Introduction
HP has been silently broadening its range of laptop offerings. We’ve talked a lot about HP’s Omen series of premium gaming laptops. Omen laptops are characterized by high-refresh-rate displays and flagship CPUs and GPUs. Just about half a year ago, HP launched its Victus series of affordable gaming laptops. The Victus series, which HP says is “built with Omen DNA” positions itself between the Omen series and the budget-focused Pavillion Gaming series. One word to describe the Victus Line would be “mainstream.” Somehow HP felt the Omen was too good for the mainstream, and the Pavillion Gaming line was a notch lower, so they introduced the Victus line. Let us see how the latest Victus 15 laptop holds up independently and in comparison to the Omen lineup.
The Victus Series comes in multiple configurations (Intel and AMD) in 15-inch and 16-inch form factors. The common feature all Victus laptops share is a 1080p, 144 Hz IPS display. The laptop we will be reviewing today is the HP Victus 15 (fb0053AX).
Specifications
The HP Victus 15 – fb0053AX comes with the following specifications:
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Build and Design
The Victus 15 is built on a plastic chassis. Our review unit is Mica Silver in color, which is actually just a slight variation of black. Other colors available for the Victus 15 are Performance Blue and Ceramic White. The laptop weighs 2.29 kg, which is in line with Omen cousins and offerings from MSI and ASUS. In context, the laptop weighs a solid 1 kg more than the MacBook M1 Air and 700 grams more than the MacBook M1 Pro 14.
HP claims an 82.2% screen-to-body ratio for the Victus 15, similar to the Omen 16. And just like the Omen 16, you will find the side bezels to be the thinnest and the bottom bezel to be thick, i.e., almost 3x more than the top bezel. We would have definitely loved to see a thinner bottom bezel though, but that would mean changing the entire structure of the laptop or increasing the screen size to something other than a 16:10 aspect ratio, which comes with its own set of problems.
While the construction is plastic with no metal whatsoever, it is still a fairly well-built laptop that has its parts firmly in place. The Victus 15 is built to last without a doubt, but if you’re looking for a “premium feel” then look elsewhere. What good is a “premium feel” anyway if the laptop cannot withstand rough and tough use? Plastic construction means you will notice noticeable flex, especially on the screen. On a positive note, there is no creaking or cranking when flexed. The keyboard area does not have any flex, though, and that is something we really like about this mainstream-focused laptop.
We’re fans of the hyper-bold “V” branding on the lid, but still, the Omen Diamond looks much better and more premium. One thing the Victus 15 has going for it is a fairly light chassis that feels grippy to hold, probably owing to its uniform center of gravity distribution.
Great for typing, not so great to look at
HP laptops were synonymous with offering a terrible typing and touchpad experience, but they have redeemed themselves in the post-Covid era. The keyboard is a delight to type on. We registered accurate key presses; the feedback was good too. Over the three weeks this laptop spent with us, we wrote multiple blogs on it without facing any issues. The typing experience is on par with much more expensive laptops and even the new MacBooks.
We’ve spoken about the weird keyboard layout in our Omen 16 review. HP has kept the same layout with the Victus 15, i.e. the oddly placed power key, the isolated arrow keys, the useless Omen Hub key, and the Insert and Print Screen keys that feel totally out of place. If you’re a fan of alignment and straight lines, the last row of keys is not aligned in a single line. On a positive note, numpads are always a blessing on laptops, especially if you’re transitioning from MacBooks.
The keyboard is backlit with a single white LED light that bleeds through the spaces of all the keys, giving the laptop a very tacky kind of look that won’t be preferred in formal settings. Without the LED lights, the keyboard looks great, but with it, it is a sight for sore eyes. There are no RGB colour choices and no zonal lighting, thus rendering the Omen Light Studio software utterly useless. The fix? Use the LED keyboard backlight only when working in absolute darkness, thank you.
The touchpad feels a lot like the Omen too. It is a huge improvement from past HP touchpads. You should be able to use Windows gestures without any problems. Unlike previous HP touchpads that caused much anxiety, HP’s newer offerings, including the Victus 15, have improved drastically and are functional for performing productive tasks. If we really had to ask, some more pointer accuracy would be good, but this is just nitpicking.
