HP OmniBook 5 Puts an OLED Screen at $699, and Reviewers Say the Processor Is the Catch

A good screen is always welcome, but the OmniBook 5 spends the budget on the screen and, by reviewers’ account, leaves the processor behind.

HP launched the 14-inch OmniBook 5 at $699.99: a Snapdragon X Plus processor, 16 GB of RAM, 512 GB of storage and an OLED display, which almost no laptop at this price has. It has twice the RAM and storage of Apple’s $599 MacBook Neo. Reviews flag mediocre speakers, a weak trackpad and a processor that feels slow on heavy tasks.

The screen matters because it is what you look at the most on any computer, whatever the category. That is a real argument, and it is the best thing about this machine. But the processor does not keep up, and I should be clear about where that comes from: the “slow processor” is the verdict of user and critic reviews, not something I measured. I have not used this laptop. If those reviews are right, you are paying for a screen and living with the slow part, which is a trade you should make knowingly.

On paper the HP beats the MacBook Neo, with double the RAM and storage for $100 more. I will not tell you whether the paper survives daily use.

About the processor being ARM: the choice of operating system belongs to the user, so I will not get into that fight. ARM is progress, whether we like it or not, and it is coming little by little. The previous approach does not let us squeeze the most out of our machines.

Read the reviews, check the trackpad and speakers, and decide whether the OLED is worth the rest. The sources are linked below.