The Omnibook X is a powerhouse. No matter what I threw at it — multiple browsers with dozens of tabs, incredibly large photo editing jobs and 4K movie editing — it never broke a sweat. I never encountered any slowdowns or other issues, it just felt like a very reliable workhorse. You shouldn’t expect anything less if you’re springing for Intel’s X9 chip and its integrated 32GB of RAM, which adds the price of another laptop ($1,030!) to the Omnibook X. That chip also requires a $90 upgrade for the 3K OLED screen.

I’ll dive deeper into the Omnibook X’s pricing options later in this review. For now, I can only review what’s in front of me. And reader, I can’t help but love it. The Omnibook X blew away every other PC we’ve seen this year in the PCMark 10 benchmark. It was only truly bested by the Omnibook Ultra, which has the same Intel chip, in Geekbench 6’s tests.

When it comes to gaming, the integrated Intel Arc B390 GPU averaged an impressive 81 fps in Cyberpunk 2077 while playing in 1080p with high graphics settings and Intel’s XeSS frame generation. It could only muster an average of 45 fps with the low ray tracing preset, but that’s still an impressive figure for something that isn’t a truly dedicated GPU from AMD or NVIDIA. Its 3DMark Wildlife Extreme score was far better than other Intel and AMD ultraportables, but I was surprised to see it bested by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 chip in the ASUS ZenBook A16.

The Omnibook X isn’t a gaming laptop, by any means, but its GPU could be useful for media rendering or offloading AI workloads. And it’s still decently capable for a bit of light gaming in 1080p. Arc Raiders and Overwatch 2, games that can scale well across a wide variety of hardware, were very playable on the Omnibook X.

And no matter what you’re doing on this computer, it all looks great on its 3K OLED screen. As is typical for OLEDs, it delivers excellent contrast and surprisingly high HDR highlights, along with very accurate color reproduction. If you care about visual fidelity and sharpness, it’s worth paying a bit more for the 3K OLED screen over the Omnibook X’s 2K OLED and LCD options.

As for the rest of its hardware, the Omnibook X’s 5-megapixel webcam was surprisingly sharp and colorful during Zoom calls. Its dual downward-firing speakers were adequate for YouTube videos and light music, but I’d love to see HP flex its hardware muscle a bit to include quad speaker arrays like we see on Dell and Apple’s premium notebooks. That’s really the only aspect of the Omnibook X that disappointed me a bit.

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

It’s clear HP paid far more attention to the Omnibook X’s keyboard and touchpad, both of which are excellent. The keyboard has a satisfying amount of travel, and it felt very natural to use, unlike the lattice-free design on Dell’s XPS 14 and 16. I breezed through typing this review on the Omnibook X without any complaint. Its smooth haptic touchpad was also a breath of fresh air after suffering through the XPS 13’s more archaic pad. Since the Omnibook’s touchpad is haptic, every part of it is clickable, and there aren’t any mechanical moving parts that can wear down over time.

In the PCMark 10 Modern Office battery benchmark, the Omnibook X lasted for 18 hours and 25 minutes, over an hour less than the Omnibook Ultra. That’s a far cry from the potential 29 hours of battery life HP touts, but it’s still more than enough to use the laptop for two workdays without a charge. And when you need to charge, the bundled compact 65W GaN charger can juice up the Omnibook to 50 percent in 45 minutes, according to HP. (In my testing, it took 46 minutes to reach 50 percent.)