Customer Ratings & Reviews

The HP OMEN 24.5" 360Hz: A Review from a Guy Who's Been Staring at Screens Since They Were Green Let me get something out of the way right up front: I'm a lot older than most gamers. I've been looking at computer screens since they were black with green text, and they hummed at you like they resented being turned on. I've watched every generation of display technology come and go — CRTs the size of a doghouse, those first flat panels that ghosted so bad every game looked like it was being played underwater, the "HD revolution," all of it. So when I tell you a monitor stopped me in my tracks, understand that I am not a man who is easily stopped. I've seen a lot of screens. Most of them were fine. Fine is the enemy of a good review, and this monitor is not fine. This thing is remarkable. What We're Talking About The monitor in question is the HP OMEN 24.5" IPS Full HD gaming monitor — 360Hz refresh rate, G-SYNC and FreeSync compatible, VESA certified HDR, adjustable height stand, HDMI and DisplayPort inputs, in black. I run it as my primary display on an OMEN 35L with an RTX 5060, sitting next to a 180Hz panel that used to be my pride and joy and now feels like the opening act. I'll be honest about where my head was when I bought it. 360Hz sounded like marketing. It sounded like one of those spec-sheet arms races where the numbers keep going up and the actual experience stays the same, and the only thing that really changes is the price tag. I figured I'd see a modest improvement over my 180Hz screen, shrug, and get on with my life. I have never been so happy to be wrong. The Speed: Where My Skepticism Went to Die Here's the thing nobody tells you about high refresh rates until you've lived with one: it's not that things look faster. It's that things stop looking like a screen at all. I play fast games. Racing games where the scenery is a blur at 200 miles an hour, arena shooters where everything on screen is either exploding or about to. These are exactly the situations where monitors traditionally fall apart — where you get that smearing, that tearing, that half-second where the image splits like a bad photograph and your brain has to stitch reality back together. I went into this fully expecting to find the seams. I was actively hunting for them. Tearing, pixelation, ghosting, stutter — I know what all of it looks like, and I went looking with a critic's eye. There is ZERO distortion on this panel. None. Zero. I don't mean "very little." I don't mean "acceptable for the price." I mean I have thrown the fastest, most chaotic gameplay I own at this monitor, whipped the camera around like a maniac specifically trying to break it, and the image stays glued together like it was painted on. The G-SYNC compatibility deserves a lot of the credit here — the monitor and the graphics card are in constant conversation, matching frames so precisely that tearing simply never gets a chance to happen. Whatever handshake is going on between this panel and my GPU, it's a good marriage. Motion on this screen doesn't look like motion on a screen. It looks like looking out a window at something moving. That's the best way I can describe it, and I realize how that sounds, and I stand by it. The Blacks: Actually Black Now let's talk about something that matters even more to me than speed, because I'm a man who appreciates atmosphere. Shadows. Night scenes. The dark corner of a room where something might be waiting. Most monitors — and I mean most, including some expensive ones — don't give you black. They give you dark gray and hope you don't notice. You load up a nighttime scene and the whole thing has this washed-out, foggy quality, like somebody left a light on somewhere off-camera. It kills the mood. It kills the immersion. Horror isn't scary at dark-gray. Night driving isn't tense at dark-gray. The blacks on this OMEN are black. Truly black. When a scene goes dark, it goes DARK — shadows have depth, nighttime has presence, and the dark parts of the image feel like actual darkness instead of a screen doing an impression of darkness. The first time I sat in a night scene on this thing, I actually leaned back in my chair and just looked at it for a minute. The shadows had layers. There was detail down in the dark that I could feel more than see, which is exactly how darkness works in real life. The VESA HDR certification isn't just a sticker on the box — the range between the brightest brights and the darkest darks gives images a dimensionality I frankly didn't expect from a panel this size at this price. And here's what surprised me most: IPS panels aren't supposed to be famous for this. IPS is the color-and-viewing-angle technology; the deep blacks are usually somebody else's party trick. This panel somehow does both, and I don't know what deal HP made to pull that off, but I'm not asking questions. The Colors and Clarity: The Part I Didn't See Coming Speed is what this monitor is sold on, but