This Panther Lake Laptop is a Beast - OmniBook X 16 Review

[00:02] 16. This is the first laptop we've received from HP with Intel's awesome new Panther Lake X chip. That's the one that's power efficient, it's powerful, and it has that awesome integrated GPU. Now, after having used ASUS Swift and

[00:15] Dell's XPS 16, which does have the same chip, I got to be honest with you guys, there's a lot I like better about this HP. The OmniBook X it performs much better than both of those. Compared to the Swift, the OmniBook's chassis it

[00:27] of its keyboard better with those squared off keys. Now, on the keyboard, did have less mistypes than when I was using the XPS 16's keyboard. Now,

[00:39] another area where the HP just really shines is it almost never gets warm to which is such a nice change from a lot of the laptops that I review. But, my glowing recommendation of this laptop is for its launch price.

[00:53] Factoring in regular HP discounts, you see it initially launched at $1,400, and HP laptops they regularly go on sale, which would make this one come in at around $1,000 to $1,200. HP has been the king of value for money

[01:07] while now, and that would carry across here. But, unfortunately, this is one of the first laptops we've seen in 2026 just get a really big price hike. Literally, while we were reviewing this laptop, its

[01:21] price increased by over $400. At close to $1,900, it's just not worth it given its cons, most of which are to do with its display. You see, its resolution is around 1920 by 1200, which is just too low when spread across a

[01:35] large 16-inch panel. Text looks fuzzy and not all that clear. The only reason that I could personally handle it when I was using it was because I tried it with an external monitor. The OmniBook X it is also rather heavy for a laptop

[01:48] without a dedicated GPU. Heavier than a lot of laptops that have one, that cheaper. So, [snorts] realistically, this OmniBook X 16 it kind of works best as a mobile workstation for people on a budget. Meaning, it really needs to be

[02:02] back to that $1,400 price to actually make it viable. Make sure you do check out the price tracker at our website bestlaptop.deals. really going on here. And over there, you can actually set price drop

[02:16] about this laptop. So, if its price does drop, then you can snap one up. With review, and here she is. So, enjoy the show. Thanks, Josh. This new Omnibook

[02:28] X16 is well-built and feels higher quality than the Omnibook X from last year. This is most noticeable when pushing down on the keyboard deck, where doesn't flex as much, either. The hinges are plenty stiff enough to

[02:41] use the touchscreen. The only place it seems to be even a little flimsy is on the top of the lid when it's closed, where there is a bit of give to it. It's where its square keys are really the only thing that makes it look modern. It

[02:54] comes in a boring gray, which just makes it look like every other laptop right now. It's boxy and not that compact. It does come with slightly rounded edges, which at least means it doesn't bite into your wrist. When you compare it to

[03:07] reviewed recently with the same processor, the Omnibook is thicker, larger, and heavier. Over 4 and 1/2 lb, which is heavier than similarly-sized gaming laptops. This thoroughly strips it of any sort of thin

[03:21] and light status, in my opinion. When it's closed, it feels to have a seamless look between the lid and the bottom. This is because of the black plastic lip open it with one hand, which is nice, but it would be kind of crazy if you

[03:34] you do open it, you will see a 2048 by 1280 OLED screen, which definitely sounds better than it looks. It's almost like they're hiding the fact that it's basically a 1920 by 1200, which is very low resolution for a 16-in. This many

[03:49] pixels is not really enough for a large screen like this. Text looks a little soft and fuzzy. I definitely wouldn't recommend this resolution for a software developer or Excel warrior. On it being an OLED, sure, you get inky blacks and

[04:03] more vibrant colors, but it's got the worst screen door effect we've seen on a laptop. Looking at plain white content, you can clearly see dots peeping the touch layer or even the lower resolution, but either way, it doesn't

[04:17] which means you may see distracting reflections in brighter environments. On the positives, it is a fast refresh rate panel up to 120 hertz, and it does get decently bright at over 400 nits.

