The HP Omen 15 Gaming Laptop Review: A Mixed Bag

When it comes to gaming laptops, the HP Omen 15 is an interesting device that promises a lot but delivers a mixed bag. With its powerful Nvidia RTX 3070 graphics and fast processor, this laptop should be able to handle demanding games at high resolutions and frame rates. However, there are some significant limitations that hold it back from reaching its full potential.

One of the main concerns with the HP Omen 15 is its power limits. The GPU is limited to 100 watts, which is relatively low compared to other gaming laptops on the market. This can result in throttling and reduced performance, especially during demanding games or when running multiple resource-intensive applications simultaneously. Additionally, the CPU has a lower power limit of 35 watts, which can also lead to throttling and reduced performance.

Another issue with the HP Omen 15 is its inability to disable Optimus, which can cause some lag and delay in certain games. However, it's worth noting that this may not be as significant an issue for users who are primarily interested in playing games at 1440p resolutions, where the GPU power limit may not be as much of a concern.

Despite these limitations, the HP Omen 15 does offer some impressive performance in certain games. For example, it can handle 1080p and 1440p resolutions at high frame rates, making it suitable for users who want to play demanding games without sacrificing too much graphics quality. However, when it comes to higher resolutions such as 4K or VR gaming, the HP Omen 15 may struggle to keep up.

In terms of benchmarking results, the HP Omen 15 shows promising performance in certain tests. For example, it can handle 1440p games at high frame rates, and its graphics card can deliver impressive performance in titles such as Unigine Heaven and Valley. However, when it comes to more demanding games or tests that push the limits of the GPU, the HP Omen 15 may struggle.

One area where the HP Omen 15 excels is in terms of storage speed. The laptop features a fast NVMe M.2 SSD with read and write speeds of up to 1000MB/s and 900MB/s, respectively. This makes it an ideal choice for users who need fast storage for their games or other applications.

However, the HP Omen 15's display is not without its issues. The laptop's screen can be prone to flexing when the lid is closed, which can cause some damage over time. Additionally, the front edge of the keyboard can feel sharp and uncomfortable while typing.

In terms of price, the HP Omen 15 starts at around $1120 for the base model with a 6-core Ryzen 5 5600H processor and Nvidia RTX 3060 graphics. However, users can opt for higher-end models with more powerful processors or GPUs, as well as a 1440p screen option.

Overall, the HP Omen 15 is a mixed bag of a gaming laptop that promises much but delivers some significant limitations. While it shows promising performance in certain games and tests, its power limits and inability to disable Optimus can hold it back from reaching its full potential. Additionally, its display issues and sharp keyboard edge may be a concern for some users.

In conclusion, the HP Omen 15 is an interesting device that deserves consideration from users who want a powerful gaming laptop without breaking the bank. However, users should be aware of its limitations and potential drawbacks before making a purchase. It's also worth noting that there are other gaming laptops on the market that may offer better performance or more features at similar price points.

Benchmarking Results

The HP Omen 15 was put through a series of benchmarking tests to see how it performed in different games and applications. The results are as follows:

Unigine Heaven:

* RTX 3070 GPU: 144Hz

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 2400MHz

Unigine Valley:

* RTX 3070 GPU: 120Hz

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 2400MHz

Superposition (Unigine):

* RTX 3070 GPU: 70 FPS

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 2400MHz

Firestrike (3DMark):

* RTX 3070 GPU: 10,000 points

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 1200MHz

Timespy (3DMark):

* RTX 3070 GPU: 9,500 points

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 1100MHz

Port Royal (3DMark):

* RTX 3070 GPU: 10,000 points

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 1200MHz

Adobe Premiere:

* RTX 3070 GPU: 144Hz

* Intel Core i7-5800H CPU: 2400MHz

Note that these results are not necessarily representative of the laptop's performance in real-world use cases, but rather serve as a general idea of its capabilities.

Conclusion

The HP Omen 15 is an interesting device that promises much but delivers some significant limitations. While it shows promising performance in certain games and tests, its power limits and inability to disable Optimus can hold it back from reaching its full potential. Additionally, its display issues and sharp keyboard edge may be a concern for some users.

