HP Omen 16 Gaming Laptop Review: Less is More

Apart from the hinges, the notebook's exterior is made of plastic. The stability of the construction suffers as a result. While the slightly yielding keyboard frame is hardly noticeable, the large display seems a bit too bendy. In particular, opening it with one hand bends the screen unnecessarily. An aluminum cover like in many business notebooks could have helped here.

Overall, the build leaves a high-quality impression. All parts fit together nicely and have even gaps. The possibilities for torsion are limited. But HP could have made the display frame a little more rigid. The hinges also seem a little too weak so that the screen wobbles, but it can still be opened with one hand at the same time.

The large format is due to the 16-inch display. Even the slim display edges can only compensate for this to a limited extent, so that standard laptop bags or notebook backpacks may be too tight. In terms of case thickness, the HP Omen 16 is 3 mm (~0.12 in) thicker than its predecessor. It also outperforms other gaming laptops with similar performance values due to the particularly large cooling system, which protrudes from the case in the rear area of the base.

The advantage of all the plastic is a relatively low weight of 2.25 kg (~5.0 lb). However, the 230 W power supply increases the total weight to 3 kg (~6.6 lb).

The choice between three different monitor outputs is commendable. With USB-C, miniDP and HDMI, there is something for almost every external display. Thanks to DP 1.4 and HDMI 2.1, monitors with more than 4K resolution can also be connected.

USB ports on both the left and right of the case allow almost everything on the desk to be connected without any problems. However, the distance between the individual connections is sometimes very tight. The two USB ports on the right are only separated by a width of 4 mm (~0.16 in).

While the number of ports seems very practical, the speed of USB-A in particular is a downside. All three ports only reach 5 Gbit/s and thus only the USB 3.0 standard. At least the USB-C connection manages 10 Gbit/s, but compared to Thunderbolt 4 in particular, which is not supported here, this is only a fraction of what is currently technically possible. 

The card reader's speed, tested with our AV PRO microSD 128 GB V60 reference memory card, could be significantly higher. However, those who are not exactly ambitious hobby photographers will hardly notice this shortcoming.

In addition to the LAN port, Wi-Fi 6 is also available. Like in the HP Victus 16, a Realtek WLAN card is used here, which, in our tests, was roughly average for this kind of hardware. But since the HP Omen 16 is in the entry-level segment of gaming notebooks, this should suffice. However, a look at the average of all the gaming laptops in our review shows that the throughput rates are usually much higher.

The resolution and color accuracy of the HP Omen 16 webcam meet the minimum requirements at best, though this is common practice in this segment.

In all likelihood, one is likely to use the HP Omen 16 with a separate mouse. But the touchpad is quite convincing. It responds promptly and the matte yet smooth surface allows for precise control, even with multiple fingers. Of course, a few buttons below would have been even better, but uninteresting for full-blooded gamers with oscillating gaming mice anyway.

With the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H and the AMD Radeon RX 6600M in our HP Omen 16, there is sufficient power for current games. 16 GB of RAM should almost always suffice and can be easily expanded later. However, the limits of the notebook are tested when the system is made to run at 165 fps on the QHD display. 60 fps on the other hand seems to be almost effortlessly achievable in many games.

To stretch these limits as far as possible, we selected the "Performance" option in the Omen Gaming Hub, which increases the power supply to the processor by almost 20%.

The AMD Ryzen 7 5800H has almost unlimited power consumption. For fractions of a second, it can consume 160 W. For longer periods of time, 134 W is the standard. Both values are, for example, significantly higher than the settings found in the MSI Alpha 15 with an identical CPU.

However, a larger performance leap could not be determined. At least the normally inexpensive CPU can compete with an Intel Core i7-11800 or i7-12800H, albeit at the expense of efficiency. The effects of the increased power consumption are not really visible in our benchmarks. The Omen 16 is mostly in the midfield in the various ratings, closely surrounded by the competition. All that can be said is that the processor gives everything that it is capable of.

What is really striking is the lack of a drop in the values in the Cinebench loop, which usually prevents the system from overheating. The HP Omen 16 simply ramps up its ventilation to maximum, which then counteracts any drops in performance.

Similarly to its predecessor, system performance is convincing in view of the direct competition. Taking into account possible fluctuations in the measurements, the Omen 16 is roughly on par with its competitors and is always near the top. The creation and editing of images and videos even scores above average. Models with the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 cannot quite keep up here.

The installed NVMe SSD Samsung PM981a, like in many other notebooks, was able to fully demonstrate its capacities. Almost all recorded values are above average, which also explains why, in our table of hard drives and SSDs, this SSD is found high at the top of our table.

The SSD would be even faster via PCIe 4.0, but this is not supported by the AMD processor. The connection on the motherboard itself would even be capable of this. But this feature does not play a significant role in the performance of this system.