the image quality is what keeps ambushing me. The clarity on this panel is genuinely something else — Full HD on a 24.5-inch screen means the pixel density is tight, and everything from game textures to plain old text is crisp in a way that makes you realize how much soft-focus mush you'd been tolerating before. The resolution and sharpness are, in a word, super. Edges are edges. Fine details are fine details. Nothing swims. The colors, meanwhile, are rich without being cartoonish. That's a harder balance than it sounds — plenty of gaming monitors crank the saturation until everything looks like a candy store, and you don't notice how fatiguing it is until you turn it off and your eyes thank you. This IPS panel doesn't do that. Sunsets look warm. Foliage looks alive. Skin tones look human. And because it's IPS, the colors don't shift and die the moment you move your head six inches to the left, which matters more than people think when you're actually living with a monitor instead of reviewing one for an afternoon. Put the clarity, the colors, and the true blacks together and you get images with real depth to them. Scenes have atmosphere. Games I've played plenty of times before have detail and mood I flat-out never saw on lesser screens. That's not an upgrade; that's a revelation. The Stand, the Build, and the Surprise Nobody Mentioned The adjustable height stand is one of those features you don't appreciate until you're my age and your neck files formal complaints. Getting the screen to exactly the right height — not "close enough," but exactly right — makes long sessions comfortable in a way that no amount of pillow-stacking under a fixed stand ever managed. The adjustment is smooth and the whole thing feels planted. No wobble, no drift, no cheap-plastic creak. It sits on the desk like it means it. And now for my favorite part of this whole purchase: the bezel lights up. Nowhere — and I mean nowhere — in the product description does it mention a lighted bezel. I bought this monitor, set it up, and discovered it has ambient lighting that the listing never breathed a word about. In an industry where every box promises you the moon and delivers a flashlight, HP somehow shipped me a feature they forgot to brag about. An undocumented bonus. I've been buying electronics for a lot more years than most of you have been alive, and I can count on one hand the times a product had MORE than advertised. It's a small thing, but it tickles me every time I look at it — a little glow around the back of the screen that adds atmosphere to the whole setup, controllable through the OMEN software if you want to change it or shut it off. I don't shut it off. Living With It A quick word about the long haul, because a monitor isn't a first date — it's a marriage. You're going to stare at this thing for hours a day, and plenty of screens that dazzle in the first week start grating by the first month. Eye strain, flicker you can't quite see but can definitely feel, that low-grade fatigue that sends you to bed with a headache you can't explain. I've put serious hours on this OMEN now — gaming sessions, long stretches of reading and writing, tinkering deep into the evening — and my eyes have exactly zero complaints. Whether it's the rock-steady refresh, the flicker-free panel, or the fact that I'm not squinting through haze anymore, I genuinely come away from long sessions fresher than I did on my old displays. That's not a spec you'll find on the box, but it might be the most valuable feature of the bunch. It also plays beautifully with others. I run it alongside a second monitor, and the OMEN is so clearly the star of the desk that my other panel — a perfectly respectable screen in its own right — has been demoted to holding the boring windows. Dragging anything worth actually looking at over to the OMEN has become pure reflex. Who This Is For If you play fast games — racing, shooters, anything where the screen is in constant motion — this monitor will show you what you've been missing, and I mean that literally. There are details in fast motion that simply do not exist on slower panels because they're smeared into oblivion before your eye can catch them. On this screen, they exist. If you care about atmosphere — dark games, moody games, cinematic stuff — true blacks and HDR depth will pull you in deeper than you expect. And if you're like me and you just appreciate looking at a genuinely excellent image for hours at a time, the clarity and color will quietly improve everything you do, including the boring stuff. Even spreadsheets look dignified. I came into this a skeptic and I'm writing this review a convert. The speed is real, genuine, visible, feel-it-in-your-hands. Images are flawless: no tearing, no pixelation, no distortion of any kind, no matter how hard I've tried to provoke it. The blacks are truly black, the colors are alive, the clarity razor-sharp, and the bezel lights up as a free surprise. Buy it... seriously...

