---
title: 'HP’s OmniBook Ultra Will Turn Heads… But Don’t Buy the Wrong One'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=nTmTkkNNOvw'
video_id: 'nTmTkkNNOvw'
date: 2026-08-03
duration_sec: 936
---

# HP’s OmniBook Ultra Will Turn Heads… But Don’t Buy the Wrong One

> Source: [HP’s OmniBook Ultra Will Turn Heads… But Don’t Buy the Wrong One](https://youtube.com/watch?v=nTmTkkNNOvw)

## Summary

The video reviews HP's new OmniBook Ultra 14 laptops, available with Intel Panther Lake or Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 processors. It highlights the premium build, vivid OLED display, and haptic trackpad, while comparing performance, battery life, and thermal behavior between the two variants. The reviewer advises on which model to choose based on use case and notes potential sales.

### Key Points

- **Redesigned OmniBook Ultra** [00:02] — The new OmniBook Ultra is redesigned with a premium feel, available with Intel Panther Lake or Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 chips. Pros include build quality, stunning OLED display, and haptic trackpad.
- **Intel vs Qualcomm trade-offs** [00:30] — Intel model wins in battery life, compatibility, and GPU performance (with X7/X9 chips), but has fan noise. Qualcomm model wins in raw CPU performance and quieter fans, but runs warmer.
- **Chassis and design** [01:36] — Chassis feels premium and sharp, with color-matched keyboard. Compact size similar to Lenovo Slim 7X and slightly larger than MacBook Air 13. Sturdy with minimal flex, stiff hinges.
- **Display quality** [02:43] — Vivid OLED with 2880x1880 resolution, bright at ~500 nits, but glossy and reflective. Some PWM flickering and screen door effect, common on OLEDs.
- **Keyboard divisive** [03:45] — Keyboard has low travel and mushy feel for reviewer, but Josh found it clicky and satisfying. Better than Dell XPS14, but not as comfortable as Lenovo Yoga or Asus ZenBook. Backlight is better than competitors.
- **Haptic trackpad win** [05:06] — Trackpad is haptic with smooth tracking, no accidental palm clicks—highly unusual for Windows. Josh found it one of the best but not MacBook level; occasional missed clicks when gaming.
- **Ports and speakers** [05:34] — Limited ports: three USB-C (40Gbps) and headphone jack, no USB-A or HDMI. Speakers are loud and good, with solid bass.
- **Webcam and mic** [06:20] — Webcam looks okay but grainy, microphone sounds off. Has privacy shutter and IR for Windows Hello.
- **Performance and thermals** [06:49] — Snapdragon felt snappier with no fan noise but warm (40C). Intel had constant low fan noise but stayed cool. Battery: Intel X9 ~12 hours, Snapdragon ~10 hours.
- **Benchmarks** [07:41] — Qualcomm wins in Geekbench and Cinebench. Intel X9 GPU is ~80% better in Time Spy, but gap narrows in Steel Nomad Light. Intel draws less power but HP feeds only 25W, limiting performance.
- **Gaming performance** [10:27] — Intel handles Cyberpunk at 60fps with upscaling; Snapdragon not recommended for gaming due to compatibility issues. Forza 6 runs at 60fps on Intel without upscaling.
- **Video editing** [11:25] — Both drop frames when editing at half resolution, but usable for light work. Dedicated GPU laptops perform better.
- **Thermals under load** [12:07] — Intel gets warm but manageable; Qualcomm gets burning hot under CPU load, limiting sustained performance. Gaming on Intel is cooler than CPU tasks.
- **Linux compatibility** [13:01] — Ubuntu works on Intel but mic/speakers fail. Snapdragon not compatible with Linux; only WSL works.
- **Recommendations** [13:39] — For light use, Qualcomm X2 Plus is best value. For performance, Intel X9 is preferred. HP laptops often go on sale; check Best Buy and bestlaptop.deals.
- **Alternatives** [14:09] — Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Ultra has better keyboard and more power. MacBook Air is best value for light use; MacBook Pro 14 is more powerful but bulkier. Yoga Pro 7i with dedicated GPU is better for gaming.

### Conclusion

The OmniBook Ultra is a solid thin-and-light laptop with premium build and display, but the choice between Intel and Qualcomm depends on priorities: Intel for GPU and battery, Qualcomm for CPU and quiet fans. Be mindful of thermals and consider alternatives like Lenovo or MacBook.

