HP Omen 17 review

HP Omen 17 review

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When we reviewed HP’s 17-inch Omen gaming laptop with battery like HP EG04 Battery, HP EG04XL Battery, HP HSTNN-DB3T Battery, HP HSTNN-IB3T Battery, HP TPN-C103 Battery, HP TPN-C108 Battery, HP Envy 6-1001TX Battery, HP Envy 6-1222TX Battery, HP Envy Sleekbook 6 Battery, HP Envy Sleekbook 6-1000 Battery, HP Ultrabook 6T-1000 Battery, HP Ultrabook 6Z-1100 Battery last year, we found it to be a little boring, but packed with a ton of powerful hardware at a very attractive price. HP’s back this year with a new Omen design, but that general description still holds true. This is not the fanciest high-end gaming laptop we’ve seen. Nor is it the absolute fastest. Nonetheless, other brands charge hundreds more for the same basic specs, often with little or no performance advantage. I hesitate to call the $2,000+ Omen 17 a “bargain,” but you definitely get a lot of bang for your buck.

The 17-inch Omen we reviewed last year was notable for giving you lots of high-end hardware at a very reasonable price. That still holds true, and it’s still the greatest strength of HP's gaming notebook line.

Our review system came packed with a Core i7-7700HQ processor, a GeForce GTX 1070 graphics card, 32GB of DDR4/2400 RAM, a 256GB M.2 NVMe drive, and a 1TB 7,200rpm SATA drive. The optical drive is again missing (and this time, there’s no USB optical drive included in the box), but who really needs an optical drive anymore?

There are two display options: Our review unit has the 60Hz 4K IPS panel, but a 120Hz 1080p panel is also available (and given the 17.3-inch size, it might be a better choice for serious gamers). Both are G-Sync compatible.

Our review unit also comes equipped with a wide-angle 1080p webcam with an array mic. Its low-light performance is only so-so, but it does have an IR sensor so it supports Windows Hello. Once you get used to split-second logins using only your face, it’s hard to go back.

All this is powered by an 86 watt-hour battery, which lasted about 3 hours, 41 minutes in our battery rundown test (in which we calibrate the display to 250-260 nits and play a 4K video file in the TV and Movies app on endless repeat). That’s pretty decent battery life for a 17-inch gaming laptop, but of course you’ll drain it faster when playing games. Most gaming laptops are better described as “easily transportable all-in-one computers” rather than something truly meant to be used on the go, and this one is no exception.

The 2017 version of the HP Omen 17-inch gaming laptop is a small but welcome update from last year’s model. It still has some room to grow, with “just okay” audio and a “just okay” touchpad, along with a rather pedestrian aesthetic. But at least it’s not nearly as plain-looking as last year’s boring black slab, and some of the annoyances, like the lack of Thunderbolt 3, have been corrected. The newer Intel processors come standard, but those don’t really make a huge difference in performance.

When we look at the big picture, we see a laptop that shares the same competitive qualities as last year’s model, despite the new design. It’s good-looking enough, feature-rich enough, and fast enough to make you think twice about spending hundreds more for one of its competitors. HP offers fantastic value here, if you can talk seriously about “value” in a high-end gaming laptop.