HP OmniBook 5 14 review: The OLED display is almost adequate

You know what I love more than OLED displays? Cheap OLED screens. This is exactly what attracted me to HP OmniBook 5 14-inch computer. It’s a $700 Windows laptop with a Snapdragon This means it should have great battery life and a beautiful display. I consider these things important in any laptop, so the color piques my interest.

You’re probably familiar with the phrase “good, cheap, fast – pick two”. I wasn’t fond of the top end Omnibook I checked last year. It was fast, but it had a dim IPS screen, bad speakers, and cost $1,200. But what if we were now talking about a much nicer screen, better battery life, and more $500 less? OmniBook 5 is expected to have 5 drawbacks. But for the right price, a lot can be forgiven.

HP’s OmniBook 5 laptops come in 14-inch and 16-inch sizes, in either traditional clamshells or 2-in-1s, and with chipset options from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. I tested the cheapest device: a 14-inch display with a low-base Snapdragon $699.99 .

This is a good deal for a high-quality laptop with an OLED display. They are often on sale, sometimes for as cheap as $480, which is an amazingly low price. Laptops with OLED displays typically cost over $1,000, and there are plenty of models well above that price with cheaper IPS panels. The OmniBook’s 1,920 x 1,200 panel isn’t HD, but at 14 inches it’s large enough to still look sharp, and it has the deep black levels and color contrast you only get with OLED. The downsides to this impressive display are that it’s only 60Hz, lacks HDR, and has a maximum brightness of just 300 nits. Working outside on a sunny day or sitting next to a large, bright window is difficult, but it is doable.

This display is paired with two other key components that are very good: a good keyboard and long battery life. The keyboard is pleasant to type on, even for long periods. I don’t mind the deeper key travel, but it’s still more tactile than a MacBook. The keys also have very large legends that can help people with vision challenges, although they are betrayed a bit by the lack of backlighting.

The other draw of the OmniBook 5 is how long the 59 WHr battery lasts. This is the kind of laptop you can take to the office without a charger all day and not have to worry. Under typical mixed usage, with lots of active Chrome tabs, lots of multi-app messaging, and little music or video streaming, it lasts all day, into the evening, and maybe even into my next lunch break. The only time I chewed up the battery at an alarming rate was while trying to use a combination of Copilot AI and Copilot Vision features – which Useless anywaySo don’t bother.

The OmniBook 5’s octa-core Snapdragon chip is power efficient, but not particularly fast. It’s the only laptop I’ve used this year with a current-gen processor that sometimes felt sluggish when quickly switching between multiple open applications (across just two virtual desktops). It didn’t stop or crash, or anything serious, but I felt it. Oddly enough, the same processor did not crash when I used it at Microsoft Surface Laptop 13 inch. I also tested two different Chromebooks with Arm-based MediaTek chips About this price (one Also with OLED), and they both felt faster. Not to mention the much faster M4 MacBook Air, which is now priced at $750. Most of the time, the OmniBook is adequate for light tasks, but it’s not hard to overdo it. This threshold will be easier to exceed as it ages, just like any computer.

I hope this is the only thing wrong with the OmniBook 5. The mechanical trackpad is generally good, but when you place your finger down—before actually clicking—you hear an audible tick and feel a tactile vibration. This annoying feature is similar to a pre-click or a false double-click on a single click. It doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but it gets on my nerves 100% when it does.

The most audible problem is the speakers, which sound like a stereo drowned in mud. They are similar to (or perhaps the same as) the dual downward-facing woofers in the HP OmniBook I checked last year. Just like that iteration, they line up just below your wrists and use whatever surface is underneath the laptop to beam sound back at you. This is especially ineffective when that surface is your soft, sound-absorbing lap. It’s usable for calls and acceptable for podcasts, but it hurts any tunes you listen to while working (as I often do).

The OmniBook 5 also shares some of the design of the OmniBook I’d rather stare at the OLED screen of the OmniBook 5 than the tepid IPS panel of the OmniBook X, a laptop that cost about $1,200 at the time. For $700, you can buy the OmniBook 5, a great pair of headphones to circumvent lackluster speakers, and still have money left over.

Cheap laptops mean having at least some shortcomings. There are ways to get around most OmniBook 5 devices, such as using external audio and a mouse, or reminding yourself that you’ve got a deal. For the money you spend, you get some gifts in the form of a beautiful display and tremendous battery life, and that goes a long way. If you rate these features as highly as I do, the OmniBook 5 will be at least as likable. At $500 or less, which recently went on sale, I’d get it, but only for light computing needs. At its regular price, I’ll get a faster Microsoft Surface or M4 MacBook Air laptop for as cheap as I can find it — both of which are often discounted as low as $750. Or, if you can get away with running ChromeOS, Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 It also offers a great OLED screen and great battery life, with better performance and speakers that don’t distort the music.

Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto/The Verge