Introduction
The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip is one of the best laptops for students or anyone who just want a solid all-round machine for general home or office use. It's even good for those doing something a little more like some light gaming or programming, so long as the projects you are coding are simple.
Compared to other laptops with Intel’s new Lunar Lake processors, like the Zenbook S 14, the flip feels more premium and is more well-rounded.
Compared to laptops with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X processors, which compete at this price point, all applications work on the Flip. That is because it uses an x86 Intel processor. Many applications and games still do not run on Snapdragon laptops. That being said, their multi-core performance is better, but many buyers of these kind of laptops don’t need that.
Compared with Apple’s MacBook Air, the Flip gives you a lot more for your money. It’s a 2-in-1 convertible, it has a fast refresh rate display, it comes with more memory and storage, the list goes on.
Finally, do not buy this laptop at its MSRP. HP laptops frequently go on big sales. Make sure to check our website's price tracker to ensure you're getting the best deal.
Chassis: Premium
The Flip looks and feels like a premium laptop, just like its predecessor the Spectre 14. The Flip maintains the same shape as the Spectre, where the back corners look like they’ve been chopped off. But, when you look closely, you’ll notice some improvements. The Flip is smaller, it is thinner, and it is over 100 grams lighter. Very welcome news, as the Spectre 14 always felt a bit big for a 14inch laptop. Unfortunately, when you open the Flip, just like the Spectre, you will need two hands. Not only is the hinge stiff, but there is no lip or cut-out for your fingers to easily grab. You must grab the laptop with both hands and pull it open. When it comes to the hinge being stiff it does make sense on a touch screen laptop like this. You don’t want the display to topple over as you press on it.
Now, when you do get that lid open, you’ll notice that the edge of the palm rest is softer and rounder than the Spectre 14. This makes this laptop more comfortable to use in environments where you don’t have adequate support for your arms, like on the couch or a plane’s tray table.
Display: Beautiful, but a Bit Dim
The display is a stunning OLED panel with a crisp 2.8K resolution. Colors look great with its wide color gamut, and the display can refresh up to 120Hz. It does support dynamic switching, so it can drop its refresh rate down to 48hz to conserve battery. This appears to be the same OLED panel as we have on the Spectre, which also brings its disadvantages. Its brightness comes in at just under 400 nits which is totally fine for indoor use, but any direct sunlight will have you squinting. Especially considering the screen is glossy. We wish it had higher brightness panel to better combat reflections like Lenovo’s Slim 7x does. Also, like many OLED panels, there is a slight screen door effect. When looking at light colored content you can see colored pixels poking through. And, of course, as this is an OLED display you do run the risk of burn-in if you're looking at a lot of similar content. You can mitigate this risk by utilizing dark modes and screen savers, though. We have a video that goes into more detail on our YouTube channel if you decide to check that out.
Pen Support: Solid and Comfortable
The laptop is a 2-in-1 that supports touch and pen. The pen did not come in the box, and it doesn't come with many of the SKUs. If you do buy the pen, though, you’ll find that it supports tilt, comes with nibs of varying sizes, and has over 4,000 pressure levels. It can be attached magnetically to the left or right side of the laptop's lid as well as the laptop itself. So, we sat down to use the pen in Photoshop to test out some of these capabilities.
Compared to the Asus ProArt PX13, ASUS’s premium 2-in-1, the hinges of the Flip are stiffer. This means that the screen is sturdier to draw or write on. The Flip also has a more natural soft drag as you write on the screen. It’s grippy like dragging a pen across a piece of paper. And on that note, it also feels 3 dimensional. The nib of the HP pen has a spring in it. This makes it feel like the pen is sinking into the screen. By comparison the Pro Art’s pen feels smoother to glide across its screen and its pen does not have that slightly springy feel to it. We feel the choice of which you prefer is subjective, as people have different preferences.
Keyboard: 7/10
The keyboard on the flip is good, but not great. Compared to the Spectre it retains its large comfortable keycaps, but it is much lower travel. It has an abysmal 1mm key depth compared to the previous 1.3mm which was already quite low. This is the main factor in us giving it this 7/10 number. We were hoping this led to a quieter typing sound as the Spectre is loud and clacky, but no such luck. Some other changes come in the form of the new rounded keycaps which look more modern, and a better backlight that leads to less light bleeding around the keys than we saw in the Spectre.