I have been playing video games since I was a teenager, back when I had to make with generic basic hardware. Now I am older and working as a software engineer, and fortunate enough to spend a little more on hardware that I want. The HP OMEN 25 is one of those purchases where I noticed the upgrade immediately. This is a 24.5-inch, 1080p IPS gaming monitor with a 360Hz refresh rate and a 1ms response time. Those numbers look great on paper, but the important thing is that you can actually feel the difference while playing. Everything responds faster, movement looks cleaner, and aiming feels much more connected. I play several online multiplayer games such as Call of Duty: Warzone, Fortnite, Battlefield and Helldivers 2. Warzone is probably where I noticed the biggest improvement. Turning quickly, tracking someone across the screen and reacting during close-range fights all feel smoother. Fast movement stays much clearer than it did on my previous monitor. I am not going to claim that a new monitor magically makes me a better player, but it definitely removes one more bottleneck. The 360Hz refresh rate is the main reason I bought this monitor. I have a powerful gaming computer and video card to push high frame rates, especially in demanding games. But if your system can deliver, the OMEN 25 feels incredibly responsive. I connected mine through DisplayPort and confirmed that Windows and my graphics settings were running it at 360Hz. That is worth checking because there is no point buying a monitor this fast and accidentally leaving it set to 60Hz or 144Hz. HP used an IPS panel instead of sacrificing image quality for speed, the colors look accurate and lively without appearing oversaturated. The monitor is factory calibrated, supports Display HDR 400 and covers 99.5 percent of the sRGB color space. Games like GTA Online Enhanced, Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza Horizon still look colorful and detailed, even though this monitor is clearly designed more for performance than cinematic 4K gaming. The 1080p resolution is a good match for what this monitor is trying to accomplish. At 24.5 inches, the picture still looks sharp from a normal desk distance, and 1080p makes it much easier for a powerful graphics card to reach very high frame rates. A larger 1440p or 4K monitor might be better for someone who mainly plays Microsoft Flight Simulator or slow-paced single-player games, but for competitive shooters, I would rather have the extra speed. G-SYNC compatibility and AMD FreeSync Premium are also features I wanted. I use adaptive sync when I want the smoothest possible experience without visible tearing. When I am playing competitively and want the lowest possible latency, I can adjust the settings depending on the game. HP did a good job on the physical design. The stand feels solid and lets me adjust the height, tilt, swivel and screen rotation. As someone who also spends long hours at a computer, having the screen positioned correctly makes a real difference in comfort. The anti-glare surface also helps when I am using it during the day. There are several smaller features that I ended up appreciating more than expected. The built-in USB hub is useful for connecting accessories or wireless receivers. There are two HDMI ports, DisplayPort 1.4, an audio output, cable management and a removable headset hook. The customizable lighting on the back is a nice touch too. It is not something that improves performance, but it looks good with the rest of my setup and can be controlled through OMEN Gaming Hub. My only real caution is that this is a specialized monitor. Do not buy it just because 360Hz is the biggest number on the box. To get the full benefit, you need a gaming PC capable of producing high frame rates, and you should be someone who plays fast multiplayer games. If your priority is a huge screen, 4K resolution or the deepest possible HDR, there are better choices for that kind of experience. For the way I play, though, the OMEN 25 is exactly what I wanted. It is fast without having bad colors, compact enough for serious mouse-and-keyboard gaming, and adjustable enough to stay comfortable during long sessions. It feels like a premium piece of gaming hardware rather than a regular office display with a gaming logo stuck on it. I strongly recommend the HP OMEN 25 to competitive PC gamers, especially anyone who plays Call of Duty, Fortnite, VALORANT, Counter-Strike, Battlefield or similar high-speed games. It is one of the most noticeable upgrades I have made to my setup. I would buy it again, and definitely recommend it.

