Introduction
HP has placed its newly launched top-of-the-line laptop in a rather interesting proposition. Laptops with this calibre are usually either heavier, with even heavier specs. Then, there are also laptops with similar specs but are thinner and lighter, but, obviously, much more expensive. The HP Omen in that sense hits the sweet spot because it carries serious power without being over the top, in a form factor that is neither too heavy nor too light, and costs relatively lower that the counterparts mentioned above.
This is the new HP Omen. The first Omen was launched in 2017. It had great specs, but came with a lot of issues. Its touchpad wasn’t great, it was incredibly un-robust and it had connectivity issues. HP took note of the issues and completely redesigned the Omen, to give us the new Omen 15 and Omen 17. The price was slightly lowered too. We will review the HP Omen 17, and see whether HP’s overhaul and redesign impresses us or not.
The Omen 17 can be configured between a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti, GTX 1060 and GTX 1070. Sadly, no option for the GeForce GTX 1080 here, which is disheartening because there is also a 4K Omen 17 available. A GTX 1080 is a must for a 4K screen. The 4K version would obviously shoot up the starting price of ₹1,59,990 considerably too. Most laptops in this category cost ₹1,80,000 and above, and HP’s pricing would win many buyers looking for a top-notch gaming laptop.
All things said, we are impressed with HP’s proposition with the Omen 17. That is mainly because of the overall package offered by HP – the specifications, the form factor, the weight, and the price. None of this would make sense if the laptop didn’t perform well, and that is what we are here to talk about, so lets get to it.
The version we received for review was the Omen 17 an009TX, which comes with a FHD screen and a GeForce GTX 1070. We will delve deeper into the specs in its respective section.
Design
Our first look at the Omen 17 reveals a very modern looking machine, with a lot of carbon fibre touches and angled corners. Mind you, this is only ‘carbon fibre finish’, not actual carbon fibre. Still, the design choices made by HP are bold to say the least. It is nowhere close to the understated and boring Omen of 2017. This one definitely looks like a gaming laptop because of HP’s obvious design choices.
We wouldn’t call the Omen 17 overly bulky, like the ASUS G752, which was way too bulky to be realistically carried around. The size of the Omen 17 is actually pretty practical and pretty manageable. Yes, it would feel heavy if you’re carrying it around everyday during your public transport commutes, but it wouldn’t be much of an inconvenience if you’re taking short trips with this laptop.
The entire body of the Omen 17 is made of plastic. At this price range one would expect brushed aluminium, but hey, this isn’t really meant to be a premium feeling laptop, so HP’s choice is justified. The lid has four triangles, two of them with carbon fibre finish, and the other two in matte brushed black finish. The red Omen logo looks super classy. The words “O M E N” sit on the bottom of the top lid and they look really good in red. Each triangle is surrounded by red accents, which come together to make an “X”, which looks really clinical and classy. We have repeated the word “classy” couple of times, it’s because we mean it. Gaming laptops seldom look classy, with a few exceptions aside (ASUS Zephyrus anyone?), but the Omen 17 pulls it off really well.
HP has revamped the airflow and cooling on the Omen 17. The size of the vents are big, and they look sufficient enough to cool an i7 and a GTX 1070 sitting inside the laptop. The vents really look like exhausts of a high powered sports car. HP calls this design “inspired by Fighter Jet and Spacecraft.”
The laptop’s lid can be opened using one hand, something we always look for in laptops and appreciate. The interior lid is thankfully made of brushed aluminium that feels great to touch. HP has given a lot of thought to the design it seems. They didn’t go all out cutting costs, they did it only in the right places. A full sized red backlit keyboard sits in the centre, with five programmable keys on the left and Bang & Olufsen speakers on the top. The power button is a glossy parallelogram like button on the top left corner. Below the keyboard is a fairly large touchpad. Our only caveat in the design is the placement of the touchpad. It is placed slight more towards the left and is kind of awkward when using in conjunction with the keyboard. More on how the keyboard and touchpad perform later.
The Omen 17 has all the modern ports, and a little more. Most of the ports are placed on the left side. You get Mini DisplayPort, HDMI, ethernet, USB 3.1 (Gen 1) Type A and Type C, headset, microphone and an SD card reader. The Type-C port supports Thunderbolt 3, which we appreciate. The right side has a pair of USB 3.1 Type A ports and a power plug connector.
The Omen 17 weighs around 3.7 kg. Similar offerings from Asus and MSI weigh above 4 kg. Some laptops, like the EVGA SC17, weigh more than 5 kg. The dimensions of the Omen 17 are 1.30 x 16.65 x 11.97 inches. This makes the Omen 17 lighter and smaller than the Alienware 17 (4.4kg).
Display
Opening the lid reveals a very good looking 17.3″ matte finish anti-glare screen. Like we mentioned, this is a 1920 x 1080 Full HD screen. There is also a 4K Omen 17 available, which we might review in the future. The screen supports Nvidia G-SYNC, and a refresh rate of 120Hz. It covers a colour gamut of 72%, and offers 291 nits brightness. This is an IPS panel, means great viewing angles and colours.
