HP OMEN - 15.6" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 1TB SSD - Mica Silver

I am a member of Best Buy’s Technical Insider Network, TIN for short. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. Conclusion: My expectations going into this review were moderate at best. I have always viewed entry to mid-tier gaming laptops to be mediocre gaming platforms with pretty case design. The best stuff is always reserved for the exotically priced laptops. In short, I am loving this Omen Laptop! I will recommend this system to anyone who is looking for a laptop capable of great gaming performance at an affordable price. It does not have all the bells and whistles. For a mid-tier gaming laptop, the Omen laptop has enough power to offer an enjoyable and stable gaming experience. I am please to say that this laptop is my first real gaming laptop. Please continue reading for the details. Review: This is not a review about benchmarks and system specs. This review is about my experience, challenges, and observations. Let us start with some Pros and Cons: Pros: • Ryzen 7 4800H with Nvidia Graphics • NVMe Storage solution. Yes! • 144hz LCD screen that keeps up with higher frames rates. • Adjustable frame rate limits to control fan noise • Keyboard has good resistance and bounce. • Bright, colorful keys • Bright, colorful screen • Fast boot and shutdown • Quick access buttons to Omen Command Center and calculator • All the ports I could want or need! • Super duty cooling solution Cons: • Cooling solution is loud • Four keyboard lighting zones • Screen is not G-Sync • Waste heat is exhausted on right hand. Not so great for heavy gaming sessions. • The edges of the laptop are sharp. Can cause irritation to wrists during typing. • Mouse pointer will randomly bounce around page while typing a document. • Omen Command Center has room for improvement with customer profiles. Gaming and performance: The combination of AMD’s Ryzen 7 with Nvidia’s 1660 Ti is a real winner here. AMD, particularly, has moved from the jaws of pending bankruptcy to becoming a real powerhouse. Matching up AMD with Nvidia’s 1660ti is brilliant. I was surprised at how well these two handled my test games: Mechwarrior 5, Titan Fall 2, Civilization VI, Supreme Command 2, and Fortnight. I did test other games but felt these gave the best representation of what the system is capable of. First, lets talk about the low hanging fruit. Supreme Commander 2? Really? Yes. I chose this game specifically to test the single threaded performance of the Ryzen processor. To my delight, I was able to play this game, vs the computer, against four armies with hundreds of units each. The Omen laughed at this game. Sustained 99fps under all conditions. Single Ryzen logical core at 100%. Each physical core is split into two logical cores! So, half a core gave me butter smooth performance. Way to go AMD! In contrast, Civilization VI is a multicore, multi-threaded beast. See my screenshot of Civ, full settings, vs system rest state. This screenshot was taken while the game was at idle. Actual gameplay is smooth. It is also producing way too many FPS which cranks the cooling system into overdrive. More on the cooling system later. The average frame rate was 60 fps. I saw it go all the way up to 250fps and as far down as 40fps. I eventually limited the game to 40fps through Nvidia’s drive to reduce heat and fan noise. Titan Fall 2, in my opinion, is one of the best first-person shooters ever. I will not debate this with you! Titan Fall 2 is a high speed, high action, super twitch first person shooter. If you run this on a machine that drops frames, suffers screen tearing, dithers, or causes other screen artifacts then you will be destroyed in multiplayer. I was blown away by how smooth this game was on the Omen. No screen artifacts, period! I am an Xbox junky with this game. I can hold my own. I dominated with this laptop! In the spirit of full disclosure, I did use my Xbox Elite controller for this game. Which brings me to the game I do play using mouse and keyboard: Mechwarrior 5. I love giant robot games. This game moves like an FPS but only slower paced. In addition to using the WASD keys this game has controls spread all over the keyboard. I often found my fingers flying across my keyboard in the middle of combat to keep up with constantly changing situation on the battlefield. I did not experience any keyboard lag, missed keys presses, or