"Thin and light. Suitable for office work and study thanks to decent performance at an affordable price. It's a letdown that it's hard to find detailed convenience features."
This is the impression left after using HP's ultralight laptop Omnibook 7 Aero 13 for about a month. It weighs under 1 kg (980–998 g) and offers a 13.1–13.3-inch display. The thickness is only up to 1.74 cm. It's notable that it uses a magnesium alloy to improve durability.
Because it's a product focused on being an "ultra-portable" (a laptop that maximizes portability), it's a stretch to call it a high-performance artificial intelligence (AI) laptop, but it handled not only document work but also simple video editing and light 3D image tweaks. That said, it was puzzling that, despite being an ultralight laptop, it comes with a charger like a "brick."
Its standout advantage is price. The price varies depending on the central processing unit (CPU; AMD Ryzen 5 8640U, Ryzen AI 5 340, Ryzen AI 7 350), graphics processing unit (GPU; AMD Radeon 760M, 840M, 860M) performance, and RAM and storage capacity, but it doesn't exceed 2 million won. Lower-spec models can be purchased in the 900,000-won range at some retailers.
The lowest price in the Omnibook 7 Aero 13 lineup is 300,000–1 million won cheaper than rival products with similar performance. Even the highest price is up to about 900,000 won less. An industry official said, "As AI services spread, memory semiconductor prices are soaring, and laptop prices are also trending up," and added, "The fact that you can buy an ultralight laptop capable of handling AI features for the mid- to high-1 million-won range alone could grab consumers' attention."
◇ HP focused on AI usability… handles 10 hours of document work with ease
The unit used for a month was a model with a Ryzen 5 8640U processor, a Radeon 760M GPU, and 16 gigabytes (GB) of RAM. Although it was the lowest-spec product in the Omnibook 7 Aero 13 lineup, there was no major constraint on productivity. It was mainly used for information searches, document writing, and video viewing, and there were no instances of stuttering or insufficient performance that prevented the use of required programs. It felt sufficiently capable for office or academic use.
The battery is a 3-cell 43 watt-hour (Wh) lithium-ion polymer, and in a Wi-Fi environment, it allowed 8–10 hours of document work. Even with light gaming, it easily lasted 6–7 hours. When the battery was around 5% and the charger was connected, it charged to 50% in under 30 minutes.
From models equipped with a Ryzen AI 5 340 or higher processor, they are certified as Microsoft (MS) Copilot+ PCs. That means they have a Neural Processing Unit (NPU) capable of 40 trillion operations per second (40 TOPS) or more. Based on this, HP enabled PCs to implement a variety of AI features.
HP's "AI Companion" is representative. In the cloud, it performs AI functions based on OpenAI's GPT-4o model. In on-device mode, it uses MS's small language model Phi-3.5. The core functions of AI Companion—free to use—are to produce, in conversational form, tasks such as summarizing documents, explaining basic concepts, and analyzing similarities and differences across multiple materials. HP regularly updates the on-device AI Companion so its performance does not significantly lag the cloud.
The model with the Ryzen 5 8640U processor is blocked from using HP AI Companion due to lower NPU performance (16 TOPS). However, it retains attempts to improve AI accessibility, such as providing a shortcut key next to the arrow keys to launch MS Copilot directly. If you have an MS account, you can easily use Copilot, so the absence of AI Companion is not a major drawback. If you subscribe to cloud-based AI services such as ChatGPT or Gemini, the lack of On-device AI support is unlikely to cause significant inconvenience.
◇ Light body and heavy charger… "half-baked" portability
Because the Omnibook 7 Aero 13 is an ultralight laptop focused on office and academic use, it's difficult to enjoy games that demand high specs. However, games with strong optimization work, such as League of Legends (LOL), VALORANT, and Overwatch 2, ran smoothly. It had sufficient performance to play EA Sports' soccer game "FC 25" at low settings.
The display resolution (1920x1200) and brightness (400 nits) are upper-mid-tier among panels used in ultralight laptops. There was no inconvenience for gaming or watching videos. Color reproduction (100% sRGB) is also good. However, the refresh rate is only 60 Hz.
The sound from the dual speakers was richer than entry level. HP incorporated features such as Poly Studio, Audio Boost, and DTS:X Ultra, making voices in videos or video conferences sound clear. However, the high frequencies were rendered somewhat harshly, which was disappointing.
Despite the low price, there are no major shortcomings in performance. However, it misses on detailed convenience features, falling short of consumer expectations. The standard charger is a 65-watt (W) USB Type-C power adapter that weighs 230 g. That's about 25% of the laptop's weight. Excluding the cable, the adapter measures 9 cm wide, 5.1 cm long, and 2.85 cm high, making it inconvenient to carry.
The port layout also lacked detail. The ports are diverse: two USB Type-C 10 Gbps, one USB Type-A 10 Gbps, one USB Type-A 5 Gbps, one HDMI 2.1 port, and one headphone/mic combo jack. However, because both the port for the charging cable and the port for the mouse are on the right side, the cables often tangled. The arrow keys are also in a compressed form, which can feel uncomfortable.