Mid-tier power in a heavy-duty body

Things are getting ominous in the best way. The latest version of the HP Omen 17 has arrived and it’s got plenty of goodies in its bag for every kind of gamer. Kitted out with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and an Nvidia RTX 4070, the Omen is a solid mid-card contender that punches above its weight occasionally. The laptop also boasts a generous 17.3-inch display and plenty of ports to make it a formidable battle station. It also has a battery life of a little over five hours, which is pretty good for a gaming laptop.

However, as a 17-inch desktop replacement, it isn’t the lightest laptop in the land. It’s also not the most stylish laptop, but hey, some gamers like an understated rig. The display, while color accurate, could be brighter. And for an almost $1,900 laptop, I expect a better keyboard, particularly when it comes to RGB lighting.

But if you’re looking for a gaming laptop with a massive screen and a one-two punch in overall and graphics performance, the HP Omen 17 (2024) is a winner.

About this review: HP loaned us an Omen 17 for review. The company did not have input in this review, and did not see its contents before publishing.

HP Omen 17 (2024)

Beefy body with specs to match

Powered by an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and an Nvidia RTX 4070 GPU, the HP Omen 17 (2024) is for gamers who want high frame rates and a big screen. The bulky desktop replacement isn’t the flashiest, but offers good battery life for a gaming laptop. The keyboard and audio could be better.

Pros

• Good overall and graphic performance
• Big, vivid display
• Nice webcam

Cons

• Weak speakers
• Mushy, one-zone RGB keyboard
• Boring design

Pricing and availability

The HP Omen 17 (2024) is currently available in several configurations. My review unit costs $1,870 and has a 3.8-GHz AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS processor with 32GB DDR5-5600 MHz of RAM, a 1TB PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD, integrated AMD Radeon Graphics, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU with 8GB of VRAM, and a 17.3-inch QHD (2560 x 1440), 240Hz, 3ms response time, IPS, anti-glare display.

The $1,000 base model drops you down to an AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS CPU, 16GB of DDR5-5600 MHz RAM, AMD Radeon Graphics, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU with 6GB of VRAM, and a 17.3-inch, FHD (1920 x 1080), 144Hz, 7ms response time, IPS, anti-glare display.

Design and ports

Oh, how far the stylish have fallen. When HP first acquired Voodoo and launched the HP Voodoo Omen, it was a svelte, sexy beast of a laptop clad in an aluminum chassis with fire-kissed accents. Fast-forward to now, and I have a massive monstrosity swathed in black plastic sitting in my lap. And let’s be clear, I have no problem with a Big Betty laptop. But outside of the glossy Omen emblem on the lid and the RGB-backlit keyboard, the Omen 17 is a rather boring black slab. Not even the “designed and built for winning” motto on top of the left vent or the black embossed “017” on the right side of the palm rest could save it.

Even the undercarriage is underwhelming. The vent design is nothing but a large grid lattice of cubes over the actual grate. You’ve got two short black raised rubber feet in the front and one long one in the back. Some diagonal slits along the sides of the laptop reveal the speakers. The Omen’s most interesting feature is the top vent on the keyboard deck, which is a collection of triangles and bars designed to create larger geometric shapes.

At 6.5 pounds, 15.65 x 10.94 x 1.08~1.18 inches, the Omen 17 carries the heft and girth of an old-school desktop replacement. Similar machines, like the Alienware m16 R2 (5.8 pounds, 14.3 x 9.8 x 0.93 inches), Dell XPS 17 (2024) (4.8 pounds, 14.1 x 7.8 x 0.58 inches), and Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (4.9 pounds, 14.1 x 10.3 x 0.69 ~ 0.78 inches) are noticeably thinner and lighter.

The majority of the Omen 17’s ports reside in the back nestled between two rear vents. There’s a pair of USB-A ports, a USB Type-C port, an HDMI 2.1 port, and the AC power port. On the right, there’s another USB-A port with a lockjaw Ethernet port on the left with a headset jack.

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Display, webcam, and audio

When it comes to gaming laptops, I prefer a glossy display despite the dangers of glare and reflections. When I’m gaming, I want every pop of vibrancy that I can get, but that’s just me. The Omen 17’s matte display isn’t bad. In fact, the 17.3-inch anti-glare panel reproduced 100% of the sRGB gamut. It wasn’t as accurate on the other gamuts, however, only reaching 78% on the Adobe sRGB and DCI-P3 tests and 72% on the NTSC gamut.

