HP OMEN Transcend 14 review

The Transcend 14 is a sleek beauty, taking cues from its larger sibling -the Transcend 16, with smooth lines, a classy single-tone colour scheme, and an overall demeanour that whispers sophistication. If you look at it from the back, you wouldn’t be able to tell it’s a gaming laptop. That all changes though when you look at the keyboard. 

However,  it's not without its quirks. While it's got the looks to turn heads, it’s a delicate dolly! The lid's a tad more flexible than we'd like, giving it a bit of a wobble when you're not expecting it. Don't get me wrong, it's still a formidable contender, but a few beefed-up hinges could have put a real smile on our faces. The all-black matte finish also is prone to a few smudges so you’ll have to keep a cleaning cloth handy.

If you have never played a game on an OLED display, you will fall in love with the panel on the Transcend 14. It packs in 500nits of brightness with a 2.8K (2880×1800) resolution. The colours truly ‘pop’ in typical OLED fashion and the viewing experience is just phenomenal. That’s until you take it outside. The gloss on the panel makes it really difficult to work on the Transcend in the bright outdoors as it is quite reflective. 

Turning on the HDR helps thanks to the 500nits of brightness, but you’re still going to be struggling a bit. But that’s a trade off we will take any day in favour of the superior colours and dynamic range of an OLED panel. A thing to note however is that the panel doesn’t support VRR in games, so no G-Sync and Free-Sync support here. However, HP claims a 0.2ms response time and unless you’re competing in an e-sport event, it should be plenty fine for a normal gaming experience.

The sound quality on the Transcend 14 is quite decent. It’s not going to produce MacBook levels of definition, but it gets the job done when it comes to delivering an immersive experience. While playing Witcher 3 we noticed that the soundtracks are put forward with enough clarity and definition to make it enjoyable and the sound effects of the spells like Igni sound LIT! Explosions in Arma 3 and other battle intrinsic games sound just okay.

It’s quite obvious that the star of the show here is the beautiful display! But that’s until you lay eyes on the keyboard.

HP wants you to say goodbye to those chiclet keys you're used to and say hello to a lattice-free design that's here to shake things up! It’s got larger keys with a halo of translucency around them, ready to arouse those RGB fans. It's like a disco party under your fingertips, and it's downright mesmerizing! Plus, it's a move that sets the Transcend 14 apart from the pack, giving it that extra edge in the style department.

But wait, what about the typing experience? Oh, it's a dream. None of that spongy nonsense you get with other keyboards. It's crisp, it's clean, and it's as satisfying as popping bubble wrap. Sure, the clatter's a bit more pronounced, but hey, that's the price you pay for greatness.

Now, here's the kicker: don't expect a rainbow under each key. The backlighting's limited to four zones, so you won't be customizing every single key like a mad scientist. But hey, when the overall package is this good, who's complaining?

The trackpad is spacious and isn’t anything fancy. We like that HP has kept something that’s supposed to be simple - simple! It’s perfectly functionable, doesn’t cause any problems while typing and your swipes are registered with perfect precision.

The Transcend 14 features the Ultra 7 155H chip which comes with a total of six performance cores and ten efficiency cores out of which two are especially low powered to handle extremely basic tasks. Intel claims they reduce power consumption by 20-25 percent and are mainly implemented for tasks such as streaming videos. But what about the star of the show? None other than the integrated NPU, ready to revolutionize your AI tasks faster than you can say "Microsoft Copilot."? 

Well, it’s still sat on grandpa’s armchair twiddling its thumbs because at the time of writing, Copilot still uses cloud based processing and newer software like OpenVINO are still in development and sort of won’t be of use to you if you aren’t a streamer. While other brands are developing their own Image generators and experimenting with AI based noise-cancellation by adding modules, we expect something from HP soon as well.

Cinebench R23 multi core scores sat around the 16435 mark with single core scores at 16233. PCMark 10 scored over 7092 all of which is quite impressive when you remember that this is a 14-incher! When it comes to gaming, Shadow of the Tomb Raider averaged over 90fps on high settings, Witcher 3 managed 80fps on Ultra settings, Red Dead Redemption 2 managed 45 on medium settings. The RTX 4060 unit here is rated at 50W with a 15W boost which is a lower TGP than some of the competitors in the same range.

For those who love a compact system that can do it all, the HP Omen Transcend is a dream come true. However if you are all about gaming performance, there are options out there that offer a GPU with a higher TGP, mainly the Zephyrus G14. You might want to hold on a bit till they are available in India although we are pretty sure the HP will have them beat at this price. For the rest of the folks, the Transcend 14 is a banger of a product, offering enough performance juice and the portable form factor. Add to that the almost 7-8 hour battery life with regular work tasks and a bit of streaming and it’s a no-brainer. Oh, and did we mention that beautiful OLED?