HP Omen X 17 (7820HK, GTX 1080, 120 Hz FHD) Laptop Review

HP includes some preinstalled apps with the Omen X 17. In addition to typical software packages like casual games, the Pièce De Résistance is the Omen Command Center. Here, users can control the "extras" of the machine, including the RGB lighting modes across the keyboard and lid of the device, the macro keys, and an overclocking utility. The software is very user-friendly and allows for fairly granular control of aspects like network connection prioritization, RGB lighting effects, and more. The overclocking utility (discussed in further detail in the Processor section below) also includes a benchmark to test the stability of an overclock. Note that this option will disappear after a failed overclock attempt that causes a crash, but rebooting Windows brings the option back. Note that the BIOS is standard HP fare; the Omen Command Center is the only way to overclock the CPU. The BIOS does contain a setting for TPM for the security-conscious.

Most gaming notebooks have ready access to the internal components, and the Omen X 17 is no exception. The bottom panel is held in place by 10 Phillips head screws (size #00) and several stubborn plastic clips. After prying these clips loose (we recommend starting near the acrylic panel and working around the chassis), the bottom panel comes off. Inside, users will have access to the two DDR4 SO-DIMM RAM slots, the 2.5-inch SATA drive bay, both M.2 PCIe drive bays, and the large 99 Wh battery. The fans can also easily be cleaned at this stage. Should users feel the need, the heat pipe assembly can be removed in order to access the soldered CPU and GPU for re-applying thermal paste. Curiously, the wireless card seems to be buried on the underside of the motherboard; further disassembly would be required to access this component.

Keyboard

One of the defining features of the HP Omen X 17 is its mechanical RGB keyboard. The beveled keys offer a generous 2.5 mm of key travel which hits a "Goldilocks" zone (good travel that's not too deep). The switches have a tactile bump that, again, offers just the right amount of resistance; it is very obvious when a key press registers, and the key springs right back up. It is miles ahead of the membrane keyboards typically found on notebooks and more natural than the Razer Blade Pro's shallow mechanical keyboard. Typists will have to take time to get used to the beveled key shapes but should quickly get up to and surpass their typical typing speeds. Overall, the keyboard is excellent, rivaling some desktop mechanical keyboards.

The main downside to the keyboard is the noise produced by the switches. The keyboard will feel and sound very similar to one using Cherry MX Brown mechanical switches; the switches offer great feedback with a subtlely tactile bump, but they can be noisy. The noise is hard to describe; it's not similar to the clatter of notebooks like the MacBook Pro. Rather, this keyboard's switches produce a deep, full click. While it's not nearly as annoying as clatter made by shallow plastic keys, it's still noticeable in an office setting.

The Omen X 17 offers 9 preset RGB modes, ranging from the typical (breathing effects, color cycles, etc.) to the unique, such as a setting that lights the keys in an "X," spreading from the epicenter of the pressed key. There's even an audio mode that lights the keyboard in response to audio playing through the notebook's speakers (users can choose for the keyboard to react to either treble or bass registers). The per-key RGB effects are fun to play with and make for a colorful centerpiece. For more serious environments, the primary setting is a static mode that can be configured to display any color the user wishes.

Touchpad

The touchpad (101.6 x 58.7 mm, or 4 x 2.3 in) is average. Windows Precision drivers make tracking accurate, and glide across the plastic surface is fairly smooth. The dedicated mouse buttons below the trackpad are also adequate, offering a good amount of travel but somewhat spongy feedback. The buttons have an almost silent but unsatisfactory click and feel mushy. The touchpad is usable but pales compared to some competitors'. Users will definitely want to use a mouse for gaming, but the touchpad will work for basic navigation in a pinch.