## Transcript

thin light laptop. Well, it is back and redesigned and better than ever. This new one, it looks so stylish and it feels very premium. This year, you get a processors. You've got Intel's new Panther Lake chips as well as Qualcomm's
new Snapdragon X2s. Now, since we value your time at this channel, I'm not going find out what's going on. I'm just going to tell you right now. The pros of these laptops are their build quality. They also look stunning. As I said, they have
this very sharp, vibrant OLED display. And the haptic trackpad is actually better than most of the ones that we've tested in Windows laptops. The Intel model, it wins in battery life, broad application compatibility, and GPU
performance. That's of course if you get one with an Intel X7 or X9 chip. Those are the chips that have that powerful B390 integrated GPU. But the Intel model, it does have some fan noise. The Qualcomm model on the other hand, it
comes in that nicer blue color, at least right now here in the USA. It wins in raw CPU performance. Its fans are also much quieter, but it's not perfect So, pick your poison. You get a bit of fan noise over here, and you get a bit
of heat you feel over here. By the way, thank you to Best Buy for sending one of these in for our review. We are a Best Buy affiliated channel here, but stating the obvious, this is not a sponsored video. Best Buy, they don't give us any
talking points, nor do they review the video before it goes live. Guys, we product reviews. That would make no sense. With that said, I'm going to hand through these laptops, all their ins and outs, and at the end, she'll go over how
they stack up versus the competitors. The chassis on this new iteration of the Ultra looks very premium. The first word I thought of was sharp. All three colors seem refined, although the new blue and tan ones definitely pop more. The
keyboard is color matched to the chassis with squared keys that look very modern. aesthetic and seems to resist fingerprints well. This laptop is also a nice compact size. It is around the same size as Lenovo's newest Slim 7X and only
a little bigger than something like the MacBook Air 13. It also weighs around the same as both of those. So, it's light, but it's not the lightest out there. Lenovo's more premium Yoga Slim 7i Ultra, which also has a 14-in screen,
is more compact and lightweight. This new Omnibook is also a very thin laptop. Thanks to its thinness, it is very enjoyable to use and rest your wrists squared off and sharp when I first looked at them. Instead, it is actually
of the keyboard deck, which means it didn't cut into my wrists. This is or something without support for your arms. The chassis overall feels very sturdy with only minimal deck flex and a little screen flex. The hinges are stiff
enough to use the touchcreen, but it can also be opened with one hand. Now, let's look at the display, which is a very vivid, color accurate OLED. It has a high resolution of 2880 by 18800, which is my preference at 14 in because it
makes small text look very crisp and readable, even when zoomed out. This is great for my complex Excel work. Plus, it gets decently bright at almost 500 nits. However, the glossy screen is quite reflective. This would be most
noticeable if you were outdoors on the patio of a coffee shop. I even noticed when sitting in my office, which just has normal fluorescent overhead lighting. As this is quite a bright panel, upping the brightness does help
combat the reflections when indoors. Unfortunately, there was also a bit of a content, which means when staring closely, I could see some colored pixels flickering used to control the
brightness, but the frequency seems to be very high, so we don't think most people would notice. Both the screen door effect and PWM are very common on OLED panels. The display as a whole is still very solid. The keyboard, on the
other hand, is divisive. To me, it felt quite low travel and even a little mushy. I don't mind a low travel keyboard, but I want more resistance to the key presses. This was a bit of a dealbreaker for me, but Josh found it
okay. He uses the MacBooks a lot, which also have 1 millm of key travel. He found the HP's keyboard more satisfying to type on as the key press feels more clicky. On the downside, it also sounds more clicky, so it is a little louder
than the MacBooks. Both of us agreed that it is a much better keyboard than Dell's XPS14. We didn't have any of the typing errors we had on that one. You can feel where each key ends easier on this one because of their tapered edges.
This isn't the case on the XPS, but Josh and I also agreed that the HP's keyboard isn't as comfortable as Lenovo's Yoga series or Asus's ZenBook A14. One area it is better than either of those is its backlight. There isn't enough space for
it does on those. This makes it easier to see which key is which in a darker environment. The tan version does have lighter keys though, which means having them more difficult to see. Unfortunately, HP doesn't seem to have
turn it off when it's not needed. haptic one with very smooth tracking. Clicking feels satisfying, but not overly reactive like some haptic ones. Also, drum roll please. None of us
