Customer Ratings & Reviews

The latest upgrade to the HP Omen 15 inch gaming laptop is a great computer if you are willing to pay the premium price. I decided to spring for the top spec model that includes the 16GB of ram, 512 SSD drive, and an 4th Gen Intel i7-4720HQ processor (For those unfamiliar with the minutiae of all of Intel's chip architecture...this is an actual quad core processor, with 4 cores, 8 threads, and a range of 2.4ghz - 3.4ghz processing power). It has an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4GB Discrete Graphics card. It also has a brilliant 15 inch glossy touchscreen that is the perfect amount of screen real estate for my aging eyes. All of this translates into one really fast computer! It boots fast, it works fast and looks great while doing it. I have yet to take it through its paces with the most graphics intensive games yet. To be honest I wanted it more for video production and graphic design than for gaming as I am a professional and a doctoral student. Here's what I like about The HP Omen so far - the thinness of this unit is amazing - not quite as brick like as the other 13 inch Alienware laptop I was looking at. The weight is a little over 4.5 lbs - not too heavy or bulky to tote around in a backpack with a computer sleeve. The combo of the Quad Core i7, 16GB of Ram and the SSD make this a very responsive computer - i found out the PCI-E SSD on this model is 4x-6x faster than traditional 128GB SSDs. The Bang and Olfsen speakers are good enough for my purposes however they can't compare to a decent set of desktop computer speakers (I use the Bose Companion 2 Series III Multimedia Speakers). All in all I like the fact that this feels like a very solid premium computer both inside and out. The Keyboard is comfortable, the touchpad is wider than usual and works well and the touchscreen works as expected. Here's what could be better - The weight is about 1lb heavier than I think is ideal. I looked at several other computers in the 13 inch or smaller range to try to get something lighter (namely the Dell XPS 13, the 12 inch Surface Pro 3, and the Alienware 13) the big compromise was always in the power/performance department. This unit seemed to be the best compromise for the best price. The battery life could be better as well. I am getting 4-5 hours of varied usage out of the box with minimal adjustments to the system settings. I would have preferred a matte screen to a glossy one but I can live with this. The price is the final area that I would love to see lower however when comparing the price they had for this at Best Buy to the price I found for this on the HP website it was several hundred dollars less for the same specs. In summary, there is a lot to love about this computer...it is stylish, fast, relatively thin and light (comparatively speaking). The price may seem steep for the average consumer but power users are used to spending $1800-$2000 for these kinds of specs. When comparing size, weight, power and price to several other powerful/popular i7 computers, it won hands down. If this is within the range of your budget I would recommend it for professionals, students and moderate to light gamers.