HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) Review: High-quality and lightweight 14-incher

I love gaming laptops with a size of 14 inches. After all, laptops should be mobile and this screen diagonal offers the ideal balance between mobility and performance. So far, however, only a few manufacturers are playing in this segment. Razer with the Blade 14 or ASUS with the ROG Zephyrus G14, but HP also wants to have a say and with the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) delivers a high-quality notebook with top modern features and strong performance. Our review reveals more.

Technical data

HP Omen Transcend 14-fb0798ng, Shadow Black, Core Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 2TB...

HP Omen Transcend 14-fb0798ng, Shadow Black, Core Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 2TB...

€ 2,399.00

48 stunden

Buy now* HP Store

HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) Review: Sandblasted aluminum model

• simple and pleasantly compact design
• good build quality but display wobbles a lot
• very susceptible to fingerprints

The HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) is visually strongly inspired by the larger Omen Transcend 16 (our review) and, like the normal Omen 16 (2024), has a slightly protruding back, behind which the inscription “O14 Designed and Build For Winning” can be read.

The display lid is adorned with the Omen lettering, while the rear is dominated by the generous air vents. The Shadow Black aluminium casing has a sandblasted anodized surface, which looks very classy, but is very susceptible to fingerprints.

Otherwise, the build quality is good to very good. Only the lid of the HP notebook is really susceptible to bouncing and warping – something we have already observed in other laptops from the manufacturer.

The base plate can be removed using Phillips screws, which makes maintenance easier. However, there is not too much to do here, as the RAM is soldered. The SSD, on the other hand, can be replaced, even though there is only one M.2 slot.

Features and connections

• top modern equipment
• heavily trimmed GPU
• modern connections and standards

The HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) comes with state-of-the-art features. Led by the Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor of the Meteor Lake generation. It also comes with 32 GB of fast LPDDR5x-7467 MHz RAM and a Kioxia SSD with 2 terabytes of storage capacity.

The GPU is the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 laptop GPU with studio drivers, which comes with 8 GB of VRAM, but is severely restricted in terms of power limits. A TDP of 65 watts is significantly lower than the values that we are normally familiar with from current gaming notebooks.

The rest of the equipment is also absolutely impressive. On board are fast Wi-Fi 7, modern Bluetooth 5.4 and two good-sounding speakers with DTS:X Ultra support, although they could work a little louder.

HP has also equipped the gaming notebook with a 1080p webcam with IR camera, which offers good image quality and enables biometric login via Windows Hello.

The Omen’s selection of connections is also pleasing, with the ports spread across three sides: At the back, you’ll find one HDMI 2.1 port and one USB-C port with 10 GBps, DisplayPort 1.4 and Power Delivery. On the left, there is another USB-C port with Thunderbolt 4 for a full 40 Gbps, also including Power Delivery and DP Alt mode, as well as a 3.5 mm jack connection.

On the right-hand side, the manufacturer has positioned two USB-A ports with a maximum of 10 GBps, one of which – like both USB-C ports – supports HP Sleep and Charge.

Bright OLED display, good input devices

• bright and colorful OLED panel
• 120 Hz dynamic frame rate; high resolution
• very good keyboard with large keys

One of the highlights of the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) is undoubtedly the display. This is an OLED panel with correspondingly rich blacks and colors, which is brighter than average in SDR mode at 400 nits (even up to 500 nits in HDR) and has a comparatively high resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels.

The display fully covers the DCI-P3 color space, making the notebook suitable for color-critical work – no wonder, as the Transcend series sees itself as a middle ground between creator and gaming notebook.

The response time of 0.2 ms is of course particularly advantageous when gaming, while the maximum frame rate of 120 Hz is somewhat lower than most dedicated gaming laptops. However, there is dynamic regulation between 48 Hz and 120 Hz.

The glossy display also boasts flicker-free certification and a blue light filter. Brightness, color reproduction and contrast are undoubtedly excellent.

The keyboard is also the only thing that identifies the Omen Transcend 14 as a gaming notebook, as the manufacturer presents the laptop with RGB single-key illumination that can be customized.

I really like the keyboard with its large, precise keys (which are rounded towards the edges). Thanks to the gridless design, the 14-inch model has larger keys than even some 16-inch laptops. This ensures that it is also very easy to type on.

The pressure points are crisp and precise, the travel distance is good despite the thin casing and the 12.5 cm x 8.5 cm trackpad also offers very good gliding properties. That fits.

Practical test of the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024)

• good cooling, but…
• … Fan almost always active
• confusing Omen Gaming Hub

The HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) masters everyday or demanding tasks flawlessly, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering its features. The fan volume and heat development are positive:

Even under continuous load, the measured 42 dB(A) is no louder than that of larger gaming notebooks. However, the fans are quite aggressive and switch on even during normal tasks such as surfing or office work, albeit much quieter (around 30 dB(A)) – however, the Omen Transcend 14 is not really a quiet performer.

The chassis heats up noticeably when gaming, especially behind the laptop and in the center of the keyboard, but it never gets uncomfortably hot.

As always, the Omen Gaming Hub is also included, which provides additional information about the system load and parameters and allows various settings to be adjusted, for example to improve gaming performance.