when typing, even when we had our palms resting directly on the trackpad. This is highly unusual for Windows laptops. So, big win. On the other hand, when gaming, Josh noticed his clicks didn't always register. He felt it is one of
the best haptic trackpads for a Windows laptop, but not quite MacBook levels. For ports, we have a pretty limited selection of three USBC ports that support up to 40 GB and a headphone jack. On the bright side, at least we
get a headphone jack, unlike some of its competitors like the Yogas. Also, since the USBC ports are on both sides, this makes it convenient no matter which side your dock or plug is on. Unfortunately, if you have a USBA mouse or prefer to
use HDMI for your external monitor, you're out of luck here. Speakers get nice and loud and sound very good for this kind of laptop. Solid bass, decent outwards, you do not lose as much sound as downward-f facing speakers if you're
using this laptop on a blanket. Take a listen.
sounds on the Omnibook Ultra 14. It looks okay, but not as premium as the rest of this laptop. The microphone also sounds off. Here's how the webcam looks in house lighting. Definitely grainier. It also has a privacy shutter and IR for
Windows Hello. Now, let's talk about how these two laptops perform. For my daily use, they were fine, but Josh and I both found the Snapdragon model felt snappier. On that one, we noticed no fan noise making graphs and writing scripts.
There was a bit of warmth near the top of the keyboard and above the port where it was docked. We measured 40 C. I didn't notice the warmth, but Josh found it a little annoying. On the Intel one, even in lighter use, there was fan
noise. It always stayed at a low volume, but it was still there. The plus side of that is that the Intel one didn't feel warm at all for basic use. Let's talk about how long they last when unplugged. With their brightness set to 300 nits,
the Intel X9 chip lasted around 12 hours, which is phenomenal. rivaling our current king, the XPS14. The Snapdragon version still does well, although not as stellar, around 10 hours total. It is a better performing chip, so that may have
something to do with it. We'd expect the X2 Plus chip to last longer. If you are running performance tasks unplugged, both OmniBook Ultras retain their full performance. On performance, the exciting thing about both of these new
Omnibook Ultras is that they can come with a variety of processors, including ones powerful enough for programming, photo editing, and even some basic video versions of the Intel and Qualcomm chips that are available. Ours perform very
well in what we consider our common performance tasks benchmark, Geekbench. Between the two, the Qualcomm one does much better, but neither are bad when you compare to a basic Ultrabook. As far as how the less expensive versions might
perform, I looked up Geekbench so that we could see the results of the X2 Plus chip. It performs worse than Intel's X9 in terms of multi-core and a little better in terms of single core. If you are considering the Intel Ultra 7 356H
version, it actually has the same amount of CPU cores as the X9 chip shown here. speeds, so it would likely only fall behind a tiny amount. In Cinebench, it the Snapdragon pulls ahead. When it comes to the Intel chips specifically,
there are better performing laptops with this chip. That is because HP only feeds at around 25 watts of sustained power. There are several other 14-inch laptops not shown here that feed their chips more power and perform better. 40 watts
for the Slim 7i Ultra with the better chip and 45 watts for Asus's expert right now, so that's why we're showing you the Yoga Pro 7 and X16 as stand-ins. This also highlights an important point. Qualcomm is more power efficient and
power draw. If you are comparing to the MacBook Pro 14 with the base M5 chip, it only performs a little better than the Air. That's why we aren't showing you it on our graphs. I felt the graphs were busy enough. Plus, at the time I filmed
this, the M5 Pro version is closer in price to the higherend OmniBBook Ultra. As far as graphics performance, you will get a better GPU in the X7 or X9 chips get a better GPU in the X7 or X9 chips from Intel. The Ultra 7 nonX has less
GPU cores. To show you, we've added the Slim 7i Ultra to our graphs, which has the same integrated GPU. In Time Spy, the Intel X9 version of the Omnibook Ultra performs almost 80% better than its Qualcomm counterpart. Almost all of
that is coming down to its better GPU score. But keep in mind, Time Spite does not run natively on Snapdragon hardware. Steel Nomad Light is a newer benchmark and runs natively on all hardware, including Qualcomm and Apple. Here, the
gap narrows a lot. This is an example of how you may get varying levels of to some apps requiring a translation layer to run on Windows on ARM. As you can see, you can get better graphics in
something like the MacBook Pro with the M5 Pro chip or even better, a laptop with a dedicated Nvidia GPU. The advantage of a dedicated GPU is also evident in games like Cyberpunk. As far as integrated GPUs go, Intel still does