The brightness levels are enough for sunlight legibility, no problems there. We would have liked a better contrast ratio than 976:1 though. Overall, we actually love this screen. The colours are solid and vibrant, the viewing angles are wide.
The black levels at 0.34 nits makes for really deep and dark blacks, which makes for an absolutely pleasing movie watching experience. The Omen 17 renders 176% of the sRGB colour gamut, which is insane! That makes it much better than other desktop replacements like the Alienware 17 (113%) and the P57Xv7 (112%). This even puts the HP Omen screen ahead of many desktop gaming monitors.
Brightness uniformity is an issue we experienced though. Around 10% of the screen’s brightness is lost along its top and bottom edges. It isn’t really noticeable, but if you look carefully, it is. Response time is another aspect we’re not that happy about, at 30.4 ms from Black to White, since we’re used to 25 ms from other gaming laptops.
The inclusion of G-SYNC adds considerable immersion while gaming, and honestly, it is a feature that we cannot do without now, we’re spoilt by it! We are confident that the Omen 17 will give you plenty of “WOW” moments while gaming.
Overall, the screen on the Omen is great for gaming and movies. We would have appreciated some software to make adjustments to the screen’s colours though. Many gaming laptops offer this and at this price range, it is a slight disappointment that HP hasn’t offered this. Buyers of this laptop would be aware customers that would like to have these features.
Keyboard and Touchpad
HP has gone for a full fledged numpad keyboard, with programmable keys on the left side of the keyboard. The keyboard overall is mixed bag. Our first observation was its weird alignment, that makes it feel kind of “off” the centre. It takes time getting used then. Then, when used together with the touchpad, the alignment feels even more awkward. However, with time, the alignment grew on us till we forgot about its awkwardness.
Other caveats with the keyboard are the single-height Return key, and the mal-aligned ‘up’ and ‘down’ keys. These are a big no-no for gaming keyboards. We appreciate that HP decided to change the half-sized ‘up’ and ‘down’ in the previous Omen 17, but still, proper alignment would have been better. The arrow keys are placed one level down the entire keyboard, and this adds to the awkwardness feel when using the keyboard for both gaming and typing. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but since almost all keyboards in the world offer aligned arrow keys, this change brings in unnecessary burn-in time for the user.
Enough with the caveats, let’s not let them take away from what this keyboard really is: a powerhouse and an absolute pleasure to use. The ‘WASD’ keys are highlighted in red. The entire keyboard is LED-backlight with red highlights. The keys have perfect spacing (key travel at 1.5mm) and feedback. Both typing and gaming are super comfortable, once adjusted to the layout. The keys are very tactile, almost like a pure mechanical keyboard, with an actuation force of 68 grams.
Since this is a 17 inch laptop, means you get plenty of palm rest space. In comparison, the 4 x 2.2-inch touchpad seems small, but really, it isn’t. The touchpad is far better than the ones we’ve used in other laptops, but still, is not at the level of accuracy of MacBooks. Makes us think, will Windows laptops ever offer Apple level touchpads?
Still, the performance of the Omen 17 touchpad is good. It supports multi-finger gestures, and they worked perfectly without any delay of mis-reads. The mouse buttons are firm and have good feedback.
Audio
The Omen 17 comes with dual Bang & Olufsen speakers. As expected from laptop speakers, the bass is lacking and the highs and mids are overstated. Nothing new there. The Omen speakers in particularly have a liking for mids, which are crisp and clear without distorting too much. They are capable enough of filling the room with sound. If you’re watching a movie with friends, the speakers will be sufficient. Nevertheless, we recommend headphones or external speakers for proper audio experience.
Performance and Gaming
Here are the specifications of the HP Omen 17-an009TX:
- CPU: 7th Gen Intel Core i7-7700HQ 2.8Ghz, TurboBoost 2.0 up to 3.8 Ghz
- RAM: 16GB PC4-19200 DDR4 – 2400
- Storage: 256 PCIe NVMe TLC M.2 SSD and 1TB 7200 rpm SATA HDD
- Display: 17.3″ 1920×1080 LED Backlit 16:9 Aspect Ration screen
- Video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB DDR3 RAM
The i7-7700HQ is a latest gen processor made for gaming and multimedia. The CPU is free of any throttling issues. The Omen 17 runs between 3.4-3.5 GHz when connected to a power outlet. On battery, it unfortunately varies between 2.6 and 3.6 Ghz, with an average of 3.1 Ghz. Overall, the CPU performance was as expected. In real life usage terms, everything in the Omen 17 feels snappy and smooth. Applications launch fast, loading times are short, no problem there.
The NVMe Samsung SSD performed really well on our CrystalDiskMark 3 tests, better than its Gigabyte and MSI counterparts. It scored sequential read and write speeds of 1736 MB/s and 1212 MB/s. The 1TB HDD performed as it should. The HDD is more suited for dumping game files and multimedia.
