When NVIDIA officially introduced the GeForce RTX 4000 cards for notebooks in January, we were extremely excited about the new gaming notebooks for the 2023 model year. At the end of February, the ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 in review showed what the devices with the top RTX 4090 model are capable of. HP also relies on NVIDIA’s RTX 4000 chips for the Omen notebooks: In the HP Omen 17 (2023) review, we take a detailed look at the new 17-incher with RTX 4080.
Technical data
| Processor | Intel Core i9-13900HX (24 cores, 1.6 – 5.4 GHz) |
| Graphics performance | Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 (12GB GDDR6 VRAM); 175 W TDP |
| Display | 17.3 inch; IPS; QHD; 165 Hz |
| Storage | 1 TB SSD (NVMe PCIe 4.0) installed |
| Memory | 32 GB DDR5 RAM (2x 32GB DDR5-5600 SO-DIMM) |
| Keyboard | Full size; with RGB lighting and macro keys |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Home |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 6E; Bluetooth 5.3 |
| Dimensions (W x D x H) | 397 mm x 252 mm x 27.1 mm |
| Weight | 2.797 kg (without power supply) |
| Price | € 2,853.00 * |
HP Omen 17 (2023) review: design and build
- Simple design without RGB lighting
- Large and heavy
- Workmanship not flawless; shaky display
The new HP Omen 17 (2023) also relies on a plain, black design and comes without any RGB lighting at all. The most striking feature on the display lid is the Omen logo, which reflects in different colors depending on the incidence of light. I personally like this trend away from the blinking notebook disco towards a more discreet design.
Otherwise, we can expect an ordinary gaming notebook that comes with large fan openings on the bottom and rubberized feet across the entire width. You can access the innards with a total of eight Phillips screws to perform maintenance work or to expand or upgrade the working and system memory.
In terms of design, there is little else worth mentioning that would stand out from the crowd. With the exception of the power supply, perhaps, which charges particularly quickly at 330 watts and is larger than any other power supply I’ve seen.
The square part weighs more than many a compact ultrabook with 1,003 grams and almost disqualifies the HP Omen for mobile use with a size of 15 cm x 15 cm x 3.8 cm (width x height x depth).
On the other hand, such a gaming notebook only delivers a fraction of the possible performance on battery power anyway, so this is quite acceptable. As for the HP Omen 17 (2023) itself, we are looking at a weight of 2,797 grams. So, the 397 mm wide, 262 mm deep and around 27 mm high laptop is definitely not a lightweight.
The build quality is on a good level, but we have seen much higher quality laptops. On the one hand, the case with its anodized finish is very susceptible to fingerprints, but on the other hand, especially the display lid doesn’t seem too robust and bounces very strongly even with slight movements. Unfortunately, the construction does not look really robust.
Features and ports
- Modern CPU and GPU
- 32 GB, fast working memory
- Good sounding stereo speakers
The HP Omen 17 (2023) gaming notebook positions itself in the upper class and naturally relies on cutting-edge components. The Intel Core i9-13900HX is used as the processor, which combines 24 processing cores with clock rates of 5.4 GHz. In theory, it should be even more powerful than the 13900H (without X) in the aforementioned ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16.
The manufacturer combines it with 32 gigabytes of fast DDR5-5600 RAM in dual-channel mode and a 1 terabyte SSD. The graphics card of the Omen is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 with 12 GB GDDR6 VRAM and 175 watts TDP (25 watts of which are Dynamic Boost) – the comparison to the RTX 4090 is also very exciting here.
The equipment is rounded off by modern standards like Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. HP also installs two speakers that are tuned by Bang & Olufsen. They achieve an excellent maximum volume and score with a detailed sound.
They support DTS:X Ultra and use the HP audio amplifier, but this sounds much more impressive in theory than the result that ultimately comes out of the speakers. The sound is good, but lacks some details and especially bass. The maximum volume also turns out a bit too low, especially considering the operating volume.
The webcam with a resolution of 720p provides sufficient image quality, but nothing more. However, the HP Omen 17 does not support biometric login at all: Neither via face recognition nor via fingerprint scanner.
The ports of the HP Omen 17
- Good selection of ports, but…
- … Only one Thunderbolt 4 port and…
- … SD card reader with mediocre speeds
Modern ports should not be missing from the gaming notebook, of course, and the manufacturer HP distributes them on both sides of the notebook. On the right side, we only find two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A ports.
