HP’s Omen sub-brand of gaming laptops is part of a growing segment in the Indian market, which has been gaining popularity among serious gamers and early adopters in recent times. The company launched its Omen 16 laptop a while back, and I have been using its Intel i7 variant with Nvidia 4080 for a few weeks now. This heavily configured laptop within the series is priced at Rs. 2,44,990. Let’s see how well it performs to justify that price tag.
Design: The HP Omen 16 comes in a complete black look with a somewhat understated Omen logo on the lid. The 16.1-inch 16:9 aspect ratio (non-glossy) display has thick bezels (housing the full HD webcam with a privacy shutter switch at the top), which is expected from a heavy gaming laptop. The hinge and durability of the laptop seem pretty decent, with no creaks or bending observed. The sides are populated with wide vents, with many ports now shifted to the back of the laptop. On the left, you get two USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 ports (with DisplayPort 1.4), a 3.5mm audio jack, and the vents; while the right side houses a USB 3.0 Type-A port and more vents. The back features your power input, a gigabit LAN port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and another USB 3.0 Type-A port, along with more vents. The laptop weighs just under 2.4kg and is less than 2.5cm thick. You get a full-sized backlit keyboard with a number pad and dual Bang & Olufsen speakers to top it off. There is no fingerprint scanner or SD card reader here.
Display: The HP Omen 16 laptop sports a 16.1-inch WQHD (1560x1440) IPS display with an anti-glare feature and support for up to 240Hz refresh rates. The display is pretty sharp and responsive in terms of different scenes and videos for playing games. It is not very, very bright, which might have helped a bit more with the overall output, but it’s still a well-calibrated display for a wide range of colours.
Performance: Powered by Intel’s Core 13th gen. i7-13700HX processor (clocked at up to 2.1GHz) with Nvidia’s 4080 GPU 12GB DDR6, along with 32GB of DDR5 RAM (upgradable) and 1TB of PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD, running Windows 11 Home (Single Language version 22H2). The HP Omen 16 handled games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider playing at the highest settings. GTA: V, on the other hand, played at around 125FPS at QHD resolution. There weren’t any major frame drops or throttling to be seen while playing games, providing a nice and smooth gameplay experience. I didn’t notice the display reaching its full 240Hz refresh rates in any game. The laptop reached a peak temperature of around 62 degrees Celsius during my usage when used without any air conditioning switched on in the room. You get dual fans inside the machine with plenty of vents to take care of thermals, importantly. I didn’t notice too much fan noise, but I still did notice a lot of heating around the left and right sides of the keyboard with continuous usage. The keys are backlit, and that’s done per key, which is a nice addition. You can customize RGB lighting, try gaming-themed wallpapers, performance controls, and other such stuff with OMEN Gaming Hub.
Sound: The dual speakers are sufficiently loud and can provide an immersive gaming experience when you're alone. You can try different audio settings from the Omen Gaming Hub app. HP also provides HyperX headsets with select models, and you can configure audio settings for them using the pre-installed HyperX NGENUITY app. The speakers are fairly decent for music playback or for watching some YouTube videos with not much noise around you.
Battery life: The HP Omen 16 laptop is equipped with an 83Wh battery unit and comes with a 280-watt charger in the box. The battery here is strictly okay, lasting about 3.5 to 4 hours with minimal gaming and, of course, much less with more gaming, which is what was expected from this gaming laptop in the first place.
Verdict: The HP Omen 16 laptop is an all-around solid gaming laptop that performs well for its main purpose – gaming. It can handle AAA and FPS games near their high settings with fairly high frames per second during gameplay. It has decent audio quality but just okay battery life and has good build quality to top it all off, making it a good option if you want to buy a new laptop for gaming.
