The OmniBook Ultra’s Listed Specs Are Impressive

As with many thin-and-light notebooks, a lot of the user experience for the OmniBook Ultra depends on the display. That display is a 14-inch 3K 120Hz OLED with 2880 x 1800 resolution. It also has touch with Gorilla Glass 3, blue light reduction, and up to 1,100 nits of brightness in HDR with 100% DCI-P3 color. These are absolutely flagship specs for a display, and I am glad that HP didn’t shy away from going for high-quality glass and a touch digitizer. Thanks to the thin bezels, this laptop has a screen-to-body ratio of 91%, which is roughly the same as Dell’s new XPS 14 (which I reviewed here).

The OmniBook Ultra comes in two processor flavors, with either an Intel Core Ultra or a Snapdragon X2 Elite. This is a nice choice that HP gives you, because you can decide which metrics are most important to you and buy the system that best matches them. When considering Intel Core 3 Ultra or Snapdragon X2 Elite, you effectively need to decide whether you care most about battery life (Snapdragon will always win here), CPU performance (also a Snapdragon win), platform compatibility (Intel win), or GPU performance and drivers (Intel also wins here). Intel also gives you a little more granularity on the CPU SKU, with CPUs ranging from the Core Ultra 7 356H up to the Core Ultra X9 388H — which amounts to five different configurations.

A view of the ports on each side of the HP OmniBook Ultra (Credit: HP)

HP also did something that I really appreciated with the OmniBook Ultra: It didn’t put cheap storage in these laptops like we’ve seen other OEMs do to save money. Even the 512GB starter SSD is a Gen5 SSD. For my test device, HP sent one with a 2TB Gen5 drive, which isn’t cheap, but I think that for the sake of system longevity, it should indeed be Gen5. Not to mention, Gen5 is almost 2x the speed of Gen4, and in some rare cases more than that. Many OEMs go with older or lower-spec parts here, but I think it is a short-sighted decision to skimp on storage performance considering how it impacts OS and application responsiveness, especially as the drive ages over time.

This laptop also came configured with 64GB of RAM, which is something the previous Core Ultra family couldn’t handle and something we’re not seeing from Qualcomm in any of its latest laptops. Qualcomm’s X2 Elite platform can technically go up to 96GB, but none of the OEMs have shipped models with more than 48GB. To be fair, most users will be fine with 32GB in most scenarios, but if you’re doing AI-heavy or content-creation-heavy workloads, you are going to need every bit of RAM you can get. So it’s nice to see that HP made it possible to build such a configuration.

Pricing between the Snapdragon X2 and Intel Core 3 Ultra models of the OmniBook Ultra is all over the place, but it does seem that the Snapdragon X2 offers a bit more value, with the cheapest configuration including an X2 Plus with 16GB of RAM at $1,299. I also commend HP for not falling into the trap of using only 8GB of RAM for a high-end machine like this just to hit a certain price point. The highest-priced configuration is the one that I am testing, which uses the Core Ultra X9 388H and sells for around the same price as Dell’s XPS 14 with the same specs at almost $4,000. That said, when I first drafted this article, the OmniBook Ultra was selling for $2,800, and I expect that Dell’s XPS 14 will likely be discounted heavily as well. It remains unclear what that $2,800 price was about, but I don’t see it anywhere anymore.

Real-World OmniBook Performance Matches the Specs

Another thing to commend the HP design team for: With the OmniBook Ultra, they set out to build the fastest laptop they could — and they did it. In my testing, I found that my Core Ultra X9 388H test device was a solid 10% faster than any Intel Core Ultra 3 Series Panther Lake machine that I have tested to date. All the benchmarks exceeded my expectations, although the machine didn’t beat Qualcomm or Apple systems in any of the areas where Intel already loses. (Intel loses in CPU single-core and multi-core, while winning in graphics performance.)

I think that what HP has built here is a truly high-performance and very sleek laptop that delivers phenomenal performance and battery life. The battery life on balanced mode is comparable to Qualcomm’s, and the standby is also measured in weeks rather than days. Running on battery with balanced mode turned on, it used less than 10% per hour, easily enabling a full day of work without ever needing to be plugged in. That’s really all that most people ever need as far as battery life goes. And in four days of standby mode, this machine used only 11% of the battery, which projects to a month or more of standby power on a single charge.

HP’s Great Business-Oriented Tools Are Missing Here

HP has arguably one of the best suites of pro-grade software tools in the industry across Poly videoconferencing, Wolf Security, and even the HP IQ AI orchestration tool. However, the company hasn’t included any of these, which feels like a significant missed opportunity for HP’s most aggressively designed and configured consumer PC. The one piece of high-end software that has been included is Omen Gaming, but the Omen Gaming Hub implementation on this machine feels like adware, and it popped up on me in annoying ways numerous times during setup and whenever I opened the laptop after a long time idle. I would much rather it pop up when I start to install gaming applications rather than while I’m trying to set up the machine.

True, the OmniBook Ultra does have a great GPU, but I’m not sure that HP needs to lean into gaming so hard on this machine. What I would have liked to see instead is at least some implementation of services like Poly, which literally is etched onto the bottom of the laptop for the sound solution. I was also expecting some kind of Poly-branded webcam software, but that is completely missing from this machine.

I know that Poly and Wolf Security are enterprise offerings typically tied to the EliteBook brand, but I also think that HP has opportunities to win at the high end of the consumer market with improved camera and security capabilities. HP Wolf is already being offered on some high-end OmniBook Ultra systems, so it seems odd that it wasn’t included on this machine for the user’s peace of mind. I was also surprised that this laptop isn’t shipping with HP IQ. Yes, HP announced IQ only for business PCs — mostly the EliteBook line — but again I believe the specs of this system are high enough to warrant some kind of consumer-friendly deployment of IQ that doesn’t require HP WPS to manage it. If HP isn’t already considering it, I think this OmniBook should be the first candidate for a consumer IQ solution. And overall, I think the company is missing a key opportunity to introduce its high-end consumer customers to its best tools.

HP Has a Winner Among High-End Consumer Laptops, But Can Still Improve The Software

I know there’s a balance to be struck between providing strong functionality and overloading the consumer with too much software, but I do think that HP should at least make Poly and Wolf Security optional at setup. That could strike a happy balance that should improve a laptop that is already incredible on paper and matches those expectations in benchmarks.

This is without a doubt the fastest Core Ultra 3 Series laptop I have tested to date, and it has the looks and build quality to match the specs and performance. Usually, a high-performing machine tends to suffer with poor battery life, but HP has performed magic with the OmniBook Ultra, giving it some of the best battery life both in both active use and standby mode. HP has given this PC workstation-like performance with smartphone-like battery life, all while delivering a solid user experience, which could potentially get better with a few software updates for tools that HP already ships on other machines.