In the gaming laptop market, names like ROG, Legion, Razer, and Predator are often the first brands that come to mind, especially in the Philippines. There’s a good reason for that too.
The laptops these brands offer the best performance and have a great form factor. In addition, the brands have built a great reputation over the following years with gamers and users alike. The only problem is that these gaming laptops tend to be expensive. Very expensive to be exact.
But what about HP? HP does have a gaming division too with the Omen series, but they’re not talked about as much. Well, as the name of this review implies, we’re checking out the new HP Omen Transcend 14 to answer the question of why that’s the case. More importantly, whether or not you should consider this laptop.
Design and Construction
When it comes to the styling of the Omen Transcend 14, HP has leveled up in the aesthetic department. There’s no question it looks good, even in the white colorway our unit is in. Black is also available if you want something more sleek and sedate.
Rather than go wild with the design as with most gaming laptops, HP kept it very clean on the Omen Transcend 14. You have a simple lid with the Omen logo at the center. No overly accentuated vents or design cues here. In fact, the vent is a solid line at the back finished in black to hide it.
With the white body, you might expect this laptop to be made mostly of plastic. However, that’s not the case. The chassis is all-metal, which lends to it feeling solid and high-end. Despite the all-metal build, the laptop is quite lightweight for its size. More importantly, it’s still very portable and easy to bring around.
Specifically, it only measures 1.79cm thick and weighs only 3.6 pounds. Best of all, you can still open the lid with one hand without the laptop having any issues. I know there are slimmer and lighter laptops on the market, but you have to remember that this is a gaming laptop.
Mind you, gaming laptops, even the 14-inch models are relatively bulky and heavy due to all the components fitted onto them. But for reference, one of the few gaming laptops that are as thin as the Omen Transcend 14 is the new Asus Zephyrus G14 (1.63cm thick and 3.31 lbs).
As for the ports, you do have a few at your disposal. On the right side, you have two USB-A ports, while on the left side, there’s a USB-C port and a 3.5mm audio port. At the back, you have a full-size HDMI port and another USB-C port.
However, the USB-C port on the back effectively acts as a charging port. It’s more than enough for an external mouse and keyboard, but I’d still recommend picking up a USB hub if you’ll be using multiple USB devices.
Once you open the lid of the Omen Transcend 14, you’re greeted by the gorgeous 14-inch OLED display, which we’ll discuss later. The keyboard isn’t a full-size, but that’s to be expected. It’s something I personally prefer too since a full-size keyboard on a laptop often feels too cramped to type with.
The keycaps feel nice to the touch, and more importantly, they’re very responsive. They also don’t feel hard on my fingers as I got a lot of writing done during my with this laptop. In the styling department, they have translucent edges in addition to the lettering to help with the RGB lighting.
I’m not too fond of the design of the keycaps though, since they don’t exactly feel the most high-end, but what do you think? One thing is for sure, the RGB helps with the gamer vibe.
Upon checking the settings, you can change the colors for four different zones only.
You can’t light up each key a different color or have it constantly change colors as with other gaming laptops (sorry RGB gamers). Still, style is mostly subjective after all. I’m sure some of you wouldn’t mind the design of the keycaps at all.
Moving on we have to talk about the trackpad. Gaming laptops don’t usually have the best trackpads from my experience. After all, you’ll probably use a mouse or controller when playing games. But surprisingly, the one on the Omen Transcend 14 is quite decent.
The centered position of the trackpad makes it quite ergonomic to use when you don’t want to bring out your mouse. It’s also quite tactile, and even if you have sweaty hands (or fingers), the trackpad easily registers the movement.
Display and Multimedia
Moving on to the display, the HP Omen Transcend 14 comes with a 14-inch screen as the name suggests. Unlike other gaming laptops, this one uses an OLED panel and has a large 2,880 x 1,800 pixel resolution with 16:10 resolution. The refresh rate isn’t as high as others, but it is decent at 120Hz.
With that, this laptop is great for day-to-day use, gaming, and even creators alike. The OLED panel features vibrant colors and deep blacks, which makes it great for binge watch series. I certainly did so during my time with this laptop.
One thing I do have to mention is that the panel isn’t that bright. For laptops, it’s not bad, but it is maxed out at 400 nits, which did make it hard to use on a sunny day out on the race track. Even in the paddock, we experienced some glare and reflections on the screen with the sun out.
There was no issue with the display at home or the YugaTech HQ though. In terms of color accuracy, the screen is quite accurate out of the box. I edited some photos for various reviews and photos, and they came out great when I checked them on my phone for reference. It wasn’t the most accurate as compared to my monitor at home, but it’s decent for something out of the box.
While there is a built-in 1080P webcam, it’s nothing to write home about. At least it’s better than the usual 720P cameras that you’re used to seeing on gaming laptops. Still, it’s decent for zoom calls or Discord sessions with the cam on.