[04:30] Unfortunately, there is a weird thing we have to point out about its brightness. its battery by setting it to the best power efficiency mode, there is a pixel dimming effect around the edges that looks sort of like a vignette. Neither

[04:44] that was causing this, and we checked the BIOS. We found this annoying enough that we wouldn't use it in this mode. Another thing on brightness is that we did detect some PWM flickering at the lowest brightness settings, 20% or

[04:58] lower, but we felt that was so dim you'd be unlikely to use it anyway. HP has clearly cheaped out on the display, which would be fine if this laptop was $1,000 or less, but as of writing this, it's absolutely not.

[05:12] Normally, HP does offer a variety of displays on their website, so hopefully there is an upgraded panel coming soon. Now, on to the keyboard where they made some weird design decisions. On the positive, the typing experience feels

[05:25] satisfying with a nice click. There is decent travel without being overly loud. HP left a little room between the keys, unlike the XPS, which normally means less mispresses. This somewhat helps here, but they moved the keyboard too

[05:38] far to the left to make room for a full-size number pad. The keys on the main keyboard are actually 1 mm narrower than those on the number pad. Normally, it's the other way around. Every other 16-in laptop with a numpad makes those

[05:52] keys smaller. The thinner keys take time to get used to, and initially we found ourselves making a few typos. The single-stage backlight gets decently bright and doesn't bleed around the keys when it's on, so that's nice. The

[06:04] mechanical one with a nice coating, which makes tracking feel smooth. slightly deeper click in the bottom corners than the rest of the trackpad. It wasn't enough to change where I was clicking, which was good. For ports,

[06:17] side, you've got a USB-A port and headphone mic combo jack. On the right, you've got another USB-A port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a Thunderbolt 4 port, and a 10 gigabit USB-C port, both of which support charging from its small and

[06:30] compact 100-W charger. Overall, it's a good selection of ports, but we would have preferred to have a charging-capable port on either side. The speakers are pretty mid, as Ethan called them. There is not really any

[06:42] bass, the highs sound a bit strained, and they're also a little quiet.

[06:58] sounds on the OmniBook X 16. It does have IR for Windows Hello and a physical privacy shutter. Here's how the webcam looks and sounds in normal lighting in my office. Let's talk performance. If you are using this laptop for light use,

[07:12] it's a dream. It's extremely snappy, there is no fan noise, and it feels very For people who want more performance, you're going to be really happy, too. In common performance tasks, we see it do very well. Not as well in single and

[07:28] multi-core as Apple's newest M5 chip, and both CPUs stay behind Intel's built for much more powerful gaming laptops like the Legion 7i you see here.

[07:41] In Cinebench, the HX chip still lands at the top for multi-core, but OmniBook is result. It's the best performing laptop with this chip that we've had in so far. Props to HP. Part of the reason for this

[07:53] may be that it's able to sustain a higher power draw for longer than some the highest average power draw we've seen for one of these processors, which is why it's performing so well. This should also theoretically mean the CPU

[08:06] is getting hotter, but it isn't. It's max temperature is less than the XPS 16, and its average temperature is just as cool. Yet, the XPS is feeding its CPU around half as much power. The bulkiness of this laptop seems to be paying off by

[08:20] giving it room for a more robust cooling solution. The OmniBook X also only gets staying under 40° C, which is still comfortable use. Even better, most of the heat is concentrated on the num pad on the right. So, if you're right-handed

[08:34] and using a mouse, you would not feel warmth at all on the left side where your hand is. It does get a bit louder in Cinebench than we'd like, but this is the worst-case scenario as Cinebench maxes out the CPU. In almost all of our

[08:47] other tests, its fan noise stayed lower than most of its competitors. You can see this shift when we drop it down to balanced mode, which is the default mode anyway. On that mode, the fan noise drops a ton while losing less than 10%

[09:01] of its performance. Its CPU still stays cool, the keyboard deck doesn't go above 40°, and it still performs great. This laptop's fan noise and heat you feel is almost always good, and the fans really only come on when they absolutely need

