HP OmniBook Ultra with NVIDIA RTX Spark Review

Quick summary: I’ve been waiting for something like this on the PC side for a while. The HP OmniBook Ultra with the NVIDIA RTX Spark chip gives you almost the same performance unplugged as plugged in, something MacBooks have done forever. It’s great for video editing and running AI models locally, and pretty good for gaming. It’s expensive, but I’m very impressed.

Key takeaways

• Performance unplugged: usually 0 to 5 percent lower than plugged in, and at most around 10 percent.
• Gaming: native Windows gaming (Steam, Epic). Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077 played well unplugged, with some Fortnite micro-stutters.
• Display: a gorgeous OLED, with about 600+ nits in HDR and roughly 430 to 450 in SDR by published measurements.
• Battery: up to about 10 hours of light use, about 3 to 6 hours of heavy work.
• Charging: a regular 65W USB-C charger, not a big power brick.
• Downsides: price (about $3,000 to $3,200), weight, non-upgradable RAM and audible fans under load.

Why RTX Spark matters

On the PC side we’ve had Snapdragon laptops, and they’re great processors, but they’re not great for everything. MacBooks have long let you keep full performance off the charger. RTX Spark brings that to Windows, and it can do pretty much anything: video editing, local LLMs and gaming. In my experience it’s more reliable for gaming than the Mac side and definitely better than Snapdragon.

Ports, size and weight

You get ports for everything you want, including HDMI, two USB ports and a microSD card slot. Out of all the RTX Spark laptops, I believe HP’s is the heaviest, but I wanted the bigger 16-inch screen, so I’m glad they made one this size.

The RAM can’t be upgraded. I have the 32GB version, and in benchmarks and day-to-day tasks the RAM options aren’t that different. Gaming is basically the same whichever RAM you get.

Display, keyboard and touchpad

The OLED display is beautiful: very clear, with no loss of quality at an angle. I don’t have a measurement tool, but published measurements put HDR at a little over 600 nits and SDR at about 430 to 450 nits. The keyboard is really nice for typing, and the haptic touchpad is great for gestures. It’s a really well-built laptop.

Speakers

The speakers get pretty loud and are definitely above average. They could use a little more low end, but for speech I’d give them an 8 to 8.5 out of 10.

Video editing test

I’m not a heavy editor, just basic edits with some transitions, and the OmniBook Ultra was really good at it, whether plugged in or not.

Plugged in vs. unplugged

Unplugged, you lose as little as 2 or 3 percent of performance and sometimes up to 10 percent. In the Geekbench GPU test, my plugged-in run actually scored slightly lower than unplugged. Most of the time, you get the same performance either way.

Gaming: Fortnite and Cyberpunk 2077

Gaming seemed more reliable at 1080p, which actually looks pretty good on a 16-inch screen, even though the panel is 3K. In Fortnite at 1920 x 1200, with a 120 fps target, DirectX 12 and DLSS, I sometimes hit 120 fps and sometimes dropped into the 30s, especially jumping from the bus. There were some micro-stutters, but it played fine overall, and I think it’ll get better with updates and tuning.

Cyberpunk 2077, mostly on high and ultra with DLSS, looked amazing: the reflections, the rain, all of it. All of this gaming was completely unplugged. On most gaming laptops you have to be plugged in for full performance, or the battery dies super quickly. Here you just use a 65W USB-C charger that looks like a phone charger. I’d rather take slightly lower resolution than drag around a big power brick.

The fans do ramp up under heavy load. You can definitely hear them, but not so much that I couldn’t game or hear what was around me.

Battery life

Expect up to about 10 hours for lighter use. Gaming, running models or video editing will land you somewhere around 3 to 5, maybe 6 hours. The best part is you don’t have to be plugged in to get the laptop’s full power.

Final thoughts

Benchmarks won’t match the newest MacBooks, but this laptop has native gaming: install Steam or the Epic store and play. Not every game will be compatible, but most are. The display is great, the speakers are really good, the power is amazing, and the port selection is excellent. At about $3,000 when it’s not on sale, it’s pricey, but if you don’t want to be tied to a charger while gaming, editing or running AI models, this is your laptop. I definitely recommend it.

Where to buy

• HP OmniBook Ultra at HP
• HP OmniBook Ultra at Best Buy