HP OmniStudio X All-in-One Desktop AI PC First Impressions

The HP OmniStudio X All-in-One Desktop AI PC is a 31.5-inch monster with a 4K display panel and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 graphics. It’s chock-full of the latest PC hardware components and offers a sleek, modern design, and it offers useful single-cable integration with a laptop for those on-the-go.

And yeah. It is a beast. An elegant beast.

The OmniStudio X is instantly impressive, with an imposing physical presence required by its enormous IPS display panel. But there’s no added bulk and the look is sleek and modern. That 4K panel–with a native resolution of 3840 x 2160 and a 16:9 aspect ratio is framed by relatively tiny bezels that provide an impressive 93.8 percent screen-to-body ratio that’s better than that of most of the laptops I’ve reviewed this past year.

Even the packaging is intimidating.

There are only a few parts to assemble–the body and display, of course, plus the base and the adjustable-height stand that connect the two–but I had to enlist my wife’s help to make sure that the body/display snapped firmly onto the stand.

As for the base, it’s weighted, of course, and you secure the stand to it using a twist-tightener. Neither connection requires tools, of course.

With that done, I connected the power cord and its 280-watt power supply to the wall and wondered about two remaining pieces, a USB-C to USB-C cable that seemed superfluous, and a small C-shaped cable organizer ring that was missing in action but would normally attach to the back of the stand. I searched through the box in vain for the cable ring, but never found it. And it wasn’t until later that I figured out what the USB-C cable was for. More on that in a moment.

There are useful connectors all over this thing. On the back of the body/display, HP placed several expansion ports, the power plug connector, and an Ethernet port, all in a horizontal row mid-body. And then the stand offers three vertically aligned USB ports for more temporary connections. There are also two big buttons on the back right of the body/screen (at least from the perspective of someone sitting in front of it) for power and on-screen menu control. And then a pop-up webcam on the top, similar to that on other HP AIOs I’ve reviewed in the past.

Before proceeding, or even thinking about each of those ports, I had to put the supplied batteries in the bundled full-sized Bluetooth keyboard (with numpad) and mouse. Both were straightforward enough, though I was worried about them not pairing during initial Setup. This was misplaced, however, as both were available immediately.

Powering on the OmniStudio X for the first time, I was met with the light of a thousand suns in the form of Microsoft’s stark white Windows 11 Setup routine, which sprung to life with a room-filling brightness that blinded me temporarily. The PC ships with Windows 11 Home, and its a new enough version of Windows 11 that the term “Tailored experiences” appears in the Privacy settings screen. There were no surprises otherwise, and soon enough I was staring at a vast Windows 11 desktop with expected HP utilities (myHP, OMEN Gaming Hub, etc.), McAfee antivirus, and assorted crapware (Adobe offers, etc.) that always accompany HP’s consumer PCs. Again, no surprises.

As always, I started my winget-based app bulk install script and let OneDrive do its initial sync. I checked for updates in Windows Update, and got app updating in the Store. And because this has been a thing for the past month or so, I fired up the Xbox app so I could install Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and compare its graphics quality and performance to that I’ve seen on recent review laptops, none of which features dedicated graphics.

That got me thinking about the specifications. HP offers two versions of the OmniStudio X, with 27- and 31.5-inch displays, and the bigger unit I’m reviewing offers just a single display panel option, which is mostly spectacular, with HDR600 and TUV Eyesafe Low Blue Light support, an antiglare coating, 95 percent DCI-P3 color gamut coverage, and 550 nits of brightness. But it’s only 60 Hz, which is surprising.

There are two microprocessor choices, both of the mobile-oriented “Meteor Lake” variety–the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H found in the review unit or an Intel Core Ultra 5 125H, and you can choose between 16 GB and 32 GB of DDR5-5600 RAM and several PCIe Gen 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD choices that rang from 256 GB to 2 TB. The review unit includes the desired 32 GB of RAM and 1 TB of SSD storage.

For graphics, you get first-gen Intel Arc Graphics–this is a Meteor Lake-based PC, remember–and, optionally, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 dedicated graphics with 6 GB of GDDR6 RAM. The review unit includes the latter, which explains my Call of Duty testing.

And it is quite good: The game autoconfigured for “ultra,” “very high” and “high” graphics quality across all settings at native 4K resolution, and in-game performance was flawless, with frame rates averaging between 45 and 50 FPS in multiplayer. I realize this isn’t a modern gaming PC replacement per se, but in keeping with what I’ve seen in the laptop space, I’m fascinated by how well mainstream PCs can play modern games now, and the OmniStudio seems to deliver. More, um, testing is needed. (My son is helping out with this over Thanksgiving, bless him.)

Helping things, the OmniStudio X features two stereo 4-watt speakers with DTS:X Ultra audio and some Poly Studio tuning. The sound quality, at least in Call of Duty, is impressive.

Connectivity is modern–Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, plus 2.5 GbE via that Ethernet port–and the ports lineup is consistent with how one would use a PC like this. With one curious exception: It doesn’t support Thunderbolt 4/USB 4 at all.

The ports on the back of the body/display include a single USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port (with 20 Gbps data transfer and DisplayPort 1.4 in/out capabilities), two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports (10 Gbps), a full-sized HDMI 2.1-in port with HDCP 2.3, and a full-sized HDMI 1.4-out port, plus that full-sized Ethernet jack, from left to right.

The stand has one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port (10 Gbps) and two full-sized USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports from top to bottom.

For you hybrid workers, the OmniStudio X includes a peekaboo 5 MP privacy camera with HDR that pops up out of the top of the body/display and offers Windows Studio Effects plus more advanced Poly Camera Pro capabilities.

The stand allows you to smoothly adjust the height of the display over a vertical range of about 4 inches, and it seems to stay put nicely where you leave it. As good, you can tilt the angle of the screen to meet your needs, too. I’m curious to test this with podcasts and meetings, but my guess is that I’ll need to sit back a bit: The brightness being emitted by the huge display is quite illuminating.

As for that bundled USB-C cable, the OmniStudio X can also be used as an external display … and more. The HDMI-in port can handle just the display bit, but if you have a laptop with a USB port, you can connect it to the OmniStudio X AIO and take advantage of its display, camera, microphones, keyboard, mouse, and expansion ports, while charging the laptop, all using a single cable. This is very interesting to me, but I’ll report back on that experience in my coming review.

This is a fascinating PC, and while the processor and expansion aren’t completely up-to-date–and are, by design, mobile-focused–its incredible display, versatile use cases, and dedicated graphics turn it into a useful hybrid device that sits somewhere between a docked laptop and a full-on gaming PC or workstation. Pricing is reasonable for what you get as well: As configured in the review unit, the OmniStudio X will set you back about $1700 at HP or Best Buy, but you can get a 16 GB configuration with no dedicated graphics for $1400 as well.

More soon.