Owners of tower desktop PCs with separate monitors take it for granted, but one perk is almost always denied to all-in-one desktop users: a height-adjustable screen. The HP OmniStudio X 31.5 AIO (starts at $1,449.99; $2,728.99 as tested) has one such display—it moves up and down and tilts for ergonomic convenience. (We rate that function higher than its trendy AI features.) And that’s not all: This AIO is downright competitive with Apple’s (admittedly much smaller-screened) iMac in some tasks, not to mention on screen quality, too. It’s not cheap, but the OmniStudio X is our new Editors’ Choice award winner among premium all-in-one Windows desktops.
Configurations and Design: Low-Res or High-End? Your Choice
You’ll find two OmniStudio X models while shopping: a 27-inch version with a baseline-minimum 1,920-by-1,080-pixel resolution, and the 31.5-inch unit with a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) non-touch display reviewed here. HP.com sells the latter for $1,449.99 to start with an Intel Core Ultra 5 processor, a two-DIMM 16GB memory allotment, and a skimpy 256GB solid-state drive.
Best Buy has the, er, best buy at $1,979.99 for a 16-core, 22-thread Core Ultra 7 155H chip, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and a 6GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU for more powerful graphics. Our review unit steps up to 2TB of storage and Windows 11 Pro for a steep $2,658.99 list price on HP’s site.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
However, HP and Best Buy had the AIO on sale during our review period, with HP cutting our review configuration to a more competitive $2,288.99, and Best Buy selling its configuration for as little as $1,800. The Lenovo Yoga AIO 9i has the same starting price pricing and similar specs (31.5-inch 4K screen, choice of integrated or RTX 4050 graphics) with an older Core i9-13900H CPU. This model seems to be nearing its expiration date with fewer configurations available. The 2024 Apple iMac has a sharper (4,480-by-2,520-pixel) but much smaller 23.5-inch display and costs $2,299 with 32GB of RAM and a 1TB drive. As this review continues, you’ll notice how often these two AIOs clash, making for a pitched battle in the Mac-PC wars.
The OmniStudio X is 28.1 inches wide and 22.3 inches high (at the top of its 3.9-inch height-adjustment range); its stand is a slim but wobble-free pole on a 9-by-8-inch base. Assembly is straightforward: You thumbscrew the base onto the bottom of the stand and snap the latter into place on the back of the monitor. A plastic clip helps keep cables tidy. The system weighs 21.6 pounds, making it luggable but not easily movable.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Slim bezels surround the display—HP cites a 93.8% screen-to-body ratio—with a pop-up webcam that you can push down for privacy (often, frustratingly, pushing down the screen in the process) or leave up for Windows Hello face-recognition logins. The camera can also lock and unlock the system as you leave and return. It also works with the MyHP app to caution you if you’re sitting too close or not taking breaks.
The power button is behind the bottom right corner of the screen, below a compass button that lets you choose PC, HDMI, or USB-C video input and switch among color modes (native, warm, neutral, cool, sRGB, DCI-P3, BT.709). It also adjusts brightness, though using the F7 and F8 keys is easier.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Using the HP OmniStudio X 31.5 AIO: Thumbs Up on the Keyboard, Thumbs Down on the Mouse
Three 10Gbps USB ports—one Type-C and two Type-A—sit on the right side of the stand, a helpful position. Around the back, you’ll find a 20Gbps USB-C port, two more USB-A ports (another, already occupied by the wireless mouse and keyboard receiver, is on the bottom edge), and an HDMI-in port (to use the display with a game console or other device). Also back here is an HDMI-out port (to connect a second screen), an audio jack, a 2.5Gbps Ethernet port, and a full-size power port. Like the iMac, the OmniStudio’s power supply is inside, so no stubbing your toe on the laptop-style external power brick of many AIOs.
Nit-pickers will bemoan the lack of a 40Gbps USB4 or Thunderbolt 4 port, but I’m more irked by the headphone jack’s inconvenient placement at the rear instead of on the side. An Intel Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 controller is a $10 upgrade from the standard Wi-Fi 6E.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The wireless mouse and keyboard take two AAA batteries each. The mouse is a generic oval with a dinky scroll wheel and no side or extra buttons; it feels scratchy and imprecise on my wooden dining table without a mouse pad. The low-profile keyboard fares better—it has a slight tilt (though no adjustable feet), a shallow but pleasantly substantial typing feel, and several shortcut keys, including search, paste, screen capture, notifications, and voice typing.
Audiophiles might turn up their noses at the OmniStudio’s downward-firing speakers, but I am delighted as someone used to laptop audio. The system’s speakers are plenty loud—indeed, I keep the volume to 50% to prevent it from getting boomy or distorted—with clear highs and a modest but welcome amount of bass. These speakers make it easy to discern overlapping tracks. The system comes with the DTS:X headphone and speaker codecs for compatible content and MyHP provides music, movie, and voice presets and an equalizer with AI noise reduction.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The display is IMAX Certified, which sounds more impressive than it is—in the real world, it amounts to a few extra pixels at the top and bottom of Marvel and some other movies on Disney+. The onboard GeForce RTX 4050 mobile GPU also sounds more impressive than it is: This GPU runs at just 60 watts, barely half the power of the same chip in some gaming laptops. Since the display’s refresh rate is limited to the usual 60Hz, you won’t be doing any high-frame-rate fragging here. The intent here is to assist with content creation and enable light gaming.
