HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Ultrabook brilliance

OmniBook – it's not exactly the most exciting name for what is meant to be one of HP's very best laptops. But it describes the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip pretty well.

This is a "do anything" laptop par excellence. It's super-portable, has a mega-long-lasting battery, a hybrid design, supports a stylus, and can even play games reasonably well.

Because we are in a timeline starring global warming and Donald Trump, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip is, of course, not perfect. Its cost is going to put off a whole swathe of folks.

Some may want a deeper-dish keyboard and there's a bit of screen wobble if you type too hard on anything but the firmest surface. But these are minor notes on what is a hugely multi-talented laptop.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip: Price & Availability

The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip was first shown off in September 2024, as one of the first laptops to use Intel’s second-generation Ultra-series CPUs.

There are three key models: the range starts with an Intel Ultra 5 CPU, 512GB storage and 16GB RAM at £1699 or $1,449.99. Another £100 or $100 bumps you up to an Ultra 7 processor and 1TB of storage.

The top dog, our review model, costs £1899 / $1,599.99 / AU$3,699 and has 2TB storage and 32GB RAM. Shop around because, at the time of review, HP’s own store actually lists the lower two spec models at the same price.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Design

The OmniBook HP family has been around since the 90s. But there's a good chance almost none of you have actually used one. It gave us the first laptop with Windows pre-installed, way back when. But it has only recently come back into the spotlight, thanks to the arrival of AI-driven chipsets that also let a laptop last an awfully long time between charges.

Despite that sense of revolution in the air, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip is a pretty no-nonsense design at first glance. It's slim, it's light, and it's not too loud – visually speaking. The only elements that come close to HP showing off are the diagonal cut-outs to the casing where the screen meets the top of the keyboard.

It’s roughly based on the old Spectre x360 line but has a more chilled-out air to it. The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip is a lovely-looking PC that seems serious enough for business, but doesn't scream "put Excel in me" like HP's executive EliteBook line.

The casing is all-metal, predominantly recycled aluminium, and the screen has a Gorilla Glass 5 top layer. There's not a hint of compromise here – the panels are stiff as they come.

The only mild design annoyance is the slight micro-wobble caused by the 360-degree display hinge. The vibration of typing can cause screen reflections to jump around. It may be worth considering if you'll work somewhere with a lot of harsh strip lighting. At home? I didn’t really notice it.

There are plenty of travel benefits to the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip hinge, though. It lets you prop the laptop up in cramped spaces, to perhaps use a Bluetooth keyboard instead of the one on the laptop itself.

All the metal and the hybrid design mean HP doesn't push the boundaries of thinness and lightness. But at 1.34kg and 1.5cm thickness, we're still looking at a super-portable PC. I'd advise getting a slip cover at least, as the lovely finish does pick up scuffs easily (ones that wipe away, mind, for now.)

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Screen

Discussing screens in higher-end laptops has become pretty boring of late, but only because they're all so darn good. The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip has a 14-inch OLED screen of 1800p resolution. It's sharp enough for that clean "Retina" style look, contrast is unbeatable, and the image really pops off the screen.

I've tested this one using a special calibrator tool, and it says the laptop's colour accuracy is truly exceptional too. These tones are both super-rich yet "real". The default mode will likely seem a lot punchier than whatever you use right now, but there are nine preinstalled modes in the Settings menu to let you take the edge off.

As with all these (many) recent OLED laptops, though, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip isn't incredibly bright. It can reach 375 nits with normal content, just below the 400-nit claim. This is bright enough for use outdoors, but not close to the 1000 nits the latest MacBook Pro models can use when displaying normal content on a sunny day.

It supports a pressure-sensitive stylus too, linking nicely with the hybrid design. This makes the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip a viable laptop for design work.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Keyboard & touchpad

Underlining the sense that HP wanted to make the OmniBook Ultra a quality laptop throughout, the keyboard and touchpad here both feel like luxury items. The keyboard is super-fast to type on, and the key depress combines a well-defined actuation click with a meaty resistance as the action bottoms out.

I personally wish the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip keyboard was at least a little deeper, but the key feel does have noticeably more substance to it than the MacBook Air I use daily. As long as you aren't entirely averse to slimline keys, you'll likely get on famously with this keyboard.

The touchpad is, in most respects, also top of the game. This is a haptic pad, the kind that uses a motor to create that classic touchpad click, rather than a mechanical clicker.

I've often been wary of these since Windows laptop makers started experimenting with them a few years ago, but this one's a doozy. Its click feel can become downright aggressive if you want (early models were often far too timid) and the default setting is just about right.

The only issue is that it can feel sleepy when coming out of standby, not quite reacting to every click. I also recommend ditching the zoned left and right click gestures here too. Thanks to the sheer size of the pad, it's quite easy to accidentally set off a right click when you don't mean to. But after a 15-second trip to Windows’s Settings menu, you’re all good.

The pad surface is excellent too. As well as being big, this is a smooth piece of textured glass. No plastic impersonation here.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Performance

There are a few different flavours of HP OmniBook Ultra Flip. The most important bit to note is you can get the laptop with an AMD processor but in a non-360-degree guise. Don’t get confused on this one. They’re effectively totally different laptops.

