HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 Review: Premium 2-in-1 Prioritizes Design and Display

8.2/ 10
SCORE

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14

Pros

• Stunning design and first-rate build quality
• 3K, 120Hz OLED display is awesome
• Great keyboard and huge, haptic touchpad

Cons

• Performance doesn’t quite live up to the price
• Speaker placement isn’t ideal
• Limited port selection

With the Omnibook Ultra Flip 14, HP introduces a new laptop brand, but not a new laptop design. The all-metal, matte-black chassis is nearly identical to last year’s Spectre x360 14, as is the 14-inch, 3K OLED display. Both the overall design and display are stellar, so I understand HP not being in a rush to update either. Still, it’s an odd way to roll out an entirely new laptop line unless HP’s priority is removing any confusion about the OmniBook Ultra Flip series taking the place of Spectre x360 models at the top of its laptop hierarchy.

And like the Spectre x360 14, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is a premium two-in-one based on Intel Core Ultra processors, just one generation ahead. It offers a selection of Core Ultra Series 2 Lunar Lake chips; our test system features the Core Ultra 7 258V. While the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 offers a premium look and build quality to go along with its premium display at its premium price, its performance fails to live up to its premium billing. It took a step back in some instances from the previous Spectre x360 14 but did show an increase in battery life. 

The problem for the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is its battery time pales compared with laptops based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processors. So even in an area where it made gains over its predecessor, the current field runs laps around it. HP’s own OmniBook X 14, for example, offers twice the battery life. If you’re willing to accept merely average laptop performance and battery life, however, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 delivers an attractive two-in-one package if you’re willing to pay for it.

The name is the biggest difference between the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 and the previous Spectre x360 14. Aside from a few cosmetic differences, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 offers a simple spec bump, moving from Intel’s first-generation Core Ultra Meteor Lake processors to second-gen Lunar Lake chips. The series starts at $1,450 for Intel Core Ultra 5 226V, 16GB RAM, Intel Arc 140V graphics and a 512GB SSD. At that price, I’d like to see a Core Ultra 7 chip offered, but I’m thrilled with the baseline display, a 14-inch OLED panel with a 3K (2,880×1,800-pixel) resolution, variable refresh rate up to a smooth 120Hz and touch support.

Our test system features a Core Ultra 7 258V and 32GB RAM, a pairing that adds $250 to the price, and 2TB of storage that adds $200 for a total price of $1,900 at HP.

You can also find one OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 model at Best Buy for $1,700. It’s the same as our test system but with a 1TB SSD.

The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 starts at £1,399 in the UK and AU$2,599 in Australia. 

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 performance 

Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 chips are designed to deliver a balance of performance and efficiency, placing greater priority on the latter than previous-gen Core Ultra chips. The Core Ultra 7 258V runs between 8 and 37 watts, and the Core Ultra 155H chip operates between 20 and 155 watts. The chips also differ in other ways, including Intel eliminating hyperthreading to maximize power efficiency.

As we’ve seen with previous Lunar Lake laptops, multicore performance is somewhat lacking. The reason for this is simple: the lack of hyperthreading. The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14’s Core Ultra 7 258V CPU has eight physical cores (four performance and four low-power efficient cores) for a total of eight processing threads. By comparison, the previous-gen Core Ultra 7 155H has 16 cores (four performance, eight efficient and two low-power efficient cores) and, with hyperthreading, a total of 22 threads. 

The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 finished at the end of the Copilot Plus PC pack on our multicore tests of Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024, next to two other Lunar Lake models, the Acer Swift 14 AI and Asus Zenbook S 14. But as we’ve seen, its single-core performance was strong on these tests, along with those of these other two Lunar Lake models. 

Its graphics performance was also strong among this group of laptops with integrated GPUs. The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 was among the trio of Intel-based Copilot Plus PCs with the highest scores on our 3DMark Steel Nomad test, finishing ahead of those with integrated graphics from Qualcomm and AMD processors.

From the CPU to the GPU, we now arrive at the NPU, or neural processing unit, which is designed to handle AI tasks. The Core Ultra 7 258V’s NPU is capable of 48 trillion operations per second (TOPS), which sits above Microsoft’s 40 TOPS minimum for its Copilot Plus PC program. On Procyon’s AI Computer Vision benchmark that measures integer math proficiency for AI workloads, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 was grouped with the other Intel- and Qualcomm-based Copilot Plus PCs. We’ve yet to run the test on an AMD-based Copilot Plus PC, but I did just test the HP Pavilion Plus 14, which features a first-gen Core Ultra chip. The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14’s score was nearly triple that of the Pavilion Plus 14, showing the big leap in AI performance Intel’s Core Ultra chips have made from Meteor Lake to Lunar Lake.

