Unveiled at Computex, HP's new OmniBook 5 could be the next battery life champ
HP's OmniBook 5 14- and 16-inch models were announced earlier this year at HP Amplify as budget-friendly AI PCs, with Intel and AMD chipsets powering the OmniBook 5 lineup. But that wasn't all: HP is adding more chipsets to the OmniBook 5 family.
During the Computex technology conference on Monday in Taipei, HP unveiled the OmniBook 5's Snapdragon X and Snapdragon X Plus 8-core versions. Latop Mag was able to go hands-on with an early production version of the 14-inch Snapdragon X Plus 8-core clamshell model.
This incredibly lightweight, portable, and affordable laptop boasts a quality display, a sleek design, and can get up to 34 hours of video playback battery life. While we're definitely interested to see how long the OmniBook lasts on our battery test once we have a true production model ready for testing, based on our early look at the OmniBook 5, it is definitely a contender as one of the best AI PCs.
But don't just take my word for it. Let's break down what we know about the OmniBook 5 14 (Snapdragon X Plus) so far.
Price:
$$799 starting
CPU:
Up to Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus 8-core (XIP-42-100)
GPU:
Qualcomm Adreno Graphics
Memory:
Up to 32GB
Storage:
Up to 1TB
Display:
14-inch, 1920 x 1200, OLED
Battery:
59 Whr (watt-hour)
Size:
12.29 x 8.56 x 0.5 inches
Weight:
Starting at 2.84 pounds
HP's OmniBook 5 has a chassis similar to that of the other OmniBook models, like the OmniBook X, and a minimalist, rounded aesthetic and streamlined keyboard deck.
This time, however, the shiny embossed HP logo on the top panel has a retro feel. The chrome inlay surrounds the 'HP' lettering, letting the aluminum chassis fill in the letters themselves. This adds dimension to the OmniBook 5 and helps set it apart from the other OmniBooks.
The OmniBook 5's bezels are near edge-to-edge on the sides, with a thicker bezel at the top to house the webcam.
HP's OmniBook 5 14 doesn't quite hit the same degree of light and thin design as the Asus Zenbook A14, but it is still incredibly portable. The OmniBook 5 14 measures 12.29 x 8.56 x 0.5 inches, and weighs just 2.84 pounds. This is well in line with other 14-inch AI laptops like:
HP OmniBook X: 12.32 x 8.8 x 0.56~0.57 inches, 2.91 pounds
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x: 12.8 x 8.8 x 0.51 inches, 2.8 pounds
Acer Swift 14 AI: 12.7 x 9.0 x 0.66~0.72 inches, 3.2 pounds
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The HP OmniBook 5 14 is a laptop designed for portability, so it has a smaller set of ports designed to connect you to your essentials, without adding extra thickness to the laptop. The OmniBook 5's port offerings include:
2x USB Type-C (10Gbps, DisplayPort 1.4, Power Delivery)
1x USB Type-A (10Gbps)
1x Audio
While this should work for the average commuter or student, if you need SD card slots or an HDMI connection to hook your laptop up to a monitor in your office, you may want to snag one of the best laptop docking stations or USB-C hubs to get the most out of the OmniBook 5.
With a Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chipset, the OmniBook 5 boasts all-day battery life.
HP reports that the OmniBook 5 has up to 34 hours of battery life for video playback. Now, video playback is not something most people will do for over a day, but that is an impressively long amount of battery life.
Since our OmniBook 5 14 is an early production model, I wasn't able to run it through our usual Laptop Mag battery life testing process, but I did use the OmniBook 5 for a full day of work and still had about 50% battery life after a day of web surfing, email and spreadsheet management, and light photo editing.
You're pretty much guaranteed to have enough battery to get you through even a day of grueling overtime.
The OmniBook 5 14 has a 14-inch, 1920 x 1200, glossy OLED display, so you know it will have some decent vibrancy and contrast.
I queued up the trailer for Disney+'s IronHeart. Though the trailer is a bit on the dark side, I could still catch all the details of the deserted pizza shop and elevator trap Riri Williams enters as part of a hero 'interview.'
OLED displays tend to boast near-infinite contrast ratios, making it easier to catch details that would otherwise be too dark to spot on an LCD panel. And the OmniBook 5's OLED is no exception.
The OmniBook's max brightness was enough to cut through the glare from the Laptop Mag office's pendant lighting, but it is only rated to 300 nits. While that should be enough for video streaming at home, you might run into some glare if you use the OmniBook in direct sunlight.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series is known for high performance and great battery life, but those high-performance numbers are often based on the high-end Snapdragon X Elite processors, while the OmniBook 5 opts for the mid-range, Snapdragon X Plus 8-core. While this chip is incredibly power efficient, its performance isn't going to be blowing Intel or AMD out of the water any time soon. In fact, the most recent chips from Intel and AMD will both outperform the Snapdragon X Plus 8-core chipset, though they don't have the same level of battery life.
HP's marketing materials for the OmniBook 5 heavily leverage Qualcomm's 'no performance drop when unplugged' statistic, but based on my own testing, that's not quite true. The Snapdragon X series processors do take a bit of a dip on battery power, particularly with very CPU-heavy multicore workloads, while single-core performance stays about the same.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series also does still have some app support issues where programs you might love and rely on have to run through emulation on the Arm-based Snapdragon X CPU. While not always bad, some applications running emulated on Snapdragon are sluggish to respond. Other apps, particularly games, just don't run at all on Snapdragon X PCs.
In fact, the core hamstring of the Snapdragon X processor line so far has been gaming. At the same time, we did see some impressive gaming performance on the Snapdragon X Elite before its launch, which was based on a custom, in-house laptop design that was never sold. All commercial laptops with the Snapdragon X series and integrated Adreno graphics tile have performed poorly in gaming compared to the latest Intel and AMD chips.
Since it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processor, the OmniBook 5 meets the Copilot+ 40 TOPS NPU requirement, giving you access to the enhanced Copilot+ exclusive features like Live Captions, CoCreate, and Recall.
HP has also included some additional AI features on the OmniBook like HP AI Companion and AI-powered temporal noise reduction.
Snapdragon X series laptops have incredible battery life. A Snapdragon X Plus laptop is currently our reigning champion for laptop with the best battery life.
If you just need to use some web-based applications, handle your emails, and stream video, the OmniBook 5 will be a fantastic choice. It's got enough power to handle all of those tasks for a full day and more. And it won't be so expensive it breaks your budget.
While Chromebooks used to be our best choice for budget, web-surfing machines with good battery life, the Snapdragon X series is far more efficient than any Chromebook we've seen in a while.
But if you want to do some casual gaming or use applications that aren't native on Snapdragon X series processors, it's difficult to recommend a Snapdragon laptop over an x86 Intel or AMD system.
HP isn't marketing the OmniBook 5 for power users, but if you were tempted by that $699 price tag, it may be worth reconsidering your options if you know you're going to be doing any gaming or using any AutoDesk software.
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