HP Omen 16 Overview (2022)

Gaming laptops look less and less like gaming laptops. The latest HP Omen 16 is on the latest list. It's part of a new series of Omen laptops and also comes with 16.1-inch screens.

The end result is a laptop that has the performance to run AAA games and perform resource-intensive tasks quickly, with a good screen and speakers that make it a great laptop for media playback.

HP Omen 16 review: what do you need to know?

The control of Nvidia's mobile Graphics cards in the laptop market is so great that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's the only manufacturer. And that would be a mistake: AMD owns a good part of/amount of its RX-series graphics cards. The latest addition to the series is the AMD Radeon RX 6600M, a midrange graphics card designed to deliver a reliable 1080p gaming experience on laptops at a reasonable price. In other words, a graphics card that can directly fight against Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3060.

HP Omen 16 (2022) Gaming Laptop

This is no easy job, as the latest GeForce graphics cards have redefined the performance you should expect from a $120,000 laptop graphics card Based on this, it should be noted that AMD was late to the party.

HP Omen 16 (2022) Prices and Competitors

The new HP Omen hits the market in three different configurations.This is an entry-level gaming laptop now on our desktop (16-c0006na), priced at $1300 (97500r+VAT), with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor, AMD graphics Radeon RX 6600M with a 512 GB SSD. The mid-range model (16-c0009na) runs on Ryzen 9 processors, with the same graphics card, with 1TB of storage, and is priced at $1900 (142500r + VAT).

New HP Omen 16 (2022, AMD)

First up is the Ryzen 9 model with Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 graphics for $2,250 (r170,000+VAT), which comes with 32GB of RAM, and1TB of storage. It should be noted that the current price of the cheapest model is reduced

Omen's new biggest competitor comes straight from HP's own stable in the form of the 16.1-inch HP Victus. Powerful performance comes from Ryzen 7 processors with Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics, but it's the sound system that really impresses. However, we found the Full HD panel annoying, while the battery life was nothing to complain about. Priced at just under $1,500 (R112,500 + VAT), this is a pretty decent setup.

Design and build quality HP Omen 16 (2022)

Like the Lenovo Legion 5, the Omen 16 is a gaming laptop aimed more at adults than youngsters. Everything about this laptop is extremely understated, black, and grown-up, although some interpret the design as boring. Aside from the 4-zone RGB backlit keyboard (you shouldn't expect per-key backlighting for the money), the Omen 16 can pass like a regular laptop, which is a plus if you need a lot of extras. laptop for work and play.

The Omen is very much a plastic laptop that feels solid enough, although the aluminum keyboard does give the process an aura of a certain quality. The hinge design is classic, the lid bends a bit, but there are no more fingerprints.

There are two plastic bends on either side of the keyboard, parallel to the third row of keys, designed to keep the screen from bending towards the keyboard, although it still feels vulnerable as the bumpers aren't thick enough.

HP has been pretty generous in terms of connectors, offering three USB Type-A at 5Gb/s, one Type-C at up to 10Gb/s, a Mini DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1 video port, as well as a Gigabit LAN RJ-45. with folding head. It's a decent choice. Wireless connectivity is implemented using a Realtek card supporting Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

Removing the Omen 16's bottom panel is easy, and you'll have access to two M.2 2280 SSD carriers, one of which is free, as well as two SO-DIMM RAM slots (both populated). HP even posts a helpful video on its support site that shows you how to remove and reinstall all internal components. At 2.3kg, the Omen stays within the normal weight range, and at 369 x 248 x 23mm, the laptop isn't big or small.

Keyboard, Touchpad, and Webcam

The chicklet keyboard is very similar to the Victus keyboard. The keyboard is solid, quiet, and responsive, but the depth of travel is acceptable. However, there is a significant difference: Victus has a number pad, while Omen does not.

In favor of the Omen, the four arrow keys are much larger than on the Victus and better separated from the rest of the keyboard in the lower right corner. The one-piece 125 x 80 mm touchscreen has a plastic coating. The click is a little shallow in our opinion, but that's the only problem.

HP Omen 16 RGB Lighting 

Above the screen, bezel sits a mid-range 720p webcam that looks grainy and dull in any lighting quality or intensity. In the absence of biometric systems, you will need to use a PIN code for quick authorization in the system.

