AMD’s New AI Chips Will Find Their Way Into HP’s Upcoming Copilot Plus Laptop

HP’s resurrected OmniBook line will soon get a performance boost with the new HP OmniBook Ultra, featuring an AMD Ryzen AI 300 Series processor with integrated AMD Radeon 800M graphics, up to 32GB of RAM, and a pair of 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports. Available starting in August for $1,449.99, the new HP OmniBook Ultra will eventually receive a free software update to make it one of the first Copilot Plus PCs not powered by an ARM-based processor.

The OmniBook brand was relaunched in May with the HP OmniBook X AI laptop, which, like most Copilot Plus PCs announced at the time, is powered by an ARM-based Snapdragon X Elite processor. Its neural processing unit was rated at 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), but with the AMD Ryzen AI 300 series inside, the new OmniBook Ultra delivers “up to 55 TOPS of NPU performance,” HP says in a press release.

The AMD Ryzen AI 300 series is also an x86-based processor, which should provide better compatibility with a wider range of Windows applications. Some older applications may require emulation to run on a Windows PC powered by the Snapdragon X Elite or other ARM-based processors.

Both OmniBooks feature a 14-inch, 2240 x 1400-pixel LCD touchscreen, but the new Ultra model includes a handful of small updates. In addition to two Thunderbolt 4 USB-C ports (plus an older USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port), the Ultra’s webcam gets an improved 9MP resolution and quad speakers that support DTS:X Ultra instead of just stereo speakers.

The OmniBook Ultra weighs about 250g more than the OmniBook X AI, partly due to a larger 68Wh battery. While the Ultra’s battery is larger than the X AI’s 59Wh, the OmniBook Ultra actually offers slightly less battery life, reaching up to 13 hours of average usage or up to 21 hours of local video playback (without streaming).

The new OmniBook Ultra won’t be a Copilot Plus PC at launch, but HP plans to release a free update at some point to add those features. HP says the timing and availability of the update “will depend on Microsoft.”