HP Omnibook X 14: A Lightweight Powerhouse with Impressive Battery Life and AI Features

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

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 pounds 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. 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 and the rest of the Copilot Plus PCs we've tested. 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. 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. 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.

One of the best lightweight laptops I've tested made me forget about the MacBook Air

That said, the lack of certain apps on Windows on Arm might limit some users like content creators. Of all the new Copilot+ PCs around the $1,000 price point, the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x feels like one of the most premium. Its dark "cosmic blue" colorway and sleek form factor exude a grown-up, capable aura that feels both down to business and ready to have some fun. The solid hardware on board supports that impression, with the Snapdragon X Elite processor leading the charge, and the brilliant 3K OLED display acting as the cherry on top. Lenovo's Yoga laptops have blown up in popularity this year for their versatile form factors that can bend and twist into multiple configurations (as their name suggests) and high degree of hardware customization. My colleague Max Buondonno reviewed the Lenovo Yoga 9i, an outright challenge to the traditional laptop form factor with a dual screen setup, and I took a look at the Yoga 7i, a 2-in-1 convertible laptop at a more accessible price point. Also: I bought the cheapest Surface Pro 11 model: 3 takeaways from a Windows expert The latest addition to the Yoga family, the aptly-named 14-inch, 2.6-pound Slim 7x, departs from its siblings' flexibility by giving up the 2-in-1 form factor but, in exchange, gains impressive battery life, increased performance, and a gorgeous OLED display. Truly, this might be one of the brightest displays I've seen on a laptop in a while, capable of up to 1,000 nits of brightness for peak HDR content. The touchscreen display features a resolution of 2944 x 1840 pixels (or 3K), resulting in a gorgeous media experience. While it doesn't have a full 120Hz refresh rate, the 90Hz it can achieve is enough for that silky-smooth, crisp image. The integrated Qualcomm Adreno GPU puts in the work here, sporting solid performance in graphics benchmarking tests in 3DMark, and usability with video editing in DaVinci Resolve, which ran smoothly during my testing. While it ultimately won't compete with other high-end GPUs on the market right now, it features solid enough performance for the majority of cases that you'll want to put this laptop through. Rounding out the media experience, the Slim 7x provides audio through two upward-firing speakers on either side of the keyboard. Unlike the display, there's not a lot to say here, as the audio is clear but lacks depth, which is typical for laptops. After all, that's what Bluetooth is for. I recommend popping in a pair of Nothing Ear (a) earbuds if you want to listen to music or watch a movie, especially since the Dolby Atmos Access app allows for audio customization. Also: Lenovo's new $749 ThinkBook may be the best-value Windows laptop of 2024. Here's why As mentioned in all of our other reviews of Copilot+ PCs, the new Snapdragon X Elite processors with ARM architecture can't run all programs, including industry staples like Adobe Premiere Pro, nor games, which are still a hit-or-miss endeavor. You can certainly game on the Yoga Slim 7x, but not all titles will work yet, and the ones that do might not be perfectly optimized. That said, games that are not on the cutting-edge of graphics and hardware requirements look as good as they can on a 14-inch laptop. While the display makes media and gaming one of the most obvious first areas to explore on this laptop, it's also well-suited to get down to business. From a productivity standpoint, you've got everything you could want here for a solid work laptop. The X1E-78-100 Processor (3.40 GHz) Snapdragon X Elite processor supports snappy, responsive performance during multitasking, even with demanding applications, while the 16GB of soldered memory and 1TB of storage is enough to future-proof it. Copilot+ PCs can still be considered nascent since the full capabilities of AI-fueled applications (namely Microsoft's Recall) have yet to arrive (which is a story for another day). For now, the ARM-based processors are fast, run cool, and allow for fantastic AI performance via the NPU. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x hits benchmarking numbers that are comparable to other Copilot+ PCs around the same price point, namely the Asus Vivobook S 15. In Cinebench, I got a single-core score of 108, and a multicore score of 1,004. Conversely, in Geekbench, the Yoga Slim 7x scored 2,412 on the single-core test, and 13,677 on the multicore. Also: Lenovo's newest laptops have a clever solution for iPhone file transferring that you have to see for yourself The Slim 7x also has an impressive 70Wh battery, which can easily power through a day of work and then some with more demanding workflows. During my testing of running a 4K livestream on YouTube over Wi-Fi with 50% brightness, I got over 15 hours before it conked out, putting it up near the top of other Copilot+ PCs. In terms of more actionable battery life, in my testing with intermittent use of work-related productivity apps, casual browsing, and light media playback, I got several days of use out of it. If I had to highlight some of the things I didn't love, I would first have to mention the port selection, which won't be everyone's cup of tea. Lenovo seems to have doubled down on its forward-looking design by giving the Slim 7x three USB-C Thunderbolt ports and nothing else -- no HDMI, USB-A, or card slots. It seems a little puzzling to not drop just one of these for at least a USB-A port. Also: The best Windows laptops you can buy: Expert tested and reviewed The laptop's trackpad is also not the most sensitive I've tested. While the keyboard looks and feels premium, the trackpad is a little too large and not super responsive. Also, the matte casing on the laptop attracts fingerprints left and right, which is certainly not something unique to this laptop, but it is nonetheless a bit of a personal pet peeve. Compared to a MacBook, one could argue that the Yoga Slim 7x is at least better than the MacBook Pro M2 Max. It has a slightly shorter battery life than Apple's device, comparable performance, a slimmer form factor, and a more affordable price. You're not going to pay thousands for this machine. The MacBook is better suited for the iOS ecosystem, however Lenovo has been making strides in developing a data transfer feature between its laptop and iPhones. So if you're not sure which one to get, the Yoga Slim 7x might be the better long-term investment. The Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x is a solid addition to the Copilot+ PC line and a laptop I'd recommend to remote workers, freelancers, and creators looking for a portable, 14-inch laptop with a gorgeous display. Its thin and light form factor makes it a solid option for anyone who travels frequently and might not have reliable access to an outlet. If you're looking for a less expensive Copilot+ PC (and are willing to significantly downgrade the display), the HP OmniBook X 14 will run you $949. If you like this laptop's stats but want a bigger screen, check out the Asus Vivobook S 15. Creators might also appreciate the fact that Lenovo is also giving two free months of Adobe Creative Cloud with the purchase of any new Yoga laptop.

