HP OmniBook Ultra 14 Review

Review disclosure: The product reviewed in this article was provided on loan. Reviewer: Elijah Cowling.

Five thousand dollars used to buy a perfectly respectable second-hand car. Now it buys a 14-inch HP laptop.

That is the first thing you need to know about the OmniBook Ultra 14. In Australia, it costs $4,999, which is an enormous amount of money for a thin Windows notebook, no matter how nice it is.

Thankfully, it is very nice.

The metal body feels solid, the design is simple without being boring, and it is thin and light enough to carry around all day without becoming annoying. It also feels properly expensive, which sounds obvious, but plenty of costly laptops still manage to feel like ordinary plastic office machines with a premium price stuck on the box.

Display is excellent, the keyboard is comfortable, and the laptop feels quick in normal use. I also used it for photo editing and 4K HDR video work, and it handled both without much trouble.

This is probably the most premium Windows laptop I have used. It looks good, feels good and has enough power for serious work.

But at nearly $5,000, being good is not enough. It has to be exceptional, because for this sort of money, you could buy a very capable laptop and still have enough left over for that second-hand car.

Design and Build: Genuinely Premium, Not Just Expensive

There is a difference between something being expensive and something actually feeling expensive. Plenty of laptops manage the first part while completely forgetting about the second. You lift them out of the box, press down on the keyboard and immediately discover a level of flex normally associated with supermarket shelving.

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is not like that.

The body is made from metal, and the whole thing feels properly solid without becoming heavy or bulky. There are no loose panels, odd creaks or cheap plastic sections trying to hide beneath a metallic paint finish. It feels like HP has spent money in the places that matter, rather than simply adding another badge and hoping nobody notices.

At around 1.28kg, it is light enough to carry all day, and at just 10.7mm thick, it is impressively slim. In fact, it is one of those laptops that looks almost too thin to contain anything useful. You expect to open it and find a calculator inside. Instead, it feels sturdy, well balanced and far more substantial than its size suggests.

Design itself is clean and restrained. There are no giant logos, glowing strips or unnecessary vents carved into every available surface. It looks like a premium work machine, which is exactly what it is supposed to be.

The edges are quite angular, and some of them feel sharper than I expected. It never became uncomfortable while typing, but it does give the OmniBook a slightly harder, more industrial feel than some of its softer-edged rivals.

The hinge also feels strong, and the screen stays firmly in place once opened. That sounds like an incredibly basic achievement, but at this price, everything matters. A loose hinge on a $5,000 laptop would be like finding a plastic steering wheel in a Bentley.

Overall, the OmniBook Ultra 14 is one of the best-built Windows laptops I have used. It does not just carry a premium price. It actually looks and feels like something made for people willing to pay it.

Portability: Thin, Light and Surprisingly Solid

The whole point of buying a 14-inch laptop is that you should be able to carry it around without developing the posture of a question mark. Thankfully, the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 understands this.

It weighs just 1.28kg and measures only 10.7mm thick, so it slips into a backpack or work bag without taking up much space. More importantly, it does not come with an enormous power brick that immediately ruins the idea of travelling light. The included 65W USB-C charger is unusually compact, and HP supplies it with a generously long cable.

Despite being extremely thin, the OmniBook does not feel fragile. There is very little flex through the body, the lid feels sturdy, and I never felt as though it needed to be handled like an expensive sheet of glass. That is impressive, because some thin laptops feel as though one badly packed bag could turn them into a very costly sandwich.

The compact size also makes it comfortable to use away from a desk. It fits easily on smaller tables, does not feel ridiculous on your lap and can be carried around the house with one hand.

The sharp, angular edges may not suit everyone, but they never became uncomfortable during testing. Overall, the OmniBook Ultra 14 manages to feel properly solid without becoming heavy, which is exactly what a premium ultraportable should do.

The 3K OLED Display Is the Main Attraction

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is a lovely laptop to hold, but the display is the part that really makes it feel expensive.

