bright of 300 nits (337 nits in my checking out) is okay indoors however lovely dull for out of doors significance. In the event you sit down later to a shining window or move outdoor, it will really feel such as you’re looking to occupation on a replicate. Its refresh fee is a in a similar fashion slight 60Hz. By means of comparability, the new Surface Laptop’s LCD display is two times as rapid, will get just about two times as shining, has extra correct colours, and helps HDR, for a alike worth.
On the OmniBook’s facets are a complete of 4 ports: two USB-C PD ports at the left (one 40Gbps and one 10Gbps, with each and every able to DisplayPort 1.4a output to a track) and, at the precise, a unmarried USB-A port (10 Gbps) beside a three.5mm combo headphone / mic jack. The chiclet-style keyboard feels excellent to sort on for plenty of hours instantly and has a Copilot button I bet you’ll significance as negligible as I do. My simplest actual gripe with the keyboard is the majestic left and precise arrow keys. I’d choose them to be the similar peak because the ill arrow, because it makes discovering the keys with out taking a look a lot more straightforward.
Home windows on Arm help is already in a much better place than a couple of years in the past now that Snapdragon X is right here and the first swath of Copilot Plus PCs are within the wild. But when an app you completely want is unsupported, the OmniBook (or any Arm PC) is a nonstarter. Techniques like Adobe Premiere Professional and Illustrator stay absent or limited to emulation for now. For me, the shortage of Adobe Lightroom Vintage is a dealbreaker. I detest modifying footage in Lightroom CC, with its totally rearranged form and shortcuts. App compatibility must book getting higher, however you must by no means purchase one thing now in line with what it would possibly do going forward.
The OmniBook’s AI options are most commonly uninteresting and inconsequential — particularly since Windows Recall remains delayed. Those encompass the “AI Experiences” that send with Copilot Plus PCs, plus HP’s AI Better half app. It’s principally bloatware: simply some other ChatGPT wrapper together with some {hardware} efficiency tracking. (It may possibly additionally obtain drivers. How leading edge!) The tide beta model limits you to 8 follow-up activates for each and every inquiry, which I bet is to tamp ill the possibilities for hallucinations.
You’ll be able to additionally feed AI Better half paperwork, which it’ll try to summarize. In an early briefing with HP, a rep demonstrated how a hiring supervisor can add 3 resumes and ask the AI to check the applicants. I will not tension this enough quantity: that is one thing you should not do.
A excellent display, trackpad, and audio system are desk stakes in a contemporary pc. In comparison to competition just like the brandnew Surface Laptop and Surface Pro 11 with high-refresh shows and haptic trackpads, the OmniBook X is lackluster — except for its remarkable battery while.
However the explanation why the OmniBook’s just a little humdrum is as it’s an undertaking pc in cover. Except for the colour choices, Wi-Fi card, and Bluetooth radio, it’s just about just like the EliteBook Extremely, which is the type of “BoringBook” issued en masse by way of corporate IT branchs. The company global isn’t involved in treating you to a shining, butter-smooth OLED show or bumping bass — it simply desires you to feed the beast and get your occupation carried out with equipment which might be sufficient and no longer too pricey.
In the event you in point of fact prayer on the altar of battery while, upcoming possibly the OmniBook is okay. However there’s disagree explanation why to pay one thousand greenbacks of your personal cash for this display, the ones audio system, or that trackpad. Possibly you’ll be able to significance the OmniBook X for 15 hours instantly, however for round the similar worth, you’ll be able to get one thing just like the Floor Computer, with a a lot better trackpad, display, and audio system — even though you do must plug it in a negligible quicker.
Images by way of Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge
