HP OMEN Transcend 14 - Frustratingly Beautiful

I always feel a bit of a fraud when it comes to testing gaming laptops. I'm not really much of a gamer and I'm pretty easily satisfied when it comes to fancy graphics.

However, I do do a lot of audio production and a reasonable amount of video editing; tasks that are also greatly enhanced with a bit of extra RAM and processing power.

So I was pretty excited to get my hands on the latest powerhouse from HP.

I was even more excited to extract my review OMEN Transcend 14 gaming laptop from its box and discover it was a Ceramic White colour - all very funky and modern-looking to match its somewhat chunky design and sci-fi-looking O14 logos. (Also available in Shadow Black)

That tingle of tech-anticipation only intensified as I powered it up and was immediately presented with a rainbow-lit RGB keyboard - fully customisable, of course.

But the real star of the show here is the display, a sumptuous 14-inch OLED panel powered by a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 GPU.

This screen really is a thing of beauty and when you use the pre-installed OMEN Gaming Hub app to wind everything up for maximum performance, classy games like Forza and Gotham Knights look like you're watching a movie. The light, shade and 3D-textured surfaces aren't just clear, they have a genuine depth to them other LCD displays can't compete with.

The 16:10 aspect ratio is that nice compromise between the more productive real estate of a squarer form factor and the wide-screen viewing experience of a 16:9 panel.

Sound-wise the OMEN Transcend 14 definitely comes to the party too, with a clear, precise and powerful, dual DTS-X speaker array.

And I really like the position of the USB-C and HDMI ports in the centre at the back, so you can keep at least two cables tucked neatly out of the way.

There's another Thunderbolt USB-C on the left-hand side and two more USB-As on the right.

The HP True Vision 1080p FHD IR camera does a fair job - offering advanced video features like auto-framing and Eye Contact (making you look as though you're looking at the viewer - not above them at the camera). The camera also works very efficiently for Windows Hello face-unlocking - it seemed to recognise me from varying distances, angles and light conditions.

The built-in mics are also worth a mention - complete with the ability to reduce background noise and room echo.

There's no doubt this is a fantastic gaming device and it should be - the variant I'm using right now has all the high-end components and goes for about five-and-a-half grand.

But...

With a ginormous 32GB of RAM and the reputable Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor running the show, I have to admit, I was expecting to be a bit more blown away by the OMEN Transcend 14's performance. I've tested enough high-spec gaming machines like this to expect a lot of fan noise and bad battery life - and this one certainly fails to improve much in either of those areas. Still, the one thing you'd hope to achieve by spending this much money on a laptop is plenty of grunt and frankly... I just wasn't feeling it.

And I'm no uber-power user. I'm talking about experiencing lag with a few apps running and several browser windows open. Admittedly, I have generally been using it plugged into my USB hub and running an external monitor for a dual display but I would expect a souped-up device like this to handle that sort of external load no problem at all. Instead, I've run into all sorts of stutters, most frustratingly when recording video, necessitating multiple retakes and overdubs. Sometimes, even just typing this review proved a chore as I experienced an unworkable delay between keystrokes and characters appearing on the screen. All very weird. Unplugging my second monitor and the USB hub seemed to make everything run as normal again.

I mentioned the bad battery and I'm not kidding. Sure, I've cranked the settings up for peak performance but these days its not uncommon for a laptop to last you six hours or more. I guess that's the price you pay running a super-bright OLED display, an RGB keyboard and a dedicated sound module. 

The OMEN Transcend 14 comes with a rather large external power supply in the box and I suggest you keep it handy. It delivers 140W which you'll need because the 100W PD my USB hub spits out certainly wasn't enough to charge it while I was using it. (Although it did eventually get to 100% when sitting idle)

So I'm torn. I love the way this laptop looks, especially in Ceramic White. The RGB keyboard is a nice bit of fun and the extreme gaming performance is more fun still. And yet the fan noise is persistent, the battery life is plain bad and the drop in performance once I added a few accessories and another screen was mystifying.

When you're paying at least NZ$3997.00 (for the base model) you'd think running a second display and having a few browser windows open would be like a hot knife through butter but that just hasn't been my experience. If all you want to do is game, this is a great way to do it. When it comes to productivity solutions, there might be better options.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the HP OMEN Transcend 14.