It uses a 14-inch 3K OLED touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate, and it looks excellent. Colours are rich without becoming ridiculous, blacks are properly black, and everything from text to video has the crispness you would expect from a premium panel.

The main display specifications are:

• 14-inch OLED touchscreen
• 3K resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate
• HDR support
• Peak brightness of up to 1,100 nits

The OLED panel gives the OmniBook a huge advantage when watching films, editing photos or working with HDR footage. Dark scenes do not look grey and washed out, while bright highlights have enough punch to make the image feel far more dramatic than it would on an ordinary laptop display.

I used the OmniBook Ultra 14 for editing 4K HDR footage, and the screen was one of the best parts of the experience. The detail is sharp, the colours look excellent and there is enough contrast to see what is happening in darker areas of an image without turning everything into a murky mess.

The 120Hz refresh rate also helps more than you might expect. It makes:

• Scrolling through websites feel smoother
• Window animations look cleaner
• Touchscreen interactions feel more immediate
• General use feel faster and more polished

It does not suddenly turn the OmniBook into a gaming laptop, but once you become used to a 120Hz display, going back to a basic 60Hz panel feels like watching the world through a flipbook.

The touchscreen is also genuinely useful. I did not expect to use it much, but it quickly became natural to tap buttons, move through menus and interact with photo-editing tools directly on the display. It is not essential, and I would not refuse to buy a laptop without one, but it is a welcome feature.

There are a couple of trade-offs. Glossy OLED touchscreens can pick up fingerprints quickly, and reflections may become annoying in brightly lit rooms. OLED panels can also consume more power when displaying bright content, although that did not ruin the battery experience during testing.

Keyboard and Trackpad: Mostly Excellent

A premium laptop can have all the processing power in the world, but if the keyboard feels like typing on a damp cereal box, none of it matters. Thankfully, HP has done a very good job here.

The keyboard is spacious, comfortable and has a satisfying amount of travel for such a thin laptop. The keys feel firm without being heavy, and I had no trouble typing on it for longer periods. It is also backlit, which is useful when working at night or in a room with less lighting than a fashionable Melbourne restaurant.

The layout is sensible, too. Nothing feels awkwardly squeezed in, and the keys are large enough that I was not constantly hitting the wrong one and blaming HP for my own terrible typing.

Trackpad is more complicated.

It is large, wide and supports the usual multi-touch gestures, including:

• Two-finger scrolling
• Three-finger app switching
• Three-finger gestures for showing or hiding open windows
• Tap and drag controls

In terms of size, it is excellent. There is plenty of room to move around, and it looks right at home on a laptop this expensive. The problem is that the clicking and dragging did not always feel as predictable as I wanted.

At times, I found myself clicking near the centre and getting the response I expected. At other times, it felt like I needed to move closer to the lower corner before it properly registered. This may partly come down to getting used to the trackpad, but on a $4,999 laptop, I do not want a short training course every time I try to move a window.

It is not a bad trackpad. Far from it. The surface feels smooth, the gestures work well and the generous size makes navigation easy. It just lacks the immediate, effortless feel that the best trackpads offer.

The keyboard is excellent. The trackpad is good, but not quite as polished as the rest of the laptop.

Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 3 Performance

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is powered by an Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 3 processor, which is the sort of name normally followed by a graph, twelve coloured bars and someone explaining that it is 17 per cent faster at doing something nobody has ever knowingly done.

What matters is that the laptop feels extremely quick.

Windows starts rapidly, applications open almost immediately and moving between multiple programs does not cause the machine to pause for thought. With 32GB of LPDDR5X memory, it can handle a busy workload without becoming flustered, even when you have far too many browser tabs open alongside email, documents, photo-editing software and everything else you forgot to close three days ago.

The 1TB Gen5 SSD also helps keep everything feeling responsive. Files open quickly, large projects load without much delay and transferring footage feels suitably fast for a laptop aimed at professional users.

