OMEN by HP 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 12GB Memory - AMD Radeon RX 580 - 1TB Hard Drive - HP sandblasted hairline brushing and carbon fiber

This is a gaming beast of a machine. Positioned somewhere between a laptop and a desktop, I would consider this a portable gaming rig. I.e. You can move it to another location in your house but you’re probably not going to be taking this on the subway or bus to work or school. I haven’t looked for a gaming laptop in several years but it’s amazing what HP is able to offer these days for the price. Upon inspection, the box and packaging looks very nice. When you open the laptop, you are presented with a very large backlit keyboard area. The palm rest area is also quite large, but consider that this is a very large laptop you would probably expect that. The matte finish does tend to be a magnet for handprints. One of the things you’ll notice right away is the red colored WASD keys. For my son during Minecraft he thought they provided some help in navigation. After logging in for the first and doing the initial Windows 10 updates, you’ll realize that you are most definitely not using an SSD drive. Even though this 1TB drive does move at 7,200 RPM, it’s very slow by today’s standards. As you can see in my attached photo, it’s relatively easy to add a M.2 SSD while keeping the magnetic drive for data storage. Once the Windows 10 update was completed, I played with the Radeon Settings application. Make sure you update this app after you start, it looks like there was a big revision since the laptop was produced. What I found particularly interesting was the ability to set specific resolution and performance settings on a per game basis. I’m not entirely sure when you would use this, but I found it pretty cool. For better or worse, many of my games are on Origin and Steam. I installed those portals and then waited as I downloaded some of the games in my library. Having the MIMO 2x2 802.11ac wireless chip provided good speeds and allowed me to surf without issue while I downloaded the games. Once the game downloads were completed, I immediately set all of them to the highest graphics setting. I didn’t document the frame rates, but everything moved in racing and FPS with ease. It’s pretty amazing what a top of the line mobile GPU can do. I did a bit of poking around and there are few to no mobile computers out there with the newer Radeon RX 580. Having an FHD IPS panel will probably satisfy demanding graphic artists and photographers as well. I have yet to try to calibrate the monitor and I know it’s only WLED, so it might not be as accurate as a RGBLED display. Inside the machine you’ll find 1 4GB DDR4-2133 DIMM and 8GB DIMM of the same speed. Both are easily user replaceable if you find 12GB is not enough. Also inside, you’ll notice the fans are rather large. These things really start going when there is any load on the machine. I would be nervous to run this on my lap without some sort of shield. You’ll also the battery inside is very large. I was a little disappointed in the performance of the battery or rather how much drain the machine put on it. During heavy gaming, I got less than an hour on a full charge. When doing simple things like browsing the web and maybe playing some YouTube videos, I barely got more than two hours out of a full charge. There might be some power saving capabilities in the display but don’t expect to bring this to a café and start working on your next book. I also want to mention the Bang & Olufsen speakers. I thought maybe for once because the laptop is so large and the speaker brand is known as a premium brand that I might actually get amazing sound for once. Welp, unfortunately I didn’t. It was really not much better than anything I had experienced on other laptops. You are still going to want some external speakers(or headphones) for music or gaming. Overall, I found this to be a very powerful gaming machine. It’s amazing what can be done in such a small package, so to speak. Typically you would need a much bigger desktop to see this graphical power. My disappointments are in the speed of the drive and the battery life. You’ll never see the full potential until you upgrade and add an SSD. I loved the display, the keyboard and the graphics power. If you are someone like me who does virtualization, you’ll like that you are getting a four core 7’th gen i7 with hyperthreading and vt-x capabilities. Overall a powerful and affordable machine that I would say every gamer looking to buy a new machine should take a look at.

I was excited to get this unit. I prefer gaming laptops - I am a heavy user, constantly multi-tasking with many tabs open. Usually, the standard laptop cannot keep up with my use. Since gaming laptops are usually made for heavy use, I think they are better choices for the price. My first impression is that this computer is HEAVY. This is NOT a unit that I would pack for a trip or carry to the coffee shop. I can appreciate the quality but, to me, the lack of portability is a drawback. The unit is made by HP, but the case and box do not have HP logos - it has the custom "Omen" logo, which I guess makes it look cool. The case is black with red accents. Again, it's got a lot of cool factor, but as a female, I thought the design was very masculine. Yes, most gamers are men, but there are many female gamers as well. To me, that's an oversight in the design, though I do like the red lights behind the keyboard. The keyboard has a nice, smooth, almost suede-like feel. It was very nice to type on. However, the programmable keys on the left of the keyboard throw off the feel a bit. I couldn't get used to the finger placement for typing. Super easy to set up. It comes with HP Orbit, which allows you to link several devices together. I linked the computer with my Android phone, and while it's a novel idea, I don't see using this feature often. For multi-tasking, I wasn't terribly impressed. I didn't find a huge gain in speed over my previous (non-gaming) laptop. My husband did take it for a few test drives, as he's the gamer in our family. He has a few MMORPGs that he plays on the PC. He found it to be VERY responsive. He's had gaming laptops that couldn't keep up with his use (we had one where we replaced the hard drive multiple times) and this unit was strong enough to keep up AND not overheat. The one drawback that he found was the lack of a DVD drive, especially for the size and weight of the unit. This is easily remedied though. Overall, this unit is a good buy for the traditional gaming consumer.