Trackpad: Great, Except for the Palm Rejection
The haptic trackpad gives you a very accurate click and gliding feels natural. This is aided by the trackpad’s smooth texture. The older Spectre 14’s haptic trackpad was plagued with woeful palm rejection. Frequently my cursor would jump to a location on the page that I didn’t intend. This has been slightly improved on the Flip, but it is still present unfortunately.
Ports: Limited
The laptop unfortunately has very limited ports. Just 3 USB C ports that support Thunderbolt 4 speeds and charging, plus, a headphone mic combo jack. This is worse than the Spectre, which at least had 1 USB A port. If you use older peripherals, like my mouse, you’ll now need a dongle, which is really annoying.
That being said, at least we get charging capable ports on both sides of the laptop, which is definitely more convenient, as you won’t need to run a cable round the back if your outlet is on the other side. Another improvement is that the headphone mic jack has been moved from the back angled corner to the side of the laptop. I always felt it got in the way in that odd spot.
Speakers: Impressive
HP have definitely improved the speakers on the OmniBook Ultra Flip. We were really impressed. The speakers get very loud, and we felt the sound was more pleasing than the MacBook Air. That laptop is normally our benchmark for great speakers in a thin and light. The Flip’s speakers were so good, we pitted it against the MacBook Pro 14. The Pro 14’s speakers definitely sounded better. The main difference is that their sound is more natural. The Flip heavily pushes certain frequencies over others. Have a listen for yourself in our video review.
Let’s talk performance. Our unit has the 258v processor, 32g of memory, and a 2 TB SSD.
Strong Single-Core
In Geekbench, you can see that this laptop has strong Single-core performance. However, it is not as fast as the OmniBook Ultra, with AMD’s Zen 5 and it can’t catch the MacBook Air with Apple’s M3 chip, which is just getting pathetic at this point as Apple is about to announce their next M4 chips for laptops.
Geekbench Results
In Cinebench, which tests what the processor is capable of when maxed out, it’s a similar story.
Cinebench Results
Weak Multi-Core
In Multi-core the Flip now edges out the Zenbook S 14 and closes the gap with the M3 MacBook Air. However, it is behind the older Spectre 14, which it is replacing. It is also well behind our AMD Zen5 and Snapdragon laptops. At least those with the X Plus 64-100 and X Elite chips. It is somewhat similar to the lowest end Snapdragon 42-100 chip. By the way, even though the Slim 7x doesn’t use the highest end X Elite processor available, it is actually our best performing Snapdragon laptop, so that’s why we are showing it here.
Anyway, what this all means is that this laptop has plenty of performance for basic office applications and web browsing, switching between them, and even some specialist programs like those used for simple programming. But, if you are looking for a performance laptop this is not it.
Let’s delve a little further. Taking a look at a 10-minute torture test, this laptop is able to maintain its max performance over time. Looking at power drawn during this test, you can see that this laptop peaks at around 40 watts, which is the same as the Zenbook S 14, which has the same processor. However, the Flip can draw an average of 28 watts, which is 3 watts higher than the Zenbook S 14.
Cinbench Power Draw
This explains why it performs a little better. CPU temperatures during this time got hot at 98 degrees Celsius, but eventually averaged at 85.
Cinebench CPU Core Temperatures
Impressive Graphics
This new Intel processor brings with it excellent integrated graphics. This means this laptop is capable of some gaming. So long as your titles are less demanding. I thoroughly enjoyed a couple of rounds of League of Legends on highest settings with high frame rates. Heck, we were even able to do some video editing on this laptop, again on simple video projects only. Minimal overlays and very little effects.
Timespy Results Graph
NPU
NPU Performance is around the same level as most of the new processors that came out in 2024. We at this YouTube channel actually use AI a lot, but all of it is run in the cloud not on our laptops themselves. On device AI, also known as edge computing, is pretty useless right now unless you have dedicated graphics. These smaller laptops have neither the performance nor the storage and memory required for useful model inference. Please ignore the marketing hype, this is not something for you to make a buying decision based on.
