HP OmniBook 5 OmniBook 5 14-he0020nr 14" Review

The HP OmniBook 5 14-he0020nr is a laptop built around a big question: can Qualcomm's new Copilot+ chip make Windows on Arm feel fast? At $700, it's priced to answer that. You get a 14-inch OLED screen, 16GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage in a package that scores well for being compact. But the numbers tell a clear story: this isn't a machine for heavy lifting. Its CPU and GPU performance land in the 23rd and 18th percentiles, respectively. That puts it squarely in the 'basic tasks' category, with gaming scoring an abysmal 11 out of 100.

Let's be direct about the performance. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X chip inside is aiming for efficiency, not raw power. A CPU percentile of 23 means it's slower than about three-quarters of the laptops we track. You'll be fine for web browsing, document editing, and streaming video, but don't expect to compile code or run complex simulations quickly. The GPU is even more limited, sitting at the 18th percentile. This thing is not for gaming or creative apps like video editing. The bright spot is the 14-inch OLED display, which hits the 68th percentile. Colors will pop, and watching movies will look great, which fits its decent 'entertainment' score of 47.8.

At $700, the value proposition is all about the screen and the form factor. You're paying for that nice OLED panel and a portable design. The performance hardware you get for that money, however, is underwhelming. The CPU and GPU percentiles are low enough that you're making a significant trade-off. If your budget is rigidly $700 and you prioritize media consumption and portability over speed, it has a case. But if you can stretch your budget, even a little, you'll find much faster Intel or AMD-based machines at similar prices.

Compared to its peers, the OmniBook 5 is in a weird spot. The Apple MacBook Pro with M4 is in a different league performance-wise, but also a different price bracket. A more direct competitor is something like an ASUS Zenbook with an Intel Core Ultra processor. You'd likely get a similar OLED screen, but with CPU performance in the 60th or 70th percentile instead of the 20s, for maybe a couple hundred dollars more. Even compared to gaming laptops like the MSI Vector or Gigabyte AORUS—which are overkill for this use case—it highlights the gap: those machines have GPUs in the 90th percentile. The OmniBook is for a very specific, lightweight user.

Here's the deal. The HP OmniBook 5 14-he0020nr is a niche product. If you absolutely must have a Windows laptop with an OLED screen under $800, and you only do very basic computing, it's an option. The display is genuinely good. But for almost anyone else, the performance numbers are a deal-breaker. A CPU in the 23rd percentile and a gaming score of 11/100 are hard data points you can't ignore. We can't recommend it for students needing reliability (27th percentile) or anyone doing more than the bare minimum. Look for a sale on a last-gen Intel or AMD ultrabook instead; you'll get more speed for your money.