HP OmniBook X 14 Review: Meet the Latest Copilot Plus PC Battery Life Champ

8.0/ 10
SCORE

HP OmniBook X 14

$1,200 at HP

Pros

• Unprecedented battery life
• Strong CPU and NPU performance from Snapdragon X Elite
• Weighs less than 3 pounds
• High-res webcam

Cons

• Dim display among Copilot Plus PCs
• Wobbly display hinge
• Mechanical touchpad is meh

There's a new battery life leader in the Copilot Plus PC clubhouse. The first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered model we reviewed, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7, ran for nearly 20 hours in testing to outpace the M3 MacBook Air by 1.5 hours. The next Copilot Plus PC we looked at, the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441, lasted more than 23 hours to become one of the longest-running laptops we've ever tested. Its reign as battery life king was a short one, though, because the HP OmniBook X 14 just snatched the crown. This Copilot Plus PC from HP ran for an absurd 25 hours in testing, delivering a round-the-clock runtime. 

In addition to lasting 2 hours longer than Dell's Copilot Plus PC, the OmniBook X 14 is also a few ounces lighter to make it an exceptional travel companion. It's a 14-inch laptop that weighs less than 3 pounds. Not all items, however, end up in the plus column for this Copilot Plus PC. 

It's a plus to get an all-metal chassis with a mainstream laptop that's regularly discounted to less than $1,000, but the laptop's hinge is a bit too weak to prevent display wobble. And the display itself is dim, which limits its otherwise wide-ranging ability to stray from wall outlets for exceedingly long stretches. Despite its record-setting runtime, it can't unseat the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 as our favorite among this new crop of Copilot Plus PCs.

With the OmniBook X 14, HP revives a decades-old product name while introducing processors capable of local AI processing. The OmniBook X line is based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon X CPUs, and there are also OmniBook Ultra models that feature the latest AI chips from Intel and AMD. 

The OmniBook X 14 starts at $1,150 for a configuration with a Snapdragon X Elite CPU, 16GB of RAM, Qualcomm Adreno graphics and a 512GB SSD. Our test system doubles the storage to 1TB and costs $1,200. All models feature a 14-inch IPS touch display with a 2,240x1,400-pixel resolution. Unlike Dell's similar mainstream Copilot Plus PC offering, the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441, the OmniBook X 14 series offers only a Snapdragon X Elite chip and not the lower-end Snapdragon X Plus.

The HP OmniBook X 14 starts at £1,250 in the UK and AU$2,599 in Australia.

HP OmniBook X 14 performance

In lab testing, the OmniBook X 14 proved itself to be an able, well-rounded performer. It posted similar scores to those of the other Copilot Plus PCs we tested, outpacing Intel Core Ultra laptops on Geekbench 6 and the Cinebench 2024 multi-core benchmark. These two tests measure pure CPU performance and take advantage of all available processing cores. 

The AI tools available on a Copilot Plus PC are more curiosities at this point than useful features that I'd use with any frequency, although Microsoft just announced an update to its Copilot virtual assistant and new AI features coming to its core apps, including Outlook, Word, Excel and Teams. I played around with the new Image Creator tool in the Photos and Paint apps for a bit, creating goofy images via text prompts. It was fun to see the different variants appear and tweak the results across the different image styles, but the results tended to be so generic, thanks to the AI guardrails Microsoft has implemented, that I rarely created something worth saving or sharing.

Meanwhile, Windows Recall remains shelved after an outcry of privacy concerns. The controversial AI-powered feature uses the NPU to take snapshots of everything you do on your computer without bogging down the CPU or GPU, allowing you to return to something you were working on or shopping for previously with a natural language query. Microsoft is rolling out the feature to Windows Insiders next month, but the date of its official release is still unknown. 

To handle AI tasks, the OmniBook X 14's Snapdragon Elite X CPU has a hexagon NPU capable of 45 TOPS -- with 40 TOPS being the minimum Microsoft set in defining the Copilot Plus PC platform. On Procyon's AI Computer Vision benchmark, it outperformed recent Intel Core Ultra laptops we've tested, as did the other Copilot Plus PCs we've seen so far.

But like the other Copilot Plus PCs, its graphics performance on 3DMark Time Spy was well off the pace set by the Core Ultra models. The OmniBook X 14 and the other Qualcomm Snapdragon X-based Copilot Plus PCs must run this test through the built-in Prism emulator because a version of this test that can run natively on Arm has yet to be released, and an emulator is never a boon for performance.

The results on 3DMark Time Spy underscore the importance of checking your mission-critical apps before choosing an Arm-based Copilot Plus PC. Using emulation here or there for an app you use only occasionally likely won't be an issue, but you probably want to avoid the performance hit you'd take on an app you need to use day in and day out.

