HP boards the MacBook Neo competitor train

HP is the latest to announce a MacBook Neo competitor before the holidays. Its OmniBook 5, starting at $699.99, will use Intel's Wildcat Lake chips and come in a series of colors. What stands out is HP's choice of OLED screens for every model.

Like Apple's Neo and Dell's upcoming 14S, HP is offering four colors: peony pink, starlit blue, smoke silver, and soft honeydew.

HP is following steps we've seen from Lenovo, which recently announced its colorful IdeaPad Vibe lineup; Dell's XPS 13 and forthcoming 14S; and Acer's Swift Air 14.

The company is promising up to 42 hours of battery life, with the catch that that's measured with local video playback. At 2.56 pounds, it's lighter than the 14S, which measures 2.65 pounds, and the Acer Swift Air 14, which measures 2.62 pounds. The MacBook Neo and Dell XPS 13 are both lighter, but have smaller 13-inch screens.

Starting with an Intel Core 5 320, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage, the system is familiar to others on paper. It's the 1920 x 1200 OLED touchscreen that stands out. The system will start at $699.99.

But that OLED screen does have one catch: the two 1920 x 1200 models at launch will each be rated for 300 nits, which is fairly dim for OLED, which benefits quite a bit from brightness.

Some configurations have clearly been affected by the ongoing component crisis. While 8 and 16GB RAM configurations will be available at launch, a 12GB option is set for November. The same goes for the top-end 1TB storage option. Lastly, the highest-end OLED panel, a 2560 x 1600 touchscreen rated for 620 nits, won't be shipping until March of next year.

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