NPU Graph
Heat & Fan Noise: Minimal
Light Use & Gaming
When it comes to heat and fan noise, in light use and casual gaming the laptop remained comfortably cool to the touch and never got distractingly warm. There was also no audible fan noise. This is a big improvement from the prior Spectre 14. One of my main nits with that laptop was that in a quiet room you could sometimes hear the fans going. In fact, this laptop was so good in this department we ran the Timespy gaming benchmark and measured heat you feel and fan noise. It only got to 37 degrees on the keyboard deck. This is basically cold. And we only measured 41 decibels of fan noise, which is pretty much ambient room noise. My only negative to mention here is that the underside of the laptop does get warm. This wasn’t my favorite laptop to use on my lap.
Heat You Feel During Timespy
Now, for high performance tasks, the keyboard deck still felt very cool to the touch. However, the underside got even warmer, this matches what I just said. If you do anything intensive on this laptop, use it on a desk. When it comes to the fan noise during max performance, the Flip was consistently one of the quietest laptops we’ve tested.
Cinebench Fan Noise Graph
Battery Life: Average
To test battery life for light use, we did a full video run down. This laptop is a small improvement on the prior Spectre 14, lasting a little over 15 hours, one and a half hours longer. This is disappointing as the Zenbook S 14, has the same processor and lasts longer. I feel the main culprit here is the Flip’s smaller battery. The OmniBook Ultra with its AMD chip also lasted longer than this laptop. That one though is aided by having a lower resolution display. Realistically HP needed to put in a bigger battery to be competitive.
Procyon Playback Rundown
Switching to performance tasks while on battery there is a small performance hit when the laptop is unplugged. After running Cinebench on a loop for 30 minutes almost 40% of the battery was drained. This is actually not bad amongst its peers, but the reason for it isn’t a good thing. This laptop just doesn’t perform that well, and therefore doesn’t draw that much power. That’s why it is even competitive in this test. This being said, it is crushed by the MacBook Air and even the Surface Laptop 7, both of which have even smaller batteries. We talked about this in our Lunar Lake specific video. These processors are just not as power efficient as Apple’s M3, and even Qualcomm Snapdragon X series. The main reason they are an improvement in power draw over prior Intel chips is that they just don’t draw that much power because their performance is less.
Linux
Before I conclude, if you do want to run Linux on this laptop we tested Fedora 41 beta. Trackpad, webcam, keyboard all worked. But speakers, Wi-Fi, and brightness up and down did not. You’ll probably have to try a newer kernel for updated drivers. But keep in mind Fedora 41 beta is already pretty cutting edge. The OmniBook Ultra, non-Flip with its AMD processor fared better here, review linked below.
Conclusion
The Good
In conclusion, the OmniBook Ultra Flip is a nice incremental step forward from the Spectre 14 that it replaces. It has better single-core performance, better graphics, better speakers,
and its more portable. As it is smaller, and lighter. Overall, it has plenty of performance for those with basic computing needs like for office and home use, as well as those using it for school. But one of the best things about this laptop is it just doesn’t have the downsides of other laptops at this price point. Either they don't feel as premium, like the Zenbook S 14. Or they suffer from application compatibility issues like Qualcomm powered laptops. Most popular games and many specialist applications still don’t work on those laptops. Or they are just too expensive, like Apple’s laptops. That’s when you factor in the configuration you get out of the box with the Flip.
The Bad
The Flip does have some downsides though as I mentioned. It is not a high-performance machine, its ports are limited, and its battery life is not as good as other Lunar Lake laptops.
Should You Buy It?
Personally, I would take these trade-offs and I would buy the Flip. The last thing that I have to re-mention is that HP laptops regularly go on big sales. The other day this laptop dropped by $400. Obviously you should buy it for its best price. Our website is the place to do that. We have a price tracker right here that will tell you when it's being sold either on sale or at its lowest price. If you're still on the fence, here is our list of favorites for students which will have a lot of similar offerings.