any issues that arise from pressing multiple keys in quick succession or simultaneously. HP did a great job here with keyboard responsiveness. The GPU, on the other hand, took a little bit of work. This game is not a hyper velocity shooter. But there are plenty of opportunity to saturate the screen with fast movement, high level of environmental details, and special effects. This game is built on the Cry Engine 4. I was able to achieve frames ranging from 50fps to 100fps during game play. It can hit 250fps during the load screens. Finally, Fortnight. I am not going to say much about Fortnight other than I had this game playing butter smooth at maximum settings. The game bounced between 60fps and 120fps averaging about 90fps. It just worked. Cooling: The laptop’s cooling system gets louder the harder the laptop works. This thing can move some air! Civilization VI, default settings, was full hair dryer! Using Nvidia’s software, I was able t get an acceptable balance between fan noise, cooling, and performance by setting the game to 40fps. I noticed fps skyrocket on static scenes or black screens while loading content. All this does is create heat and wastes energy. Spending a few minutes mucking around with Nvidia’s software will reward you with less heat and fan noise in almost everything but the latest AAA title. How is the fan noise during every day, mundane tasks? It is as quiet as your typical office laptop. And, unlike my office issued work laptop, the Omen remains cool to the touch throughout the day regardless of workload of use. Room for improvement: First, sharp edges. I do like the case style. It looks super slick and modern. I love the hard angles, the Omen logo on the LCD bezel and the diamond on the cover, the 015 logo on the side of the palm rest, and how the palm wrest is slight elevated from the keyboard. It is all the little things that make this really work for me. However, the hard angles are bit too sharp for my wrist. I type proper with my wrists up. However, when I am not typing, my writs rest on the palm rest. This is where I scrap my wrists against the case. It is not sharp enough to cut but it is uncomfortable. Second, the keyboard lighting. I am just nit picking here. The RGB lighting is restricted to four pre-set keyboard zones. HP makes a programmable keyboard. Why not here? I like having the ability to set a color for each key or group of related keys. HP did a great job with what they did deliver. I love that the lighting can show brightly through the keys and around the keys. I love the affect. And it looks super cool in a darkened room. I just would have preferred individually programmable keys. One final thought, and HP can add this through software, is create a setting in Omen Command Center that allows me to set a single color and brightness level to all keys simultaneously. That way I can quickly set or change full keyboard colors and assign them to different game profiles. And finally, the touch pad. This one is plain annoying and years overdue to be addressed. Why is it that any laptop running a Synaptic touch pad includes the undocumented “cursor reposition while you type” feature? It is annoying and disruptive for the cursor to randomly reposition itself on the screen when typing, I do not know, a laptop review. I have seen this issue in various laptops from multiple manufactures for ten years or more. Can we fix this?! Final Conclusion: I would recommend this laptop to my best friend.

I had been hooked on Apple computers since 2000. I went to college for media productions and editing. No doubt Apple delivers a seamless experience between the user and the software. A year and a half ago I went to Best Buy to purchase a new Apple desktop for video editing and with an open mind and spec comparisons I saw just how much more computing power you get for you’re dollar. So I bought the Omen desk top with a sweet Samsung 32 inch 4K monitor and for fun the Oculus Vr cause I could.. Most amazing, I still saved $$! So given it was the end of summer, I really wanted to edit my videos on my porch in the mornings. So It was the easiest decision I have ever made. I knew this was the laptop for me. It delivers power, fun custom lit up keys and a great battery life. I can not recommend this laptop enough! It dose not look like a typical gaming laptop, and packs a slim look. If you are even considering this laptop then consider no more! This is right for you!