During my time with it, I used the OmniBook Ultra 14 for:

• General office and productivity work
• Heavy web browsing and multitasking
• Photo editing
• Working with large image files
• Editing 4K HDR video
• Running several applications at once

The most impressive part was how easily it dealt with video editing. Thin laptops often advertise themselves as creative workstations, only to sound like a leaf blower the moment you place a 4K clip on the timeline. The OmniBook handled 4K HDR footage with very little fuss, and playback remained smooth during normal editing.

It is worth pointing out that this is not a dedicated gaming laptop or a full desktop replacement. It relies on Intel integrated graphics rather than a separate NVIDIA or AMD GPU, so demanding 3D rendering, high-end gaming and heavier professional effects work will still favour a larger machine with dedicated graphics.

For productivity, photography and everyday creative work, however, there is more than enough performance here. The OmniBook feels fast in the situations that actually matter, rather than merely looking impressive on a specification sheet.

The laptop can become warm when pushed, which is hardly surprising given how much hardware HP has squeezed into such a thin metal body. Fan noise was noticeable during heavier work, but it remained controlled and never reached the point where I felt as though a small aircraft was preparing to leave the desk.

Everyday Productivity and Multitasking

For normal day-to-day work, the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is almost comically overqualified.

It handles web browsing, documents, email, video calls and general office work without any hesitation. You can keep a ridiculous number of browser tabs open, jump between programs and leave half your desktop running in the background without the laptop suddenly deciding it needs a quiet moment.

The 32GB of memory makes a noticeable difference here. It gives the OmniBook plenty of room for heavier multitasking, particularly if your usual workday involves several applications running at once.

During testing, I regularly used it with:

• Multiple browser windows and tabs
• Word processing and spreadsheets
• Email and messaging apps
• Photo-editing software
• Video playback and streaming
• Large file transfers
• Several programs open at the same time

Everything remained quick and responsive. Applications opened rapidly, switching between windows felt immediate, and there were no strange pauses while the laptop tried to remember what it was doing.

The 14-inch screen is also a good size for productivity. It is compact enough to travel with, but the sharp 3K resolution gives you enough room to comfortably work across several windows. Text looks crisp, menus are clear and the 120Hz refresh rate makes scrolling through long documents and websites feel noticeably smoother.

The touchscreen becomes useful in small ways as well. Tapping through menus, selecting photos or quickly moving around a webpage feels natural, even if it is not something I would consider essential.

For most people, the OmniBook Ultra 14 has far more power than they will ever need for office work. But if your idea of multitasking involves dozens of tabs, creative software and several unfinished jobs open at once, it barely notices.

Photo and 4K Video Editing Performance

This is where the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 starts to make more sense.

For everyday office work, it is massively overpowered. You do not need an Intel Core Ultra 9 processor and 32GB of memory to answer emails or move numbers around a spreadsheet. Start editing photos and video, however, and the extra performance becomes much easier to appreciate.

Photo editing feels quick and smooth, even when working with larger image files. Adjustments apply rapidly, switching between tools is responsive, and the high-resolution OLED display makes it much easier to judge colour, contrast and fine detail.

I also tested some of the built-in Windows image tools, including background removal and background blur. The laptop was able to identify and remove the background from a particularly busy image surprisingly quickly. The photo included cameras, different colours and plenty of clutter, yet the result was clean enough to be genuinely useful rather than looking like someone had attacked it with digital scissors.

The OmniBook Ultra 14 was equally impressive when editing 4K HDR footage. Playback remained smooth during normal editing, moving around the timeline felt responsive, and the laptop handled the footage without the sort of hesitation you often get from very thin machines.

The display helps enormously here. Its 3K resolution makes fine details easy to see, while the OLED panel provides deep blacks and strong contrast. HDR footage looks particularly good, with bright areas having real impact rather than appearing flat and lifeless.

There are limits, of course. The OmniBook uses integrated Intel graphics, so it is not going to replace a workstation with a powerful dedicated GPU. Complicated effects, large multi-camera projects and heavy 3D work will still favour something bigger and considerably less elegant.

