The OMEN Transcend Gaming 14 Laptop is a 14-inch gaming powerhouse that packs impressive hardware into a compact form. Sporting an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H processor, 32 GB LPDDR5x RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU with 8 GB GDDR6, the OMEN Transcend aims to live up to its name, rising above other gaming laptops in the 14-inch chassis category. However, at $2,249.99 USD, it is important to determine if the performance justifies the price point.
The Transcend offers a unique look without straying too far from the standard gaming laptop design. The top side of the clamshell design is inset slightly off the back bevel, allowing for a small outjet along the backside of the laptop. This extra space is dedicated to the Transcend’s cooling, with a central I/O slot housing the HDMI and charging ports—a design choice I am fond of. Notably, gone is the barrel-plug-style charger that has been making a resurgence in some modern gaming laptops; in its place is a 140 W USB Type-C power adapter.
OMEN has opted for a matte black finish that, after a month and a half of testing, holds up well, showing only light wear. Even this can be easily wiped down with a damp cloth, restoring the Transcend to its pristine look. Aside from a glossy logo on the top cover, the only other identifying mark is a small logo on the right palm rest. The result is a sleek, minimalist design that feels both classy and premium.
On the note of premium, the OMEN Transcend’s shell is made of aluminum and feels the same quality as a MacBook. A few design inspirations find their roots in the Apple world. The trackpad, for instance, not only looks similar but offers just a similar user experience. This is to the Transcend’s credit as the trackpad performs exceptionally well, feels sturdy, and offers a satisfying tactile experience.
Perhaps one of my favourite design choices of the Transcend was the inclusion of HyperX keycaps. These pudding-style keycaps look and feel like HyperX full-size pudding keycaps for mechanical keyboards, simply adapted for a laptop. The translucent edges and letters give the keyboard a unique look and feel. The typing experience is also exceptional, with the slightly rubberized top pad on each keycap offering a comfortable touch point for my fingers.
The Transcend supports four-zone RGB control and is managed with OMEN’s Lighting Studio software. Thanks to the pudding keycaps, the keyboard glows and looks sharp. Such a great pairing of keycaps and RGB would have been nice to see per-key RGB assignment, but to their credit, even four-zone is something we don’t see a lot in laptop keyboards. Regardless of this nitpicking, the keyboard on the OMEN Transcend is one of the best I’ve used.
“The inclusion of HyperX pudding-style keycaps gives the keyboard a unique, premium feel while delivering an exceptional typing experience.”
A 2.8K (2,800 × 1,800, 16:10 aspect ratio), 14” OLED display offers a beautiful viewing experience on the Transcend. Rated for 120 Hz refresh, the display supports HDR up to 500 nit peak brightness. The result is a bright, rich viewing experience. The colour richness is of particular value, which can be attributed to the 1.07 billion-colour support afforded the display thanks to HDR. It simply looks beautiful.
I/O is the one area that I always wish there were more of, no matter the laptop, and the Transcend is no exception. This is a critique of the design philosophy of modern laptops in general, and to its credit, what is provided with the Transcend is serviceable. A single HDMI 2.1 and Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports are located on the back of the chassis. The latter can be used for 40 Gbps data transfer, which supports power delivery or DisplayPort 2.1. A second USB Type-C with 10 Gbps data transfer (supporting power delivery and DisplayPort 1.2a) along with a headphone jack are located on the left side, while two USB Type-A ports are located on the right side.
As for the wireless connection, the Transcend offers both Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. With the latest and greatest wireless technology (as of the time of writing), the Transcend is prepped and ready for any data that needs moving. Wi-Fi testing revealed some impressive numbers, with the Transcend averaging 900 Mbps down on my Gigabyte network.
Shifting to performance, the Transcend manages to push some impressive power out of its smaller form factor, thanks to the Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 185H processor. This 16-core, 22-thread processor does an excellent job handling both single processes and multitasking. In the world of productivity and content creation, the Transcend performs exceptionally well.