Unfortunately, the software is not really clear and intuitive, especially as the performance benefits are very limited.

Benchmark: Productivity, system, SSD and gaming

The most interesting aspect is the performance, which I also took a closer look at in our extensive benchmark and test course for the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024).

I measure the productivity and system performance with PCMark 10 and Cinebench R23. PCMark 10 simulates different workflows when running the benchmark, which include word processing, surfing the Internet and spreadsheets. Cinebench, on the other hand, measures the speed of the CPU cores individually and in multi-core mode.

Geekbench 6, which measures the performance of the CPU in single and multi-core mode, as well as the power of the GPU, is now also new to our benchmark test track. In addition, Cinebench 2024 is now also available, which offers better comparison options with a new engine and a more uniform benchmark scene since September 2023.

In addition to the synthetic benchmark 3DMark, various games such as F1 24 including ray tracing, Final Fantasy XV and many more are used for the gaming tests. The SSD speed is measured by AS-SSD.

SSD benchmark: AS-SSD

The built-in SSD comes from Kioxia and around 1,900 GB of the 2 terabytes of storage space is available. With a sequential read speed of around 5,200 MB/s and a write speed of 3,170 MB/s, the storage delivers good results that are absolutely sufficient for even the most demanding modern games.

However, the latencies, especially when reading, are noticeably higher than on many other gaming notebooks that we have tested recently. The Omen 16 (2024), for example, achieved a read access time of just 0.017 ms, while here it is still a good 0.041 ms.

On the other hand, the performance remains very constant over a longer period of time, only the write latency drops a little.

Cinebench, Geekbench and PCMark

It gets interesting in the system benchmarks for the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024). How does the Core Ultra 9 compare to the Ultra 7 and the i9? This shows once again that the low power limits have a noticeable effect on performance. At least in the pure CPU benchmarks.

In Cinebench 2024, for example, the notebook doesn’t quite reach the Intel Core Ultra 7 155H in the Alienware m16 R2 (our test) with 847 points in the multi-core test, but is ahead in single-core mode in both Cinebench versions.

However, the gap to the Intel Core i9-14900HX in the Omen 16 is clear, which shouldn’t really come as a surprise. In Geekbench 6, however, the Core Ultra 9 comes in ahead of the Ultra 7.

The Omen 14, on the other hand, can show off the strengths of the CPU-GPU combination in the comprehensive PCMark 10 test and, with 7,275 total points, outperforms all notebooks with Intel Meteor Lake that we have tested so far.

This once again shows quite impressively that HP has delivered a coherent overall package here, in which the system performance and the digital content creation deliver excellent scores.

This makes the Omen Transcend 14 a handy and powerful all-rounder, even though dedicated and larger gaming notebooks are significantly better in terms of GPU performance.

Gaming and 3D performance

Unsurprisingly, the built-in RTX 4070 falls far behind the same GPU model of other gaming notebooks with a higher TDP due to the low power limit. The graphics unit in the aforementioned Alienware m16, for example, is allowed more than twice as much power at 140 watts as the variant in the Omen Transcend 14 and this is clearly noticeable when gaming.

So much so that it even falls behind an RTX 4060 with 105 watts. If only HP had provided the compact notebook with more power, the overall result would have been much better.

So much for the theory. In practice, however, the notebook delivers enough power to run even modern games absolutely smoothly in medium or high details. However, for real graphics platters such as Cyberpunk 2077 or F1 24 with maximum ray tracing settings, you should reduce the level of detail or the resolution slightly in order to achieve a smooth 60 fps and – if possible – activate DLSS.

After all, the stress test shows that the laptop can maintain a constant performance without a drop in performance. Very good.

Battery life

The HP Omen Transcend 14 uses a 71 Wh battery, which is supplied with power via a handy 140 watt power supply unit. This is connected via USB-C and fully charges the notebook in 1 hour and 32 minutes.

However, the battery runtimes are disappointing: 3 hours and 46 minutes in the PCMark Modern Office battery benchmark – the powerful components and the OLED display are simply very power-hungry.

HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024) test: Conclusion

With the HP Omen Transcend 14 (2024), the manufacturer presents a very interesting notebook that bridges the gap between a compact and handy creator laptop and a racy gaming machine.

The device is equipped with the currently fastest Intel chip of the Meteor Lake generation, 32 GB of RAM and a 2 TB SSD, which in combination ensures strong system performance. However, the RTX 4070 is significantly limited with a TDP of 65 watts, which is clearly reflected in the gaming performance.

Here, the notebook lags noticeably behind weaker GPUs with higher power limits. For 1080p gaming in medium to high details, however, the performance on offer is still sufficient – you simply have a light and very handy notebook with a well-balanced price-performance ratio.

If you’re looking for more power in 14 inches, you’ll have to turn to the Razer Blade 14 or ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, which are similarly equipped but will tear a much deeper hole in your wallet.

HP Omen Transcend 14-fb0798ng, Shadow Black, Core Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 2TB...

HP Omen Transcend 14-fb0798ng, Shadow Black, Core Ultra 9 185H, 32GB RAM, 2TB...

€ 2,399.00

48 stunden

Buy now* HP Store