HP OmniBook 7 Aero review: Powerful computing and value, in a compact package

Hindustan Times

4 days ago

There is a certain charm about slim, lightweight and compact laptops. We've lost some of that troika, particularly with larger screen sizes becoming par for course with recent launches, taking away that compactness. One look at the HP OmniBook 7 Aero, and it is an easy reminder of the HP Dragonfly laptops from a few years ago. It is good to have the 13.3-inch display as an option, at a time when 14-inch and large display real estate is becoming the norm. More isn't always better, when you're lugging a computing device in your backpack, particularly during travel.
HP has done well to realign this OmniBook series, making it consumer focused and fully in line with the 'next-gen AI PC' or 'Copilot+ PC' capabilities. That's thanks to the AMD Ryzen AI neural processing unit capable of 50 TOPS, or trillion operations per second. In a form factor that weighs less than 1kg (less than the 1.24kg of the MacBook Air, widely regarded as the thin and light benchmark), the baseline specs include the latest generation AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 chip with 16GB memory, a 512GB solid-state drive, AMD Radeon 860M graphics and HP's complete layering of AI functionality over and above everything Microsoft has embedded into Windows as part of the Copilot proposition.
That specifically may or may not hold value for you, but you would do well to consider this machine for the future-proofed specs. We draw that inference from the performance of the HP OmniBook 7 Aero, which absolutely doesn't seem to be holding back despite having a significantly lower price tag (its ₹87,499 onwards) than most laptops bucketed as 'next-gen AI PC' or 'Copilot+ PC'. This has more than enough performance headroom for usage scenarios that you'd deploy this for at work and at home. We did test this with some typical work laptop multitasking scenarios, and the HP OmniBook 7 Aero holds the speediness of response, without any stutter. In itself, that's the OmniBook 7 Aero's biggest strength.
The only noticeable change at this time would be the perceptible heating on the underside of the laptop — the don't keep it on your lap levels of heat, and ideal to have a cooling pad on the desk. Just as an added layer of care, we would recommend heading to the MyHP app preloaded on the laptop, and enable Smart Sense — that's again an AI layered performance management feature that will switch the machine between different modes, depending on usage. Then there is of course the HP AI Companion, which does have some smart tricks up its sleeve — we have covered this in detail in our review of the HP EliteBook X G1a. HP has kept feature parity across its AI PCs, and this is underlined by OpenAI's GPT models, though HP doesn't specify which ones are in play.
With so much power being delivered when needed, it is creditable that the HP OmniBook 7 Aero, fully charged as we began a workday, still ends up with about 40% charge remaining at the end of the day. That would translate to close to 13 hours of battery life on a single charge, with some care regarding screen brightness and apps running in the background. For a compact laptop, this may not be the highest numbers ever (the MacBook Air, and indeed some of Qualcomm's new chips deliver much more), but still good enough to conveniently leave the power adapter behind. And you will certainly want to do that, because unlike Apple and even Asus, HP has still clung to a bulky brick that can only be classified as antiquated.
It is important to touch on the ports that are available on the OmniBook 7 Aero. There are two USB-A ports of which one is rated at 10 Gbps while the other is 5 Gbps, two USB-C ports topping out at 10 Gbps, an HDMI 2.1 and an audio-out jack. That, pegged against the MacBook Air which doesn't have any USB-A port or an HDMI, is in a good place. A question that must be asked at this point is — despite all the AI to improve the video call experience, shouldn't HP have thought of moving beyond a 5-megapixel webcam? A better hardware baseline would allow the Poly Camera Pro functionality to really shine through.
The one thing I am still getting used to with the OmniBook 7 Aero is its weight distribution, which for an ultra-lightweight machine, is quite unique. The centre of gravity seems to be in the middle, and not around the edges as you'd pick this up — most laptops tend to be top heavy, owing to battery placement. Think of this as a computing equivalent of a mid-engined sports car. And even beyond that, there is pristine delivery of performance through different usage scenarios, and battery life that's certainly long enough and consistent enough, to allow you to leave that bulky adapter at home or in the drawer beneath your office desk. Despite ticking off all the boxes on a decidedly premium checklist, perhaps the most exciting thing about the HP OmniBook 7 Aero is its price. And that'll define value.