I tried HP’s Omen Transcend 14, and this gaming laptop offers the best of both worlds | Technology News
I constantly juggle between a gaming laptop and a MacBook for a very specific reason. A gaming laptop lets me play high-fidelity video games, and the MacBook Air offers portability and battery life, especially while travelling. When HP wanted me to review their latest Omen Transcend 14, I was more than happy, as, on paper, it felt like a perfect device that could do the job of two machines for the cost of one.
The HP Omen Transcend 14 is the latest addition to HP’s gaming laptop portfolio, which is also touted as a creator’s laptop. When I started testing this machine, I had two questions in mind: Can this machine handle gaming and still deliver stellar battery life and portability when needed? Here is what I found out after using this machine for a few days as my computing machine.
Practical, Premium, and compact
The laptop offers a premium build and a slim form factor (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
I have almost zero things to complain about the HP Omen Transcend 14, especially on how it looks and feels. Just like a MacBook, it comes with a metal unibody design, and I personally enjoyed using the black variant, although it was a bit of a smudge magnet. It looks stealthy and like a business laptop when the keyboard backlight is turned off or in white mode, and when RGB lighting is enabled, it looks like the perfect compact gaming machine.
The well-spaced-out keys and the bright RGB lighting make it look like a gaming machine that throws a disco party. However, it has a four-zone lighting system and misses out on per-key customization.
I hate the fact that my gaming laptop throws hot air at my hand, even when I am not gaming, and this isn’t an issue on the HP Omen Transcend 14, as the outlet vents are on the back along with a USB-C port for charging and a full-sized HDMI port. This also means the keyboard area also remains cool, even during extended gameplay.
A display that’s suited for gaming and content creation
The OLED screen is bright, and vibrant, and offers a faster refresh rate (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
Another excellent aspect of the HP Omen Transcend 14 is its fast high-resolution (2.8K) OLED screen, which covers all aspects. If I had to nitpick, I would have preferred to see touch input. Not just that, this is also one of the few laptops to have IMAX Enhanced certification. The display on the Transcend 14 put the MacBook Pro’s (review) display to shame with its higher peak brightness, excellent contrast ratio, and fast 120Hz refresh rate.
In fact, most gaming laptops offer a max peak brightness of just 250 nits, which makes them unusable even in slightly bright conditions, and become completely unusable under direct sunlight. However, the HP Transcend 14 with its bright (500 nits) display, you can use it under any lighting condition. I got the full sense of this display while watching Mammootty’s Bramayugam, a horror movie shot in black-and-white format. I was also able to grasp the full-color gamut of this display while I was playing Far Cry 6, more on that in the performance section.
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A gaming laptop with two GPUs and an AI processor
This laptop has two graphics cards (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
The HP Omen Transcend 14 is touted as the world’s lightest 14-inch gaming laptop, and it is also one of the first gaming laptops powered by an AI processor — Intel Core Ultra 7 155H, while it isn’t the most powerful gaming CPU, it does get the job done and comes with the Intel Arc graphics, which can handle most AAA titles at 1080p 30fps. On top of that, it has an 8 GB NVIDIA RTX 4060 laptop GPU.
This is also the company’s first HP laptop, which has been tuned for HyperX accessories. On Geekbench 6, the laptop posted 2315 points on the single-core CPU test, and 12955 points on the multi-core CPU test. Similarly, while gaming, on Far Cry 6, the laptop offered 75fps at 1080p on RTX 4060, and 31fps while running Far Cry 6 on Arc graphics. This machine can handle most games without any issue, even with the integrated graphics, and I could hear the fans spinning only while gaming.
Almost all-day battery
One can enhance battery life by disabling the dedicated NVIDIA graphics card (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
The HP Omen Transcend 14, hands down has offered me the best battery life that I have ever seen on a gaming laptop. Even with over 20 Chrome tabs open while streaming video and a bit of photo editing, the laptop has delivered me over 6 hours of battery life almost every day. Not just that, it also has an option to disable the external graphics, which will add a few more hours of battery life.
It comes with a 120W USB-C charger with support for USB-PD, and do note that you need to use the port at the back and not the ones on the side to fast charge, as the ports on the side do support full 120W power input. I was able to travel to an outstation and work my way through at the airport for a couple of hours, and when I came back later in the evening, I was still left with some 20 per cent of the battery.
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Verdict: A gaming laptop with a dual purpose
A laptop that can do a lot more than gaming (Image credit: Vivek Umashankar/The Indian Express)
There aren’t many laptops in the market that are as versatile as the HP Omen Transcend 14, as this is a laptop that combines two distinctive characters into one. If you are looking for just a gaming laptop or a thin-and-light notebook, you are better off with something else. However, if you want a laptop that can do both, I believe there is nothing better than the HP Omen Transcend 14.
