
HP’s Omen gaming laptops have always been solid performers when it comes to gaming hardware.
I’ve always been a fan of its gaming line-up and after spending time with its Omen 16 laptop, I’m even more of a fan of the hardware.
The review model I had was packed with an Intel 11th Gen i7-11800H (@2.3FHz) CPU, 32Gb of RAM, an nVidia GeForce RTX3070 laptop GPU (8Gb memory), a 1Tb SSD, a 16-inch 144Hz 1080p panel, Bang & Olufsen speakers and is running Windows 11.
The Omen 16 has a chonky 200w charger that ensures enough power to the innards and the Omen 16 really does look smart, with a great build quality and an appearance that doesn’t outlandishly scream: “I’M A GAMING MACHINE, EVERYONE.” It’s subtle in its design.
Connection-wise, on the the left side we have the power socket, a hinged ethernet port, USB-A 3.0, HDMI, USB-C with thunderbolt, a mini display port, the headphone jack and an SD card reader. The right hand side has two USB 3.0 ports.
Primarily aimed at the gaming market, the Omen 16 has a huge mesh grill on the underside of the chassis, letting you catch a glimpse of the substantial cooling system. Raised rubber feet mean the cooling fans have plenty of airflow and ventilation to keep things cool. It’s hefty in the hand but passes the backpack test.

HP is known for cramming it’s laptops with bloatware – and sadly, there’s a fair bit of it here in the Omen 16. I counted no less than eight HP programs (not including the HP specific Gaming Hub software) plus perennial bloatware antivirus McAfee and a trial for ExpressVPN. McAfee was the most annoying of the bloatware with it’s constant nagging but thankfully its reminders can be disabled. Frankly, the amount of bloatware is too much, HP.
System boot up from cold to the load screen was 14 seconds thanks to the SSD with Intel’s Opthane software and showcasing its gaming credentials HP’s Gaming Hub software lets you tweak the hardware to eek as much performance out as you can or change the lighting under the keys.

For example, you can under volt the system – where you reduce the CPUs core voltage without reducing the CPU’s performance) – meaning less power consumption and heat. There’s also balanced or performance modes, and an in-build graphics switcher so you can flick between the integrated graphics and the discrete RTX3070 GPU to ensure you’re getting the best graphical power when you need it the most.
Right, onto the bench marking. Let’s play some games on this thing.
I tested the Omen 16 with bench marking tools Cinebench, Catzilla, Heaven and 3D Mark (Timespy & Firestrike) and using the in-built benchmark tools in Batman Arkham Knight, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. I also played God of War and RDR 2 a fair bit because, well, I just like those two games a lot.







As you can see, 3D Mark’s Firestrike demo returned a score of 18.063 and Timespy a score of 1112, and Tomb Raider returned an average frame rate of 123 frames per second with nVidia’s DLSS set to Quality mode and using DirectX 12. Unfortunately, I don’t have my bench mark images for RDR 2 or God of War as I, ahem, accidentally deleted them from a USB stick when I was clearing out unwanted data – and I’ve already sent the laptop back.
Suffice to say, it performed nicely with Red Dead Redemption with a mix of quality settings, same for God of War, although I noticed periodic slow down in the latter sections of the game, especially when there were a lot of enemies on screen. It didn’t last long but it was noticeable.
I also felt that performance dipped a little when on battery power (the system seems throttles a little to conserve battery life) but that’s to be expected. As I do with all laptops that are desktop replacements, I’d recommend to keep it plugged into mains power when you are gaming. This isn’t one for extended gaming sessions at the cafe if you’ve left your charger at home!
Look, HP’s Omen 16 does what it says on the box – and it does it very, very well. In fact, it’s probably the best performing gaming laptop I’ve reviewed on this blog.
It’s well built, has good battery life, has a good screen and performances extremely well with any game I threw its way. HP also tells me that the Omen 16 uses recycled plastic for the key caps, recycled metal and ocean-bound plastic for the speaker enclosure.
That said, it’s not cheap but decent gaming laptops never seem to be, right? The Omen 16 starts from $NZ4,699, depending on whether you go for an Intel CPU or AMD processor, and the review configuration – if I’ve read things correctly – would set you back about $NZ5499. That’s a fair chunk of change.
However, if I was looking for a more portable gaming machine to replace my desktop PC – which I partially rebuilt last year with a new motherboard and Intel 11th Gen i5 CPU – I wouldn’t hesitate to put the HP Omen 16 at the top of my list.