OMEN by HP 17.3" Laptop - Intel Core i7 - 12GB Memory - AMD Radeon RX 580 - 1TB Hard Drive - HP sandblasted hairline brushing and carbon fiber This is a hard review to write so let’s just get back to gaming everyone. That is exactly how I felt since I have been using the new HP OMEN Laptop. Ok I admit it I love PC gaming. And I was knocked over at the performance of this gaming laptop. Before I give my final impressions anyone interested in a gaming laptop is either focused on their budget or the system spec. Well in this case the cost is very competitive with the competition. You have the newest top of the line 7th Generation, Intel i7 processor so nothing to worry about there. 16GB of ram should be standard in any modern gaming computer and we have that here also. The other two critical part are the GPU and your connection options. Well I looked hard to find another laptop with the AMD Radeon RX 580 GPU. And I have yet to see another gaming laptop with that option so I didn’t know what to expect. I am happy to say that you don’t have to worry here. Like all mid level GPUs this goes head to head with the Green Team. Finally the connection options. Well I do have a few issues, on the left we have a DisplayPort with a mini connector. So if you're going to run a second DisplayPort monitor your going to need the right cable. There available but it would have been a nice addition in the box. There is a full size HDMI cable to the rescue but again it was in not the box. Finally there is wired lan, a power USB, seperate mike and headphone jack and a USB 3.1 Type-C that supports power. This is becoming a very important connection today and any modern computer should have this option. And if you're in the market for a Laptop it should be a must have connector. Phones, external HDD, DisplayPort monitors and any number of future devices will need this port. It is also a sign this is a new modern mainboard and I do like that this new technology is backed by HP and their support process. And then of course there is the keyboard and display. The display is nice and bright and works as well in gaming as in desktop work. The keyboard feels good is easy to reach and supports macros. The red backlighting could use more options but it doesn’t take away from the experience and looks good. The trackpad is done very well and maybe one of the best I have seen on any Laptop.The separate right and left buttons are a nice addition. The build quality here is top notch with little to no flex. It can get hot on long game plays but the heat is above the keyboard and it never gets so warm that I was even thinking about it. This gaming Laptop comes with top of the line parts, a very good selection of connection options, a very fast CPU and GPU and the thermals work well. It is a 17” display and there are some 15’ options. Choose by what you would use it for. If your main thing is gaming the bigger display models will serve you well. The smaller screen options by HP would be easier to carry around. With this Laptop and a Geek Squad warranty and you are good to go for a long time. One final word, I played on the Laptop screen and also on my 34” widescreen 2K monitor. It has been a great experience on both and for what you get here this is a great gaming laptop option and shouldn’t be overlooked. If I had one complaint it is with the boot time. This model only has the 1TB HDD. There is an M.2 slot where I can add a fast SSD which is easy to do and something I plan to do. Simply create the HP USB recovery drive through an assistant software program. Take the back off to access the original HDD and take it out, put in the M.2 drive and restore the OS to there. Then put the HDD back in. Or better yet get the model that already has this M.2 SSD and HDD option already setup. No matter what once the Intel i7 processor and AMD RX580 get going you're in for a treat.

I am on the border of returning this laptop for a few reasons. Initially I wanted a 15.6" laptop for the portability but was turned off from those with nvidia optimus because they are incompatible with my Oculus Rift VR headset. This was the only laptop under $1000 with flagship level specs. I played with it in the store and was pleased with the screen color and sharpness. I bought one and brought it home, my unit has severe light bleed in three corners. probably the worst i have ever seen (normally its not even something i look for, but this jumps out at me) Then the size. This laptop is massive, thick, heavy, can't zip my bag with laptop in it. Then the hard drive is god awful slow. It took about 10-12 hours to install mechwarrior online and a few windows updates. Task manager showed disk utilization at 100% the entire time. I uninstalled the antivirus and rebooted -- its seems much better now livable even. Battery life blows, but you should of known that before purchase. Now the pros. "But can it play crysis?" My favorite game mechwarrior online is based on cryotek and my desktop gaming rig is a ryzen 1700 two SLI geforce 1080 OCs. It averages 45-60fps at 2560x1080. This laptop is averaging 75-90fps at 1080p -- very impressed. I played robo recall last night for about an hour and the VR experience was perfect as well. Its also the first time oculus software didn't throw a fit that my hardware wasn't compatible or some B.S. Conclusion: Lightbleed, borderline not portable, poor battery life, but it absolutely crushes gaming and VR. I will probably keep it and complain about the size and weight -- as i really wanted an RX580 in a smaller package

Awesome it's back up light of keyboard, convenience, quickest games download, codes secure that's so cool, easier to load more money on its with safety, and power very last for long time.

I purchased this laptop almost 3 months ago on sale for $950, it wasn't my first option since it was powered by the RX 580, my first option was a GTX 1060 based laptop, unfortunately that was way over my budget so I gave this one a try. After almost 3 months of usage and constant gaming I can say I made the right choice. This laptop will play everything I throw at it maxed out no problem, doesn't over heat and wont overheat when overclocked as well. PERFORMANCE: Now my younger brother owns a GTX 1060 based laptop and I decided to do a quick comparison, both stock it would appear my RX 580 is ahead by a hairline in graphics performance, in 3DMark11 of course (p14325 vs p17135). Now it gets a bit interesting with both systems slightly overclocked, the RX 580 is destroying the GTX 1060 in graphics performance (p15980 vs p19330) not bad at all! Overall, Its a great laptop, there are a few things I don't really like, for example the IPS display isn't the best especially since it has slight Backlight Bleeding, which would appear its getting a bit worse and the battery life isn't great I've maxed out 2 hours. For anyone looking for a cheap affordable gaming laptop with excellent performance, look for further, you won't be disappointed!!!

Booting and every game is so fast. It's nice performance and price.

Great laptop for the price, I would highly recommend. I went with this laptop due to performance and looks.