HP Omen 17 Review

Gaming laptops are a sector of the PC gaming market that has quietly grown by an insane number. It was reported to have reached a market value size of USD $10.837 billion, which is just an unfathomable amount of money, but that number does at least give us an idea of why all the popular, big-name OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) have been investing so heavily in this market – the demand is clearly there. One such OEM is HP with their gaming division, Omen. Their continued investment in the laptop scene has produced the Omen 17, a laptop that offers some great performance despite some bloatware and a mediocre keyboard trying to hold it back.

Starting from the top, the HP Omen 17 Gaming Laptop is a 17-inch laptop that is honestly packing more under the hood than I am. It sports an i7-11800H CPU, an NVIDIA RTX 3080 Laptop (16GB GDDR6), 32GB DDR4-3200 MHz RAM (2 x 16GB), and a 1TB PCIe NVMe TLC M.2 SSD. The screen is a 17.3” (diagonally), 2560×1440 (QHD), 165Hz, 3ms IPS display. While these specs aren’t top of the line, what they lack in power compared to more modern alternatives they make up for in thermals and balance, but that is something I will get to later. These specs are actually remotely comparable to the laptop I use as a daily driver, the Razer Blade 14 (2021), which is a laptop that has continued to impress me with its small form factor and power. But I digress, the Omen 17’s specs are still quite good and will handle pretty much any game with no issue.

In terms of actually using the laptop, this was where my first problems arose. When you first set up the laptop, you will be absolutely bombarded with a variety of bloatware and unnecessary junk. If you have read my reviews before, you will know that this is a sore point for me with virtually any laptop from the big OEMs – they love slapping their own software onto these machines, to the device’s detriment. The Omen 17 is by far the single worst offender. I counted around 15+ individual pieces of bloatware, most of which were some kind of OMEN Gaming Hub, or HP software. Including bloatware is one thing, but including a borderline virus is another and, much like the ASUS Flow Z13 that I reviewed last year, the Omen 17 also comes with McAfee preinstalled. There is no other way to say this: McAfee is utter shite. If there is one thing you should never install on your PC, it’s McAfee.

After spending around 20 minutes making sure that every piece of pre-installed software was removed, I was able to begin actually using the laptop, and the first thing I did was make sure the 2H22 update for Windows 11 was not installed because good God does that update suck, through no fault of HP. Once everything was ready, I began using it as I would if it were my laptop, which meant a lot of Word processing and Adobe Creative Cloud use. This was where the 32GB of DDR4 memory came in handy, especially for the Adobe stuff. Adobe is a memory hog, and while it won’t outright stop working when it hits RAM limitations, it will grind everything else your computer is doing to a halt and proceed to work incredibly slowly. With 32GB of RAM, I was able to have a much better amount of ingest for Premiere Pro which just made the workflow of the Omen 17 great.

While the specs of the laptop afforded a great experience of workflow-related tasks, the keyboard is something that I found myself not being particularly fond of. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m all for keys that aren’t overly clicky (I love me some linear switches on keyboards), but it’s also quite difficult to offer a keyboard on a laptop that doesn’t fall into one of two traps – clicky/rigid or mushy. Unfortunately for the Omen 17, it falls into the latter category. While I tried my best to use it, towards the end of my time with it I just threw in the towel and ended up connecting my custom-built keyboard to use that instead. I don’t expect a laptop’s keyboard to compare to my custom-built keyboard as that would just be unfair, but I do expect a laptop keyboard to at least be decent enough to the point where I don’t lament using it. The Omen 17 does at least leverage its wider form factor to include more keys, making it more akin to a TKL keyboard, with even some specific macro keys on the left side. If you like mushy keys, then this might be a pretty good keyboard for you. For me though? I’ll pass.

