HP OmniBook 16-ay000, Core Ultra 7 255H, 32GB, 1TB SSD, Silver

The OmniBook 16-ay000 packs a 16-core Core Ultra 7 255H, 32GB RAM, and a stunning 2K OLED display into a $935 refurbished package. It's a productivity monster with an 85th percentile CPU and 89th percentile screen. Just don't expect to game on it, the 21.4 gaming score tells you everything you need to know.

The Core Ultra 7 255H is the star here. 16 cores, up to 5.1GHz turbo, and it lands in the 85th percentile of our CPU database. That's genuinely impressive for a refurb at this price. Multitasking with 32GB of LPDDR5X-5600 means you can have a dozen browser tabs, an IDE, and a video call running without breaking a sweat. The 1TB PCIe Gen4 SSD is no slouch either, sitting in the 80th percentile for storage. Boot times are snappy and file transfers are quick.

The Arc 140T integrated GPU is where things get interesting. It's in the 70th percentile overall, which sounds okay until you realize that's against all GPUs including integrated ones. For light photo editing or casual indie games, it'll do fine. But the gaming score of 21.4 tells the real story. Don't expect to run Cyberpunk or even Fortnite at anything resembling playable frame rates. This is a productivity GPU, not a gaming one.

Stacked against the Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro, the OmniBook wins on price but loses on pretty much everything else. The MacBook's GPU and build quality are in a different league, and its battery life will embarrass the HP's 68Wh cell. Against the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, the OmniBook has a bigger screen and more RAM, but the G14's dedicated GPU makes it the obvious choice for gaming. The Lenovo Legion 5i is another gaming-focused competitor that crushes the OmniBook in graphics performance. Where the OmniBook shines is against the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro and MSI Prestige, both thin-and-light productivity machines. The HP offers similar specs at a lower refurbished price, though the Samsung likely has better portability and battery life.

At $935 refurbished, this OmniBook is a lot of laptop for the money. You're getting a top-tier CPU, a gorgeous OLED display, and 32GB of RAM for under a grand. Compare that to a new MacBook Pro M4 Pro or a ROG Zephyrus G14 and you're saving hundreds. The trade-off is reliability, which sits in the 33rd percentile. Refurbished units can be hit or miss, and with only 4 reviews to go on, you're taking a bit of a gamble. But if you get a good unit, the price-to-performance ratio here is hard to beat for productivity work.

The HP OmniBook 16-ay000 lands at $935 refurbished, and for that money you're getting a 16-core Core Ultra 7 255H, 32GB of LPDDR5X, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and a 16-inch 2K OLED touchscreen running at 120Hz. That's a spec sheet that reads like a productivity workhorse, and the numbers back it up. The screen sits in the 89th percentile of our database, RAM at 87th, and the CPU at 85th. This thing is built for getting work done, not for fragging noobs.

But there's a catch, and it's a big one. The gaming score is 21.4 out of 100, which is rough. The integrated Arc 140T GPU with 6GB of VRAM just doesn't have the muscle for modern titles. And at 1.95kg with a 68Wh battery, this isn't the most portable machine either. It's a desk-bound productivity laptop that occasionally pretends it can game. It can't, and we'll get into that.

Gamers should absolutely skip this. The 21.4 gaming score is one of the weakest we've seen for a laptop at this price point, and the integrated Arc 140T GPU simply can't keep up with modern titles. If you need portability, the 1.95kg weight and 22nd percentile compactness score mean this thing is a pain to lug around. And if reliability is a top concern, the 33rd percentile reliability rating combined with only 4 customer reviews should give you pause. You're essentially rolling the dice on a refurbished unit with limited social proof to back it up.

The HP OmniBook 16-ay000 is a productivity beast disguised as a budget laptop. The 85th percentile CPU, 87th percentile RAM, and 89th percentile display make it a fantastic choice for developers, students, and anyone who lives in spreadsheets and code editors. The $935 refurbished price is aggressive for this spec sheet. Just don't buy it expecting to game, and be prepared for the possibility of reliability hiccups given the 33rd percentile reliability score. If you need a workhorse and can live without a dedicated GPU, this is a strong buy.