HP - OMEN Gaming 15.6" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 1TB SSD - Mica Silver --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *****Review***** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ladies and gentlemen… I present to you… A gaming laptop that is worthy in my books because of the COOLING. What we have here is a gaming laptop that can perform because it’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 4800H 8 core CPU clocked at 2.9GHz, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB of dedicated video memory and 16 GB of DDR4 3200MHz memory; but where it shines the most is the incredible cooling capability. Are you tired of buying a gaming laptop to find out that the cooling is subpar or practically terrible? Well… if you are; definitely keep reading. If you are a heavy gamer and have had experience building your own custom PCs; you will understand that it’s important to have a rig that can perform all your games at your desired specifications while maintaining a nice temperature. The folks at HP behind the cooling of this laptop really deserve a pat on the back here. I am thoroughly impressed. I also own an older version of their HP OMEN Obelisk gaming desktop and honestly the cooling wasn’t as good as I expected. I ended up swapping out the CPU cooler for an AIO water-cooler to help lower the temps on that beast. But we’re not here to talk about that… We are here to talk about the HP - OMEN Gaming 15.6" Laptop - 15-EN0023DX. The design of the laptop is quite minimalistic. It doesn’t SCREAM gaming which in my opinion is perfect. I like what HP has done with the OMEN logo as well. The laptop looks very sleek and I am able to carry it around without people wondering what I whip out of my laptop bag. Come’on everyone… You know EXACTLY what I am talking about when you have one of those crazy looking gaming laptops that draws too much attention to you. Typically it’s either massive or it has all these crazy red colors. The only personal gripe I have with the design is that although the laptop doesn’t look cheap; a lot of plastic is used… including the touchpad. I noticed that because the screen is plastic; there tends to be a good amount of “flexing” going on when the laptop is closed. What I mean is that if you put this laptop in a laptop bag and you travel a lot; I’d be really careful about applying too much pressure on the screen side of the laptop because there’s a lot of “flexing” going on here due to the plastic housing of the screen and gap between the keyboard side of the laptop. The speakers aren’t amazing but they definitely aren’t bad. I personally felt that the keyboard definitely overall isn’t bad either but nothing really blew me away here as far as the build quality of the laptop goes. Again this is my opinion but I do feel that there could be some build quality improvements here. Performance is where this laptop shines though. I have to say I am honestly thoroughly impressed. I threw all the games I had in my different libraries such as Steam, Blizzard, Uplay, Origin and Epic (in no specific order). With the included software called OMEN Command Center, there’s honestly some nifty contents in there. You have achievements that you can accomplish and earn rewards, control the RGB keyboard, overclock the system along with other things and of course… Control the fan profiles. HP gives you the preset standards of Comfort, Default and Performance; including “auto” fan speed or “max” fan speed. When I ran FarCry 5 through my UPLAY+ on the Default fan profile with “auto” fan speed; I hovered around 65c for the GPU and 80c for CPU which is honestly really impressive for an air cooled gaming laptop. If that honestly isn’t good enough for you and you don’t mind a little more fan noise, you’re more than welcome to change the fan profile to performance and set the fan to max which will bring you in at around 58c for the GPU and 72c for the CPU. Next up I went ahead and threw BFV at this bad boy and was playing on Ultra with a solid 70 FPS with right around 80c on the GPU and 60c on the CPU (Fan mode: Performance; Auto). If that’s not convincing enough… I ran Resident Evil 3 on ultra and was getting a solid 80 FPS while the GPU hovered around 75c and the CPU hovered around 57c. Still not convincing enough? How about running Witcher 3 at a solid 60 FPS with no stutter or lag at 83c for the GPU although while the CPU was a little higher than I liked; still no issues with any thermal throttling due to the awesome cooling. I mean come on… That is AMAZING. Just an FYI, I run my games on either Ultra/High so this laptop being able to give me the performance and smooth gameplay without any temperature issues is really just fantastic. Also, if you are aware of what screen tearing is; this laptop’s monitor includes AMD Freesync which really helps and it boasts a 144Hz monitor. So for you first person shooters out there… enjoy! So in conclusion; what you’re getting here is a gaming laptop that can definitely play practically any game you want to throw at it. While you are throwing these games at it, you are supported with some phenomenal cooling thanks to HP’s team that designed the cooling of this laptop. As mentioned above; the only gripes I had were with the actual build quality of the laptop due to the plastic usage. Again, it doesn’t look terrible; I would’ve just liked to see less plastic used. Nonetheless! If you are in the market currently for a performance gaming laptop with steller cooling; please do yourself a favor and take a look at the HP Omen 15-EN0023DX at your local Best Buy. I definitely recommend it and you will not be disappointed with this purchase. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *****Quick Features & Specs***** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows 10 operating system: Windows 10 brings back the Start Menu from Windows 7 and introduces new features, like the Edge Web browser that lets you markup Web pages on your screen. 15.6" Full HD display: The 1920 x 1080 resolution boasts impressive color and clarity. IPS technology for wide viewing angles. Energy-efficient WLED backlight. AMD Ryzen 7 Processor: Imagine, design and create without boundaries. The powerful AMD Ryzen™ 7 processor features machine intelligence that anticipates your needs. Discover true responsiveness with 8 cores and 16 threads for ultimate performance. 16GB system memory for intense multitasking and gaming: Reams of high-bandwidth DDR4 RAM to smoothly run your graphics-heavy PC games and video-editing applications, as well as numerous programs and browser tabs all at once. 1TB Solid State Drive (PCI-e): Save files fast and store more data. With massive amounts of storage and advanced communication power, PCI-e SSDs are great for major gaming applications, multiple servers, daily backups, and more. NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics: Backed by 6GB GDDR6 dedicated video memory for an ultrafast, advanced GPU to fuel your games. Audio by Bang & Olufsen with dual speakers: DTS X: Ultra support on headset when users plug headsets in to 3.5” audio jack creates a virtual surround sound experience for your music, movies, streaming Web content and games. Weighs 5.22 lbs. and measures 0.9" thin: Thin and light design with DVD/CD drive omitted for improved portability. 6-cell lithium-polymer battery. HDMI output expands your viewing options: Connect to an HDTV or high-def monitor to set up two screens side by side or just see more of the big picture. 144Hz Full HD anti-glare display: Power the latest games in 1080p and up to 144fps for fast, smooth gameplay Built-in media reader for simple photo transfer: Supports SD memory card formats. Wireless/Wired connectivity (WiFi 6 - 802.11 ax): Flexible, dual-band connectivity w/ greater reliability thanks to two data streams and antennas. Connect to a Wi-Fi router to experience GB Wi-Fi speeds nearly 3X faster vs. standard Wi-Fi 5 w/ improved responsiveness for even more devices. Built-in HD webcam with dual array microphone: Makes it easy to video chat with family and friends or teleconference with colleagues over Skype or other popular applications. 4 Zone RGB backlit keyboard: Allows you to enjoy comfortable and accurate typing, even in dim lighting. Additional ports: Mini DisplayPort and headphone/microphone combo jack. Note: This laptop does not include a built-in DVD/CD drive. AMD 4th Generation Ryzen 7: 4800H 8-core 2.9 gigahertz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 6GB GDDR6 dedicated video memory 16 gigabytes DDR4 SDRAM 3200 megahertz 1000 gigabytes SSD --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *****What's in the box***** --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- HP OMEN by HP 15.6" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 7 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti - 1TB SSD 6-cell battery Power adapter Various Manuals and Guides

This is my first gaming laptop. Normally, I prefer a desktop gaming rig because you get a lot more options for customizing the rig. This laptop actually has some incredible stats and if you aren't a stat person, all you have to do is turn it on and play a game. You will be sold. I wont really go over the specs, because you can read that in the description but I will talk about the display. I was a bit disappointed that it didn't include a 4K display. I have another HP laptop that isnot a gaming rig and it has a 4K and it's an awesome display. However, when I started playing a game, I didn't really notice much difference. The fact that the display was clear and virtually lag free, I didn't question the lack of a 4K display anymore. The one thing I would definitely suggest is that you keep the charging brick at close distance to this laptop. Although I never played with mine without it being plugged in, the fact that it comes with a 200W charger, told me all I needed to know about the battery life of this thing. Realistically, I wouldn't expect a gaming rig to have tremendous battery life because of the graphics cards, fans, etc. This was not a concern of mine, so I didn't even test it. This laptop has all of the inputs you would expect from a current laptop. USB-C, USB-A, SD card reader, HDMI and even an Ethernet connection. Since this is a gaming laptop, you get the colored keyboard, but you don't get a numeric pad, touch screen and surprisingly no facial recognition to unlock the laptop. The keyboard works well and is pretty quiet overall. I paired mine with a Logitech gaming mouse and I couldn't be happier with the response of everything. I played multiple online games for several hours and I never noticed the laptop getting too hot or the performance start to lag. I was pretty impressed by that. I also really liked the dedicated Omen button that takes you into the settings of the laptop for customization. As I said previously, this is my first gaming laptop and I am pretty happy overall with it. I would definitely recommend this.

