HP is taking aim at the budget MacBook market with its new $700 OmniBook 5 14 AI PC, bringing a larger OLED display and promising much longer battery life than Apple’s MacBook Neo.

The OmniBook 5 starts at $700/£679 and will be available to order from HP and Best Buy in October. That puts it directly in the same affordable laptop conversation as the MacBook Neo, whose starting price has reportedly climbed from its original $599 to around $700.

HP’s biggest selling point is the screen. The OmniBook 5 has a 14-inch 2K OLED display with a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, making it larger than the Neo’s 13-inch panel and even the 13.6-inch display on the MacBook Air. It reaches 300 nits of brightness, though that could make it less comfortable to use outdoors on particularly bright days. A 2.5K OLED touchscreen is also available as an upgrade.

Battery life could be another big draw. HP claims the OmniBook 5 lasted up to 42 hours in its local video playback test. That isn’t directly comparable with other battery tests, but it is considerably higher than the 13 hours recorded for the MacBook Neo in the source’s testing.

The trade-off is performance at the entry level. The $700 model comes with an Intel Core 5 315 processor, 8GB of RAM and just 256GB of storage. HP offers configurations with up to an Intel Core 7 350, 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD, although moving up the range starts to make the budget proposition less straightforward.

Connectivity is also fairly basic. There are two USB-C ports, but neither reaches Thunderbolt 4 speeds, while USB-A is missing entirely. An adapter may therefore be necessary for older peripherals.

There’s a little MacBook Neo influence in the design, too. The aluminum OmniBook 5 comes in muted silver, blue, pink and green finishes, echoing Apple’s pastel colour choices.

HP hasn’t stopped at the OmniBook 5, either. It also announced the slim ProBook 4 G2iS 14 AI PC, with a 3K OLED display, up to 32GB RAM and 1TB storage, although pricing hasn’t been revealed yet.