HP OmniBook Ultra First Impressions

HP announced the new OmniBook Ultra this past July, and since then, we’ve learned it’s an AMD Ryzen AI 300-based Copilot+ PC. This is immediately interesting: PCs based on the AMD Zen 5-series and Intel “Lunar Lake” Core Ultra Series 2 chips will ship with Windows 11 version 24H2 and will be updated with Copilot+ PC features in November. And I’m particularly excited to experience a next-generation AMD chipset in action.

And … it’s here now. Given the timing, I’ll be taking the OmniBook Ultra (and the radical Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid) to Mexico City in early October and will publish my review then. For now, here’s a quick rundown, but you can learn more about this PC, which sits at the top of HP’s new range of premium consumer laptops, on the company’s website.

As noted, the OmniBook Ultra is powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 series processors, which feature the fastest NPU in the market, currently, rated at 55 TOPS. The review unit ships with a few upgrades though: It has a 12-core AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 processor with Radeon 890M graphics, 32 GB of LPDDR5x-7500 RAM, and 2 TB of M.2-based PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD storage.

The display is a 14-inch 2.2K (2240 x 1400) multitouch IPS panel with Gorilla Glass NBT, low blue light, and 100 percent sRGB color gamut coverage that emits 400 nits of brightness. It’s only 60 HZ, but it includes AMD FreeSync capabilities for video games.

There’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity, Windows Hello ESS facial and fingerprint recognition, and DTS-X audio with HP Audio Boost firing through quad speakers.

Connectivity is mostly modern and on the light side. There are two Thunderbolt 4/USB4 Type-C ports on the right (one on the back right corner), both with USB Power Delivery, DisplayPort 2.1, HP Sleep and Charge, and 40 Gbps data transfer capabilities. And then a single drop-jaw USB 3.2 Type-A port on the left with HP Sleep and Charge, plus a headphone/microphone combo jack.

For communications, there’s a 9 MP webcam that should be a significant upgrade over the 5 MP units HP sometimes uses, not to mention the Full HD cams that are still common throughout the market, and it’s backed by Poly Camera Pro capabilities. And then more standard-sounding dual-array microphones, though they do support Microsoft Voice Focus.

There’s only one color, Meteor silver. It’s a bit chunky at 3.46 pounds, but I suspect the powerful processor and graphics play a role there, and if the game playing capabilities are as good as I hope, that’s an OK trade-off.

HP promises up to 16.5 to 22 hours of battery life, depending on where you look. That indicates something in the 8 to 10 hour range for real-world use, which would be fantastic.

It ships with Windows 11 version 24H2, though as with the Snapdragon X-based Copilot+ PCs, there’s a lengthy additional OOBE update installer to deal with. Once you get it, there’s a new AI Companion app that, among other things, will further HP’s use of automatic system configuration. And this is the first HP consumer laptop to ship with the firm’s Wolf Security suite, a staple of its commercial products.

It looks like pricing starts at about $1400, though the base model–with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and a 1 TB SSD–is on sale now for about $1050.

I’m eager to get started with this one. More soon.