HP OmniBook X AI PC – a brand revision gone mostly right

HP is not only getting in on the AI action with its brand-new laptop, but the HP OmniBook X AI PC represents another massive change for the HP brand - it's consolidating and rebranding to make for an easier consumer shopping experience and to reduce brand confusion.

With this comes both the OmniBook and EliteBook lines, which include all the previous versions of HP laptops but combined within two brands: OmniBook and EliteBook. Both are outfitted with Qualcomm's Snapdragon CPUs and NPU. The latter, in particular, complements each laptop's integrated AI processes.

HP OmniBook X AI PC: price and availability

The HP OmniBook X AI PC was revealed just before Computex 2024.

The HP OmniBook X AI PC will launch in the US through HP.com and Best Buy at a starting price of $1,199.99 (around £1,020 / AU$1,960) with 1TB storage and will begin shipping on June 18, 2024.

HP OmniBook X AI PC: specs

Here are the specs for the HP OmniBook X AI PC at a glance. 

HP OmniBook X AI PC: design

One of the most striking aspects of the HP OmniBook X AI PC is its sleek and gorgeous design. It's also lightweight and thin, two features always welcome in what's supposed to be an everyday portable machine. 

It comes in two colors, grey and white, with the latter much more distinctive. The 'OmniBook' label is on the back outside of the laptop, as well as under the keyboard, and opposing it is the new Helix logo representing the line (it's supposed to represent 'AI' and 'DNA').

Opening it reveals an equally gorgeous display and a keyboard filled with wide snappy keys perfect for larger or shaky hands. The touchpad is also sizable, which is a preference of mine as it makes navigation much easier. 

The webcam, standard fare in terms of resolution but greatly enhanced by HP's signature lighting tools, has a much more secure physical privacy shutter. It features a poly camera pro-control setting, which automatically transfers over any camera settings to other cameras you connect to the laptop. And the Poly Studio partnership that enhances the camera also adds more audio options.

HP OmniBook X AI PC: performance

I wasn't able to take the laptop for a true test run, due to the AI features not being available to try out during the hands-on. But, looking at the impressive specs, there's plenty of expectation for the HP OmniBook X AI PC to churn out some excellent benchmark results.

HP did give me some impressive stats that, if they turn out to be true, would put Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite on the map for the foreseeable future. This laptop promises 26-hour video battery life, 22-hour Netflix (or other streaming services) battery life, 20-hour web browsing, nine hours of Teams (or another video conferencing service), and 20 days of battery life keeping the laptop on Standby mode.

It also apparently beat out the M3 MacBook Air on the multithreaded performance benchmark, which would also mean a massive win over Apple when coupled with the battery life. And as for the NPU, I was told that it runs at 45 TOPs

There are tons of AI tools to further enhance the webcam image including spotlight, background blur for conference calls, auto-framing, filters, and camera setting transferring. 

There's also the HP AI Companion, a chatbot and hub of AI tools. When used, the data is uploaded to cloud storage first, downloaded again, and then deleted from the cloud to maintain privacy. It seems to be a separate entity from Microsoft Copilot, though I couldn't test it out and see for myself how well it worked.

HP OmniBook X AI PC: early verdict

Visually, the HP OmniBook X AI PC looks amazing, with a sleek and lovely lightweight design that's sure to appeal to many buyers investing in a productivity machine. Its display is beautiful, and the keyboard and touchpad are also well-crafted and feel responsive and snappy to use.

As for performance and AI, it's difficult to make any judgment calls as I wasn't able to properly benchmark for the former and couldn't test out the latter due to the tools not being available at this time. However, if both the specs and AI features hold up well during our proper review, then we'll have a well-balanced laptop that could easily be one of the best thin and light laptops on the market - even one of the best laptops period.