First impressions matter, and the Omen laptops do that well. HP has refurbished the already sleek looking Omen series with a snazzy new look. The carbon fiber visage accented with the Omen’s distinct crimson color is just a wonder to behold. It’s sophisticated and cool, without going overboard.
One of the more striking things about the Omen 15 is the keyboard. At first glance, the keys seem dull and obscured, but turn on the backlight and you’ll be in for a visual feast. A warm crimson glow radiates from the system, highlighting each key. The WASD keys are clearly demarcated in orange, a nod to the fact that this is a system built for gaming. The keys are pleasant to use, and while it’s no mechanical keyboard it does have a good degree of tactile feel and doesn’t feel limp and intangible like other laptops.
Of course, the true test of a gaming laptop is in the playing. We tested the ce026tx model which comes with a GTX 1060 graphics card, and our experience was that everything ran smoothly and crisply on the Omen 15. We fired up Overwatch, the wildly popular first-person shooter MOBA and a pretty demanding game, and cranked the graphic settings all the way up to Ultra. To our surprise, we were getting consistent framerates of over 60. You should be able to run every game on the market at the time of writing at decent graphic settings without hiccups on the Omen 15.
For a gaming laptop, the Omen 15 is impressively thin and light, weighing close to a mere 3kg, making it one of the more portable 15-inch laptops on the market. Pretty good for such a powerful machine! While it’s a little on the pricey side, we think the Omen 15 is well worth the investment if you love being able to game anywhere.
Rating 4.5
With the Omen 15, you get what you pay for. Despite being on the pricier side of gaming laptops, the Omen 15 delivers performance in spades and is very portable, so you definitely get what you pay for.
Price S$2,599
www.hp.com