I bought the cheapest Surface Pro 11 model: 3 takeaways from a Windows expert

Most mainstream business software written for Intel-based Windows PCs should run just fine, but apps such as VPNs and older hardware devices that require custom drivers might not install or run properly. The Windows PC industry has fallen into a rut over the past decade. Microsoft and its OEM partners routinely ship a crop of new devices each year, mostly based on incremental speed bumps to Intel CPUs. If you buy this year's model, you get slightly better battery life and a modest increase in performance over last year's crop. Yawn. That predictable pattern is why the just-released Copilot+ PCs have so much potential. Yes, they run on Windows 11, but at their core is a new engine, Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series of ARM-based processors. Also: Microsoft is changing how it delivers Windows updates: 4 things you need to know My Surface Pro 11 (I know its official name is "Surface Pro, 11th Edition," but let's keep it simple, OK?) arrived last week. I deliberately ordered the least expensive configuration and had no idea what to expect. Yes, it should get better battery life than an Intel-based alternative, and all the preliminary benchmarks suggested it would deliver impressive performance, but seeing is believing. After one full week, I can say, without qualification: This machine absolutely rocks. My original plan was to use the new Surface Pro as a secondary mobile device, while keeping my Dell Precision workstation on the desktop for my everyday activity. I am now using the new Surface Pro as my daily driver. How did this happen? Let's dive in. This laptop is a radical shift in the Windows ecosystem, but it doesn't feel all that different from its predecessors. In fact, it's almost indistinguishable from the Intel-powered Surface Pro 9 that's sitting on my desk alongside it. The slim bezels around the displays of the two devices are nearly the same dimensions. The new device, at 1.9 pounds, is the same weight as the Surface Pro 9 and is a few ounces heavier than the Surface Pro X, although that's not something you really notice until you have to lug it through an airport as you rush to make a connection. The Type Cover from the older Surface Pro clicked into place on the Surface Pro 11, exactly as expected. And as for the software, well ... It's Windows 11, which looks and acts the same on an ARM-based PC as it does on an Intel-powered device. Also: One of the best laptops for work travel I've tested is not a Lenovo or MacBook The big difference is that this next-gen device is extremely cool and quiet. After a three-hour Zoom call the other day, the chassis was barely warm; on an Intel-based machine, it would have been uncomfortably hot. There's a fan inside the Surface Pro 11, but I have yet to hear it run, even under the most demanding conditions. It's also extremely responsive, with none of the hesitation I occasionally noticed on the Surface Pro X. If you've used an M2-equipped MacBook Air, the feeling will be familiar. Of course, this new device also embodies everything you like and/or dislike about the Surface Pro design. If you're expecting a radical shift that will suddenly make the kickstand comfortable in your lap, I'm sorry to report you will be disappointed. If, however, you're comfortable with that design, you'll find this iteration completely familiar. If the ARM architecture has a killer feature, it's battery life. The Surface Pro X delivered the goods on that score, but it did so at a cost to performance. This generation, on the other hand, ups the battery life impressively and does so without any compromise in speed or responsiveness. It's still a bit too early to make definitive pronouncements about how long this Surface Pro will allow me to work before I begin to look for a place to plug in. The first week with a new device is never typical, as it involves a lot of downloading, installing, configuring, and futzing that presumably won't be a regular thing. Also: 9 settings I changed on my Windows 11 PC to maximize the battery life Still, these actual usage numbers, from a report generated by the Windows Powercfg /batteryreport command, speak for themselves. At an average of more than 10 hours of actual, observed battery life, this Surface Pro is able to run for well over twice as long as my Intel-based Surface Pro 9. That's also at least as long as the M2 MacBook Air in my office. For these Snapdragon X PCs, battery life is an unqualified success, but the compatibility story is more mixed. Microsoft has been developing Windows on Arm for more than a decade, and it's remarkable how well most software just works on an ARM-based PC. If you do most of your work in a web browser and in Microsoft Office, you might never notice a difference. There are still some rough edges, however, and you can expect some compatibility headaches, especially when using older hardware or apps that require low-level system drivers. Also: Buy a Microsoft Office Pro and Windows 11 Pro bundle for $50 - the lowest price we've seen On this PC, every preinstalled Microsoft app is, naturally, compiled to run as native Arm64 code. That includes the Edge browser, the complete collection of Microsoft 365 apps, and every imaginable Windows utility, from PowerShell to Registry Editor to Calculator. Even the semi-official PowerToys collection installs in