Regardless, HP’s screen is terrific. The big IPS panel looks exceptionally bright (and measures even brighter; see below), with deep contrast and vivid, richly saturated colors. Its viewing angles are wide (though the edges look dim at extreme angles), and fine details come through sharp. White backgrounds appear pristine instead of dingy on this panel, and you’ll see no pixelation around the edges of letters even when you zoom in on text. The height adjustment is a definite plus, and the display, overall, is a pleasure to work with.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Using Windows Camera, the high-quality webcam supports up to 1440p videos and 1800p stills. The camera app can also access Windows Studio Effects, including auto framing and background blur. Using HP’s Poly Camera Pro, the webcam really shines, with various profiles, including 4K resolution (with a caveat that videoconferencing apps rarely support it), effects, layers, and backgrounds ranging from a cafe to a frozen tundra. An Enhanced Lighting app simulates a ring light.
Testing the HP OmniStudio X 31.5 AIO: Neck and Neck With Apple’s All-In-One iMac
For our benchmark charts, we compared the OmniStudio X with its Lenovo Yoga 9i rival (with integrated graphics) and one other consumer all-in-one, the under-$1,000 Lenovo IdeaCentre AIO 27. We filled out the Windows-based lineup with the upscale, gaming-oriented Dell XPS Desktop home PC. Finally, we brought the 2024 Apple iMac into the comparison set to see how HP’s AIO compares on raw speeds and found exciting results.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image editing prowess with various automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
The OmniStudio X’s Core Ultra 7 slightly trailed the Yoga’s Core i9 in most of our CPU tests, but its extra RAM gave it a narrow edge in PCMark 10’s productivity rating (though any score of more than 4,000 points is acceptable for apps like Word and Excel) and Photoshop. The hot-rod Dell tower often led the pack, showing what spending even more gets you.
The OmniStudio X proved quite competitive against the iMac, particularly in raw CPU performance measured by Cinebench and HandBrake. The HP system was far behind in Geekbench, but its score was respectable, suggesting high-end performance. Naturally, the iMac dominated in Photoshop, with macOS being optimized for Adobe apps for decades now. Regardless, it’s been rare to see Windows-based AIOs clashing with the iMac du jour, so kudos to HP and Intel for working together to present a worthy competitor.
Graphics Tests
We challenge computer graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K) use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. A fifth test, Solar Bay, emphasizes ray-tracing performance.
The XPS Desktop’s GeForce RTX 4080 Super card predictably ran away with these benchmarks, while the HP’s low-wattage RTX 4050 decisively outran the systems with integrated graphics, though we’ve seen bigger numbers from RTX 4050 laptops with their GPUs less power-restrained. This graphics arrangement in the HP AIO is satisfactory for video streaming and, based on the numbers, should suffice for light 1080p modern gaming at high detail settings. (The 3DMark scores are within 10% to 15% striking distance of a typical RTX 4050 gaming laptop, and the models we have tested can manage most demanding games at cranked-up settings in full HD.) Just don’t expect to play at high detail settings and 1440p or 4K resolution.
The 2024 iMac couldn’t run the three of these five 3DMark tests that Macs are compatible with at the time of our review. However, looking at the same GPU’s results within the 14-inch MacBook Pro, the 10-core M4 GPU trades blows with the RTX 4050 but gets predictably blown away in ray tracing performance.
Display Tests
As with laptops, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure an AIO screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Although it lacks the iMac’s fancy optional nano-texture glass, the HP has virtual workstation-class color coverage and brightness. It even narrowly outclassed the iMac on Adobe RGB coverage and far outshone it on maximum brightness. The OmniStudio X has one of the most premium displays we’ve seen in an all-in-one to date, rivaling the iconic Apple AIO on more than one key metric.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Verdict: A Showpiece AIO for Home Offices and Family Rooms
All-in-one desktops with displays larger than 27 inches are desirable but rare, which leaves plenty of room for the OmniStudio X 31.5 to shoot to the top of an exclusive class. We don’t know if Lenovo plans to refresh the Yoga AIO 9i, but the current model has no height adjustment or easily reached side ports. Notably, neither does the latest iMac, which this AIO gives a serious run for its money (and vastly outsizes). The OmniStudio is as quality as a Windows AIO gets, rivaling the iMac and handily earning our Editors’ Choice award.
Pros
View
More
The Bottom Line
HP’s big-screen all-in-one desktop is an elegant alternative to a tower PC. Its perky performance, larger display, and numerous conveniences make it a worthy iMac competitor.
Like What You’re Reading?
This newsletter may contain advertising, deals, or affiliate links.
By clicking the button, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our
Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy.
You may unsubscribe from the newsletters at any time.
About Eric Grevstad
Contributing Editor