One thing you would hope that a gaming laptop would excel at is gaming, and I am pleased to say that the Omen 17 does an excellent job with this. There were a few games I ran with this laptop, but the one I ran the most was actually Star Citizen. Yes, I know “Oh my god, Scam Citizen!!!” but this was a game that actually also displayed the benefits of the extra RAM and VRAM. This game doesn’t like running stably at the best of times, but it is very difficult to run it in its current state with only 16GB of RAM due to system operations and background processes taking up precious resources. With 32GB? Resources were never an issue (but the state of the game was). Given that games are beginning to ask for more and more memory, both general system memory as well as VRAM (GPU memory), it is becoming increasingly hard to recommend laptops that have not risen to the occasion, so to speak. The extra memory on both fronts allows for the Omen 17 to stand quite proudly amongst the ranks of other powerful gaming laptops. Heck, you might even be able to run The Last of Us Part I decently considering that game has serious memory limitation issues.

There were other games that I ran to see how it handled more…functional games. Returnal was one of them because that is a game that really benefits from not only high framerates but also lots of stability. Naturally, this laptop crushed it. Returnal is a pretty solid PC port and the Omen 17’s power capitalised on that. It’s a shame, really, because now I only have myself to blame when I die to stupid things.

Onto the screen. This is another strong point of the Omen 17. As previously mentioned, it features a 17.3” (diagonally), 2560×1440 (QHD) IPS display with a 3ms response time. It has a peak brightness of 300 nits meaning that it won’t be HDR by any means, but the colour accuracy afforded to an IPS display that covers a 100% sRGB colour gamut is still very good. Returnal actually looked phenomenal on this screen as that is a game that really benefits from sharp, accurate colours. Those giant purple orbs of death had never looked so good as they were inevitably on their way to end my run and send me back to the Helios.

Back to the entire package, HP has definitely made sure to pack a lot into this laptop. The full specs are as follows:

With all this performance on hand, it was time to run benchmarks. As is the case with all my previous laptop reviews, I ran the game through multiple passes of Forza Horizon 5, a shining example of superb graphics and optimisation. To value the performance of the entire unit, the benchmark is run using the internal display and its associated resolution, not using other resolutions or displays. The results will also be placed side-by-side the other laptops.

The results speak for themselves. The Omen 17 offers a great level of performance, and when you factor in its solid price of A$3,429 then the package becomes even more enticing. The Omen 17 managed to attain an average FPS of 92.5, with a 99th Percentile of 72.6. The only laptop that is comparable in price here is the Flow Z13 without the XG Mobile unit, which has an average FPS and 99th Percentile of 35.5 and 30 FPS, respectively. Now, these aren’t directly comparable as the specifications are different, especially with the GPU, but in terms of price the Omen 17 is clearly a better value proposition. The Omen 17 attains by far the best price/performance ratio with an average of A$37.07 per frame. Compare that to the ASUS ROG Zephyrus Duo 16 which has by far the most powerful specs, but only manages to attain a result of A$83.31 per frame. This really shows how strong the Omen 17’s performance really is.

With all these games being run, you would expect the Omen 17 to get quite warm. It does, as is par for the course when it comes to laptops. However, the thermals by no means are at risk of running away and getting out of control. When running the three mentioned games – Star Citizen, Returnal, and Forza Horizon 5 – the Omen 17 comfortably sat around 63°C. I was quite impressed with these thermals. Sure, it can be quite warm for some, and the warmer climates/ambient temperatures will see this average temperature rise, but there is still a lot of thermal headroom to play with. The fans definitely work hard to keep these temperatures in check, but they are by no means so loud and aggressive that it renders everything else inaudible. Most people will have headphones/headsets on so most of the noise created by these fans is easily ignored. The Omen 17 clearly leverages its larger size to bolster its cooling capacity, and it has clearly paid off.

Final Thoughts

The HP Omen 17 is a solid laptop that offers a great level of performance for its price point. While A$3,429 is a lot to swallow for its price of entry, specifications and configuration achieve an average of 92.5 frames per second at an average price of A$37.07 per frame which is what makes its price enticing. It’s definitely far from perfect, as its keyboard is an acquired taste of sorts, and it comes packed with the most bloatware I have ever seen in my life (McAfee can go die in a fire). Regardless, if you are someone that is happy to uninstall the included garbage and can either appreciate or look past the mushy keyboard, the Omen 17 is a great unit.

Review unit supplied by the manufacturer

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics