HP OmniBook X Flip First Impressions

If you’re in the market for a new PC, this is both the best of times and the worst of times, in the latter case thanks to the AI-triggered component price and availability crisis. But HP is doing what it can to shine a more positive light on this business. And one of the many good things it’s doing is giving customers more choice. Not just more choice in models and form factors, but more choice in the underlying processor architectures it offers across those offerings.

Case in point: The OmniBook series of notebooks can be had in traditional clam shell and convertible/2-in-1 form factors. There are 14- and 16-inch display options. And there are even models with the latest Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm processors. So there is this wonderful matrix of possibilities that should meet the needs of just about anyone.

The product I’ll be reviewing over the next month or so is an HP OmniBook X Flip, a 14-inch convertible laptop powered by AMD Ryzen processors. The review unit is a high-end configuration with a Ryzen AI 9 465 processor with integrated Radeon 880M graphics and 512 MB of dedicated RAM, 32 GB of 8533 MT/s DDR5x RAM, and 2 TB of speedy PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2-based SSD storage. This one can be expensive, a higher-end configuration is about $2200 at HP.com as I write this, but there are configurations available for as little as $950 and lots of configurable display and storage options.

If you’ve used any modern HP OmniBook X or Ultra, the OmniBook X Flip will be familiar in a good way. This is a thin and light premium convertible laptop with strong enough internals to play modern AAA game titles ably and meet the needs of creators and other professionals.

The convertible form factor adds versatility, especially if you need or want to use the HP USB-C rechargeable pen that’s bundled with this configuration. But it does add a bit of weight: The laptop weighs 3.09 pounds, just a bit heavy for a 14-inch laptop, but it’s still only 0.57 inches thick when closed.

The OmniBook X Flip is all aluminum and comes in a handsome dark gray-brown color that HP calls deep espresso. The keyboard keys are a slightly different color–a “darker deep espresso”–and that and the backlighting provides some nice contrast. The branding is minimalist and tasteful as per other modern HP premium laptops.

The high-end Ryzen processor should prove impressive based on my previous experiences with this kind of configuration, and 32 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage is, of course, ideal.

You can configure an OmniBook X Flip with a 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED panel, but the review unit came with a more pedestrian Full HD+ (1920 x 1200) display with a 60 Hz refresh rate. This is a solid choice for productivity work and it’s not at all reflective at least.

Expansion is excellent, and there’s a USB-C port on both sides, which is ideal.

On the left, HP provides a 10 Gbps USB Type-A port, a full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, and a 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 4/USB4 port with Power Delivery 3.1, DisplayPort 2.1, and HP Sleep and Charge capabilities, and a combo microphone/headphone jack.

On the left, there’s a second USB Type-A port and Thunderbolt 4/USB Type-C, both identical to the similar ports on the left.

Connectivity looks solid, with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0. And the hybrid work functionality should be likewise good with the laptop’s 5 MP webcam and dual array digital microphones. This is a Copilot+ PC, of course, and it also provides Windows Hello ESS facial recognition and Presence sensing capabilities.

The audio-video situation should be good, too, thanks to its bottom-firing stereo speakers and DTS:X Ultra sound with HP Audio Boost.

HP provides its new 65-watt USB GaN power adapter with the OmniBook X Flip, and I love this. It’s roughly half the size of previous generation power adapters, and the adapter itself isn’t hard-wired to the cable and features foldable prongs. Very nice.

More soon. This looks like an excellent laptop, even if it’s just used in the traditional clamshell mode most of the time.