Out of the box, color reproduction is fairly good. The DeltaE2000 score for colors and grays hit 3.4 and 2.4, respectively. This is very good for a gaming notebook; competitors typically hit DeltaE scores between 5 and 6. (As a reference, a DeltaE2000 of 3 or less is generally considered acceptable for professional color work.) With calibration, these numbers improve to 3.3 and 1.7 respectively. Gamma is about average at 2.35 and color temperature is nearly centered at 6495º K (6500º K is considered perfectly balanced). The biggest weakness here is color space coverage; the panel covers 88% of the sRGB color space and only 57% of the AdobeRGB color space. These scores aren't terrible and should be more than adequate for gaming, but professional photographers and videographers may find these limited coverages unacceptable. Considering the Omen X 17 is first and foremost a gaming notebook, the screen is excellent and presents a well-blended medium between cost and features that will satisfy all but the most scrutinous of gamers.

Owing to its IPS panel, viewing angles are good. The screen tends to dim when viewed at extreme angles (greater than 45°), and the color temperature noticeably shifts to a cooler tone, giving everything a blue hue. Otherwise, the viewing experience is typical of a high-quality IPS display. Backlight bleed is minimal, but the top of the display bezel doesn't sit quite flush with the panel. The bleed is only noticeable in completely dark environments and shouldn't detract from normal viewing.

The Intel Core i7-7820HK shares quite a bit in common with the Core i7-7700HQ. Both processors are 45 W, quad-core hyperthreaded Kaby Lake chips designed for power and are commonly found in gaming notebooks or high-end workstation machines. However, the 7820HK has a few features that place it above the 7700HQ. Featuring a slight increase in base clock speed (2.9 GHz vs. the 7700HQ's 2.8 GHz), a slightly higher boost clock (3.9 GHz vs. 3.8 GHz), and a small bump in L3 cache (8 MB vs. 6 MB), the 7820HK is the more powerful of the two. Out of the box, the Omen X 17's CPU performs about 5% better than notebooks equipped with the 7700HQ, which is expected given the 2% bump in boost clock frequency. Single-threaded testing pegs the Omen X 17 toward the bottom of the 7820HK stack by about 5-7%.  Multi-threaded testing shows a similar result; the Omen X 17 beats out only the MSI GT75VR Titan Pro, with the other 7820HK notebooks trumping it by about 9-13%. (Surprisingly, the Core i7-8650U in the Surface Book 2 edges out the 7820HK in Cinebench's single-threaded render test.) These scores are consistent when the device is on battery power.

The 7820HK is an unlocked processor, which means it can be overclocked (provided there is enough thermal headroom for the CPU to remain stable). HP includes its own overclocking tool via the Omen Control Center software suite; this tool consists of CPU multiplier and voltage sliders that can be tweaked and a benchmark that measures the stability of the CPU. The default multiplier is set to 35x. In our testing, we were unable to get a stable overclock at any multiplier between 37x and 40x with voltage set to +0.510V. Performance was shaky in both the Omen Center benchmark and Cinebench with some multipliers giving lower scores and hitting lower clock speeds, and one setting (38x CPU multiplier, +0.505 V) crashed the system and forced a full reboot. Given the high thermal output of the CPU at its base multiplier (more on this in the Stress Test below), we opted not to push the silicon any further.

At its base configuration, the 7820HK is fairly stable. Our Cinebench R15 loop sees most scores consistently hit between 740 and 750 CB with the occasional dip into the upper 730 range.

For more information about the Intel Core i7-7820HK, visit our dedicated CPU page here.

Overall system performance is very quick. The combination of the powerful Core i7-7820HK CPU, the GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, and the snappy Samsung PM961 NVMe SSD makes for a highly responsive experience. PCMark 8 scores are among the best in our database, and real-world use reflects these numbers. Apps open almost instantaneously and move with the fluidity expected of a high-end machine. Users will not be left waiting for the system to respond.