Just look at that keyboard! The home and page up page down delete and insert are exactly like a full size keyboard. Perfect if you like gaming but also want to be productive on it during the day! I also Shrunk the main drive down by 100 GB and was effortlessly able to install Ubuntu 20.04 without any issue whatsoever, worked first try so awesome. So now have a full dual boot system for gaming and productivity

Legitimately the best bang for your buck laptop out there. Many other laptops are the specs but forget to add the build quality and reliability. This laptop is good for anything you throw at it. VR-gaming is ready on setup and the omen services are plentiful. You can even stream games to and from your phone. The keyboard is a lacking with rgb as there are only 4 sectors for lighting, but the customization is still there. The engraving of "015" is a really nice touch

I think this year HP gaming laptop looked mature, doesn’t scream “ look at me i’m a gaming laptop” that’s the number one thing I liked after opening and experience this laptop and it turned out it’s actually pretty amazing. Pros - the simple look of this laptop is a major plus for me, it does look out of place being placed beside my computer section - comes with 144hz refresh rate, the laptop has that smooth feels to it, looks amazing - I personally thought the keyboard felt great as well, spacing wasn’t an issue, did not give me any hard time when it comes to playing games - trackpad have that matted feel was simple and didn’t really have any issue with it - the laptop runs pretty quite when it comes to running video games - tested Warzone and I got about 80-90 fps on the lower setting, which it was fine for me, the 1080p quality looked great on the monitor - you also have the ability to change your RGB lighting through the command center - this laptop is fairly lite weight i’m impressed Cons - there’s a flex on the front of the monitor no sure if that’s how it’s suppose to be or I got a bad gaming laptop, makes me wonder if it will be an issue in the future - the camera was alright was hoping for laptop camera to improve by now but still very basic . - it can get pretty loud sometimes when it la booting game, but it will eventually stop after couple of mins, I was playing Warzone and in the middle of the match the fan starts getting loud , like I said takes couple of seconds then it was done - tested VR and was pretty disappointed that everything I do it just can’t handle it for some reason, I thought it did my overall laptop experience was great I can still play PC games without a problem, you’ll just need to adjust couple of settings, also if you play games on plug the game was running lock 30fps on warzone, the laptop looks great, clean and it can definitely perform, thanks HP.