Display and Sound 

For a budget gaming system, Omen offers a decent IPS panel. Competitors are generally limited to 15.6-inch panels with 1080p resolution and speed up to 144Hz, so 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution on a 16.1-inch diagonal with a maximum refresh rate of 165Hz is a nice bonus. At 311 cd/m2, we don't have the brightest panel on the market, but it's a colorful screen that covers 100.9% of the sRGB color space. Its color reproduction is quite acceptable considering the Delta E of 1.74, with a contrast ratio of 1184:1.

The combination of these numbers can practically guarantee you an immersive, crisp, colorful, and smooth gaming experience. If you plan to spend a lot of time watching movies on your laptop, the Omen 16's color reproduction easily bolsters our recommendation.

On the other hand, Bang and Olufsen's proprietary sound system won't let you down. It forms a clear and crisp soundscape with a volume margin - an average of 75 dB at a distance of 1 m, the bass, by the way, is not bad.

HP Omen 16 (2022) Performance and Availability

At the heart of the Omen 16 (16-c0006na) tested here is an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with a maximum clock rate of 4.4 GHz, accompanied by an AMD RX 6600M graphics card with 8 GB of memory. video and a TDP of 100 watts. System memory consists of 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 RAM split into two 8GB blocks. These specs suggest the Omen 16 should have the performance you need for both gaming and non-gaming workloads.

The most notable drawback when using an AMD graphics card is Nvidia's widely praised but exclusive DLSS or Deep Learning Super Sampling scaling magic. AMD has an open-source equivalent called FidelityX Super Resolution (FSR), but that solution still doesn't support as many games as DLSS. Ray tracing is less of an issue, after all, RTX is just the name Nvidia has given to the same Microsoft DirectX 12 ray tracing API everyone uses.

First, we activated Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, a game that requires a ray-tracing graphics card to run. At 1080p the Omen 16 hit around 55 FPS, while at 1440p it dropped to 37 FPS. Shadow of the Tomb Raider returns an average of 53 FPS at 1080p and 36 FPS at 1440p with ray tracing active. Without ray tracing, those numbers will go up to 103 FPS and 72 FPS.

We then moved on to Wolfenstein: Youngblood, last year's usual gaming test to measure the impact of upscaling and ray-tracing on the frame rate, but there was no option to enable ray tracing. Without ray tracing, the Omen 16 ran at 134 fps at 1080p and 84 fps at 1440p. Wolfenstein: Youngblood is one of two big games where we've seen ray-tracing issues on AMD graphics cards using Nvidia's proprietary APIs, 

To get an idea of ​​how effective FSR is, we tested Anno 1800. At 1440p the game ran at an average of 58 fps without FSR, but with FSR enabled at 150% the frame rate increased to 81 ips. Obviously, FSR scaling is key to getting the most out of ray-traced games running at native screen resolution. Without FSR, better to go to 1080p.

Additionally, while playing the demanding Hitman 2, the Omen 16 achieved 45 fps at 1080p and 26 fps at 1440p. When oversampling was reduced from 2 to 1, these numbers increased to 101 FPS and 85 FPS respectively. This matches what you would get from an RTX 3060-based system.

Moving away from gaming, the HP Omen 16 (2022) scored 322 points in the 4K Media Performance test, which is a solid result for a laptop of this performance. The Geekbench 5 test showed a similar story, while the SPECviewperf 3Dsmax rendering test returned 66 FPS at 1080p, again a good result for a laptop in this price range.

What does all this say? In games, the AMD RX 6600M performs much the same as the Nvidia RTX 3060, with a slight advantage in performance tasks thanks to an additional 2 GB of virtual memory. The Omen 16 clearly handles games at 1080p better than 1440p, unless the game in question supports FSR, so it's probably best to use the extra resolution for watching movies.

The Western Digital SN730 512GB PCI-E Gen 3 SSD, which boasts a decent but not outstanding sequential read/write speed of 2389MB/s and 2436MB/s, respectively, will sum up the test results.

Battery life wasn't exceptional, with the Omen 16 lasting 7 hours and 11 minutes in our video test. This is again in line with most competitors, with the exception of the ASUS TUF Dash 15, which continues to be the benchmark in this category. We expected more given that the Omen has an 83Wh 6-cell battery.