very well here. In terms of what's available in a thin and light laptop, it settings. Do keep in mind that we've lowered the screen's output resolution here to 1920 x 1200 and we are using upscaling. This is likely what you'd
type of hardware. Looking at the Snapdragon Omnibook, we don't recommend performance and app compatibility issues. Cyberpunk like Time Spy runs require anti-heat software like League of Legends don't run at all. Looking at
just the Intel in Forsa 6, which is a brand new title where we do not utilize upscaling, the Intel version is able to maintain 60fps on average at full HD. considering the Omnibook CPU draws less power than many other laptops with
this game on the Omnibook with Qualcomm on this graph because the ZenBook A16 that you see there has a more powerful version of the same chip and it performs horribly. Graphics performance will also have an effect in tasks like video
videos at half resolution. These Omnibook Ultras drop significantly more frames than other laptops you can get around this price point, either MacBook Pros or laptops with a dedicated GPU. This doesn't mean you can't edit on
these. I personally do review our videos and leave markers on the timeline using the Panther lakes all the time, but I'm playing back at half resolution and this is not my primary workflow, so a few dropped frames doesn't bother me.
intensive and more doable on both of these Omnibook Ultras, though, if that's interested in. Let's talk about how comfortable the OmniBook Ultra would be ones I've just talked about. For pure CPU tasks, the Intel version gets very
warm. It's around the same as the MacBook Air, which doesn't have a fan. The Qualcomm version is worse. It gets burning hot. It should really be running its fans higher, but it isn't. This is unfortunate, as I showed you, because
Qualcomm's max CPU performance is better, but you can't reasonably use it for that. What surprised me, though, is that when gaming, the Intel doesn't get as warm as it does for pure CPU tasks. This is all while it keeps the fan noise
conclusions line up with what Josh and I experienced. The Intel version tends to have more noticeable fan noise. The Qualcomm version feels warmer. We've were running on balance mode and we've shown you our performance results on
performance mode. But here's the detail of our Cinebench runs on each mode. What that it gets a big drop in heat and fan noise when stepping down from performance to balanced, but you lose some performance by doing that. The
Qualcomm 1 is still warm even on balanced mode. How is it so warm when it's drawing less power than the Intel variant? For Linux, we've noticed Iuntu works better for Panther Lake laptops. So, we booted it up and a lot of our
tests passed, except the microphone and speakers. It didn't detect the and the speaker wouldn't produce sound even though the controls appeared to work. As far as Linux on Snapdragon, it's not really compatible right now,
Subsystem for Linux working. As far as booting into the actual OS, we were unsuccessful. As far as upgradability, only the full-sized M.2 two SSD and the battery are replaceable. The RAM and Wi-Fi card are soldered. So, let's wrap.
laptop. For someone just doing light use, we feel the Qualcomm X2 Plus variant makes the most sense. It gives you this great laptop at a lower price since you don't need the extra performance of the X Elite chips. If you
performance tasks, we prefer the Intel X9 version for its excellent integrated GPU and less heat you feel. Be aware, HP laptops tend to go on massive sales, and the time I filmed this video, both Intel ones are on sale over at Best Buy. Their
current market. I've linked that one and our favorite configs down below. You can bestlaptop.deals, to track sales in one place. When it comes to alternatives, Lenovo has their high-end Yoga Slim 7i Ultra. It has a better keyboard. It's
lighter and more portable. And it feeds its Intel chip more power, which is relevant if you're getting one of the higherend CPUs. The Yoga Slim 7X is better keyboard and feels cooler to the touch than the Qualcomm Omnibook. But it
doesn't feel as well built, and its mechanical trackpad is worse. If you are considering a Qualcomm laptop, you should also be considering a MacBook. For light use, the MacBook Air is excellent, and until its price goes up,
it remains the best value on the market. At the price of most of these Omnibooks, you can get the MacBook Pro 14. If you get the M5 Pro variant, it's a lot more powerful for things like programming and creator tasks, but it is bulkier,
heavier, and Josh and I think it's not as pretty as the Blue Omnibook. If you definitely better options around this price. We expect the Yoga Pro 7i to be around the price of the highest end models when on sale. The Pro 7i is a
pretty compact 15-in laptop with a dedicated GPU. It's not fed full graphs, it performs substantially better than these laptops. Well, that's all time, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day, and I will catch you
rest of your day, and I will catch you later.