If your compatibility check comes back clean, then there's a huge benefit to a Copilot Plus PC. And that's getting a laptop that offers unparalleled battery life. The OmniBook X 14, as mentioned earlier, lasted for more than 25 hours on our online streaming battery drain test. That's 2 hours longer than the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441, which just set the battery life record earlier this month for any laptop we've tested. It's also nearly 7 hours longer than Apple's latest M3 MacBook Air, and we've lauded MacBooks' runtime and rightly so since Apple introduced its Arm-based M-series chip four years ago.

All aluminum and less than 3 pounds

The HP OmniBook X 14 looks very similar to Dell's Copilot Plus PC, the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441. Both are 14-inch laptops wrapped in an aluminum chassis. Getting an all-metal design in a laptop at this price isn't a given, so it's nice to see HP not try to cut costs by outfitting the OmniBook X 14 with a plastic keyboard deck or bottom panel -- or both. HP even avoids using plastic on the display bezels, something that detracts from the Dell's design. HP's Copilot Plus PC features edge-to-edge glass on its display for a clean, seamless look.

HP offers two color choices for the OmniBook X 14. We received the Meteor Silver option, which is a pewter gray color. The keyboard is a charcoal gray, and while the two colors don't clash, they don't exactly match either. The only pop of color is a muted blue that appears on the power button and a small AI logo that sits between the keyboard and above the Snapdragon X Elite sticker. The other color choice is Ceramic White, which looks like a true white. The Ceramic White option comes complete with a white keyboard, but the function row remains gray and the power button blue.

The OmniBook X 14 is appreciably lighter than the Inspiron 14 Plus 7441. It weighs just under 3 pounds, while the Dell is 3.2 pounds. The slightly smaller 13.8-inch Surface Laptop 7 also weighs just under 3 pounds, and the smaller still 13.6-inch MacBook Air weighs only 2.7 pounds.

HP designed the display hinge to create a larger opening and more airflow along the laptop's back edge. While this design may aid thermals -- the system operated coolly and quietly during my time with it -- I wish the hinge was firmer. The display wobbles more than I'd like when tapping on the touchscreen or when I just bump the laptop. 

I'd also like to be able to trade the OmniBook X 14's mechanical touchpad for a haptic touchpad. There's nothing inherently wrong with the OmniBook's touchpad, but it's not as responsive as a haptic touchpad you get with a MacBook Air or Surface Laptop 7. And it doesn't offer a consistent click response across its entire surface; clicks offer too much travel near the bottom edge and feel too stiff toward the top. 

Dim display, high-res webcam

The OmniBook X 14 is based on a 14-inch, 2.2K (2,240x1,400 pixels) touch display The resolution is high enough that text and images look crisp, but the other two similarly sized Copilot Plus PCs we reviewed -- the Dell Inspiron 14 Plus 7441 and Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 -- offer slightly higher resolutions along with Apple's MacBook Air. 

The OmniBook's display is dimmer than these two other Copilot Plus PCs. It's rated for 300 nits, and I measured a peak brightness of 291 nits with tests conducted with a SpyderX Elite colorimeter. The Inspiron 14 Plus 7441's display (491 nits) and the Surface Laptop 7's display (569 nits) were each significantly brighter.

When watching shows and movies, even in a moderately bright room, I had the brightness set to its max and wished I could have pushed it higher. I also wish the laptop's two downward-firing speakers had more oomph. Their sound can fill a small room at max volume, but the sound is muddied and lacks a bass response.

One area where the OmniBook X 14 has an advantage over the Dell and Microsoft Copilot Plus PCs is with the webcam. The OmniBook X 14 has a 4.7-megapixel camera that can capture 1440p video, which will make you look clearer in video conferences than you would with the 1080p cams of the Dell and Microsoft models. The OmniBook's webcam also has an IR sensor that lets you use facial recognition for easy and secure Windows Hello logins. Without a fingerprint reader, the IR camera is the only biometric feature on the OmniBook.

The OmniBook X 14 offers a minimal amount of ports, but you do get both USB-C and USB-A ports so you won't need to carry around an adapter. They are clearly labeled, but you'll need to make sure you're using the faster USB-C port for data transfers -- one offers 40Gbps speed, and the other is only 10Gbps. The OmniBook also supports the latest wireless standards -- Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4.

The OmniBook X 14 takes the battery life crown and represents another strong foot forward for Copilot Plus PCs. The long-running battery and sub-3-pound weight make it a good pick for an on-the-go laptop, but the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7 is still my favorite Copilot Plus PC for its sleeker design and stellar haptic touchpad.