The HP Omen Transcend aims to be a part of a new generation of gaming laptops that are beautiful, powerful, and affordable. Can it meet those lofty goals?
Powerful gaming laptops can be expensive. If you want specs that can tackle the latest games like Helldivers 2 or Dragon’s Dogma 2 you might expect to have to lay down thousands for the privilege. The HP Omen Transcend aims to provide a powerful gaming laptop that balances performance with affordability.
Key specs
- CPU: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H
- RAM: 16 GB LPDDR5-7467
- GPU: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060
- Display: 14-inch 2.8k 2880×1800 120Hz HDR OLED
- Storage: 1TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD
- Operating System: Windows 11 Home
- Weight: 1.6Kg
- Connectivity: 1x Thunderbolt 4 / USB Type-C 40Gbps with USB Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4, 1x USB Type-C 10Gbps with USB Power Delivery and DisplayPort 1.4, 2x USB Type-A 10Gbps, 1x HDMI 2.1, 1x combo headphone jack
- Price: $1360 / £1699
Design
The version of the HP Omen Transcend 14 we received for review was in a stark white, giving it a sleek and modern look, which combined with its aluminum chassis and solid screen hinge gives it a feeling of good build quality. It’s surprisingly thin and light for something that feels so solid, though not quite as airy feeling as the Asus Zephyrus G14.
However, after just a week of use, the sleek white finish began to become marred with light scratches that ruined the matte white appearance.
The screen is beautiful. It’s an OLED display with a 2800 x 1800 resolution and a 120Hz refresh rate. As a result, it looks incredibly crisp and clear, which is remarkable on a laptop as small as this one. There’s also very little glare, making it great to play or work on even in a room with a lot of bright sunlight.
It is only when we take a look at the keyboard that problems start to emerge. At first glance, it looks nice. The keycaps feel pleasant to touch, with an indent inspired by the HyperX ‘pudding cup’ keycaps. The lighting is quite pleasant and vivid, illuminating the keys perfectly. One particularly nice touch is how the WASD keys are highlighted in a different color. It lacks the customizable per-key lighting of many other gaming laptops, however.
The power button is located on the top right in line with the rest of the keyboard keys. It sits right next to the backspace button, making it far too easy to accidentally hit the power button when you’re trying to delete something. The keys also feel oddly mushy, lacking the crisp snap of a high-quality mechanical board. I’m also not a fan of the arrangement of the up-down-left-right keys either, but that is a relatively minor complaint.
Another concern on the design front is that the HP Omen Transcend solely uses USB-C for charging. USB-C ports can be fragile when compared to standard power barrel jacks, this also means a USB-C port is taken out of use when playing games.
Software
The HP Omen Transcend comes with Windows 11 Home, but also with a whole bunch of unnecessary bloatware loaded on top of it. The pre-installed version of McAffee was bad enough, but HP has seen fit to also stuff in apps like the ‘HP Support Assistant’. These don’t seem to have any useful features beyond nagging you to pay for more things like VPNs, and telling you things you are already aware of.
Thankfully most of it is fairly easy to remove, though the process of doing so is tedious.
Performance
The HP Omen Transcend 14 has some fairly impressive specs packed into a fairly small form factor. As a result, it does a pretty good job of running most games. The lovely OLED screen makes a big difference here, allowing the RTX 4060 GPU to shine.
I tested a few games on the HP Omen Transcend, from Last Epoch to Persona 3 Reload and Cyberpunk 2077, and didn’t encounter any problems to speak of. The HP Omen Transcend being equipped with the RTX 4060 means it can take advantage of DLSS 3, which makes a big difference in the level of performance.
I also ran a few benchmarks to see just how well the laptop performed under pressure and compared the results to some other laptops we reviewed in the past.
Synthetic benchmarks
The HP Omen Transcend 14 was surprisingly disappointing in these tests. This could potentially be down to power throttling issues. Oddly, it wasn’t even able to match its older sibling, the HP Omen 16.
Gaming Benchmarks
Again, the performance is a little lacking for a PC equipped with a laptop RTX 4060. This could potentially be due to the Core Ultra CPU, this new generation of CPUs has yet to be fully optimized, or could be power throttling. It is possible that a future driver or firmware update could improve these results even further.
Thermals and battery
Even when running under heavy gaming load or benchmarking tests, the laptop remains impressively cool. I didn’t feel the laptop get hot at all during testing. The fans were also blessedly quiet, only kicking in when loading a demanding application or game like Cyberpunk 2077.
The battery is a source of mild concern. If engaging in basic productivity tasks like word processing or research on the web, it can last for a comfortable five hours on a balanced power mode. Unfortunately, when used for gaming, it could only last for just over an hour before it got to a critical level of power and needed to be plugged in.
Arguably, gaming laptops are rarely far away from a power outlet, but considering how portable the HP Omen Transcend is, a longer-lasting battery seems like a good feature.
Should you buy it?
The HP Omen Transcend 14 falls just short of true excellence. It has some nice features, but the lackluster keyboard and disappointing gaming performance means it doesn’t quite manage to stand on the same level as other devices like the Asus ROG Zephyrus 14 or Razer Blade 14.
That said, it remains a solid option that is more affordable than the competition, particularly if you need something portable and lightweight.
Verdict: 4/5
The HP Omen Transcend 14 great little lightweight machine that offers some very decent features like the OLED screen. It is not quite as premium as some other options on the market and it does show some compromises. However, with a great screen and some decent hardware under the hood, it remains a good choice for the price.
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