The HP OmniBook X Flip 16 is a brilliant, big, beautiful 2-in-1 laptop – but it's also an absolute bargain

Let's cut to the chase: the HP OmniBook X Flip 16 is a brilliant laptop. This 16-inch 2-in-1 daintily pirouettes between laptop and tablet modes, the 16-inch OLED touchscreen is stupendous, and the performance from the mid-pack Intel Lunar Lake processor – both in games and productivity – is spot on.

The big surprise is the price. As with most of HP's laptop range, the OmniBook X Flip 16 is available in a variety of specifications, but our review sample comes in at a very reasonable £1,299. For that money, a bright, color-accurate OLED panel and a modest but capable specification is something of a coup.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16 : Design & connectivity

The OmniBook X Flip 16 doesn't deviate from the HP 2025 design guide – and that's no bad thing. Clad in a pale, matte silver with a subtle sparkle, HP has crafted a really good looking laptop. The OmniBook X Flip's straight lines all flow smoothly into smooth curves and rounded edges, and the inward filleting around the base adds a little character.

The visual flair goes hand in hand with good build quality. It's not rock-solid, but this feels like a premium laptop – there's a little flex in the base, but not worrying amounts. Sensibly, the lid housing the OLED touchscreen feels like the stiffer of the two parts. And despite the solid build, the 1.88kg weight is modest for a laptop of this size.

The hybrid design is well thought out, too. The hinges smoothly float through 360 degrees, and the keyboard and touchpad turn off at around the 190-degree mark. This provides all the usual 2-in-1 options: you can use the OmniBook in tent mode, and as a tablet in portrait or landscape modes. You even get a USB-C rechargeable active pen in the box for inking purposes, and it works well.

Connectivity is ample. There's a full-sized USB-A port on either edge, both of which reach 10Gbps speeds, and two USB-C ports on the left-hand side. Only one of the USB-C ports supports Thunderbolt 4, though – the other is a plain USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection. Both support USB Power Delivery 3.1, however, so you can charge the laptop from either – and both provide DisplayPort Alt functions, too. To round things off, there's also a 3.5mm headset socket and a full-sized HDMI 2.1 output.

Wireless is handled by Intel's BE201 card, and this provides Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 connectivity.

Sadly, the speakers are the least impressive part of the package. There's very little meat and bones on the audio here, and they really don't do justice to the OLED display at all. They're not unspeakably awful, but it just feels like a missed opportunity here.

Oddly enough, the speakers sound worst when they're firing forward in laptop mode. Flip the laptop around into tent mode and, even though the speakers are firing downwards into the desk, they actually sound a little more full and balanced. If you're watching movies or playing games with a gamepad, that's what we'd recommend doing.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Keyboard and touchpad

It's so nice to find so little to say about a laptop when it comes to the core essentials. The backlit keyboard is spacious and provides a nice amount of travel and feel for fuss-free typing.

It's largely free from any strange layout decisions, but we still wish manufacturers would sacrifice uniform looks for an even more spacious layout: the up and down cursor keys are still crushed into a single row, and it'd be nice to have a full height Enter key, too. After all, there's lots of room on the deck for a laptop of this size.

Again, HP's engineers have made the sensible decision to make it nigh-on impossible to turn off or send the laptop to sleep by accident. Tap the power button when the laptop is running, and nothing happens. Hold it down for a couple of seconds, and it does what you'd expect. It's a little thing, but it's important – and something which rivals often fail to think about.

Another small but welcome touch is the little status LEDs by the various toggle buttons. The Caps Lock, speaker mute, microphone mute, and power buttons all indicate when they're active. Again, a simple sign of basics done well.

The mechanical touchpad is large and almost entirely forgettable – and we mean that in a good way. It just does its job of moving cursors and clicking things without any fuss or fanfare.

