I Tested HP's Midrange Omen 16 Gaming Laptop and Like Its Good Looks and 1080p Performance

Pros

• Competitive 1080p performance
• Good-looking design
• Long battery life
• Free M.2 slot to add second SSD
• User replaceable RAM

Cons

• Pricey when not on sale
• All-plastic design
• Underwhelming audio output
• No speedy Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 ports

• I Tested HP's Midrange Omen 16 Gaming Laptop and Like Its Good Looks and 1080p Performance
• HP Omen 16 (16-ap0047nr)
• HP Omen 16 performance
• Dressed-up, all-plastic design
• Average AV
• Is the HP Omen 16 gaming laptop worth buying?
• Geekbench 6 CPU (multi-core)
• Geekbench 6 CPU (single-core)
• Cinebench 2024 CPU (multi-core)
• Cinebench 2024 CPU (single-core)
• 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (Highest @ 1920 x 1080)
• Guardians of the Galaxy (High @ 1920 x 1080)
• The Riftbreaker GPU (1920 x 1080)
• Assasin's Creed Shadows (1920x1080 @ High)
• F1 24 (1920x1080 @ Ultra High)
• Online streaming battery drain test
• System configurations

The display is merely average, and the design is an all-plastic affair, but the HP Omen 16's duo of an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and Nvidia RTX 5060 graphics delivers competitive 1080p framerates for the price. And while the plastic shell is disappointing, it's fairly rigid and coated with a soft-touch finish that lends it a look and feel better than true budget gaming laptops. Additionally, its gaming appeal is enhanced by RGB keyboard backlighting that highlights the WASD keys and internal expansion for RAM and storage, allowing you to extend the laptop's useful lifespan.

As much as I like the Omen 16 as a midrange gaming laptop, I wouldn't pay the full price of $1,800 for it when the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 is available at Newegg forNewegg at $1,569. Both the Omen 16 and Legion 5i Gen 10 offer solid 3D performance from an RTX 5060 GPU running at a full 115 watts, but the Legion 5i has a better, if slightly smaller, display: a 15.1-inch OLED with a higher resolution and better color and contrast. The Omen 16's display is a basic 16-inch, 1,920x1,200-pixel IPS LCD that is sufficient for 1080p gaming but less appealing for general use. 

If you like the look of the Omen 16, then this is a laptop to monitor before purchasing because I've seen its price drop by as much as $650. And at a sale price of $1,150, it becomes a much more attractive proposition when viewed against budget models such as the Alienware 16 Aurora, Acer Nitro V 16S AI and MSI Katana 15 HX B14W.

HP offers both Intel -- and AMD-based Omen 16 models and up to RTX 5070 graphics. The series starts at $1,400 for an AMD Ryzen AI 5 340 CPU, 16GB of RAM, RTX 5050 graphics and a 512GB SSD. My test system costs $1,800 and bumps you up to a Ryzen AI 7 350 CPU, an RTX 5060 GPU and a 1TB SSD. 

Unless you can find my test model on sale with a good discount, it makes more sense to stretch for the $2,000 flagship model that upgrades you to an Intel Core i7-14650HX, 32GB of RAM, RTX 5070 graphics and a higher-res 2.5K display. Those upgrades are well worth the extra $200.

My Omen 16 test system costs £1,600 in the UK and was on sale at the time of this review for £1,499. A model similar to the one I tested is on sale for AU$2,649 in Australia (it has 24GB of RAM but is otherwise the same configuration HP sent me).

Matt Elliott/CNET

HP Omen 16 performance

The Omen 16 performed competently in benchmarking, but its multicore results on Geekbench 6 and Cinebench 2024 were a bit lackluster. Its framerates, too, on our Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Guardians of the Galaxy benchmarks were also a bit lower than I anticipated, but it rebounded nicely with very competitive results on our two newest gaming tests, Assassin's Creed Shadows and F1 24. 

The biggest surprise in testing was its fantastic result on our YouTube streaming battery drain test. It lasted nearly 16 hours on this test, which is rather unheard of for a high-powered, big-screen gaming laptop. Given its size and weight, you aren't likely to travel with any great frequency with the Omen 16, but it's nice to know that you can move it around your home or lug it down to your coffee shop and know that you won't soon be looking for a wall outlet to charge the battery. 