I have been looking for a laptop that could compete with my Helios 300 for the price, and man have I found it! It's slightly more expensive, however, it's also an 8core/16 thread CPU. Here are my thoughts: Packaging- Pretty standard box, laptop comes wrapped in a plastic sheet with the power supply in a small compartment next to it and the usual manuals and warranty card. Nothing exciting or flashy here. Thermals- This laptop's cooling system is phenomenal. I have been playing Far Cry 5, max settings, 60fps+ and the highest temp it reached was 90c on the CPU, and 74c on the GPU. Dying Light max settings 75c on CPU and 72c on GPU. I am absolutely shocked by these temps, my Helios which has the 9750h/1660ti configuration AFTER repasting with coolermaster maker pro, STILL reaches 97c-99c on CPU playing just World of Warcraft(which by the way stays at high 70s on CPU on this laptop) I did run AIDA64 on max fan settings and the CPU did hit 103c, which was rather scary, after much digging around, I found out that it's an AMD boost clock issue, and can be easily fixed by disabling the boost clock. There are plenty of videos on youtube on how to do this. Now I understand most people want something that works out of the box and trust me, this does perfectly. You'll never reach those high temps under normal circumstances unless you buy a laptop just for stress testing 24/7 ;p . By the way, the fans are whisper quiet, max fan settings are a little loud but not distracting. Screen- The screen is 144hz, not sure about the ms because HP does not disclose it. This particular model has Freesync(40-60hz range), you need to enable it as it's disabled by default. My panel doesn't have backlight bleed or glow but that varies from panel to panel. Battery- I use it plugged in as it doesn't make much sense to game on battery. Keyboard- The keyboard is phenomenal. It has 4 zone RGB. They keys feel nice when pressed and there's a satisfying feedback. They don't feel mushy at all like a certain competitor with the G and a number 14. >_> The lighting is also perfect and uniform. It doesn't have a side numeral keypad, but that's not a huge deal for me. It has a dedicated key for the Omen Command Center software which is pretty neat. The power button is interestingly located next to the F12 key and in between a delete key. There's a little section on the side with the insert key/home/pg up/down/pause/end/print etc.(one key for a calculator shortcut o.O I actually like this one) Software- It doesn't come with a ton of bloatware, just the usual suspect, vpn, mcafee(dear God), dropbox and some HP software. I normally get rid of the OEM software but these are pretty useful, you can update the drivers/bios etc. It also comes with OMEN Command Center, this thing is pretty neat. You can control the RGB keyboard through here, manage fan profiles. Overclock the system, keep an eye on vitals such as temps/utilization etc. It also has a pretty neat rewards tab that gives you rewards for literally just playing games. Think sweepstakes or $5 BK gift cards etc for things such as playing Call of Duty for 30mins. Speakers- The speakers on this thing are beastly. Uses Bang & Olufsen speakers, the sound is perfect. It's pretty loud and fills a small room. Upgradeability- 8 screws to remove bottom panel, (4 big screws on the back, 4 small on the front). You can use a guitar pick to undo the latches on the edges and remove the bottom panel. Here you have 2 sticks of DDR4 3200mhz RAM. Not soldered from what I saw(yay:D) Your wifi 6 module, battery and 2 nvme slots(which by the way, they each come with their shields to prevent overheating!) Port Selection- 4 USB ports in total. 3 USB Type 3.1 type A ports(1 on left side, 2 on right side towards the side of the screen) 1 USB Type 3.1 type C port 1 HDMI Port 1 Headphone jack 1 Mini display port 1 SD card reader Overall build quality- Build quality is pretty good. It's a budget laptop and that reflects on the material. Not that it looks cheap or anything, but it uses a lot of plastic. Lid, bottom cover, palm rest are plastic, keyboard area is aluminum. You're not getting CNC aluminum for the price here. It looks and feels very nice. Speaking of the lid the logo is different and more subtle now. Very minimalist. By the way, the color is supposed to be Mica Silver, but it's closer to a light shade of black than silver. -Conclusion This year there's plenty of good laptops out there, there are several offerings from intel and AMD. This one's a pretty solid one, I'm surprised it's not getting more press. I've already went through several other mainstream brands and they've been nothing but trouble, whether it's a mushy keyboard with pretty bad back light and a screen that randomly goes black, or a device that you could fry an egg on top because the temps are outrageous and the fans sound like jet engines. I think this one is a pretty good compromise between price and performance. The 1660ti is a very capable GPU, please don't think that because it's not some 2070 super or 2080 you won't be getting awesome frames because it's simply not true. You're missing out on raytracing which is honestly overrated, that's it. Thanks for reading and if you do buy this one, I hope you enjoy it!