The left side, on the other hand, offers much more choice. Here you have (from back to front) an RJ45 Gigabit LAN port, one USB 3.2 Gen 1 (Type A), one Mini DisplayPort, one HDMI 2.1 and one Thunderbolt 4 with PowerDelivery and DisplayPort Alt mode. A 3.5 mm jack for connecting headsets or headphones and a full-size SD card reader round out the selection.
Too bad: The SD card reader only realizes mediocre speeds and only one USB-C or Thunderbolt 4 port is a bit little in 2023.
The display of the HP Omen 17 (2023)
- 17.3 inches; 165 Hz; QHD resolution
- Average brightness of only 350 cd/m²
- Medium color space coverage
Are we perhaps a bit spoiled? After the strong ROG Nebula HDR display or the excellent OLED screen of the HP Spectre x360 14 2023 (our review), the matte IPS panel of the HP Omen 17 (2023) seems a bit disappointing.
It resolves in 16:9 format with QHD in 2,560 x 1,440 pixels and offers a refresh rate of 165 hertz. I liked the low response time and the excellent viewing angle stability. However, the brightness of around 350 cd/m² is only average, as is the color space coverage, which means that the notebook is only suitable for creative work to a limited extent. We have seen much better screens from the competition and also from HP.
Keyboard and trackpad
- Large keyboard
- Practical macro keys
- Good, but not outstanding typing feel
The keyboard and trackpad also turn out well, but unimpressively. Both serve their purpose, but do not really have many noteworthy features otherwise.
The Chicle keyboard offers a quite good typing feel thanks to convincing pressure points and comes with RGB lighting. Despite the large case, HP has decided against a full-size layout and does without the number pad.
Instead, there are a total of six macro keys on the left edge, which can be assigned with various functions. The trackpad is 12.5 cm x 8 cm (width x height) and offers good, but also not really impressive gliding properties. All in all, the input devices are not the gaming notebook’s biggest strength.
Practical test of the HP Omen 17
- Excellent performance across the board
- Performance mode leads to inexplicable jerks
- Effective cooling; relatively low operating noise
In practice, there is not much to complain about with the HP Omen 17 (2023). According to the powerful hardware, the gaming notebook easily copes with all requirements – from long Excel spreadsheets to image editing to current games.
However, I noticed a few negative points during the test:
On the one hand, the practical and clearly arranged companion software Omen Hub offers the option to add a power mode, among other things. Here, the TDP of the gaming notebook is increased to up to 130 watts.
When starting games or computationally intensive applications, the Omen notebook reports and recommends selecting this power mode. Exactly this mode seems to be a bit problematic, because we experienced incomprehensible stutters and short, but sometimes heavy performance drops.
NVIDIA Advanced Optimus, which automatically switches between iGPU and dedicated graphics unit depending on the application, also showed similar behavior at times, as I’ve seen it several times on various notebooks: If the system automatically switches between both GPU variants, it can sometimes lead to 1-2 second freezes in which the laptop briefly stops responding. You can also completely deactivate Advanced Optimus in the software if you want.
However, there are also some positive things to report about the HP Omen 17 (2023). For example, the cooling does an excellent job. The device heats up even under permanent full load, but it stays much cooler than some competitors.
The notebook also achieves this with manageable noise levels. I measured an average of 33 dB(A) in idle mode, and the notebook turns up to an average of 53 dB(A) under load, which is not quite on par with the Zephyrus M16, but still well below the volume of many other gaming laptops.
Benchmark: Productivity, System, SSD and Gaming
As always, I checked the performance of the HP Omen 17 (2023) in various benchmark and gaming tests. I measure productivity and system performance with PCMark 10 and Cinebench R23. PCMark 10 simulates different workflows when running the benchmark, which include word processing, web browsing and spreadsheets. Cinebench, on the other hand, measures the speed of the CPU cores individually as well as in multi-core mode.
3DMark, F1 22 including ray tracing, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and a few other titles were used for the gaming tests.