For editing YouTube videos, social content, photos and shorter 4K projects, though, the OmniBook has more than enough performance. It manages to deliver that power in a machine thin enough to disappear inside a bag, rather than one requiring a separate desk and an extension cord.

Integrated Graphics and Light Gaming

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is not a gaming laptop. There is no giant exhaust vent, no glowing logo and no dedicated graphics card with a name that sounds like a military aircraft.

Instead, it relies on Intel integrated graphics built into the Core Ultra 9 processor. That is perfectly sensible for a laptop designed around portability, battery life and creative work, but it does place some limits on what you should expect from it.

For lighter games, older titles and less demanding releases, the OmniBook should be perfectly usable. Games that do not require a huge amount of graphics power can be played comfortably, particularly if you are prepared to lower the resolution and reduce a few visual settings.

It should be well suited to games such as:

• Minecraft
• The Sims 4
• League of Legends
• Valorant
• Rocket League
• Older racing and action games
• Indie and strategy titles

The 120Hz OLED display is a real advantage here. Games that can run at higher frame rates look smoother, colours are rich and contrast is excellent. Dark areas actually look dark rather than grey, which is useful in games where something unpleasant is usually waiting in the shadows.

The touchscreen may also work well with slower strategy games, card games and titles designed around simple controls, although Windows gaming still largely expects a mouse, controller or trackpad.

What the OmniBook is not designed for is running the latest demanding games at its native 3K resolution with every graphics option turned on. That would be like taking a beautifully tailored suit to a mud-wrestling competition. It may survive, but it is not really the point.

Without a dedicated GPU, heavier games will require compromises. That could mean:

• Lowering the resolution
• Reducing texture quality
• Turning down shadows and lighting
• Using performance-focused upscaling
• Accepting lower frame rates

Long gaming sessions will also push the cooling system harder than normal productivity work. In such a thin metal body, heat has fewer places to go, so the fans are likely to become more noticeable when the processor and integrated graphics are working together.

I did not carry out detailed gaming benchmarks during testing, so I would not buy the OmniBook specifically for gaming based on its specification alone. The supplied review material also stops short of testing games directly, noting only that the hardware should be capable of some gaming despite this not being its intended purpose.

For occasional gaming between work sessions, there is enough power to have some fun. Anyone planning to spend hours playing demanding new releases would be better served by a laptop with dedicated graphics, even if it is thicker, louder and considerably less elegant.

The 50 TOPS NPU and Copilot+ Features

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 comes with a dedicated neural processing unit capable of up to 50 TOPS, which sounds impressive until you realise most people have absolutely no idea what a TOP is.

In simple terms, the NPU is designed to handle certain AI tasks without leaning entirely on the main processor. This can improve efficiency, reduce power use and allow compatible features to run more smoothly in the background.

The OmniBook is also a Copilot+ PC, giving it access to Microsoft’s growing collection of AI-powered Windows tools. Some are useful. Others feel like they were added because every technology company is currently terrified of releasing a product without mentioning artificial intelligence at least six times.

During testing, I used several of the built-in image tools, including:

• Automatic background removal
• Background blur
• Colour background replacement
• Generative image features
• Touchscreen editing controls

Background removal worked particularly well. I tested it with a busy photo containing cameras, different colours and plenty of clutter. The laptop identified the subject and removed the background quickly, without turning the edges into the digital equivalent of a badly cut school project.

The generative tools were more entertaining than essential. Using Paint, I drew a terrible stick figure, a tree and what was supposed to be the sun. Windows then attempted to turn this artistic disaster into something respectable.

It was extremely generous.

The results were not always accurate, but that was probably less the laptop’s fault and more the fact that my drawing looked like it had been created during an earthquake. Some generative features also required an internet connection, so the presence of a 50 TOPS NPU does not mean every AI tool runs entirely on the laptop.

Copilot itself can help with general Windows questions, summaries and basic tasks. I even used it to suggest features worth testing for this review, which felt slightly like asking the car to write its own road test.