The lack of a fingerprint reader is one omission, but it isn't a big deal for a laptop like this, though – the 5MP IR camera is Windows Hello compatible, and this worked perfectly in our time with the OmniBook. Image quality isn't stunning – there's a lot of grain to the image at lower light levels – but make sure to keep yourself well-lit, and colors are natural and there's enough detail to make for decent-looking video calls.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Display

The OLED display is a highlight. The 16-inch, 2,880 x 1,800 panel covers a claimed 100% of DCI-P3, provides an adaptive refresh rate from 48Hz to 120Hz, and a 0.2ms response time. Peak brightness in SDR is a claimed 400cd/m2 and 500cd/m2 in HDR.

Subjectively, those numbers translate into glorious image quality. The panel looks impeccably crisp from edge to edge, colours are wonderfully intense, and there's no shortage of brightness. It is quite simply a lovely display.

In our tests, the display put in a terrific performance. We tested against a Display P3 target, and the HP's panel was impressively accurate across the board. The average Delta E of 1.63 is superb, the white point measured a perfect 6,504k, and peak brightness reached 392cd/m2 in SDR and around 520cd/m2 in HDR. Color coverage is superb, too, as the panel reproduces 100% of DCI-P3 and an impressive 95% of Adobe RGB.

Suffice to say, this is a panel that you can legitimately use for photo and video editing and be pretty confident of color-accurate results. Or you can just enjoy the clarity and vibrancy for games and videos.

We tested HDR in Hogwarts Legacy, and thanks to the in-game HDR adjustments, we managed to get HDR looking pretty good with a little tweaking. Wonderfully deep blacks and eye-popping highlights were the order of the day.

For HDR video content, however, we had the same overexposed image issues that we encountered on the Dell XPS 13 9350. With brightness at maximum, activating HDR crushes the brighter parts of the image into a flat, uniform white. It's not until you lower the screen brightness by over 50% that the highlights in video content display properly – and then the image is too dim to be watchable. Right now, we'd point the finger at Intel's Arc Graphics drivers as the XPS 13 exhibited the same issues with its tandem OLED display. Fingers crossed that a software update rectifies the issue. For now, we'd stick with SDR video content – which, happily, looks fantastic.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Performance

The OmniBook X Flip 16 is a great showcase for Intel's mid-range Lunar Lake chips. Our review model (16-as0009na) came equipped with an Intel Core Ultra 7 256V CPU, 16GB of on-package RAM, and a 1TB SSD. It's a modest but sensible package, and the result is a predictably solid performance in both applications and games.

The only thing we'd change here is the RAM. For £130 more, you can buy a model with double the RAM (part code: 16-as0005na), and that's well worth doing in our opinion as it gives the integrated graphics more memory to play with. In our time with the OmniBook, we encountered some stuttering in more demanding titles, such as Hogwarts Legacy, and also when we were spreading high double-digit Chrome tabs across multiple virtual desktops. We'd point the finger of blame at the 16GB of RAM here. Given that the RAM is physically on the CPU package itself, it's not something you can upgrade later, either.

The combination of a 68Wh battery and Intel's power-efficient Lunar Lake has predictable results. In our video rundown test, the OmniBook lasted for a creditable 15 hours 24 minutes. In Balanced power mode with Wi-Fi on and multiple virtual desktops in play, we tended to get well over a full working day before we had to reach for the charger.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16: Is it worth it?

The OmniBook X Flip 16 is a great all-rounder. It's well built, lovely to use, and the balance of power and stamina make for a laptop that's as happy sitting on a desk as it is coming on your travels. And whether it's work or play, the OLED touchscreen is a delight.

There is room for improvement here, naturally. Firstly, we'd strongly recommend opting for the pricier 32GB model, and secondly, we really wish the speakers were better. If HP could find a way to get a more full-bodied audio experience, this would be a nigh-on perfect laptop for the home – or the home office.

Even as it stands, though, this is one of our favourite laptops of 2025 so far. If you've got around £1,400 to spend on a laptop, the OmniBook X Flip 16 should be very near the top of your shopping list.

HP OmniBook X Flip 16 specifications