I'm really impressed with the new HP Omen Transcend 14 Gaming. I love a good 14-inch gaming laptop at the best of times, but that usually comes with a pretty prohibitive price tag. Not so with this little beauty. I mean, it's still more expensive than most RTX 4060 gaming laptops, but you won't find one at this size and with such a beautiful design and a gorgeous, high-resolution OLED screen.
The standard price for this Meteor Lake unit is $1,660 for this RTX 4060 version (only $70 more than the RTX 4050 option, so why not?), but since I got this test unit in the lab received, I haven't seen it sitting at this price again. In fact, this spec is currently only $1,360 and that's a great price for this little device.
I received the package with the HyperX Cloud III wireless headset in the box, which is a ridiculous $150 upcharge for the privilege. It's another reminder that HyperX is no longer a Kingston brand and is entirely developed by HP, although I'd probably suggest another wireless gaming headset and save myself the money.
But what you get with the base unit is so great that you don't have to worry about an included headset at all. The Intel Core Ultra 7 155H chip at the core is a decent 16-core, 22-thread device that accelerates up to 4.8GHz when needed. All of these cores aren't a workstation-level 16-core CPU, although it can still compete with the AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS and 7840HS chips in the Razer Blade 14 or Asus ROG Flow X13 we tested before.
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So you won't lack the single-core or multi-threaded performance you expect from a standard gaming laptop. And it's easily possible to supply the Nvidia RTX 4060 with enough data to keep the GPU running at a decent pace. However, this RTX 4060 is only a 65W variant, so it can't fully stretch its silicon legs, although it still performs well in gaming benchmarks.
However, it's worth noting that you won't be able to deliver the frame rates you need to take full advantage of the beautiful 120Hz, 2880 x 1800 pixel screen. That's a lot of pixels for one of the smallest Ada GPUs to handle. But what a beautiful thing this screen is.
I admit that I haven't seen an OLED gaming monitor that deserves a spot on my desktop, but when it comes to laptop screens, I definitely agree. Of course, you still don't get the glaring brightness of the mini-LED screens in Asus' Nebula displays or the Lenovo Legion 9, but the colors, contrast and clarity of the Transcend 14's panel are excellent. It particularly shines with HDR content – although unfortunately it's not one of those where you can leave the Windows setting turned on with impunity. It still has a dampening effect on the colors of your standard resolution desktop.
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And if you're worried about the font rendering issue and weird color fringing that can occur on desktop OLED displays, that's not visible on the Transcend 14's high pixel density screen. I also use it with 200% on Windows scaling section, and that has a big impact on the clarity of the font, making it almost iOS level sharp. It's also a glossy panel, which goes a long way to mitigating the edge diffusion that occurs with matte display coatings.
The rest of the backup spec is pretty standard: 16GB of dual-channel LPDDR5x-7500 storage and a 1TB NVMe SSD. If you want, you can save a little more money (around $100) and go for the 512GB version if you don't feel like you need that much internal storage. It's an expensive premium, but SSD prices are steadily rising.
In terms of performance, it is quite powerful. Even in the latest games at 1080p, you'll get excellent frame rates, especially if you take advantage of Nvidia's DLSS and frame generation capabilities, and you might even get by with a bump up to 2560 x 1440 in some less demanding games. However, at the native resolution you'll probably be a little thrown off.
But I'd still rather have the high-resolution screen than none, even if the GPU can't do that Really Power it natively. The pixel density of the panel and the quality of the fast OLED display mean you get a pretty sharp image even when zoomed out.
Then the HP Omen Transcend 14 is a powerful gaming laptop. But to be honest, it certainly doesn't offer outstanding performance as the focus is more on maintaining balance. HP has kept the internal components under control so that it doesn't get too warm on your lap (although the CPU regularly jumps over the 100°C+ mark under load, pfft, Intel, right?), and that's not it either Fall also hard on the ears. Even operating the device in gaming mode at full power is no problem. This system allows you to easily play on public transport without feeling like a total waste.
As long as you are connected to the power grid. The battery itself is rated at 71Wh of potential power, but it's the Transcend 14's off-grid performance that really lets it down. Battery life is arguably more important with this type of compact laptop, as it's the type of device you'd like to toss in a day bag to use on the go. But with a PCMark Gaming test result for battery life of just 58 minutes, it's difficult for me to rate its effectiveness as a mobile gaming device particularly positively.
It's not just gaming performance either. I've used it as an office machine – largely fortunately, I might add – but it only lasts until lunchtime, even when I only use it for writing and editing. And that in balanced power mode, even without the screen being set to full brightness. I really want a laptop like this to be something that I can leave the house with without having my power adapter in hand and expect to be able to work with it all day.
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Maybe that's an unrealistic goal, but the Asus ROG Flow still is definitely something Intel wanted to talk about, particularly with its Intel 4-node and Meteor Lake series of machines, making it disappointing in that regard.
So yeah, the battery life isn't great, but that's almost my only criticism of the Transcend 14. The keyboard feels great – although I'm not 100% sold on the look of the pseudo-pudding caps with their RGB glow – and the trackpad was absolutely responsive and precise.
However, I have a little concern about the otherwise beautiful, slim case. It feels beautifully machined and the keyboard has virtually no give, but if you touch it by the corner with the screen open, as I'm used to with such a small device, you'll hear a rather unsettling creak. From the chassis, it's almost, but not entirely panic-inducing. The lid behind the beautiful OLED panel also gives way significantly, making it feel a little less high-quality.
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Buy if…
✅ Are you looking for an affordable, compact gaming laptop: These small slot machines usually come at a premium, so the Transcend 14's affordability is a big advantage.
✅ You want a beautiful screen on your laptop: This OLED is truly something special and the high resolution and pixel density means you can run it at 200% scaling and it will look stunning.
Don't buy if…
❌ You need long battery life away from the plug: Gaming battery life is weak, but general operating time is also weak. It's not a full-time worker or a long-distance player.
If I paid Razer Blade 14 money for the Transcend 14, I would have something damned to say. But that's about $600 less than an RTX 4060 Razer, and I'd still consider it a great device if I'd spent the money on it myself, even given the half-hearted concerns.
As far as price goes, however, this isn't the top-of-the-line Transcend 14 I'm testing here. And I'm very happy about that, considering the RTX 4070 version with a Core Ultra 9 CPU and 32GB of memory costs a pretty shocking $500 more than this setup. And I don't think I would particularly like paying that extra for what you get from it.
This RTX 4060 version then feels like the pinnacle of the ickle HP Omen series and I'm all for it. If only it had better battery life, I'd want a full-time job, but if that's not a big problem for you – and about four hours of work time is enough for you – then I have no hesitation in recommending the Transcend 14. It's small, feels good, offers decent gaming performance, has a beautiful OLED screen as standard, and is impressively affordable. Yes, I like it very much.