Display
The HP Victus 15 comes with a 1920 x 1080 display that supports a 144 Hz refresh rate and fast response time. The display is absolutely fine considering this is a mainstream gaming laptop, but it has its qualms. Color fidelity is adequate for gaming and productivity, but falls short for image editing and content creation. Don’t expect vividness in the colors. The brightness peaks at 250 nits, which is disappointing, to say the least. Forget about working in broad daylight conditions. If it weren’t for the 144Hz refresh rate, this screen wouldn’t have been worth it. The refresh rate is the saving grace for this display.
Connectivity
On the left side of the HP Victus 15, you’ll find a power adapter, which is shared by HP’s Omens, Pavillions, and Victus models, as well as a USB Type-A port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the right side, there’s an HDMI 2.1 port, a USB Type-A port, Ethernet, and a USB Type-C port. You get no Thunderbolt ports, which is kind of disappointing, especially if you plan to retain a machine for a good three years or so.
Benchmarks and Performance
CPU Performance
The Victus 15 comes with AMD’s latest-generation Ryzen 7 5800H processor that has 8 cores and 16 threads. This processor has a TDP of 45W and sits somewhere in the upper end of AMD’s mobile CPU lineup. It has a base clock of 3.2 GHz and a max. boost clock of 4.4 GHz. Here are its benchmark numbers.
Cinebench R23
The Victus 15 performs in line with its specifications, but somehow scores lower than its competitors who sport the same Ryzen 7 5800H chip. On a deep dive analysis into the reason for this, we suspect this has got to do something with Windows optimizations. The Windows build on the Victus is different from the build on the other machines. WIth more Windows updates and optimizations for this Ryzen 7 CPU, the score will improve.
PCMark 8
The PCMark 8 test runs the laptop in various “home” scenarios like web browsing, photo editing, video chatting and casual gaming. The Victus 15 scored 5091, which is a solid score. It beat the Acer Nitro and Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 which have the same processor.
Gaming Performance
3DMark Time Spy
On 3DMark Time Spy, the Victus 15 performed better than the Acer Nitro. The Lenono Ideapad performed roughly 7% better due to its GPU being a RTX 3050Ti, which is slightly better than the RTX 3050. What makes this score interesting is that the RTX 3050Ti is supposed to be at-least 10% better than the RTX 3050, which means the Victus 15 is actually performing better than it is supposed to.
GFX Bench
The Victus 15 did pretty well in GFX Bench, which runs ray-traced scenarios, pushing the GPU to its limits. These scores prove that the VIctus 15 will last you a good time if you’re going be using it for gaming.
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla is the latest installement to Ubisoft’s blockbuster franchise. The game used Ray Tracing and other advanced graphical algorithms and is know for pushing GPUs to their limits. We ran Assassin’s Creed Valhalla at 1080p resolution and the “High” settings preset. To our surprise, the Victus managed to maintain an average FPS of above 30, with the highest FPS being 91. We achieved an average FPS of 60 by sliding the settings down to Low, with Ray Tracing on.
Grand Theft Auto V
Released almost 9 years ago, GTA 5 can still bring a modern-specced machine down to its knees. It has a huge dynamic map that tests both the CPU and GPU. Nine year on, it still frequents best-selling lists and is still played by millions. We ran the game at 1080 with all settings cranked up to their highest present, including draw distances and 4x MSAA. The Victus managed to stay afloat the 60fps mark.
Frames Per Second (Higher is better) Min, Max, Avg
Pass 0, 6.137409, 86.003014, 60.178566
Pass 1, 31.186457, 61.308315, 50.929947
Pass 2, 37.037857, 77.513374, 64.238686
Pass 3, 48.841953, 85.538811, 69.465210
Pass 4, 34.306496, 98.638779, 61.768356
Time in milliseconds(ms). (Lower is better). Min, Max, Avg
Pass 0, 11.627500, 162.935196, 16.617212
Pass 1, 16.311001, 32.065201, 19.634813
Pass 2, 12.900999, 26.999403, 15.566944
Pass 3, 11.690599, 20.474201, 14.395696
Pass 4, 10.138000, 29.148998, 16.189520
SSD Performance – Crystal Disk Mark
Here is where the Victus 15 leaps ahead of the similar specced Acer Nitro 5 and the Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3, and manages faster write speeds than the more expensive Lenovo Legion 5. These speeds are currently one of the best read and write speeds one can experience on laptops. Rest assured, you will be treated by fast boot of the OS, really short game loading times and generally a snappier system to work on.