The Samsung PM961 is among the fastest PCIe NVMe drives currently available, and the Omen X 17 is able to take advantage of the fast read and write speeds it offers. Read speeds hover around 2300-2400 MB/s, which are very quick. Write speeds are somewhat disappointing, managing only 1150 MB/s. There are faster notebooks on the market, but they are either configured in RAID 0 or have a larger storage capacity, both of which result in faster read and write speeds for SSDs. The comparatively meager 256 GB drive in our review unit is limited in both speed and capacity compared to a large drive. The Omen X 17 is typically configured with a 1 TB 7200 RPM HDD for mass storage, which offers speeds expected of a mechanical drive (~130-150 MB/s read and write). This drive is attached through a SATA III interface and could be swapped with a 2.5-inch SSD or HDD by the end user if desired.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 1080 needs no introduction. The top-tier card is currently the most powerful non-SLI GPU option for laptops. The card boasts 2560 CUDA cores clocked at 1582 MHz and 8 GB of GDDR5X VRAM. To put it plainly, the GTX 1080 chews through any graphical workload thrown its way. In 3DMark's Fire Strike test, the Omen X 17's graphics score is comparable to our desktop GTX 1080 test bench but sits near below other similarly-specced devices. The MSI GT75VR, Guru Marks K, and Alienware 17 R4 all beat the Omen X 17 by 5-8%. Gamers looking for the penultimate powerhouse notebook should consider the Aorus X9, whose dual GTX 1070s beat out the Omen X 17 by a whopping 61%. 

Compared to the thin-and-light devices in our roundup, the Omen X 17 beats out the Acer Predator Triton 700 (GTX 1080 Max Q) and the Asus Zephyrus GX501VS (GTX 1070 Max-Q) by 12% and 26%, respectively. Keep in mind that these thinner notebooks may produce more heat under similar loads due to their smaller chassis.

As a quick note, the integrated graphics chip is disabled due to the G-Sync display. This can be re-enabled via the BIOS, but this setting disables the GTX 1080. For more information about the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080, visit our dedicated GPU page here.

With its overclockable CPU and top-of-the-line GPU, stress testing is of particular interest. Our stress testing somewhat explains the limits we ran into while overclocking the CPU: synthetic stress on the system sees the CPU rise in excess of 90° C. While this is within Intel's rated thermal limits (100° C), these temperatures are still extremely hot. At its default settings, the i7-7820HK managed to boost to 3.9 GHz before falling back to about 3.3 GHz across all cores during our hour-long Prime95 stress test. There is a dip in power consumption during this test as denoted by the Metrahit graph (below under the Power Consumption section); this likely explains the drop in clock speed. Temperatures cap out at 86° C and average 81° C. However, bringing the GPU into the mix by running FurMark sees the CPU climb into the upper 90s. Running FurMark and Prime95 concurrently keeps the CPU at bay; while the 7820HK is able to intermittently hit its full boost of 3.9 GHz, average performance hovers close to its base clock speed.

This heat output could explain why we ran into inconsistent performance during our overclocking attempts; the CPU could have been throttled to keep temperatures at bay when voltage settings were pushed. The GTX 1080 performs admirably under stress, maintaining a respectable 1400-1470 MHz clock while averaging about 70° C.

Running The Witcher 3 for an hour gives us a more realistic picture of what to expect from the system. Both the CPU and GPU do well during this test, holding at 3.6 GHz and 1725 MHz, respectively. Temperatures are also acceptable, hitting 89° C on the CPU and 74° C on the GPU. The processor temperatures are a bit high for extended gameplay, but gamers shouldn't need to worry about throttling or excessive component heat during long play sessions.

Due to the combination of its larger chassis, its efficient fans, and its aggressive ventilation, the HP Omen X 17 is able to remain surprisingly cool across both the keyboard deck and bottom panel. While most gaming notebooks of this caliber have hot spots that reach past 45° C (e.g., the Alienware 17 R4 and MSI GT75VR), the Omen X 17 never tops 40° C, which is excellent. Of note, the keyboard temperature remains almost unchanged when the system is under load. The palm rests also stay nice and cool while gaming. So long as the vents along the back and sides are left with plenty of breathing room, the chassis will keep its cool without breaking a sweat. Keep in mind that the power supply does get warm at about 45° C.