Arm64 mode. I installed a wide selection of Progressive Web Apps that run in the Arm64 Edge environment, and they all worked just fine. Mainstream x86 apps written for Intel-based machines mostly install without any issues in the Windows on Arm emulation layer, and there was no obvious performance hit for the apps I tried, including my go-to screen capture utility, SnagIt. Many third-party developers have gone to the trouble of recompiling their apps for Arm64, and if you can find them, they're the preferred option. You might have to do some digging. The default download for the VLC Media Player, for example, is a 64-bit x86 version, but nightly builds compiled for Arm64 machines are available. Likewise, the normal download options for 1Password will get you the x86 release, which is problem-free, but there's a preview of the Arm64 version if you know where to look. Also: Is your Windows license legal? Should you even care? I'm not sure what to make of Adobe, which tweeted earlier this year that it's "excited to announce that your favorite Adobe apps are coming to Copilot+ PCs." What does that even mean? Photoshop has been available in an Arm64 version for three years, albeit with significant limitations, but I can't find a native ARM version of Acrobat. Maybe Adobe just means that the x86 versions are certified to run in emulation mode? Who knows. Then there's Google, which finally released an Arm64-native version of Chrome back in April. Hooray! Unfortunately, you will not find any version of the Google Drive for Desktop sync client that works on a Copilot+ PC. If you try to install the x86 version, you get this unfriendly error message: So, if you're a confirmed Google Drive user, and you want your cloud-based storage to integrate with File Explorer, you'll need to stick with Intel-based machines for now. Or, maybe switch to OneDrive. The stickiest compatibility problems arise when you try to install an app that requires custom drivers for low-level access to networking and the file system. Most commercial VPNs, including Proton VPN and ExpressVPN, will refuse to run on Windows on Arm for that reason; try Wireguard or Viscosity instead. If you insist on running a third-party antivirus app (you probably don't need one, anyway), you'll likely be frustrated. Also: The best VPN for Windows: Expert tested and reviewed I had no hardware problems to speak of. My 10-year-old Logitech C930 webcam just worked. So did my trusty Brother laser printer and ScanSnap x1600 scanner. I connected the Surface Pro 11 to a StarTech Thunderbolt 4/USB4 docking station and everything worked exactly as it should have. Your mileage may vary, of course, especially if you have exotic hardware like video capture cards and ancient multifunction printers that require custom driver packs and won't work with the in-box Windows drivers. Thankfully, I have none of those. Every PC in the Copilot+ line includes a powerful neural processing unit designed to accelerate AI-based activities. Because I didn't spring for Microsoft's pricey new Flex Keyboard and stuck with my old Type Cover, I didn't get a dedicated Copilot key. Instead, I had to run the Copilot app, which works exactly like it does on any other Windows 11 PC. If it was chatting faster, I didn't notice. Also: I tried Microsoft's new Surface Laptop Copilot+ PC and it beat my MacBook Air in 3 ways As you probably already know, what was supposed to be the marquee feature of these new PCs, Recall, was pulled at the last minute over security concerns and will be available as a Windows Insider Preview feature later this year. Some of the app-based AI features were more useful. The front-facing camera on the Surface Pro 11 is one of the best I've ever seen in a laptop, and the AI-powered studio effects (which are accessible from the Quick Settings menu on the taskbar) include some useful options like automatic framing and eye tracking. The neural processing unit helps make background blur options look more natural than on a conventional camera. The Paint and Photos apps are also loaded with AI-based features for creating and editing images. The options to remove background distractions and use blur effects to simulate portrait mode were useful; the styling options, which transform a photo into an alternate style (Impressionist, Anime, and so on) feel gimmicky. The real question is whether those features are powerful enough to make you switch from your current image-processing tool to one of Microsoft's built-in options. History says that's a pretty big ask. Even if you avoid the AI features completely, though, there's more than enough power in this budget PC. Plus, as long as your apps and hardware requirements aren't exotic, you'll appreciate its cool, quiet operation. We use a combination of methods to test laptops here at ZDNET. First, we acquire data from benchmarking software to analyze a system's metrics under the hood, and compare those to advertised numbers. Then, we spend an extended amount of time with the laptop (usually a week or two) using it the same way a normal consumer would, in order to analyze its portability, form factor, and how well the battery actually holds up, among others. For an extensive breakdown, check out our comprehensive laptop testing methodology. Ultimately, our goal is to break down the capabilities of each and every laptop we test into digestible terms that real people can find useful.