HP’s thinnest gaming laptop wowed me with its looks and performance
HP’s thinnest gaming laptop wowed me with its looks and performance
Did the HP Omen Transcend 14 just beat the Razer Blade?
If you’re looking for the thinnest and lightest gaming laptop from CES 2024, look no further than the HP Omen Transcend 14.
Weighing in at 1,637g (3.61 pounds) and measuring just 17.99mm (0.71 inches) thick, this laptop is nearly as thin and light as an Ultrabook. Despite being so compact, this gaming laptop still packs a lot of power with the latest Intel Core Ultra 9 processors and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics.
Astonishingly this thin gaming laptop doesn’t overheat at all thanks to its vapor chamber and dual channel airflow. After playing Cyberpunk for over 15 minutes, the laptop stayed surprisingly cool, and even the underside of the laptop was still comfortable to touch.
➡️ The Shortcut Skinny: HP Omen Transcend 14 gaming laptop
🤏 Thin at just 0.71 inches thick and light at just 3.61 pounds
👊 Packs serious power with an Intel Core Ultra 9 CPU and Nvidia RTX 4070 graphics
💃 Gorgeous 14-inch 2.8K OLED screen and an RGB keyboard with trasparent edges
Similarly, the keyboard feels amazingly tactile despite not having a ton of physical travel to work with. Typing each key feels satisfyingly crisp with tactile clicks. It also helps the gapless keyboard looks gorgeous with transparent edges to help the RGB shine through. It’s just a shame that you can only customize the RGB with four lighting zones instead of with every key.
The HP Omen Transcend 14 also features an equally beautiful 14-inch 2.8K (2,880 x 1,800), OLED display. It’s rated for VESA True Black HDR 400 and I can tell you the blacks are truly deep while the colors pop with an amazing vibrancy too.
HP also tells us the screen is IMAX Enhanced certified too. However, there wasn’t any media (outside of games) loaded onto my laptop during my hands-on time, so I couldn’t really how this improved video quality on this screen.
Back to specifications, the base HP Omen Transcend 14 will come equipped with Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Nvidia RTX 4050 with a 512 GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and 16 GB LPDDR5x 7467MHz RAM. This starting spec will retail for $1,499 and be available for preorder starting today, January 8th, at Best Buy.
You can also upgrade this laptop with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H and Nvidia RTX 4060 or RTX 4070, as previously mentioned. The storage can also be upgraded to either a 1TB or 2TB PCIe Gen4 SSD while the memory can be doubled to 32GB of LPDDR5x 7467MHz RAM.
If you’re looking for a gorgeously thin gaming laptop that performs as good as it looks, the HP Omen Transcend 14 excels at both. I’m so surprised by this entry, it may well tackle the Razer Blade off its throne of being the thinnest gaming laptop. Of course, stay tuned for our full review of this laptop in the near future.
Kevin Lee is The Shortcut’s Creative Director. Follow him on Twitter @baggingspam.