Power efficiency improvements, performance uplift, and hardly any noise: HP Omen 17 (2024) evaluated

HP made many good decisions with the Omen 17 (2024), at least if you always have to keep an eye on the price while still offering a solid gaming performance. You have to expect some compromises, when the model with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070, a current AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, and 32 Gigabytes of RAM is already available starting at less than 1,500 Euros (~$1,628).

But there are no compromises with the possible frame rate, even though this wouldn't have been very surprising in light of the technical data. The Omen 17 uses significantly less of the potential power for the CPU and GPU than the competitors. Only 65 and 120 watts respectively don't sound like absolute top performance.

Since HP has equipped the 17-inch laptop with a large cooling system and also optimized this smartly, we measured an absolutely stable performance in our test, where the competitors at the same level had to start throttling a long time ago. Particularly in the actual gaming tests, we did not see any performance differences. At times, the Omen 17 even succeeded in placing ahead of models with higher power settings such as the Asus TUF Gaming A17.

The fans collect positive points

The lack of revving up is also noticeable in other areas. Since 20 to 30 watts less power is used, the amount of heat development that has to be dissipated is also significantly smaller. Even at the maximum performance level, we still measure a bearable 52 dB in the Omen 17. In practical use during gaming, it is even considerably less. In other words, the HP gaming laptop won't annoy you with permanent and pervasive fan noise.

In balanced mode, it even sounds almost subdued and could be mistaken for a powerful business laptop, at least in terms of the noise level.

On the other hand, the Omen 17 is definitely not perfect. While we could also find several other comfortably positive aspects, the need to cut corners also required significant compromises in some other places. For some interested buyers, they might even become dealbreakers.

You can find all the measurements, benchmarks, and the corresponding placements in our review of the HP Omen 17 (2024).