When you’re listening to music or movies, you have a dual speaker setup to work with. They’re loud and the sound stage is great when you’re sitting in front of the laptop. Unfortunately, they lack bass and treble, but the mids are nice. More importantly, they can be loud when you need them to be. Overall, I would still recommend using a pair of headphones or earphones when listening to music or even playing games.
Performance and Benchmarks
Our unit of the HP Omen Transcend 14 is arguably the top-spec variant available. It comes with an Intel Core Ultra 9 chipset, 32GB of RAM, an NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU, and 1TB of fast SSD storage.
I initially expected this system to run the latest Intel i9 processor but was surprised to find that HP used the Core Ultra 9 chipset instead. On paper, there doesn’t seem to be that big of a difference in terms of performance, and even from my experience, this laptop could handle almost everything I throw at it.
Doing everyday productivity tasks was no issue for the Omen Transcend 14, and even if I ran multiple apps I did not experience any lag. I could run Lightroom and Photoshop at the same time and still have fast export times. It was a similar experience when editing videos on Premiere, but the export time on Premiere wasn’t as fast as I expected when it came to 4K videos.
But perhaps the more important question is how it performs when playing games. As expected, it ran Genshin Impact and ZZZ on max graphics without any issues. It’s a similar story when playing more graphic-intensive titles. I mainly played Tekken 8 on this laptop with all the graphic options maxed out.
While playing, I did experience the occasional FPS drop and lag when going between the menus. Thankfully, there weren’t any during the fights, but still, I expected it to perform well in all aspects. Thankfully, the fans aren’t that loud even they are running at max power. More importantly, the laptop did not feel that hot, which is amazing considering how thin it is.
The performance benchmarks tell a great story about the laptop too, and you can check them out below.
Battery and Connectivity
So far the HP Omen Transcend 14 has been a great gaming 14-inch laptop, but the one part where it disappoints is the battery. It packs a 6-cell 71Wh lithium-ion battery pack, which according to HP lasts up to 8 hours and 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Even when I wasn’t playing games and only getting work done, it drained quite fast. I only managed to get around 5 hours of battery life. For reference, I was only using Chrome, Spotify, and Lightroom, and the RGB lights on the keyboard were even turned off.
When you’re gaming, it drains even faster. After just 1 hour of playing Genshin Impact in performance mode, I only had around 60 percent battery life left. I also noticed that below 40 percent, gameplay already starts to suffer.
I know gaming laptops don’t have the longest battery life, but I was expecting more given HP’s claim. Still, it’s not bad considering the other gaming laptops I’ve tried this year. Thankfully, it recharges really fast using the provided power brick.
For connectivity, you have Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4, giving you stable and fast connections when gaming.
Conclusion
I had my doubts about the HP Omen Transcend 14 at first given my previous experience with HP gaming laptops. But with this new model, the brand has definitely stepped up its game. It’s not perfect, far from it to be exact, but it’s definitely an improvement in a lot of aspects. In fact, I am considering getting one as a replacement for my dying 9-year old laptop.
But there’s just one problem with the Omen Transcend 14 – the price. Depending on where you order it, it could start at around PHP 124,450 (Datablitz SRP) and go up to PHP 131,990 (PCX SRP), which is a lot of money.
Granted gaming laptops are very expensive to begin with, but at that price, you already have a lot of alternatives. You could even get some brand-new 16-inch models with the same GPU or the new MacBook Pro with the M4 Pro Chip (if you’re looking at something more focused on the content creation side of things) at that price point.
Still, if you have the budget, you can’t go wrong with the Omen Transcend 14. It can handle most that you throw at it. Work and play in one package. You just need to pay to play for this one though. But what do you think of the HP Omen Transcend 14? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
What we liked:
* Beautiful OLED panel on a gaming laptop
* Good performance
* Nice clean design
What we didn’t like:
* Price is expensive
* Battery life could be better
HP Omen Transcend 14 specs:
14-inch 2.8K HDR OLED Display, 16:10 (2880 x 1800) 100% DCI-P3, 120Hz refresh rate
Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor 185H (24M Cache, up to 5.40 GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU (8GB GDDR6)
Up to 32GB LPDDR5-7467 MHz RAM
Up to 2TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD
1080P FHD webcam
Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be)
Bluetooth 5.4
3.5mm Combo Audio Jack
HDMI 2.1
2x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A
USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C, DisplayPort, Power Delivery
USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4, DisplayPort, Power Delivery
Backlit RGB Keyboard with translucent keycaps
Windows 11
71Wh battery, 140W USB-C Power Adapter
1.637 kg / 3.60 lbs (weight)
355 x 243 x 18 mm | 13.98″ x 9.57″ x 0.71″ (dimensions)