The NPU also supports camera features such as:

• Automatic framing
• Eye-contact correction
• Standard and portrait background blur
• Exposure and contrast adjustments
• Background effects during video calls

These features are more practical than the novelty image tools. Automatic framing keeps you centred when you move, while background blur is useful when your home office contains a drying rack, three cardboard boxes and evidence that you have not cleaned since Tuesday.

The edge detection was not always perfect, especially around hair and finer details, but it generally worked well enough for video meetings.

Webcam, Microphones and Video Calls

Laptop webcams have spent years being treated like an afterthought. Manufacturers would happily give you a beautiful display, a powerful processor and a keyboard with seventeen different brightness settings, then wedge a miserable camera into the lid that made everyone look as though they were calling from a basement.

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is much better than that.

It has a 5MP webcam with dual-array microphones, and the image quality is sharp enough for video calls, online meetings and recording the occasional piece to camera. Faces look clear, colours are reasonably natural and there is enough detail that you do not immediately resemble a witness whose identity is being protected.

Bright lighting can still cause some shine and blown highlights, but that is not unusual. Under normal indoor lighting, the camera does a solid job.

HP also includes a physical privacy shutter above the display. Slide it across and the camera is properly blocked, rather than relying on a software setting and a small light that you are expected to trust with your life.

The built-in camera tools include:

• Automatic framing
• Eye-contact correction
• Standard background blur
• Portrait-style background blur
• Exposure adjustment
• Contrast and sharpness controls
• Saturation settings
• QR code scanning

Automatic framing is particularly useful. It follows your movement and attempts to keep you centred, which is handy if you are the sort of person who cannot sit still during a meeting.

Background blur works well most of the time, although it can struggle around hair, beards and finer edges. This is hardly a disaster, but occasionally the software seems unsure where your face ends and the bookcase begins.

The OmniBook can also allow multiple applications to access the camera at once, provided the setting is enabled. That could be useful for anyone recording while also using video-conferencing software, although it is probably a feature most people will switch on once and then completely forget exists.

The microphones are clear enough for meetings and calls without requiring a headset. They pick up speech well, although a dedicated microphone will still sound better for podcasts, voiceovers or anything more serious than explaining why a spreadsheet is late.

Quad Speakers and Media Playback

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 includes a quad-speaker system, which is exactly the sort of thing you want on a laptop with such a good display. There would be little point fitting a beautiful 3K OLED panel and then pairing it with speakers that sound like they were borrowed from a supermarket checkout.

For watching YouTube, streaming films or listening to music while working, the speakers are clear and provide enough volume for normal use. Voices come through well, which is particularly useful for video calls, interviews and anything involving people talking over dramatic background music.

The four-speaker arrangement also gives the sound more presence than you get from many thin laptops. It does not feel as narrow or trapped inside the chassis, and there is enough separation to make films and videos more enjoyable without immediately reaching for headphones.

That said, physics still exists. This is an extremely thin 14-inch laptop, so you should not expect deep bass or the sort of room-filling sound that makes the furniture vibrate. Music with heavier low-end sounds cleaner through a decent pair of headphones or external speakers.

For everyday use, the audio works well for:

• Video calls and online meetings
• YouTube and streaming
• Podcasts and spoken content
• Background music while working
• Watching films when travelling

The OLED display does most of the heavy lifting when it comes to entertainment, but the speakers are good enough that they do not let the rest of the experience down. The supplied review material focuses more heavily on the display, webcam and performance than detailed audio testing, so this is not the sort of laptop I would buy specifically for its speakers alone.

Ports: Three Thunderbolt Connections and Not Much Else

HP has given the OmniBook Ultra 14 three Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. All three can be used for charging, data transfer or connecting an external display, which is genuinely useful if you regularly move between a desk setup and life on the road.

