HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14: A flipping great display and next-gen features

HP’s latest notebook PC promises plenty of nifty next-gen bells and whistles. Under its hood, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip packs Intel’s latest mobile silicon, the Core Ultra 7 256V processor, making it one of the first so-called Lunar Lake-powered laptops we’ve had a chance to test.

Design-wise, the gunmetal black metallic finish of the OmniBook Ultra Flip lends it a solid, no-nonsense look. While its chassis sports an alloy frame, it wasn’t easy to distinguish between metal and plastic. Either way, the screen hinge and screen panel feel reassuringly solid, with little to no flexing, which is particularly important given the convertible nature of the OmniBook Ultra, which sees its screen flip around to convert it into a Windows-powered tablet. The screen can also be partially flipped for delivering presentations to a small audience via what HP calls “tent mode”. The overall design is super thin, light and compact, so throwing the OmniBook Ultra into a laptop bag is unlikely to result in any future chiropractor visits.

Its fingerprint reader/power button, located in the upper right of the keyboard, stands out as it’s finished in powder blue and is both accurate and responsive. As with most contemporary notebook PCs, its keys are scrabble tile style, and even though keyboard space is limited by the OmniBook Ultra Flip’s 14” form factor, there’s plenty of spacing between the keys, and nothing feels cramped. Similarly, its haptic touchpad is slightly recessed, which reduces accidental touches via the palm rest.

As you’d expect from such a set-up, typing on the Omnibook Ultra was surprisingly good. Decent key travel and spacing between keys, despite its ultra-shallow keyboard deck and compact size, made qwerty bashing an accurate and satisfying experience. Compared to Dell’s XPS 16 trackpad and keyboard disaster, HP got the keyboard and trackpad just right.

On the port front, you’re limited to two usable USB-C sockets, as the third socket is reserved for the power supply. This isn’t a huge surprise, given the OmniBook Ultra’s super skinny chassis. What is irritating is that the two USB-C ports are located on both back corners. This ultimately leads to a mess of cables emerging from the back of the machine and creates extra cable clutter from the OmniBook Ultra’s power supply, which connects on its right-hand side. That said, two of the USB-C ports (both located on the right side) are Thunderbolt 4 ports, which are extremely fast. With only two usable ports, a USB-C hub should also be considered when making a purchasing decision.

There are speakers built in, but they’re not really up to much. There are far worse examples out there, but if audio is your thing, the 3.5mm audio jack and Bluetooth support are a sure sign that investing in a good pair of cans is your best bet.

The star of the show, however, is the touch-capable display, which is extremely vivid and thin, featuring excellent contrast levels thanks to the use of OLED. While it isn’t as bright as some flagship phones, it can crank out 500 nits, which isn’t too shabby at all. In use, it proved to be more than bright enough for most applications, even if direct sunlight sometimes presented a challenge.

At the top middle of the screen bezel sits a 9MP 1440p camera, which delivers mostly crisp video. While you can get better cams, HP has baked in a bunch of nifty AI features that’ll help you wring every ounce of goodness from its captured video. The addition of a mechanical video shutter for enhanced privacy also earns HP some serious brownie points. The camera also delivered quick and refreshingly accurate Windows Hello biometric logins.

The OmniBook Ultra has you well covered on the connectivity front. You get the latest Wi-Fi 7 as well as Bluetooth 5.4. While Wi-Fi 7 routers are not yet common, the addition of Wi-Fi 7 to the OmniBook Ultra adds a significant amount of future-proofing into the mix.

As mentioned earlier, the system features an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V Lunar Lake processor, 32GB of RAM, and 1 TB of SSD storage. While many will expect the OmniBook Ultra to deliver cutting-edge performance, the real emphasis of Intel’s Lunar Lake Core Ultra is power efficiency. This was borne out in benchmarking, which saw the OmniBook Ultra squarely located in the middle of the performance pack.

Under PCMark 10, the Ultra Flip scored a middling 6,844. In the 3DMark test, the Flip 14 scored an impressive 4,319. While a dedicated gaming laptop with a baked-in GPU will easily beat this, the score is solid, especially for integrated graphics, which is more than ample for light gaming.

Running a looped 4K video with flight mode enabled, I managed to wring an impressive 17 and a half hours of use out of the OmniBook Ultra, which is enough for non-stop movies and a snooze on most long-haul international flights. Firing up Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and/or using computer-intensive apps will, however, lower this figure.

The OmniBook Ultra Flip 14 features decent build quality, outstanding battery life and a decent keyboard and trackpad. While its ports are awkwardly placed, the inclusion of Thunderbolt is a nice touch. Add to this a super-compact, lightweight design, and the OmniBook Ultra Flip is a versatile 2-in-1 notebook PC that is definitely worth considering.

https://www.hp.com/nz-en/shop/hp-omnibook-ultra-flip-14-fh0006tu-ay6v1pa.html