The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 lasted for roughly 12.5 hours on our YouTube streaming battery drain test, an admirable battery life for a laptop with a high-res OLED display but hours upon hours fewer than other Copilot Plus PCs offer. The HP OmniBook X 14, the current battery life belt holder, ran for twice as long.

New name, familiar design

Like the Spectre x360 14 before it, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 is about as close to a MacBook’s elegant design and strong build quality as you can get with a Windows laptop — it’s a toss-up between it and the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7. The aluminum enclosure is extremely rigid, and the matte finish has a soft, slightly textured finish that feels luxurious. HP offers two color options for the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14: Eclipse Gray and Atmospheric Blue. We received the former, which looks similar to charcoal color on the Surface Laptop 7 and a MacBook Air in Midnight or a MacBook Pro in Space Black.

There are three differences in the exterior design of the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 and the Spectre x360 14, aside from the wordmark being changed from Spectre to OmniBook Ultra below the keyboard. First, the speaker grilles that flanked the keyboard are no longer. Secondly, the right Ctrl key is now a Copilot key that calls up Microsoft’s AI assistant. Third, the power button in the top-right corner is light blue, which helps hide the always-on LED stripe of light that can be annoyingly bright and distracting when sitting in a dark room. 

It seems like HP may have dialed back its brightness a bit from what felt like a blinding light at moments on the Spectre x360 14, but it might just be that there’s less contrast between the light and the light blue color of the power button. Instead of changing the color of the power button to help mask the LED light, why not just do away with the LED entirely? It serves no purpose that I can imagine.

While the power button is a modest improvement, the positioning of the speakers is a move in the wrong direction. You still get quad speakers on the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14, but now they all fire downward. Without two of the speakers firing upward, the audio output sounds a bit more muddied since it’s all directed into your desk, table or lap. Still, the quad array produces a fuller sound superior to that of a typical set of laptop stereo speakers.

Like the Spectre x360 14 and other premium models, such as Microsoft’s Surface Laptop 7 and Apple’s MacBook Air and Pro, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 features a large haptic touchpad. It’s a feature I look for on any high-end laptop because its consistent and customizable click response is far superior to a mechanical touchpad. At its default click sensitivity setting of 50%, clicks felt a bit too lively, so I dialed it back to 25%. At that level, the click response was closer to what I’m used to on my MacBook Pro. 

The keyboard, too, feels like a MacBook Pro’s. The keys offer shallow travel but springy feedback that I liked. They also have a wonderfully stable feel. Even off-center strikes on a key push it straight down, which increased my typing speed. It definitely made me immediately comfortable typing on the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14.

The display and display hinges remain excellent. You may overlook the display hinge on a typical laptop, but it plays an important role in a two-in-one where the display is rotating between laptop and tablet modes. A weak hinge can ruin the experience, but here it’s perfect. It’s firm enough to keep the display rooted at any angle while rotating smoothly without too much resistance. And magnets with just the right amount of strength keep the display affixed to the bottom panel when rotated all the way around into tablet mode.

The 14-inch HDR OLED display is crisp and fast, offering a 2,880×1,800-pixel resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. Text and images looked razor sharp, and videos and games showed smooth movement. The colors looked vibrant, and the contrast was fantastic with deep black levels and bright whites. Color accuracy is great, too. In testing with a Spyder X Elite colorimeter, the display covered 100% of the sRGB and P3 spaces and 95% of AdobeRGB. I also measured a peak brightness of 377 nits in SDR mode and 424 nits in HDR mode.

The display also supports pen input, and the included pen isn’t a skinny stylus but fat enough that writing and sketching with it feel natural. It has a hidden USB-C port for charging and can be attached magnetically to the right side of the keyboard deck or lid.

The 9-megapixel webcam produces crisp images and video but with oversaturated color. The Windows Studio Effects can’t improve the color but gives you AI-assisted effects like automatic framing and blurred background effects. Despite offering one of Intel’s latest AI processors, the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 doesn’t offer the full suite of Windows Studio Effects. The Portrait light and Creative filters effects were grayed out and unavailable.

The webcam also has an IR sensor, so you can use facial recognition for easy, secure log-ins. The power button doubles as a fingerprint reader for a second biometric option. The camera also has a physical shutter, so you can protect your privacy when you aren’t on a video call.

The port selection is limited but includes a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports on the right side of the laptop, one of which is located on the back corner that’s sliced on the diagonal. On the other back corner is a 10Gbps USB-C port next to a headphone jack. You can charge the laptop using any of the three USB-C ports.

Is the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 worth buying?

The elegant design and sturdy build help cover up the fact that the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14’s performance and battery life don’t quite match its elevated price. It serves up two features I like to see in any premium laptop or two-in-one: a high-res OLED display and a large, haptic touchpad. If you care more about the overall design and display and don’t need bleeding-edge performance, then you’ll find lots to like about the OmniBook Ultra Flip 14.