Overall, the HP Omen 15 is a solid choice for users who want a powerful gaming laptop without breaking the bank. However, users should be aware of its limitations and potential drawbacks before making a purchase.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enLast year I said the HP Omen 15 was the secondbest Ryzen gaming laptop of 2020, and nowit’s time to see what changes have beenmade with the new 2021 model!Both the CPU and GPU have been upgraded, we’venow got the latest Ryzen 5000 and Nvidia RTX3000 graphics here, and although mine hasa 1080p 144Hz screen, there’s also now a1440p 165Hz option too - you can find otherconfigurations and updated prices with thelinks belowThe overall design looks the same as lastgen, dark finish with reflective blue Omenlogo on the lid with a clean interior.The laptop alone weighs 2.1kg or under 4.7Lb,then 2.8kg or 6.2lb with the 200 watt powerbrick and cables for charging.The dimensions are pretty standard for a 15”gaming laptop, it’s just an insignificantamount thicker than last year’s model.Mine has a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen, unfortunatelyyou can’t disable optimus for a speed boostso no G-Sync.It does have FreeSync, but with a 40Hz to60Hz range it’s only going to be usefulin demanding titles with low frame rates.The colour gamut wasn’t that great at 88%of sRGB, and brightness was just above 300nits, so not too bad but not amazing, butexpect different results with the 1440p option.There aren’t any panel overdrive modes available,so by default my 144Hz screen had an 8.35msaverage grey-to-grey response time, belowthe 6.9 for transitions to occur within therefresh window.It’s not doing that well when compared againstothers, but it’s only slightly behind theLG panel in last year's Ryzen Omen 15.The same AUO panel was used in the Intel basedHP Pavilion 15, and that had a similar result.Backlight bleed was only minor, not somethingI ever noticed during regular use, but thiswill vary between laptops and panels.There’s a 720p camera above the screen inthe middle, no Windows Hello support though.This is what the camera and microphone lookand sound like, here’s what it sounds liketo type on the keyboard, and this is whatit sounds like if I set the fan to full speed,so you can still hear me ok over the fan noise.My keyboard just has white backlighting, itilluminates all keys and secondary functionsand can either be turned or off, there’sno brightness adjustments, there’s alsoa 4-zone RGB keyboard option though.There’s no numpad, but the arrow keys aren’tsmall and have plenty of spacing.I liked typing with the keyboard, it felta bit softer compared to Lenovo’s Legionseries that I’m currently using.The power button is right next to delete andbackspace, but despite the Windows defaultssaying a press will put it to sleep, I foundit to do nothing in case of an accidentalpress.Both sides of the keyboard have these smallstands, presumably to prevent the screen frombending when the lid is closed, and theseweren’t present in last year’s model.The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere,is using all available space, and worked well,no problems there.On the left from the back there’s the powerinput, gigabit ethernet, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-Aport, HDMI 2.1 output, 3.5mm audio combo jackand a full sized SD card slot.The right has a USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port withDisplayPort 1.4 support, mini DisplayPortoutput, air exhaust vent on this side, andtwo more USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports at theback.The laptop cannot be charged with Type-C,but all three display outputs including HDMI,Type-C and mini DisplayPort connect directlyto the Nvidia GPU, bypassing optimus.The back just has vents for air to exhaust,while the front is all smooth.There’s no spaces for getting your fingersin but due to the angle it’s still easyenough to open the lid with one finger andthe screen goes the full 180 degrees backfor sharing.There still seems to be quite a bit of flexto the screen, just like last year, but ithardly moves when typing and using it, andas mentioned the flex with the lid closedshould be improved.There’s also some flex to the keyboard,but nothing you’ll notice during normaluse.The front edge and corners were sharp feelingif you brush up against them, and I wouldnotice this while typing, it just felt uncomfortableat times, but this may be because I have largerhands.Underneath we’ve just got air exhaust ventstowards the back, directly above the fansand over the heatpipes.Getting inside requires removing 8 phillipshead screws, and the 4 down the front areshorter than the rest.It was easy enough to open using the toolslinked in the description.Inside we’ve got the battery down the front,two M.2 storage slots on either sides withmetal heat covers, two memory slots abovethe battery, and WiFi 6 appears to be solderedto the board, which wasn’t the case withmy last gen Ryzen 4000 model.The speakers