Now, lets talk about the graphics card. The Omen 17 respectively comes with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 with 8GB of RAM. The GTX 1070 currently is the second fastest laptop GPU, after the GTX 1080. The GTX 1070Ti and 1080Ti have not been launched for laptops. The laptop version of the GTX 1070 performs at the same level of the desktop GTX 1070, and sometimes, depending on cooling solutions, even better. In our case, the Omen 17’s GTX 1070 performed better than its desktop counterpart, and that is ONE BIG positive.
We were able to run Witcher 3 at Ultra settings super smoothly, with the full GSYNC experience. Our experience was the same with Rise of Tomb Raider. The Omen 17 managed to maintain framerates of 100fps upwards at 1080p. When compared it its competitors, the Omen 17 was 3% slower than the ASUS G752VS in Witcher 3. It is pretty evident that the Omen 17 can handle modern games pretty well, at full settings. It is also considerably future proof when it comes to gaming. The laptop also supports VR.
When gaming on battery power, we were disheartened to see the GPU throttling down its frequencies by about 20%. There is no way to get around this.
Battery Life
With a big and powerful machine like with Omen 17, one walking in would obviously not expect the battery life of standard laptops. With the 86 watt-hour Omen 17 battery, we managed to get the laptop last for 2 hours and 12 minutes with general surfing using WiFi and full brightness. The ASUS G752 got us almost 3 hours and the Alienware got us 2 hours 46 minutes, so the Omen 17 lags behind in that department.
We reduced the brightness to 50% and that is when we managed to get 3 hours 39 minutes of battery life, which is a fairly respectable score. When playing Rise of Tomb Raider, 47 minutes was our best score. Using HP’s battery saving profile got the Omen 17 to last about 4.5 hours.
The Omen 17 supports rapid charging, which means that you can charge 90% of the battery in 90 minutes. The remaining 10% will take an additional 30 minutes to charge. We tested this and the claim by HP holds accurate. One worthy point to mention is that HP claims a maximum of 12:45 hours battery life on this laptop. We have no idea how HP managed to come up with that figure as the maximum juice we could get out of this laptop was 5:49 hours, and that was with WiFi off and brightness at 30%.
Heat and Noise
Most notable changes from the previous Omen 17 is the change in design of the exhaust fans. These changes aren’t just aesthetic, they are pretty practical and functional. This Omen 17 has two large fans, connecting to four copper heat pipes, that allows better heat dissipation and cooling.
Under stress, the Omen 17 gets hot most notably on the area above the keyboard, near the speakers. The centre of the keyboard does get hot too, but not so much like the top. On the bottom, there is some heat felt in the centre and some on the top sides, but this heat is considerably less than the top. The palm rests remained cool even after a two hour gaming session.
The highest temperature reached by the GPU during gaming was 69 degrees Celsius. When overclocked, it reached 73 degrees. The CPU, under stress tests reached 90 degrees, which we felt was pretty high, since the CPU’s specification states 100 degrees Celsius as the maximum core temperature.
Noise levels of the Omen 17 are respectable. When idle, the laptop was silent. Although, it got significantly louder when running graphics intensive games. We ran a test with cryptocurrency mining where the Omen 17 was at its loudest, and the fan noise could be heard across the room. During these levels of noise, we highly recommend using headphones.
Webcam
The Omen 17 uses HP Wide Vision HD Webcam, that supports 1280 x 720 resolution at 30 frames per second, with a Field of Vision at 88 degrees. The webcam also support Wide-Dynamic Range. The are dual array digital microphones for video chat and communication. The camera is certainly of better quality than the ASUS and MSI counterparts. The pictures are vivid and capture colour pretty well. However, there is noticeable visual noise.
Conclusion
There is a lot to love about the HP Omen 17-an009TX. It comes with the latest generation Intel Skylake i7 processor, a GeForce GTX 1070, a 17.3 inch 1080p screen with 120Hz G-SYNC support, USB 3.1 Type A and Type C ports with Thunderbolt 3 support, and six programmable keys. Those are top of the line features for this day and age. HP has done a good job in keeping its price below INR 2 lakh, at ₹ 1,79,780. A lot of laptops with similar specs cost upwards.
The question here though, is, is the Omen 17 worth it? We like the build quality and looks of the Omen 17. The screen is gorgeous, minus a few hiccups. The keyboard is awkward and takes time getting used to, but still is great to type and game on. The laptop runs well under load and cools well too. There are a lot of areas of improvement for the Omen 17, and we hope that HP will address those issues in future iterations. Rest assured, as a complete package, the Omen 17 definitely has something to offer for someone out there, for those looking for this kind of a package.
We would recommend the Omen 17 to anyone who is looking for a well rounded, top-of-the-line, feature rich, good looking, future proof and comparatively pocket friendly gaming laptop. HP offers good value here, i.e., if you’re looking for value in a high-end segment.