SSD benchmark
The 1 TB PCIe 4.0 SSD comes from SK.Hynix and realizes very good speeds. With speeds of around 5,500 MBs in sequential read and 3,670 MB/s in write, it even tops the Zephyrus M16’s SSD and even offers significantly more performance in the 4K and 4K-64Thrd values that are crucial for gaming.
Cinebench R23 and PCMark 10
However, the plus points that the HP notebook collects in terms of the SSD have to be forfeited quite quickly in the CPU-intensive tests. Although the Core i9-13900HX should be able to call up more performance than the 13900H in theory, the CPU disappoints a bit in the benchmark tests and is more or less on the same level.
I can’t quite explain why, but I repeated the Cinebench R23 test several times and always came up with the same result of around 18,300 points.
A very similar result can be seen in the PCMark 10 test, in which the 13900HX and 13900H again perform on par. Although the HX has a minimal lead here in the overall result, this is mainly due to the productivity test, where the CPU can clearly set itself apart. I also achieved scores that were below those of the ROG Zephyrus M16 in Essentials and Digital Content Creation.
| Benchmark | HP Omen 17 | ROG Zephyrus M16 |
| Cinebench Multi | 18,302 pts | 18.811 pts. |
| Cinebench Single | 2,102 pts | 2,027 pts. |
| PCMark Total | 7,946 pts. | 7,900 pts. |
| PCMark Essentials | 11,417 pts. | 11,883 pts. |
| PCMark Productivity | 11,526 pts | 9,659 pts. |
| PCMark Digital CC. | 10,348 pts. | 11.658 pts. |
Graphics performance: 3D mark and gaming tests
The results in the gaming tests of the HP Omen 17 (2023) turn out interesting, because surprisingly, the gaming notebook even puts itself ahead of the ASUS notebook here in terms of performance. This is despite the fact that the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 is the weaker graphics unit (compared to the RTX 4090).
Despite 4 GB less VRAM, the HP Omen 17 (2023) achieves better scores in all tests, which is of course also due to the up to 175 Watt TDP.
For better comparability, I performed the tests in Full HD resolution, however, the laptop is also easily capable of rendering current and demanding high-end titles like F1 22 in QHD resolution and with maximum details at over 60 fps.
| Benchmark | HP Omen 17 | ROG Zephyrus M16 |
| Fire Strike Total | 27,526 pts | 31,026 pts. |
| Time Spy Total | 14,927 pts. | 14.418 pts. |
| Port Royal total | 10,023 pts. | 9,871 pts. |
| Speed Way Total | 4,358 pts. | 3,867 pts. |
| F1 22 (Max Setting; RT Max.) | 97 fps (Average) | 88 fps (average) |
| Final Fantasy XV (High Quality) | 14,746 pts. | 13,447 pts. |
| Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Ultra) | 175 fps | 113 fps |
Battery life
- Nearly 3 hours of battery life at idle
- Huge 330-watt power supply
- About 90 minutes of charging time
The Achilles heel of any gaming notebook is battery life, and the HP Omen 17 (2023) is no different. In the idle test of PCMark 10 we end up at 3 hours and 04 minutes, in the gaming benchmark it is still 1 hour and 04 minutes – minimally more than the ASUS notebook, but not worth mentioning.
The 330 watt power supply doesn’t bring a real advantage in terms of charging speed either. The Omen notebook charges from 0 to 100 percent in pretty much exactly 90 minutes – a standard value.
HP Omen 17 (2023) review: conclusion
The HP Omen 17 (2023) reveals a lot of light, but also shadows in the test. The outstanding gaming performance and the fast SSD, which also ensures a very strong system performance in creative applications, are particularly positive. The efficient cooling and the fairly low operating noise are also pleasing.
On the other hand, the laptop suffers in some areas. The display, keyboard and trackpad are merely average, the build quality could be a bit better and only one USB-C port is simply not up to date in my opinion.
Otherwise, there is not much to complain about. If you are looking for a large and massive gaming notebook for home use, the HP Omen 17 (2023) is a good choice. However, some competitors offer more for the same money. For over 1000 Euros less than ASUS charges for the ROG Zephyrus M16, for example, the price-performance ratio is impressive.
HP Omen 17 (2023)
Design & workmanship
Display
Features
Performance
Battery
Value for money
87/100
Large and heavy gaming notebook that impresses with an excellent performance, but cannot quite compete in terms of display, keyboard and build quality.
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