[09:14] to. You continue to see this when we switch over to fan noise during Forza, which is a gaming benchmark that pushes both the CPU and GPU at the same time. 48 decibels is very reasonable and below most high-performance laptops. Its

[09:27] here, especially considering what I said earlier about where the heat is concentrated on the right. So, if you do plan to do any gaming on it, it performs very well with solid thermals. It gets higher average FPS and 1% lows than even

[09:41] the ZenBook Duo, which has a supposedly better processor in it, the X9. This is feeding its processor more power. However, there is a bit of a gap here to the LG Gram with its lower wattage dedicated 5050. As far as synthetic

[09:54] benchmarks go, we like to look at Time Spy first to see how well the CPU and GPU perform. This time, the OmniBook is right on the heels of the dedicated 5050 in the LG Gram. Its graphic score is less than 10% behind, and its CPU score

[10:06] is way better. This is saying something considering this 16-core Panther Lake CPU is meant to be a replacement for that older Aero Lake H1 in the Gram. Dedicated GPUs tend to pull wattage away from the CPU, so this Panther Lake CPU

[10:19] is clearly able to do more with less power than the Gram. For another Nomad Light because we can compare to MacBooks. The OmniBook still does well here. It lands above the integrated GPUs in all of its competitors, including

[10:32] ones with this chip. However, it falls further behind laptops with dedicated GPUs in this test. Look, we've done a thorough test of 10 of the most popular laptops with one of these B390 integrated GPUs perform almost as good

[10:48] as a laptop with a lower wattage RTX 5050, which is what you just saw. Given better than others with this chip, and it has a lower resolution screen to drive, we feel it can play most mid-range modern titles on medium to

[11:02] high settings. If you're trying more intensive titles like Monster Hunter World's though, it's going to be rough. If you wanted to do creative tasks like photo editing, it does not perform as well as a MacBook Pro in Photoshop or a

[11:14] gaming laptop, but the OmniBook's performance is plenty for users who are just doing simple projects. When we look at video editing in Premiere Pro, the laptops with dedicated GPUs extend their lead. This makes sense as video editing

[11:26] is more intensive. The OmniBook performs very close to the MacBook Pro with M5 in this test, which is on the lower end. Lastly, we have our battery results. When unplugged, the OmniBook X maintains around 90% of its max performance, which

[11:40] isn't perfect, but still pretty good. As far as how long it lasts on battery, its results seem respectable, around 10 hours on our new tougher battery test, tying with the MacBook Pro 14 with M5 and the XPS 16. Not bad considering the

[11:52] OmniBook X is a high-performance laptop that beats the XPS 16 and rivals the M5 As we showed you earlier, though, there is a dimming vignette that happens on the display in its best battery mode. We feel most people won't want to use the

[12:07] laptop like that, so we tested it on balance mode as well. Then it lasted 9 hours. Anyway, given that this laptop is the only one with a low resolution screen out of the ones we are comparing it to, it would have been nice if it did

[12:19] better. Low resolution displays don't require as much power, but its result is still decent amongst all laptops, even on balance mode. When it comes to Linux, Bluetooth, which may be fixed with a full install and update. So, at this

[12:34] for casual users. It's just too heavy and its screen isn't good enough. As Josh said, it's more a budget mobile workstation. We think it's viable at $1,400 or less and a great deal around a thousand. For casual users, you can buy

[12:49] the new MacBook Air 15 with M5 for the OmniBook sticker price with similar with a sharper display. If you're a life, Lake laptop from last year, like the ThinkPad X1 5 or Slim 7i 15, would

[13:03] also get you there. If you want high performance and you're on a budget, you the new Hawk. We just reviewed it and the Panther Lake version actually has pretty competitive battery life to this laptop. Plus, it performs much better

[13:15] need the battery life Panther Lake brings, there are a ton of good gaming laptops you could buy with better CPU and GPU performance, like the Legion 7i. So, on a sale, maybe it's worth it for your use case, but at its full price,

[13:27] there are a lot of better alternatives for most people. You can find all the and it should tell you whether we consider its current price a good or watching, and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your day.