HP Omen 16 review: a mid-range gaming laptop with a great display
The HP Omen 16 is one of HP’s efforts to further refine its range of gaming laptops. An AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a dedicated graphics card in the form of NVIDIA’s Geforce RTX 3070Ti GPU make this laptop capable of a range of different tasks, including mid-range gaming. The hardware is perfectly suited to 1080p gaming but can just about be pushed to 1440p if you’re happy with frames per second of around 30.
The 16.1-inch display at Full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution makes almost all games look visually great. As you’d expect, any games above this resolution struggle. The aspect ratio of 16:9 slots neatly into most formats of games and films, demonstrating the target audience for this laptop.
The overall build quality is very strong, with a beautifully designed case. The keyboard has everything you’d hope for except a separate number keypad. The trackpad is big but lacks the necessary quality to be useful with fine cursor movements and clicks.
The fans do a superb job of keeping the device cool, but they do this at the cost of increased levels of noise. There is an abundance of vents located around the laptop, which results in a lot of hot air being pushed out. All of this hardware drains the battery pretty quickly, making it far from ideal as a portable laptop. But if you’re happy with a home setup with the laptop permanently plugged in, then you obviously won’t have any problems.
The HP Omen 16 will find a lot of happy homes, but if you shop around, you’ll find better performers at a similar price point.
Price
Many think that you have to pay through the earth to get a gaming laptop that will have the necessary beef to be able to run the latest games. Although some games do indeed demand the very latest hardware, the majority of games will be more than fine running on my middle-of-the-range hardware.
The exact laptop spec that I was sent for review is no longer available, but the Omen 16 (xd0003na) has a very similar specification, with the main differences being an AMD Ryzen? 7 7840HS CPU and a Nvidia GeForce RTX? 4050 (6 GB) GPU. This laptop retails at ￡1,300 but is currently on sale for ￡1,099.
Design
The HP Omen 16 looks and feels great. As soon as I took it out of the box, I could feel, from the weight, that this was a laptop made with premium parts with very little compromise on quality. The blend of metal and plastic casing gives enough strength to be confident that the unit will cope with being moved around. The bevelled edges to all four corners of both the base and the screen give this a slightly softer feel than brutalist-looking alternatives.
At 16.1 inches, there seems to be room for everything, including an abundance of ports, a well-spaced-out keyboard, and a generously sized trackpad. Each key has enough room around it to make typing a joy, although the lack of a dedicated number pad is a little disappointing, especially considering there is room for one.
The trackpad is of plastic construction and therefore lacks the quality of metallic alternatives that you would find on the MacBook range of laptops, for example. I'm sure it'll stand the test of time, but I experienced some unwanted deformation of the plastic when clicking on the trackpad. I use trackpads a lot during my work, and if they're not up to scratch, then it makes portable working very tricky.
The ports are spread around the left and right sides as well as to the rear. The location of each has been thoughtfully positioned, with the power and display ports located to the rear. This makes for tidy cable management when connecting to an external monitor.
Three USB-A ports are located on the sides, with two USB-C ports on the rear. I would have liked to have seen at least one of these USB-C ports on the side to make connecting and disconnecting peripherals easier. The addition of an SD card slot is a pleasant addition and is perfect for transferring files from a camera, for example.
Display
At 16.1 inches, there's a lot of screen real estate. This was ideal for playing games and for creative work, especially with multiple windows open at the same time. The 16:9 aspect ratio was fine for watching films and gaming but less suited to reading blogs or word processing.
A full HD (1920 x 1080 pixel) screen is sufficient for most games and watching Netflix, although it obviously limits users who want to either watch or work with 4K footage. If I looked closely or was working on any graphic design tasks, then I definitely noticed the lack of resolution.
The display panel is a tad flimsy, with definite bending occurring during opening and closing, especially if I wasn't bang on centre with my finger positioning. The hinge is also a little too stiff, which requires more force to move it, which is not ideal when that's the last part of the laptop that you'd want to damage.
Viewing angles are more than adequate, especially as I spent most of the time directly in front of them. Brightness levels were fine for my indoor setup but were definitely lacking when outside in brighter light.
Key features
Discrete graphics card
A NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3070Ti sits alongside 8GB of RAM and an AMD Ryzen 9 processor for excellent graphics performance. NVIDIA has since delivered a successor, the RTX 4070Ti, but this is only generally available on high-spec laptops. The RTX 3070Ti performs fantastically on all games at 1080p and is adequate at 1440p. You could push it to 4K games, but the frames per second really start to take a hit.
Having a dedicated graphics card like the RTX 3070Ti is essential for running any games that are dependent on ray tracing. This is a more than capable GPU, and because of its positioning in the NVIDIA pecking order, it helps to keep the overall price down.
16.1-inch display
The Omen display is really nice. At 16.1 inches you get a lot of screen that makes it possible to work on without requiring an external monitor. The resolution tops out at FHD (1920 x 1080 pixels) which is enough for general working and watching FHD films. 4K films or games don't look great on this display but that's to be expected. The visual quality remains good even at acute angles.
Omen Tempest Cooling
The AMD processor and NVIDIA graphics card are both regulated by Omen Tempest Cooling. Vents are located at the sides and rear of the laptop, and the fans do a great job of keeping everything cool. I didn't experience any significant problems with the laptop getting too hot, although at times I was glad to have the laptop on my desk rather than on my lap.
All of this excellent cooling system does come at a cost – not a financial one but a noise one. To keep the temperature regulated, the fans do have to work very hard, and as a result, this is quite a noisy laptop. It's not to the level that you would hear if you were playing a game or watching a film, but at the same time, it's not the most pleasant of background noises. To be fair, this was most noticeable only when the laptop was under the most extreme loads.
Power and performance
In terms of design, the HP Omen 16 is a really nice gaming laptop. The design is edgy and built perfectly for gamers. That's not all that's important, though. In our laptop reviews, we run a number of tests to get under the hood and see how the hardware performs. We do that using Geekbench and Cinebench, as well as using Handbrake to carry out a transcoding test.
The CPU single-core and multi-core scores on Cinebench were 1539 and 13075 respectively. The Geekbench 6 test resulted in a single-core score of 2086 and a multi-core score of 10005. This is marginally better than the Razer Blade 14, which scores around 1500 for single-core and 9000 for multi-core. Another competitor is the Acer Nitro 5, which scores similarly for single-core but easily outperforms it for multi-core with a score well over 13500.
In terms of GPU testing, Geekbench scored the Nvidia Geforce RTX 3070Ti 103250, which again puts it in the middle between the lowest and highest performers. The HP Omen 16 isn't designed specifically for video editors, but if you're looking at it for that purpose, then you'll be pleased to know that Handbrake managed to transcode a 10-minute, 34-second 4K video to 1080p in 6 minutes and 34 seconds.
The battery performance continues in the same vein as the CPU and GPU, with mediocre life. This is a little disappointing considering the bigger case should allow for larger and better-performing components. This is not a laptop for hybrid working on the go without a charger.
Should I buy the HP Omen 16?
In terms of hardware and performance, the HP Omen 16 laptop sits solidly in the midrange of gaming laptops. When it comes to price, for some reason, HP has pitched the Omen 16 series on the slightly pricier side. I’m not sure if that’s because of the Omen brand or the effective Tempest cooling system, but either way, it does mean that similarly performing laptops are available for slightly less money.
If you love the design, need an abundance of ports that would put most docking stations to shame, and love the RTX 3070Ti, then you’ll be pleased with what you get. More advanced games with top-end ray-tracing technology will struggle on this hardware, but for most AA games, especially those at 1080p, you’ll have a laptop that delivers everything you need.