The HP Omen 16 is a laptop that looks great but lacks serious gaming power.
The HP Omen 16 (n0003na) has a lot to commend it. The 16.1-inch display gives great screen real estate, has fantastic resolution, and boasts brilliant viewing angles. The laptop case is a modern and up-to-date gaming design with rugged edges. There are also a huge number of ports, with several located at the rear, which is pretty rare for laptops. In terms of performance, this laptop is firmly in the middle range, outperforming the Razer Blade 14 but falling short of the Acer Nitro 5. If price is a consideration and you’re happy with mid-range performance, then the HP Omen 16 is a solid choice.
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 issues.
The HP Omen 16 is a mid-range gaming laptop with a great display, modern design, and a solid choice for those looking for mid-range performance.