Webcam
We have seen a lot of webcams, from the finest ones to the worst ones, in laptops that cost a quarter of the price of the Victus 15. It is fair to say that the 720p Webcam in this laptop is one of the worst we’ve seen lately. The images are blurry, noisy, and have terrible performance in low light. Even under bright lights, the images are grainy and noisy.
Speakers
The speaker unit is a grill located above the keyboard with Bang & Olufson branding, as is the norm with HP laptops. Speaking of the audio quality, there is nothing really so speak about. Most flagship smartphones will sound much louder, richer, and deeper than the speakers in the Victus 15. There is no bass whatsoever. A pair of headsets is a must for this laptop. HP offers many deals on headsets when buying a laptop. The speakers are not suited even for casual YouTube. Plus, there is no way to access any equalizer settings to maybe get more juice out of the speakers. We recommend the versatile Logitech G Pro headset.
Battery Life
The Victus 15 comes with a 4-cell, 70 Wh battery unit, which seems appropriate for a laptop of this size. HP claims the battery life to be up to 14 hours and 30 minutes, but our battery test told a completely different story. Performing productivity tasks, which include a mixture of web browsing, spreadsheets, and text editing, you can squeeze about 9 hours from this battery. The brightness in this scenario was 50%. Playing 720p video at 50% brightness gave us just close to 7 hours of battery life. Running a 1080p video reduced this further to about 5 hours. In comparison, the battery life is slightly better than the MSI Katana GF66 and Dell G3 15, but the cheaper Acer Nitro 5 performs much better than the Victus 15 in gaming scenarios. The Lenovo Ideapad goes leaps ahead of the Victus 15, performing almost 50% better.
Heat
The laptop performs well in the heat management department, owing to the clever design of its intake and exhaust fans. Idle CPU temperatures are a respectable 52.1 degrees Celsius. The CPU reached temperatures of 100 degrees when running Cinebench. The heat is slightly noticeable when the laptop is placed on the lap, but it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. When I ran 3DMark and played Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the GPU temperature reached a high of 78 degrees.
Noise
We were delighted to see that fans did not come on when browsing the Web and working with spreadsheets. That meant absolute silent operation when performing basic tasks. During gaming, when the fan runs at 100% speed, the noise can fill an entire mid-sized room. This is another reason why a good headset is a must for the Victus 15.
Power Consumption
It is in its efficiency that the AMD Ryzen 7 Series really shines. On idle, the 45-watt TDP Ryzen 5800H used only 4.6 watts. This is very similar to the lower-end AMD laptop CPUs that operate at much slower clocks. Despite having a TDP of 45 W, the CPU drew 56.7 W under load, according to OpenHardwareMonitor. This may be due to some changes done to the power draw values by HP, the OEM. The Ryzen 5800H offers better efficiency than the same TDP-rated Core i9-10980HK.
Conclusion
This HP Victus 15 exists because it wants to offer gaming performance on a budget, along with a penchant for productivity. This means it is aimed at students or gamers who also need a laptop to do some work on. It is a capable gaming machine, with the GTX 3050 offering good performance for modern games along with support for ray tracing and DLSS. The AMD Ryzen 7 5800H performs in a way that’s suitable for power-hungry apps and games, as well as low-power usage scenarios. This makes the Victus 15 a product that fills the requirements of the majority of laptop buyers.
What matters when buying such a machine is that it should perform well and that it is reliable enough to last a long time without causing many issues. HP laptops are known for reliability and are fairly easy to service and upgrade. The webcam and speakers on the Victus 15 aren’t very good, but other than that, it’s a pretty good and versatile laptop that will appeal to many regular users and serious gamers.
It directly competes with the Acer Nitro 5, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3, and the MSI GF66. The HP Victus is priced about 5% higher than other offerings and offers lower storage capacity. In that sense, it doesn’t sound like the best deal but considering HP’s wide network, easy serviceability, and long-term reliability, it might just be the sweetest of them all. HP Victus 15 offers much better SSD performance though, that will derive more dividends in the long run because its NVMe SSD supports the latest generational technologies meaning you will be working in a much snappier environment.
We can recommend this laptop to people who are sure they want to play the latest games, and as a bonus, have a snappy machine they can get some work done on. We cannot recommend this for video conferencing due to the weak camera or for image/video editing due to the lifeless screen. For everything else, the Victus 15 will get the job done.
