HP Omen 17 Laptop Review: High-end gaming with some small limitations

While the quality of the case is not particularly impressive (only the top of the base unit is made of metal), we were still very pleased with it in general. This is mainly due to its unique design, which sets itself apart from other gaming notebooks thanks to its unusual form and contours.

Unlike with the last generation, HP has now decided against using red elements as highlights, which we think was a good choice. This makes the case appear a great deal more grown-up. Although the bottom bezel continues to be rather wide, we  appreciate the general change to a slim-bezel design. Particularly the side and top bezels were significantly wider on the predecessor.

Another advantage of the new generation is its lower weight. The Omen 17 now weighs 3.3 kg (~7.3 lb) instead of 3.7 kg (~8.2 lb). This is still heavier than the MSI GE75 9SG (2.7 kg/~6 lb), but lighter than the MSI GT76 9SG, Schenker XMG Ultra 17 and Alienware Area 51m (3.9/~8.6 to 4.3 kg/~9.5 lb). The Omen 17 can beat all of its competitors in terms of thickness: 2.7 cm (~1.1 in) is the lowest you can get in this comparison field.

Apart from its size, weight and look, we would describe this case as average. The workmanship is fine apart from some minor details and the hinges are not particularly noteworthy either. HP could, however, improve the stability of the display cover, as this can be warped and squeezed together quite easily in some areas. But then again, the same can be said for a lot of other notebooks as well. The base unit does not give way even under strong pressure. 

Ports

The Omen 17 has a decent port selection that includes three classic USB 3.0 Type A ports as well as a modern Type C port that supports USB 3.1 Gen 2, DisplayPort and Thunderbolt 3. The other ports include an HDMI connector and a Mini-DisplayPort for connecting external monitors, an SD card reader and an RJ45 port as well as two audio jacks. The Omen 17 does not have a Kensington Lock connector. 

As most of the ports are positioned towards the back of the sides, there is sufficient space for using a physical mouse on either side of the device.

The performance of the card reader is average - neither particularly bad, nor particularly good. We measured a rate of 80 MB/s for sequential reading and transferring photos. This positions the Omen 17 between the MSI GE75 9SG (~30 MB/s) and the Schenker XMG Ultra 17 (~200 MB/s). The MSI GT76 9SG only has space for a microSD card while the Alienware Area 51m has completely foregone an SD card reader.

HP has made no compromises in terms of Wi-Fi performance and has equipped our test unit with an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200, a very fast and up-to-date WLAN module. The transfer rates of 749 Mbit/s and reception rates of 675 Mbit/s comfortably position our Omen 17 in first and second place, respectively.

The AC adapter that comes with the RTX 2080 version of the Omen 17 has a rated output of 330 watts and has a rather unusual shape. It is around 15 x 15 x 4 cm (~5.9 x 5.9 x 1.6 in) large. All other 330-watt AC adapters that we have seen up until now were narrower, but usually significantly longer and thicker. The only other thing in the Omen 17's box is a small quick-start guide.

We are not quite sure what to think of maintenance on this 17-inch gamer. The good news is that you can access all components by removing the bottom cover (see photos). The bad news is that the bottom cover is rather difficult to remove in the first place. Users will need a fine spatula, which might discourage some less experienced laptop owners. Removing the 10 Philipps screws was no issue. 

Like most gaming laptops, the HP Omen 17 comes with a two-year warranty.

The touchpad has a good size at 10.2 x 5.6 cm (~4 x 2.2 in). Due to its slightly rough finish, fingers do not glide over the surface as easily as on some other gaming notebooks. The dedicated mouse keys have a clear (and loud) pressure point and feedback. Not surprisingly, the touchpad supports several gestures. We had no issues zooming and scrolling with two fingers. The precision of the touchpad is average. 

HP has joined in the current trend of using high-refresh-rate displays and has equipped the Omen 17 with a 144-Hz IPS display with a matte surface. The panel (CMN175D) is quite impressive. It has a contrast ratio of 1385:1 and a black value of 0.26 cd/m². This places our 17-inch gamer right at the front of our comparison field.

The best configuration of the Omen 17, which we are testing today, features a Core i9-9880H, a GeForce RTX 2080 and 32 GB of DDR4 RAM (2x 16 GB, dual channel). This hardware combination makes this device suitable for almost any area of use and should future-proof it for quite some time. The SSD RAID also guarantees a fast system performance with short load and boot times.

The clock rates are quite impressive, too. As long as the cooling system allows it, the Core i9-9880H can reach clock rates up to 4.8 GHz, which is quite a lot for a laptop. Unfortunately, the Omen 17 cannot make the most out of the CPU's potential. While it does fairly well in single-core and 3D applications with low core utilization, reaching clock rates over 4 GHz, the CPU can only reach between 2.9 and 4.0 GHz in applications that use all cores. The clock rate even drops to 2.9 GHz permanently after a while.

This behavior is depicted very nicely in our Cinebench graph, which shows a drop in performance of around 10 percent from the second round onwards. While other 9880H laptops, such as the MSI GE75 9SG, also lose several percent in this scenario, their clock rate is higher from the start. The Omen 17 cannot compete with notebooks that are equipped with the Core i9-9900K. Both the MSI GT76 9SG and the Schenker XMG Ultra 17, as well as the Alienware Area 51m easily beat the Omen 17 in our Cinebench loop and multi-core test.

We cannot criticize the overall system performance of our test unit. The HP notebook does not make the podium in PCMark 10, but its score of 6558 points is very good nonetheless, and promises a fast and smooth-running system.

Most users should be well-equipped in terms of storage capacity for quite a while. The combination of the SSD RAID with an additional 2.5-inch HDD hard drive means that this configuration of the Omen 17 has a total storage capacity of 3 TB. The Toshiba MQ04ABD200 HDD, offers a fairly decent performance for a 5400-RPM drive.

The GeForce RTX 2080 currently is Nvidia's strongest notebook GPU. The Turing-based DirectX 12 monster has 2944 shaders and an 8-GB GDDR6 VRAM (256-bit interface). Its base clock rate is 1380 MHz, although the GPU boost (works similar to Intel's turbo boost) enables far higher clock rates.

As with the CPU, the clock rate of the GPU is not used to its full potential. Both in 3DMark 11 and in 3DMark 12, the performance of the RTX 2080 is around 10 percent below the average of previously tested competitors. The same goes for games, during which the clock rate settles at around 1600 MHz. This is not a particularly bad result, but it does not place our test unit in the top range, either. We would like to mention that almost every competitor pays for the higher performance with a thicker case. The Omen 17, on the other hand, is one of the slimmest RTX 2080 laptops available. This puts the difference in performance into perspective.

We did not notice any anomalies in our gaming test with "The Witcher 3" (1920x1080, maximum details). The frame rate remained constant and there were no drops in performance. By the way, HP has foregone the graphics switching feature Optimus in exchange for using G-Sync to improve the image.

The gaming capabilities of the Omen 17 were tested with 13 games dating from 2015 to 2019. In short: Users can play demanding titles such as "Anno 1800" and "Metro Exodus" at native resolution and maximum settings.

The GeForce RTX 2080 displays less CPU-intensive games such as "F1 2019", "Rage 2" and "Apex Legends" at over 100 FPS. Therefore, we can confirm that the 144-Hz panel is here for a reason. The Omen 17 would also do well with an (external) WQHD or 4K display.

The device becomes particularly loud when running 3D applications. Although the Omen 17 is quieter than some other RTX 2080 laptops (despite its slim build), sensitive users will still have difficulties with a noise level of 47 to 51 dB(A) under load, which is why we would recommend using headphones in these situations.