HP's $599 OLED laptop takes on MacBook Air with 41-hour battery life

HP has launched the OmniBook 3 (14-hz0488nr) in the United States, positioning it as a direct rival to Apple's MacBook Air. Priced at $599.99, the new 14-inch laptop undercuts the MacBook Air, which starts at $699 on Amazon, while offering a higher-resolution OLED display, a larger battery, and more connectivity options.

The base model, equipped with 8 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD, is available at Best Buy for a discounted price of $499.99. It can also be preordered on Amazon for $599.99, while HP's official store lists the same configuration at $749.99. Like the MacBook Air, the OmniBook 3 comes with 8 GB of memory, which reviewers note could be more restrictive on the Windows machine due to the operating system's higher memory usage.

Under the hood, the OmniBook 3 is powered by the Snapdragon X X1-26-100, the slowest chip in Qualcomm's Snapdragon X series. It features eight Oryon CPU cores clocked at up to 2.98 GHz, a 45 TOPS NPU, and 30 MB of cache. Compared to the A18 Pro chip in the MacBook Air, the Snapdragon X delivers stronger multi-core performance but falls behind in single-core and graphics tasks.

The laptop sports a 14-inch OLED display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution and 100% DCI-P3 color coverage. However, its peak brightness is only 300 nits, significantly lower than the 500-nit IPS panel on the MacBook Air. On the upside, the OmniBook 3 packs a 60 Wh battery that HP claims can last up to 41 hours and 45 minutes in official testing. Connectivity is another advantage: the laptop includes two USB-A ports, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and two USB-C ports, offering more versatility than the MacBook Air's limited port selection.