The best gaming laptops of 2024 (so far) have been able to blur the lines between gaming machine and productivity — highlighting through design how that horsepower could be applied to more intense workloads.
HP’s brand-new Omen 17 doesn’t really go down that road. It certainly still looks like a large-and-in-charge gaming laptop. But there’s a lot more than meets the eye with this beast, especially when you take into account that super low starting price (especially for a 17-inch gaming laptop).
What’s new?
Outside of the usual suspects here — audio tuned by HyperX, Tempest Cooling to prevent thermal throttling, and plentiful I/O — there are some interesting advancements that fall in line with what we’re seeing across the gaming laptop space.
First of all, bigger is most certainly seeming to be better, as HP has gone large on its 17/3-inch QHD panel with a variable refresh rate up to 240Hz. Alongside this, with the AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS chipset inside giving the Omen 17 an NPU, HP’s slapped a Copilot key on the board.
Most interestingly, HP has steered further into this by offering users a free 30-day trail to Otter.ai Pro. Currently, I’m using the free version, and it’s been a huge help for transcribing meetings. It shows an intent for the Omen to be more than just a gaming machine, which it is absolutely capable of thanks to that CPU and the RTX 4070 under the hood.
As for going specific on the performance, everything is kept cool by full three-side venting and two 12V fans. Plus, it’s a gaming laptop, so you can indeed personalize the RGB lighting to make it either as muted or wild as you want through the light studio section of Omen Gaming Hub.
It’s an Omen
For those who (in HP’s own weird words) “who prefer bigger screens and wear many hats,” on paper, the Omen 17 does seem set to achieve this — giving you enough power under the hood for gaming and prosumer prowess, a giant 17.3-inch QHD display up top, AI capabilities thanks to the NPU on AMD’s Ryzen chip inside, and enough cooling to ensure it doesn’t break too much of a sweat.
And at that starting price of $1,349/£1,199 (for AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS, RTX 4050, 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD), the system’s temptation gets all the more sweet. While I’ll reserve full judgement until we go properly hands-on with the Omen 17, color me excited for what this big screen experience can bring to the gaming table in May.
