HP OmniBook Ultra Flip

A stylish 2-in-1 packed with the latest technology, and the local AI tool shows signs of promise, too

- TIM DANTON

PRICE As reviewed, £1,416 (£1,699 inc VAT) from hp.​com

Name a famous HP laptop brand. Tricky, isn't it? Dell has its XPS range, Lenovo the ThinkPad and Apple the MacBook Pro, but most people would struggle to name an HP laptop brand that exudes the same high-end class. The Pavilion is a solid budget range and I've seen plenty of attractive mid-range HP Envy laptops, but HP's top-end Spectre range never landed a killer punch.

And now it never will, for the OmniBook Ultra is here to replace it. But where the Spectre was pitched as a luxury consumer brand, the OmniBook Ultra takes aim at professional users. HP's OmniBook Ultra Flip is leading the charge, with a fresh design, striking angled corners (carried across from the Spectre family) and all the Al trimmings.

Every HP OmniBook will support Microsoft's Copilot+ PC update as they will include a CPU with a sufficiently powerful NPU. HP isn't fussed which one: the rather boring OmniBook X (see issue 362, p54) uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon SoC, the non-flipping OmniBook Ultra – not yet tested – a Ryzen AI 300 series, and this Ultra Flip one of Intel's Core Ultra 200V series.

Ultra difference

This makes the Ultra Flip only the third laptop I've tested to include a processor from Intel's Core Ultra 200V family; the Dell XPS 13 (see p51), which landed on my desk two weeks earlier, was the second, while Asus' excellent Zenbook S 14 (see issue 362, p46) was the first.

I tested an Ultra Flip with a Core Ultra 7 256V inside, which is identical to the Core Ultra 7 258V in the Dell XPS 13. The only reason that they have a different model number is memory support, with the 256V maxing out at 16GB and the 258V at 32GB. The Asus Zenbook S 14 I tested packed a Core Ultra 9 288V chip with 32GB of RAM.