Software such as DaVinci Resolve has no issue running on the Transcend and handles edits quite well. Render times are reasonable, mostly thanks to DaVinci’s hardware allocation support, which enables the software to leverage the GPU for extra render power. While the 14-inch screen might feel a bit cramped for editing when connected to my 27-inch display, the OMEN Transcend became a decent system for handling video editing. As for daily tasks and processing, the Transcend will crush anything thrown its way.
Gaming, likewise, is decent on the Transcend. While the processor plays a part in this, the accompaniment of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, 8 GB GDDR6, and 32 GB of LPDDR5x RAM help make the Transcend a serviceable gaming laptop. Games testing went fairly well, with the Transcend handling the games tested. DOOM Eternal had no issue maintaining around 95 FPS at Ultra settings. Path of Exile 2 at high settings while running my wonderful, all-spell-effects, all-the-time Sorceress still managed a very respectable 50 FPS. This is saying something, considering the sheer number of spell effects my Sorceress can produce on screen at any given time.
“The OMEN Transcend’s sleek aluminum chassis and minimalist design evoke a sense of premium quality, comparable to a MacBook in build.”
While ray tracing is available thanks to the RTX 4060, there is a noticeable dip in overall performance in games. With DOOM Eternal, for example, the average of 95 fps dropped to an average of 50 fps (with a few dips into the high 30 fps range) with ray tracing active. So, while ray tracing is usable, I found the overall gaming experience to be much more satisfying with it off. This is a bit disappointing and makes the Transcend feel somewhat throttled during gameplay sessions.
One other notable hardware feature that took me by surprise was the audio experience. While it offers the latest in DTS:X Ultra, it is the overall sound quality that stands out. For context, we are talking about laptop speakers, which historically have never been great, so everything that comes next is shared through that lens. The speakers provide a surprising amount of depth and richness to the audio profile. The bass, mids and highs are well-balanced and sound good. Vocals come through clearly while still providing some respectable low end. It should be noted that the speakers aren’t overly loud, but the audio quality is solid.
Cooling on the Transcend is quite impressive, especially considering the chassis size. It had no issue maintaining serviceable temperatures even during heavy testing. Heat dissipation is also fairly solid, with the unit only getting noticeably warm near the very top of the keyboard, near the exhaust ports.
OMEN uses its Tempest Cooling Go cooling system to help achieve these results. In essence, the bottom of the unit houses two separate cooling bays that focus cool air on the components that need it. It allows air to move more quickly through the system while also running the fans at lower speeds, which translates to a quieter overall user experience. In testing, while the fans were audible, they were noticeably quieter than most of the laptops I’ve reviewed this year.
Battery life, on the other hand, is a bit disappointing, as it generally has been with gaming laptops this generation. While the official site rates the laptop for eight hours of battery life, this just wasn’t my experience. In battery testing, while running games with performance mode active, the battery couldn’t manage more than two hours on a single charge. Adjusting the system profile did see a slight improvement but also impacted gameplay.
Productivity tasks such as email, writing and data entry saw better results, getting me into the five- to six-hour range, but I was never able to squeeze eight hours out of the battery during a regular workday. While I’m sure there are test cases where these numbers can be produced, in everyday work the eight-hour mark just wasn’t obtainable.
To help manage the many aspects of the Transcend, OMEN offers its own Gaming Hub software that manages everything from cam and voice settings to monitoring systems vital to changing hardware settings and profile configurations. While it is similar to other branded settings software, OMEN Gaming Hub is well laid out and fairly easy to navigate, making it painless to adjust system settings and monitor system vitals.
The OMEN Transcend 14 Gaming Laptop offers solid performance but is not as solid as I would have expected. While the CPU and GPU are both solid on paper and even in benchmarking, for some reason, they feel a bit underpowered in real-life applications. Gaming, especially while quite serviceable, seemed to underperform with ray tracing. Battery life, likewise, was quite disappointing. All of this, coupled with a $2,249.99 USD price tag, makes the Transcend feel a bit overpriced for its performance output.