Dressed-up, all-plastic design

The Omen 16 looks thinner and lighter than it really is, thanks to the angled sides that slope steeply away from the top of the keyboard deck. It gives the illusion of slimness, but this is a gaming laptop that is both bulky and heavy. It's about an inch thick at its front edge and widens to roughly 1.5 inches thick at the back. It weighs 5.3 pounds, which is average for a 16-inch gaming laptop. It's lighter than the 5.5-pound Alienware 16X Aurora and 5.6-pound MSI Katana 15 HX but heavier than the 4.6-pound Acer Nitro V 16S AI.

Matt Elliott/CNET

Unlike the Alienware 16X Aurora and Acer Nitro V, each of which features an aluminum top cover, the Omen 16 has an all-plastic design. But HP dresses it up with a soft-touch finish over a rigid frame that makes it look more luxurious with a firmer feel than a typical all-plastic budget model like the MSI Katana 15 HX. The black chassis is a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but it gives the Omen 16 an understated yet imposing look.

Getting four-zone RGB keyboard backlighting isn't uncommon on a gaming laptop at this price, but the Omen 16's four-zone treatment is unique. Typically, the four zones are divided equally across a keyboard, with each zone receiving a quarter of the space. Not so with the Omen 16! Its RGB lighting divides the keyboard into thirds, allocating the fourth zone to the WASD keys, which highlights the four keys gamers use most frequently. I prefer the Omen 16's new spin on four-zone RGB backlighting to the largely useless 24 zones you get with the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10.

Matt Elliott/CNET

The keyboard's feel is good, but not great. The keys offer a satisfyingly snappy response, but that snappiness is lessened by the flex of the plastic keyboard deck. And I felt even more flex when clicking on the touchpad. While there are no shortened keys that you'll need to learn to use, the four arrow keys are all half-height when there would seem to be more than enough room for four full-size keys, even if they would need to dip below the bottom of the keyboard a bit. 

Average AV

There's nothing special about the 16-inch display, but there's also nothing inherently wrong with it if you're simply looking for a gaming laptop for 1080p play. The 1,920x1,200-pixel resolution presents a fairly sharp picture for games, shows and movies, but the 2,560x1,600 panels found on the Alienware 16X Aurora and Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 allow for crisper text. Letters looked a bit pixelated on the Omen 16, making it a better fit purely as a gaming machine than an all-purpose laptop. 

The display proved to be bright enough for any indoor lighting scenario, but color performance was only so-so. On my tests with a Spyder X colorimeter, it hit a peak brightness of 400 nits, matching exactly its rated brightness from HP. It covered 100% of the sRGB gamut but struggled with the larger color spaces, with just 75% of AdobeRGB and 77% of P3. Again, this is a display better suited for gaming than for other purposes, including color-accurate graphics work.

Matt Elliott/CNET

The Omen 16's pair of stereo speakers and 1080p webcam are also merely standard-issue laptop features. The speakers produce weak, muddied sound that will have you reaching for your headphones. The webcam produces a somewhat sharp picture but isn't as crisp, clean and well-balanced as the Legion 5i Gen 10's 1440p cam. For biometrics, the Omen 16 offers facial recognition via the IR webcam but doesn't have a fingerprint reader.

The Omen 16 offers a wide selection of ports, but as with most gaming laptops at this price, it lacks the fast 40Gbps speed of Thunderbolt 4 or USB4. Its USB ports top out at a transfer rate of just 10Gbps.

Matt Elliott/CNET

You also get some interior expansion with the Omen 16. It offers a second M.2 slot for adding another SSD to expand the laptop's storage, and the memory isn't soldered onto the motherboard but comes as two removable sticks, so you can replace the current allotment (16GB in two 8GB DIMMS in the case of my test system) with more RAM in the future.

Is the HP Omen 16 gaming laptop worth buying?

If you're patient and wait for it to go on sale, yes, the HP Omen 16 is worth it. I've seen it discounted by $600 to $1,200 with some regularity, and it even dropped as low as $1,150 for a day or two while I was monitoring the price. At $1,200, its shortcomings of an all-plastic chassis and average 1200p IPS display become more palatable. However, my two favorite RTX 5060-based midrange gaming laptops remain the Lenovo Legion 5i Gen 10 and Alienware 16X Aurora.