At the heart of the machine is AMD’s Ryzen AI 9 HX 375, a 12-core processor that is essentially the top of the line in mobile when it comes to the company’s 2024 “Strix Point” generation of chips. For raw multi-tasking power it blows most laptops this size out of the water, with graphical capabilities that also enable 3D development, video editing and gaming. Plus, I’ve been getting close to 13 hours of battery for browsing and work tasks, which is great.
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But in case you hadn’t guessed it from the chip’s name, a big focus of the latest Ryzen silicon is AI processing, with the neural cores here capable of more than 85 trillion operations per second; more than double the requirement to get the laptop certified by Microsoft as a Copilot+ PC. But I’m not convinced too many workers will see the benefit.
AI why
HP has come up with a fancy new ribbon logo spelling the letters “AI” to put on its neural-powered PCs, but the extremely vague tagline on the box (“powered by AI experiences”) might indicate that it’s just as unsure about the specific benefits as I am.
The Omnibook comes with an app called HP AI Assistant installed, but it doesn’t offer much besides a ChatGPT style interface that can tell you about the laptop and summarise documents. It also needs to be connected to the internet to work, which defeats the purpose of local NPU power. Since this is a Copilot+ PC there’s also a dedicated Copilot button to open the Copilot app. But this again merely opens a chat window, this time with Microsoft’s GPT-like assistant. To be clear, any PC with access to a web browser can access assistants like these.
CoPilot+ PCs do have some unique tools that leverage local AI power, such as system-wide live captions and translations, webcam effects, AI filters in Photos and a pretty wild generative scribble interpreter in Paint.
Microsoft’s Cocreator works to turn a very carefully-made blob into AI art, but that’s all it does.
Having a Copilot+ PC with a powerful x86 architecture is theoretically the best of both worlds, since you can enjoy AI creation and long battery life while still having native access to all Windows programs and games. But the fact is Microsoft’s suite of AI tools hasn’t really expanded or proven itself as a productivity bonus since it was first introduced.
People whose workflows require or benefit from dedicated AI silicon will notice a boost here, and that includes people building or running their own smaller-scale language models or editors who use AI processes in video or photo work. But the vast majority of people aren’t doing local AI work, despite how hard the industry is pushing the idea.
How the OmniBook stacks up
My favourite laptop in this form factor is the Framework Laptop 13. I like that it’s user repairable and upgradable, that it has no software bloat and that you can choose to kit it out with any ports you like. But pre-built and specced as closely to the Omnibook as possible it would cost you quite a bit more.
You can get a very nice Framework Laptop 13 (left) pre-built for under $2300, but it’s not going to be as powerful as the HP, which is also slightly larger.Credit: Tim Biggs
The beefiest AMD chip currently available on Framework is the Ryzen 7 7840U, which is a full year older than the AI 9 HX 375 in the Omnibook and so is comparable in some tasks but falls behind in 3D and is nowhere close in AI. Add 32GB of RAM and a 1TB and you’re looking at around $2400. You can preorder a Framework 13 with the AI 9 HX 375 for later this year, but at the same spec as the $2300 HP you’d be looking at around $3700, which is not at all competitive.
You could go for other AI-forward Copilot+ PCs including the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x or the Microsoft Surface Laptop, which to my taste are also prettier machines, but they do run ARM-based processors. Speccing them with 32GB of RAM will get the Lenovo around the same price as the HP, but will place the Surface quite a bit higher. The Yoga is also available in a non-Copilot+ variant with an Intel chip for around $2000, as the Slim 7i, which might be a great alternative if you don’t mind losing some performance and features.
Then of course you have to consider Apple’s devices, assuming you’re not in a work setting that requires Windows. At its most powerful the MacBook Air with M3 chip, 24GB of unified memory and 1TB of storage is $2699. In benchmarks the standard M3 can’t hold up to the multi-core performance, gaming speeds or graphical power of the Ryzen, though you will get a longer battery life from the Mac. Apple’s AI suite is not really any better than Microsoft’s, but MacOS in general has a lot going for it when it comes to creative work.
All this is to say that, at $2300, the HP OmniBook Ultra may be the Windows laptop to beat when it comes to a blend of power, features and portability. Its focus on AI credentials won’t make sense for most, but its graphical capabilities and traditional x86 processor let you try the specific benefits of the Copilot+ PC without many associated limitations.
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