HP Omen Transcend 14 Review (2024)

HP has impressed us with its Omen gaming laptops in recent years. Now, here’s its latest, attractive, ultraportable gaming laptop that seeks to be an enticing alternative to rivals from Razer, MSI and Asus ROG rivals. Will the HP Omen Transcend 14 be the model to buy?

HP Omen Transcend 14 Specs

Features, Ergonomics and Design

The Omen Transcend 14’s black, sandblasted, anodised aluminium chassis both looks and feels very classy. I’ll continue to lament the loss of the alien-goo Omen logo of yore, but the understated, glossy-lettered moniker on the lid still looks pretty cool. Opening it up reveals an impressive-looking, four-zone RGB keyboard which has three colours bands plus a WASD key colour zone. It’s all very premium stuff.

The 14-inch, OLED screen has a high, 2,880 x 1,800 resolution which keeps the Windows Desktop looking crisp and clear and ensures all colours are impressively vibrant. The glossy coating can turn into a bit of a dark mirror in dark scenes but it’s not quite as reflective as some other OLED displays that I’ve seen.

The very bright (500-nit) screen is great for multimedia. It’s HDR compatible which ensures chromatic and monochromatic transitions are smooth and step-free. Contrast is excellent with details being revealed in both light and dark areas and with true-blacks being rendered perfectly. That said, some bright content could blow-out at times.

It has a 120Hz refresh rate and a fast, 0.2ms, pixel response time which keeps fast-moving objects in games looking sharp . However, competitive FPS players will want more if they’re using the laptops’ own screen. It’s very good, though. It’s also TÜV Eyesafe certified for low-blue light which will help fend-off eye fatigue when used for extended periods. 

Multimedia also sounds great thanks to the dual, HyperX-tuned speakers which offer great fidelity from top to bottom and even a decent bass response. If you add any other wireless HyperX peripherals, they’ll pair automatically without a dongle.

Above the screen is a Full HD webcam which simultaneously captures crisp and clear audio and bats-away grain in low light. It’s great for streaming and webconferencing.

The keyboard looks great with its translucent, RGB-backlit, surrounds and it is comfortable and accurate to type and game upon for extended periods. The trackpad is smooth and accurate and the buttons have a high-quality feel and well-weighted actuation.

All in all, HP’s Omen 14-inch Transcend is great to interact with.

Connectivity & Ports

It’s worth noting that the charger takes up one of the USB-C ports. Inside, there’s Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. That’s an impressive, modern complement of connectivity.

Features, Ergonomics and Design Score: 4.1 / 5

Performance

Inside the HP Omen Transcend 14 is a beefy, 1-5GHz Core Ultra 9 185H processor which has six Performance cores, eight Efficiency cores and two Low-Power Efficiency cores. It’s backed up with new, speedy, low-powered LPDDR5-7467 RAM plus a fast, 2TB NVMe hard drive (note, our review unit had a 1TB unit but I don’t expect that to have a significant effect on performance). There’s also an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 with 8GB of GDDR6 RAM which is an upper-mid-range gaming GPU.

In the general-computing PCMark 10 test, the Transcend 14 scored 6,769. That’s actually quite low considering the components inside but it’s far from slow. (Score: 3.0 / 5)

It was a similar deal in the 2D, CPU-based Cinebench rendering tests where it scored 2,270 in the rapid R15 test and 13,085 in the longer, R23 test. I expected quite a bit more. (Score: 2.2 / 5)

In our difficult 3DMark ray-tracing, game benchmarks, the 14-inch Omen started off by scoring 3,592 (average 16.6fps) in Port Royal and 1,309 (13.1fps) in Speed Way. Those are half what I’d expect from a 4070-wielding gaming laptop. They’re not playable framerates. You’d have to drop the resolution and settings considerably to make things smooth.

It was a similar story with the AAA-title-mimicking Time Spy and Fire Strike Extreme tests where the Transcend scored 6,511 (average 37.6fps) and 7,265 (average 34.8fps). These are playable framerates but only just: smoothness won’t be guaranteed.

In the much easier 3DMark Night Raid test, which apes casual and competitive games, it scored 30,912 which is an average of 207.6fps. That’s plenty playable but one-third what I’d expect.

The primary reason for the low performance scores appears to be the power power supply which is rated to just 140-Watts. Rival gaming laptops will swallow much more power than that in an effort to provide huge, overclocked performance boosts. It’s also worth noting that there aren’t any options to push performance in the Omen gaming app, so any tinkering will need to be done with third-party overclocking apps.

Of course, ultraportable performance inevitably comes at the expense of heat and noise and this is where HP’s Omen 14 may turn some heads – the Tempest Cooling Go cooling technology never goes beyond a light swooshing sound when it’s under load and it doesn’t get more than a little warm (unless you force the fan to Max settings where it becomes a robust, whoosh). That’s a very different story when compared to rivals and undemanding users might prefer this portable toned-down power in a quest for some cool and quiet.

3D Performance Score: 2.2 / 5

Portability and Battery Life

HP’s Omen Transcend 14 weighs 1.64KG and the power supply and cables only add an additional 474g to the mix. The latter is half the weight of rivals. While it’s not light for a 14-inch laptop it’s still within ultraportable territory and not heavy for a robust gaming laptop that’s made out of aluminium. The hinge is also solid (unlike previous Omens I’ve seen) and it will easily survive life on the road.

It doesn’t have the largest battery (at 71Wh) and so I wasn’t surprised to see it last a modest 6 hours and 16 minutes in our PCMark 10 Modern Office Test. That’s not quite a full day out of the office.

Portability and Battery Life Score: 2.4 / 5

Price and Availability

The HP Omen Transcend 14 is available now for $6,199 at HP’s online store. Rivals include the slightly lower-powered ROG Zephyrus G14 which was much cheaper; the Razer Blade 14 which is faster and cheaper, but hotter and louder; and the MSI Stealth 14 AI Studio which has a similar specification and lower price but is hotter and louder.

Another option is to choose a lower-spec’d Omen Transcend 14 as those with RTX 4050s and 4060s won’t be much slower (if at all). I’ll investigate and report back on this one. EDIT: The RTX 4060 version is otherwise the same and costs $5,699 at HP’s store. I expect it to have very similar performance. There’s also a white version with an RTX 4050 (and noticeably lower other specs) for $4,699 which I don’t expect to be great value. However, our review unit is now on sale at a massive 41 per cent discount (over $2,500!) at $3,639 which makes it the value winner.

Price: 1.4 / 5

Value: 2.9 / 5

Conclusion

There’s much to like about the HP Omen Transcend 14 but it won’t be for everyone. It looks very good and is great to interact with. I appreciated the fact it didn’t get hot and loud too. However, many design decisions appear to have been made to keep the weight down and heat low, and this has affected the performance and battery life. It’s very much a  premium gaming laptop – with a price tag to match – but many gamers will look elsewhere for more raw performance.

However, if you want a gaming laptop because it offers power for occasional demanding tasks and casual gaming – all the while retaining sober, daily driver handling – then it’s arguably unique in the market. I’d compare it to a Maserati sports car in that you can get a better bang per buck elsewhere, but plenty of people want comfort and luxury with only occasional high performance and that’s arguably where the Omen 14 Transcend sits.

Overall: 2.3 / 5

Last Updated on 26 April 2025 by Nick Ross