Specs scale from an Intel Ultra 5 with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD to this review PC, with an Ultra 7 chipset, 32GB RAM and a 2TB SSD. But you're not getting fleeced when you upgrade here, folks, as it's fairly good value.

But is this Intel Ultra series any good? It might be some of the best laptop hardware around, as long as you embrace the whole "omni" thing as I am, anyway. You see, the Intel Ultra 7 doesn't bring truly killer raw CPU performance. It's actually often lower than that of the previous generation Intel Ultra 7 in tests, and markedly below chipsets like the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite or the AMD Ryzen AI 9 365 – the latter which a cheaper (thicker, heavier, non-folding) version of this laptop uses.

We don't advise coming to the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip with too many expectations of its AI features. Sure, it has a Windows CoPilot button on the keyboard that brings up the AI assistant but, at the time of review, the tentpole Recall search feature still hasn't launched. CoPilot just feels like another virtual assistant – which is hardly a rarity.

One question you need to ask yourself before buying an HP OmniBook Ultra Flip: does that matter? What you get in return is rather solid gaming and graphics performance, as well as top battery efficiency. More on that in a minute.

You should not buy an HP OmniBook Ultra Flip as a gaming PC. But you might be surprised to hear it hit 66fps in one of my Cyberpunk 2077 gaming tests. Sure, this is playing it at 900p resolution with fairly low graphics settings. But it still looks pretty good, and there's scope to make it much sharper if you play around.

Capped at 40fps, with the graphics at Full HD, you can have a great time with Cyberpunk 2077. And the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip doesn't even have to max out its GPU to get there. This all works just as well on battery as it does plugged in, and thanks to the marvel of these new processors, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip can last a reasonable time doing so as well.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Battery life & features

The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip's respectable 68Wh battery lasts for dead on 13 hours of YouTube streaming before the laptop shuts down. That's at moderate screen brightness, suggesting HP's own estimate of 16 hours and 15 minutes is ambitious but not pure fantasy.

It's a solid result, although not the best we've seen from either these Intel Ultra 2 laptops, or the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite crowd. A couple of extra hours is feasible.

We saw the same sort of result in a Cyberpunk 2077 gaming test: 30 minutes of going all out, on the laptop's Performance power mode, saw it lose 28% charge, suggesting runtime of a little under 110 minutes.

It's less than what we saw from the Asus Zenbook S14 OLED, although that's also an indication of how hard the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip is allowed to rev while gaming. It barely makes any noise while doing so, too. There is a fan inside, but it never seems to make more than a polite whirr and doesn't engage at all with general work and pootling around.

You can drown out the fan with the speakers, no problem. The HP OmniBook Ultra Flip has four speaker drivers, so more than most, in an array that no doubt helps it conjure a good sense of bass and mid-range bulk for laptop speakers. Bass punch isn't close to the best of Apple's MacBook Pro range, mind, and more complicated music can sound a bit muddled. But it's a decent performance all-round.

HP has gone beyond the basics with the webcam too. The OmniBook Ultra Flip has a 9MP webcam miles better than the current 1080p norm. Sure, your phone may well still have a better front camera, but I was impressed by how well the image holds up (with the help of smart noise reduction, no doubt) in rooms with barely any more light than that provided by the laptop's screen. It’s a cracker by laptop standards.

This is also an IR camera, used to enable some baked-in privacy extras like turning the screen off when you move away from the PC. I found this more annoying than useful, but it does work.

Finishing up, the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip has a weird approach to connectors borrowed from the HP Spectre x360 laptop (its dear old pa). Only one of the three USB-C connectors is actually placed directly on the side of the laptop. The other two sit on the 45-degree cut-out corners.

The positive take is this provides a neater way to handle power cable management, given you can't put a connector on the back of a 360-degree hybrid. But it also means there's not all that much clearance from the lid if you need to plug in something extra chunky. A short adapter cable is an option, of course. Personally? I’m not fussed.

Two of these connectors are super-fast Thunderbolt 3 USBs, the other a basic 10Gbps port. There are no other slots beyond the 3.5mm headphone slot on the left side. You may therefore need to get a dock of some description.

HP OmniBook Ultra Flip review: Verdict

There's not much to complain about in the HP OmniBook Ultra Flip, beyond its asking price. The design, the screen, the versatility and the sheer quality of the keyboard/touchpad inputs all shine. You have to go digging to find much wrong here!

As with other second-generation Intel Ultra chipset PCs, the raw CPU performance is not too impressive on paper. But, for most people, that will be amply repaid by the battery life, graphics power, efficiency and low noise.

You can find other Intel or Snapdragon PCs that last a bit longer, or are a bit thinner or lighter. But, true to its OmniBook name, the Ultra Flip can simply do more than just about any direct rival right now. But, still, you’d better get saving...

Also consider

At the time of review, there aren't loads of laptops with second-gen Intel Ultra processors available. The Asus Zenbook S14 OLED is the key alternative. It's great, and significantly cheaper than this HP. But it's also not a hybrid, and does not support a stylus. If you want similar substance for less money, though, check it out.

There's also the latest Dell XPS 13, with the same generation of CPU. It manages to cost even more when specced up to the same level as this HP though. It is even smaller and lighter though, in part thanks to a smaller 13.4-inch screen, weighing 1.22kg. Not that it'll be around for long: Dell has killed its XPS brand for 2025.