Players on a budget now have two more laptops to consider, with the arrival of HP’s Omen 16 and Victus 15 notebooks.
Victus is especially designed for beginner level players who do not have to play all games with Ultra settings at 300 frames per second. Despite its low price, Victus is a beautiful notebook with some decent components under the hood. Those in need of more power can turn to Omen 16, an update of one of the best choices from last year.
Omen and Victus have not changed much this year, but some minor improvements combined with upgraded internal parts should at least put these on your radar.
Omen 16 and Victus 15 release date and price
Omen 16 will be available sometime this summer at a starting price of $ 1,199. Its cheaper sibling, the Victus 15, also goes on sale in the summer and is priced at $ 799 for the base model. Both systems will be available at Best Buy and HP.com.
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Omen 16: Powerful specifications at a lower (ish) price
The Omen 16 is a fairly straightforward gaming laptop. It is a laptop with a shell in aluminum with a clean design, harmless branding and four-zone RGB keys. The Intel-powered models come in a fresh ceramic white color, while the AMD options are a tame mica silver. Those who want the most portable option should look elsewhere; The Omen 16 weighs 5.3 pounds and is 0.9 inches thick.
There is a good selection of ports to choose from, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports (or standard USB-C on AMD models), three USB Type-A inputs, an HDMI 2.1, an SD card slot, an RJ-45 Ethernet jack, and a headphone / microphone jack.
HP spent a lot of time chatting with me about the cooling improvements it has made to this year’s model. The company added a fifth heat pipe and a fourth outflow valve, resulting in 3% lower GPU and 14% SSD temperatures. This should give you peace of mind during long gaming sessions.
Speaking of which, Omen comes up with options from each of the major chip manufacturers; on the CPU front, you can choose between an AMD Ryzen 9 6800H or Intel Core i7-12700H CPUs while the GPU is left to Nvidia or AMD in the form of up to an RTX 3070 Ti or Radeon RX 6650M GPU. Whichever CPU / GPU combination you choose, you can pair it with up to 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and up to a 2x 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD.
The 16.1-inch, 1440p resolution IPS display has a 165Hz refresh rate at a 16: 9 aspect ratio. HP says it goes up to 300 nits, the absolute minimum in this price range. There are also two 1080p options at either 144Hz or 60Hz.
Victus 15: Bet on a budget
Victus 15 looks like a nice budget gaming laptop, although I am not convinced that a 15-inch version was needed when there is already a Victus 16 (provided the larger model sticks).
In any case, this new version has a similar understated design with a beautiful V-shaped logo centered on the lid. Again, HP is promoting thermal improvements (7% better airflow), promising that Victus will stay cool under a tough workload. Victus is inspired by the Omen design, and it’s clear that restraint is the thread here. While it may not be that premium, an advantage that Victus has over the Omen – at least in my eyes – is the beautiful “Performance Blue” color option that connects Mica Silver and Ceramic White.
In terms of specifications, the Victus 15 is powered by either Intel Core i5-12500H or AMD Radeon RX 6500M CPUs and up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM. You will play at 1080p instead of 4K on the RTX 3050 Ti or Radeon RX 6500M, but most titles will run well over 60 frames per second.