Upon opening the box, I was pleased to see that the HP Omen gaming monitor was packaged nicely, and everything was well organized. I was able to have the monitor set up on the stand, and plugged into my computer, in about 5 minutes. Included with the monitor, are a selection of display cables, to ensure that this monitor will work with your set up, no matter what type of port you use. I used the included HDMI cable. As for the stand, it is study, heavy, and I definitely felt like the screen was secure when installed. Putting everything together takes little to no time, but I did notice that removing the stand from the screen took far more effort. There is a button that has to be completely pushed in, while pulling the stand/pillar portion from the back of the screen. I tried this out, and I was surprised at how much effort I had to use, but eventually the pieces separated. You can also adjust the height of the monitor while on the stand. The 24.5” IPS monitor itself is well made, with a mostly black plastic build, and is not overly thick. This is not an ultra-thin gaming monitor, but since this will be on the stand, it doesn’t really matter to me how thick it is. It does weigh a decent amount, but thankfully, the stand and base are so robust that this is also not an issue. For testing, I used my PC to do things like browse the web, work on daily tasks like writing emails and using Microsoft office software, streaming videos on sites like Hulu and YouTube, and also played various games. For daily tasks, this monitor more than excels at making every activity enjoyable, with a bright, vivid picture, and clear definition of fine details. Even though the resolution is only FHD, the picture looks pretty incredible, which is no doubt helped by the stunning 360Hz refresh rate. Videos and live sports look great, and fast-moving shots never looked choppy thanks to the tech in the HP Omen monitor. When gaming, things really shine on this monitor. Playing modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and Forza 6 on the HP Omen looked absolutely incredible, with detailed, accurate, and smooth visuals throughout my time testing this screen. Once again, being rated as FHD does not seem to impact the overall quality of the pictures produced by this device. Colors are rendered beautifully, and this monitor gets bright enough to work in any environment. I have been blown away with the HP Omen’s ability to produce accurate visuals, while maintaining smooth, fluid performance no matter how crazy the action gets on screen. HP has produced a great monitor for someone looking for a screen that can easily do it all. While the HP Omen excels at gaming, it’s also phenomenal for daily tasks and watching videos. I really can’t think of anything I would change, with only a small critique that it is a bit harder to remove the screen from the stand than it is to install it. Beyond that point, which is truly not a big deal, I think this is an awesome gaming monitor from HP. If you’ve been looking for a new monitor that combines amazing performance with killer value, check out the HP Omen!

While some people look for Quad-HD or 4K gaming monitors along with larger screen sizes, sometimes the cost-factor to get one that works extremely well can be a challenge. If getting a fast Full HD that is still smaller than a 27" is an option, then the HP OMEN - 24.5" FHD 360Hz G-SYNC & FreeSync Compatible Gaming Monitor, being even slightly bigger than a 24" class (which are mostly 23.9"), is a great choice! Getting it set up was easy. Just assemble the two stand pieces and snap it into mounting nodule on the back of the monitor. The included stand is fully adjustable, with height, swivel, tilt, rotate. One thing I was worried about when first seeing that mounting nodule firmly in place (no quick release for it) was that I wasn’t sure if it would be able to be mounted as a part of the triple monitor setup it is being a part of. No information was included in the quick setup guide. After finally finding the monitor on the HP support site and getting to the full User Guide, I was able to find that the mounting nodule bracket can be removed and a VESA mount can be connected to it, after rotating 45°. There is not much of a bezel for the top and sides, and maybe .5" on the bottom (like most high-end monitors lately). For inputs, there are two HDMI 2.0 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4. It comes with one cable for each of the import types. It has a built-in USB hub with 2 Type-A ports (with 5Gbps signaling rate) and a Type-B port to connect to the computer (the Type-B USB cable is also included). And there is a 3.5mm headphone jack (but no built-in speakers). The is also a removeable headset hook that can be inserted on either side near the top. My biggest, well, only issue is the location and design of the control buttons. They are on the back, near the bottom right corner when looking at the front. There is separate power button on the right, with a D-Pad style menu control button just to the left. This issue is that they are just high enough to make it a little awkward to reach from the bottom when a part of a multiple-monitor setup when it is not the far-right monitor. At least the monitor settings (including the LED lighting on the back) can also be changed using the OMEN Gaming Hub app. Even though this is not a 4K monitor, everything looked great, from the background wallpaper to the details while gaming! The gameplay was extremely smooth, running native 360Hz (by the way, 360Hz is only supported with the DisplayPort connection with DSC, HDMI is only up to 235Hz) and all the highest graphics settings! On average, it was showing to be running at 600-700 fps. This is being used on a Radeon RX 9070 XT with 16GB, but any decent newer GPU should handle providing the content. The 1000:1 contrast ration with 5M:1 dynamic contrast ratio and 1ms response time are definitely helpful. Like most monitors these days, it does support Nvidia G-Sync and AMD FreeSync versions of Adaptive-Sync. If you are not needing a larger or 4K monitor, this one should be a top candidate on your list!