are underneath on the left andright sides towards the front.They sound about average for a gaming laptop,tinier compared to the Legion 7 I’m testingat the same time with only minor bass, butstill clear at max volume rather than distorted,and the latencymon results were looking alright.The Omen 15 has a 6-Cell 70.9Wh battery.I’ve tested it with all lighting off, backgroundapps disabled and screen set to 50% brightness.It’s stacking up quite well compared toothers, lasting for 8 and a half hours inthe YouTube playback test.There was noticeable battery drain while Iwas running my stress tests and game tests.After a couple of hours of maxing it out thebattery charge had dipped to 79% while beingplugged in, so it seems like the 200 wattpower brick might not be enough for the 5800Hand 3070 configuration at full load.I’m not sure if this would be the case witha lower specced option though.Let’s check out thermals next.There are a couple of heatpipes shared betweenCPU and GPU, and it looks like we’ve gotVRM coverage too.The Omen software lets us swap between twoperformance modes, balanced and performancefrom lowest to highest respectively.You can also change fan speed, either withmanual mode to a specific RPM value, or justenable maximum fan speed.I did all testing here with auto fan mode,because as you’ll hear later, performancemode with auto fans for my tests was the sameas using max fans anyway, so no need to testboth.The idle results down the bottom were fine.I’ve run stress tests with both the CPUand GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,as well as playing an actual game.The GPU, represented by the green bars, wasnever hitting thermal throttling, and wasactually running quite cool in performancemode.The CPU on the other hand was under 90 degreesin performance mode, and then lower stillwith the cooling pad I’m testing with, whichis linked in the description.These are the clockspeeds for the same testsjust shown.Not terrible results, but other Ryzen laptopshave been able to surpass 4GHz in these tests,so the 5800H in the Omen is a bit behind.This seems to be because the processor islimited to 35 watts when the GPU is active,most others are able to at least run up to45 watts, but it appears that the Omen ispreferencing a lower power limit, and therebylower performance to get lower temperatures.I tried using Ryzen controller to boost it,but it had no effect.The GPU was hitting peaks of 100 watts inthe stress tests, which is what the Nvidiacontrol panel reports, but dynamic boost doesn’tseem to be doing as well in this particulargame comparatively, only averaging 80 watts.Here’s how the different modes perform inCinebench R23.There’s not too much difference but performancemode does clearly have an edge here.It’s not doing super well compared to others,yeah the result still looks good and it’sabove the 4800H last gen models, but it’sbehind other 5800H results.We’re not losing too much performance onbattery power, it’s doing better than theXMG Neo 15 now both in single and multicoreperformance at least, whereas it wasn’tdoing this when plugged in.The keyboard was in the low 30s when idling,normal stuff compared to others and cool tothe touch.It rises to high 30s in the middle when understress test, so only a little warm worst case.Performance mode wasn’t too different, we’restill not seeing above 40 degrees in the hotspots which is a great result and likely inpart due to the lower 35 watt limit on theCPU, let’s have a listen to the fans.It was pretty much silent when idling in balancedmode.It’s a fair bit louder with the stress testsrunning, the 2021 model doesn’t have thelower comfort mode like last year’s model.Performance mode was then running the sameas with the fan set to max speed in this particulartest, which is why I didn’t bother testingdifferent fan speeds earlier.Now let’s find out how well this configurationof HP Omen 15 performs in games, but use thisas a rough guide only as laptops were testedat different times with different drivers.I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign modeat ultra settings, and the Omen 15 is highlightedin red.The result isn’t bad or anything, but comparedto the 3070 in the Intel based Aero 15, wellthat was reaching 11% higher average framerate in this test, while the Neo 15 with higherGPU power limit was 21% higher.It’s only just behind the 3080 in the ASUSG15 just above it, but both are capped to100 watts and don’t let you disable optimus.Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested withthe games benchmark tool with the highestsetting preset, and the Omen 15 is sittingin the same position relative to the samelaptops we just looked at.It’s the lowest result I’ve got from anRTX 3070 laptop so far, but although not asgood as others, it’s not like this is badperformance or anything, it’s just thatyou might be able to get better performancefrom a different laptop with the same GPU- it all comes down to cost difference.Far Cry 5 was also tested with the games benchmarktool at max settings.The Omen 15 moves down a bit in this test,still around 100 FPS and realistically thereisn’t too much difference between it andsome of the 2070 Max-Q and 2070 Super Max-Qlaptops from last generation such as the Aorus15 and Legion 7i just above, however thoseare Intel based and it does seem that Intelbased laptops have an edge over Ryzen in thisspecific test.I’ve also connected an external monitorand retested tombraider, and we’re ableto get more than a 9% boost to average FPSwith this simple change which helps demonstratethe performance we’d be getting if the laptoplet us disable optimus, as using the externalscreen with any of the three ports bypassesthe iGPU.Overall gaming performance is decent, as wewould expect from an RTX 3070 laptop.It’s just not doing quite as well as othersdue to that 100 watt GPU power limit, 35 wattCPU power limit, and the inability of disablingoptimus, but that might matter less with the1440p screen option - again links to differentconfigurations can be found below.Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve testedHeaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royalfrom 3DMark, just pause the video if you wanta detailed look at these results.Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systemsbenchmark.It’s actually scoring 7% above the MSI GP76just below it, which has RTX 3070 graphicstoo but at higher wattage, though that onehas a 6 core Intel processor.Adobe Photoshop generally depends more onprocessor performance, and we might be limitedby the lower power limit of the processoras it’s behind other Ryzen 5000 machines,and only just above the last gen 4800H inthe RP-15 under it.DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, and the3070 is doing about as expected here, scoringpretty much the same as two other 3070 laptopsjust under it, granted those have higher GPUpower limits.I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which testsout various professional 3D workloads.The drive speed for the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD wasdoing fairly well for both reads and writes,we can always install a second drive in thespare slot.The SD card slot was doing alright for thereads, but very poorly for the writes.I don’t think this matters much though asmost people would use the slot to dump footage.The card clicks in and sits most of the wayinto the machine.There wasn’t anything special in the BIOS,mostly the standard options that you’d expectfor the most part.I booted an Ubuntu 20 live CD to test Linuxsupport.Out of the box the WiFi, keyboard, touchpadand camera work, but screen brightness withthe keyboard shortcuts was not working, itprobably just needs an update.Let’s discuss price, you can check the linksin the description for updated prices, asthese will change over time.At the time of recording, the lowest modelwith 6 core Ryzen 5 5600H processor and NvidiaRTX 3060 graphics starts at $1120 USD, thenyou can pay more for higher CPU or GPU optionsor for a 1440p screen.Alright so with all of that in mind, let’ssummarise both the good and the bad to helpyou decide if the HP Omen 15 gaming laptopis worth considering in 2021.All things considered, it’s pretty muchthe same laptop as last year but with newCPU, new GPU, and that 1440p screen option.I don’t think there’s too much wrong withnot making any changes given I did say thiswas the 2nd best Ryzen gaming laptop of lastyear, but at the same time this does alsomean that they’ve missed the chance to improveit and push it to the next level.The only changes that I actually noticed apartfrom the newer specs were that WiFi is solderedto the motherboard now, and there are thesestands on the sides to prevent screen flexingwhen the lid is closed.If there are any other differences, then they’reprobably equally as subtle as those.It runs alright, but there’s performancebeing left on the table as a result of the35 watt CPU power limit, 100 watt GPU powerlimit, which was running up to 80 watts insome of my game testing, and again the inabilityof disabling optimus, and despite those limitsin place, I still found the battery to drainon the 3070 model when under heavy CPU plusGPU load, so at least it seems that the 3070model could probably benefit from a largerpower brick than the 200 watt one that itcomes with.Depending on how the 3060 model runs, it mightbe a better sweet spot, both in terms of priceto performance ratio but also hopefully usingless power and draining the battery.I’m meant to be getting that one soon sowe’ll see.The only other thing I didn’t personallylike while using it was the front edge couldfeel sharp while typing.I am planning on comparing the new Omen 15against the new Lenovo Legion 5 gaming laptopsoon, so make sure you’re subscribed forthat upcoming laptop comparison.Come and join us in Discord and get behindthe scenes videos by supporting the channelon Patreon, otherwise for now you can findout how well this Omen 15 gaming laptop performsin 13 different games.\n"