The ports support:

• Data transfer speeds of up to 40Gbps
• USB Power Delivery 3.1
• DisplayPort 2.1 output
• Charging from either side of the laptop
• External docks, monitors and storage drives

There is one Thunderbolt port on the left side and two on the right, so you are not forced to trail the charging cable across the keyboard because the nearest power point happens to be on the wrong side of the desk.

There is also a combined headphone and microphone jack, which is good news for anyone still using normal wired headphones rather than paying $400 for tiny wireless objects that eventually disappear beneath the sofa.

That is where the port selection ends.

There is no full-size USB-A connection, no HDMI port and no SD or microSD card reader. For such an expensive machine aimed partly at creative users, the missing card reader is particularly irritating. Anyone transferring photos from a camera will need an adapter, a dock or a cable that they will inevitably leave at home.

The lack of HDMI is also slightly annoying. Thunderbolt can easily handle an external display, but most televisions, meeting-room screens and hotel monitors still expect HDMI. Once again, you will need an adapter.

HP is hardly alone here. Modern ultraportable laptops have apparently decided that ports are ugly and must be removed until every owner carries a small plastic hub filled with the connections that used to be built into the computer.

At least the three Thunderbolt ports offer plenty of flexibility. You can connect a dock at your desk and use a single cable for charging, external monitors, storage, networking and other accessories. For users already living entirely in the USB-C world, the arrangement will probably feel clean and sensible.

For everyone else, the OmniBook Ultra 14 may require a brief archaeological dig through the drawer where all the adapters live.

Battery Life and the Tiny Charger

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 has a 70Wh battery, which is a decent size for something this thin. In normal use, I found it capable of lasting through most of a working day without needing to be constantly connected to a wall.

Battery life will depend heavily on what you are doing. Basic web browsing, documents and email are obviously much easier on the battery than editing video, running the screen at high brightness or using AI features in the background.

In general use, you can expect around:

• Nine to 12 hours of mixed productivity
• Less when editing video or pushing the processor
• Better results with reduced screen brightness
• Faster battery drain when using HDR content
• Longer life when working mainly in documents and browsers

The OLED display is one of the laptop’s best features, but it can also be one of its hungriest. Running the panel at high brightness with the 120Hz refresh rate enabled will naturally reduce battery life, especially if you are watching video or working with bright content for long periods.

Thankfully, charging is quick. HP says the OmniBook Ultra 14 can recover up to 50 per cent of its battery in around 45 minutes, which is genuinely useful when you only have a short break between meetings or flights.

The charger itself deserves a mention because it is unusually small. HP includes a compact 65W USB-C power adapter that is easy to carry and does not feel like someone has hidden a house brick inside your laptop bag.

It also comes with a long USB-C cable, which sounds like a tiny detail until you are sitting in an airport and the only available power point is located somewhere behind a vending machine.

Because all three Thunderbolt 4 ports support charging, you can plug the power cable into either side of the laptop. This is far more useful than it sounds, particularly when working at a crowded desk or using the laptop in a hotel room where every power outlet appears to have been installed by someone with a personal grudge.

The Annoying Bits

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is extremely good, but spending nearly $5,000 on a laptop changes the way you look at its faults. A small irritation on a $1,500 machine becomes far more offensive when the price begins with a four.

Biggest frustration is the port selection. Three Thunderbolt 4 connections are fast and flexible, but HP has removed almost everything else.

There is no:

• Full-size USB-A port
• HDMI connection
• SD or microSD card reader

This means adapters will become part of your life. Connecting a normal USB drive requires a dongle. Plugging into a television or meeting-room display requires a dongle. Transferring photos directly from an SD card also requires a dongle.

Apparently, the future is carrying a tiny plastic hub everywhere because building useful ports into the laptop itself would be far too convenient.

The missing card reader is especially disappointing. The OmniBook has enough performance and a good enough display to appeal to photographers and video editors, yet those users cannot insert a memory card without adding another accessory.

The trackpad is another area that does not feel quite as polished as the rest of the machine. It is large, smooth and excellent for gestures, but clicking and dragging did not always feel predictable. Sometimes the centre worked perfectly. At other times, I had better results clicking closer to the bottom corners.

This may become easier with familiarity, but a trackpad should not require familiarisation. You should place your finger on it and make things happen, rather than briefly wondering whether you have forgotten how clicking works.

There are a few smaller complaints as well.

The metal body has quite sharp, angular edges. They did not become uncomfortable during normal use, but the design feels harder and less inviting than some competing laptops with more rounded sides.

The glossy touchscreen also collects fingerprints quickly. After a few minutes of tapping through menus or editing photos, the display starts looking as though it has been handled by a toddler eating hot chips. Reflections can also become noticeable under bright lighting.

Then there is the lack of dedicated graphics. The integrated Intel graphics are perfectly suitable for productivity, photo editing and lighter creative work, but buyers expecting serious gaming or heavy 3D performance will need to look elsewhere. At this price, it is reasonable to ask why HP could not fit something more powerful, although doing so would likely make the laptop thicker, hotter and heavier.

Some of the AI features are not as local as the 50 TOPS NPU marketing might suggest. Certain tools can use the laptop’s dedicated AI hardware, while others still require an internet connection. The generative features can also be inconsistent, sometimes producing impressive results and other times confidently misunderstanding what you asked for.

And finally, there is the price itself. At $4,999, the OmniBook Ultra 14 is competing with powerful MacBook Pro configurations, dedicated gaming machines and mobile workstations with separate graphics cards. It may be thinner and lighter than most of them, but buyers are paying an enormous premium for portability, build quality and that excellent OLED display.

Australian Pricing and Value

At $4,999 in Australia, the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is not merely expensive. It is the sort of expensive that makes you pause before clicking “Add to cart” and briefly consider whether your current laptop is actually fine after all.

This price puts it well beyond the usual premium ultrabook territory. For the same money, you can find larger creative laptops, gaming machines with dedicated graphics and professional workstations built for much heavier workloads.

The OmniBook is not trying to beat those machines at their own game. You are paying for a very specific combination of qualities:

• An exceptionally thin and light metal design
• A superb 3K OLED touchscreen
• Strong everyday and creative performance
• 32GB of memory and fast storage
• Excellent portability
• A high-quality webcam and speakers
• Copilot+ support and dedicated AI hardware

Taken individually, none of those features explains the price. Plenty of laptops have OLED screens. Plenty are thin. Plenty have powerful processors. The reason HP is charging so much is because the OmniBook combines all of them in one machine without turning it into something thick, heavy or unpleasant to carry.

That combination will appeal to executives, frequent travellers and creative professionals who need serious performance but do not want to carry a two-and-a-half-kilogram workstation through airports. It also suits anyone who simply wants one of the nicest Windows laptops available and is not especially troubled by the cost.

The difficulty is that the OmniBook still asks for compromises. There is no dedicated graphics card, no memory card reader and no full-size USB port. You will need adapters, and anyone doing serious gaming, 3D rendering or heavier professional video work may get more performance from a larger machine for similar money.

There is also the unavoidable fact that most buyers do not need this much laptop. A much cheaper Windows notebook will handle email, browsing, office work, streaming and occasional photo editing perfectly well. Spending nearly $5,000 only makes sense if you genuinely value the lighter body, premium materials, OLED display and extra performance.

The OmniBook Ultra 14 feels expensive in a way many premium laptops do not. The metal chassis, display, keyboard and overall finish all help justify part of the price. It never feels like a normal office laptop wearing a designer jacket.

But $4,999 remains a vast amount of money. At this level, you are not paying for practicality alone. You are paying for the pleasure of owning something thinner, lighter and better made than it strictly needs to be, which is essentially the same logic people use when buying a luxury watch instead of checking the time on their phone.

Who Should Buy the HP OmniBook Ultra 14?

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is not a laptop for everyone, and at $4,999, it is not pretending to be.

This is aimed at people who want a powerful Windows machine but refuse to carry something the size and weight of a paving slab. It gives you serious performance, a superb display and a genuinely premium build in a body that weighs less than 1.3kg.

The most obvious buyers are frequent travellers. If you spend your week moving between offices, airports, hotels and meetings, the thin design and compact charger make a real difference. It is easy to throw into a bag, light enough to carry all day and powerful enough that you are not sacrificing performance for portability.

It also makes sense for:

• Executives who want a premium Windows laptop
• Photographers working with large image files
• Content creators editing photos and shorter 4K projects
• Business users who regularly multitask across demanding applications
• Anyone who values a high-quality OLED touchscreen
• People who want MacBook-style build quality but prefer Windows
• Buyers who expect to keep the same laptop for several years

The 32GB of memory is particularly useful for anyone who regularly keeps multiple programs running at once. It gives the OmniBook enough headroom for heavier workloads and should help it remain capable as software becomes more demanding.

Creative users will appreciate the screen, fast storage and strong editing performance, although there is an important limit. Anyone working with heavy 3D rendering, complicated effects or large professional video projects will be better served by a laptop with dedicated graphics.

The same applies to gaming. The OmniBook can handle lighter titles and occasional gaming, but spending $4,999 on it specifically to play games would be a slightly strange decision. A proper gaming laptop will deliver much more graphics performance for the money, although it will probably weigh twice as much and sound like a vacuum cleaner under load.

This is also not the right machine for someone who simply needs a laptop for browsing, streaming, emails and documents. You would be paying thousands of dollars for performance you may never use. A much cheaper OmniBook, Pavilion, Spectre or competing ultrabook would cover those basic needs without requiring a conversation with your bank manager.

You should also think carefully about the ports. Photographers, office workers and presenters who regularly use memory cards, USB-A devices or HDMI will need to carry adapters. That is manageable, but not especially elegant on a laptop costing this much.

The OmniBook Ultra 14 is for someone who values the whole package rather than performance alone. It is thin, light, fast, beautifully built and excellent to use. You can find more powerful laptops for the money, but very few that combine this level of performance with such a slim and portable design.

Verdict

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is one of those laptops that makes an excellent first impression and then, rather annoyingly, keeps backing it up.

It looks superb, feels genuinely premium and is thin enough to make most other Windows laptops seem slightly agricultural. The all-metal body is solid, the keyboard is excellent and the 3K OLED touchscreen is easily one of the best displays I have used on a laptop of this size.

Performance is just as impressive. The Intel Core Ultra 9 Series 3 processor, 32GB of memory and fast 1TB SSD make everyday use effortless, but there is enough power here for more demanding work as well. Photo editing is quick, 4K HDR video runs smoothly and heavy multitasking barely seems to bother it.

The 5MP webcam is also far better than the usual laptop camera, the quad speakers are good for such a thin machine, and battery life is strong enough to get through most of a working day. Even the small 65W charger feels like HP has actually considered what it is like to travel with the thing.

But then we arrive at the price.

At $4,999, the OmniBook Ultra 14 is competing with powerful MacBook Pros, mobile workstations and gaming laptops with dedicated graphics. Those machines may be thicker and heavier, but some will deliver considerably more performance for the same money.

The OmniBook also has only USB-C Thunderbolt ports, so anyone using HDMI, memory cards or ordinary USB accessories will need adapters. The trackpad is large and smooth, but its clicking does not always feel as predictable as it should. And despite all the noise around its 50 TOPS NPU, the AI features are not yet a convincing reason to spend this much money.

This is not a value purchase. It is a luxury purchase.

You are paying for a Windows laptop that is fast, beautifully built, exceptionally portable and genuinely pleasant to use. You could buy something cheaper that does most of the same things, just as you could buy a Casio that tells the same time as a Rolex. That is not really the point.

The HP OmniBook Ultra 14 is the most premium Windows laptop I have used, and one of the few that feels special enough to justify at least some of its enormous price. I thoroughly enjoyed using it and would happily carry it every day.

I would just prefer someone else to pay for it.

Check out the HP OmniBook Ultra 14 here.