HP Omen 16 and Victus 15: Gaming notebooks with improved performance and cooling

With the HP Omen 16 and Victus 15, the company has introduced two new gaming notebooks which get numerous improvements in the 2022 refresh. As a high-end gamer, the Omen 16 runs an Intel Core i9-12900H or AMD Ryzen 9 6900HX at most. In the mid-range HP Victus 15 notebook, there’s an Intel Core i7-12700H or AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU.

HP Omen 16 in detail

The new HP Omen 16 gaming notebook marks the spearhead in the manufacturer’s lineup and gets its first hardware refresh after its debut last year. According to the manufacturer, the cooling system has been improved in addition to the latest technology.

This is mainly due to a fifth heat pipe and a fourth fan outlet, which are supposed to reduce the GPU temperature by three percent and the SSD temperature by 14 percent and also make the notebook five percent quieter compared to the predecessor.

Visually, the Omen 16, which is available in both white and black, is quite unspectacular. However, the technical features are more than impressive. You can choose between Intel processors up to Core i9-12900H or AMD chips up to Ryzen 9 6900HX.

For the graphics solution, the maximum choice is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti laptop GPU or an AMD Ryzen RX 6650M. The whole thing is combined with up to 32 GB of DDR5 working memory with a clock rate of 4,800 MHz and up to 2 TB of PCIe Gen4x4 SSD storage.

Gaming sensor and fast display

A special feature of the HP Omen 16 marks the built-in IR thermal column sensor, which, in combination with Omen Dynamic Power and Omen Gaming Hub, measures the CPU and GPU capacity in real time and dynamically splits the power. In practice, this should be able to improve the frame rate in FPS when gaming. HP speaks of an 18 percent performance increase in 3D Mark Time Spy and a 36 percent improved CPU performance compared to the predecessor.

There is a choice of different display variants, whereby the top model comes with a QHD IPS panel with a refresh rate of 165 Hz, as well as a response time of 3 ms. The screen size is 16 inches for all variants, and the Omen notebook also relies on a 16:9 aspect ratio.

In terms of ports, there are two USB Type-C ports (10 Gb/s, DisplayPort 1.4 and PowerDelivery), three USB Type-A ports, an Ethernet input, an HDMI 2.1 port, an SD card reader and a combined 3.5mm jack.

HP Victus 15 unveiled

Positioned below that is the mid-range HP Victus 15 gaming notebook, which comes with a 15.6-inch IPS panel in Full.HD resolution and a refresh rate of 144 Hz. The maximum brightness of 250 nits is on a mediocre level.

At least the rest of the features are right. An Intel Core i7-12700H or an AMD Ryzen 7 5800H are offered at most, which HP combines with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 6500M, respectively. In addition, there is a maximum of 16 GB of DDR4 RAM with a clock rate of 3200 MHz and up to 1 TB of SSD storage space. Unfortunately, the manufacturer does not really go into detail here.

Prices and availability

The new HP Omen 16 and HP Victus 15 gaming notebooks are supposed to be available in stores in the summer of 2022, as well as on the manufacturer’s homepage. However, a concrete date has not been mentioned so far. The Omen 16 starts at $1,199.99, the Victus 15 is available from $799.99.