The panel hit HP’s 300-nit estimate right on the nose when I tested for brightness. It’s fine, but I wish HP shot for the 400-nit mark.

Still, when I watched the trailer for “Outlaw Posse,” the old west looked hella colorful. The blue skies were striking, as was actor Amber Reign Smith’s ruby red dress. One can’t help but admire the detail in the black lace garter wrapped around the owner’s mahogany thigh.

The color cavalcade continued when I took some test snaps with the Omen 17’s 1080p webcam. My fuchsia dress looked amazing, as did my skin. It even did a great job capturing the different colors in my locs. The detail was so clean that you can actually see the small lines of black, white, and gray in my couch instead of it looking like an amorphous gray blob.

Be sure to grab a gaming headset or a pair of headphones before launching that game or video conference. The weakness of the Realtek speakers belie the size of the Omen. I’m not expecting the power of a pair of desktop speakers, but there’s no punch to the volume. And no, neither speaker was muffled by my thunder thighs. But it’s not all bad news. As I listened to PJ Morton and JoJo’s duet on “SAY SO,” the sound stage was actually pretty spacious. I had no problem hearing the piano nor the French horn. The vocals were clean and buoyant, but the oboe was a bit distorted.

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Keyboard and touchpad

For the price, I expected a better keyboard. I was already disappointed that this is a one-zone keyboard, meaning that the keyboard can only be one color at a time. There aren’t even any lighting effects. But the bigger crime was the overall mushiness and the small key caps. HP needs to find a way to bring its Elitebook keyboards over to its Omen line, as they’re the superior input tool. I fell below my usual 70 words per minute average on the Monkeytype test with a 90% average.

I do appreciate that HP gave gamers a numpad to work with. If you need to launch the Omen Gaming Hub app, they’ve also designated a button for that in the top row. And like just about every laptop these days, you’ve got a Microsoft Copilot button right next to the arrow keys.

The Precision touchpad is large, with good palm rejection. Navigating web pages or performing Windows 11 multitouch gestures was easy-peasy. The bottom corners of the trackpad gave a nice, steady click when pressed.

Performance

I love when AMD and Nvidia play nice. They should team up more often. The Omen 17 came locked and loaded with a 3.8-GHz AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU and 32GB of RAM. My usual workload with its 75 Google Chrome tabs and its haphazard mix of G-Suite apps, news sites, videos, and social media were mere light work for the laptop. It even kept its pace even when I started batch resizing 100 photos in Adobe Photoshop.

The notebook stood strong in the synthetic tests as well. Starting with PCMark 10, the laptop hit 8,041, easily dusting the Alienware m16 R2 and Dell XPS 16 (Intel Core Ultra 7 155H CPU). However, the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 with its overclockable Core i9-14900HX CPU was the ultimate winner. I saw similar results on Geekbench 6 single thread benchmark. However, on the multithread run, both the XPS 16 and the Legion 7i outpaced the Omen.

There was a little bit of turbulence on the 3DMark Time Spy test. Although the Omen notched a respectable score of 11,467, it wasn’t enough to push past the Legion 7 (12,380). Still, the Omen spanked the XPS 16 (9,187). On the Extreme version of the test, the Omen 17 reached 5,373, which again, was only enough to beat the Dell.

Armed with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 GPU along with integrated AMD Radeon Graphics, the Omen delivered great performance on most games. When I ran the Forza Horizon 5 benchmark, the Omen 17 produced 116 frames per second on Ultra at 1080p, which dropped slightly to 102 FPS at native resolution. Enabling Nvidia’s DLSS technology made the laptop max out the 120 FPS cap at both resolutions.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a more grueling mistress. With DLSS, the Omen notched 49 FPS at native resolution and 63 FPS at 1080p. Without it, the frame rate dropped drastically to 21 FPS (1440p) and 39 FPS (1080p), respectively. The frame rates shot back up on the Hitman benchmark, yielding 101 and 106 FPS at native and 1080p. When I turned on DLSS, I saw results of 161 FPS at native resolution and 175 FPS at 1080p.

For a gaming laptop, the Omen’s 6-cell, 83Wh battery lasted pretty long on the PCMark 10 Battery Test (brightness set to 200 nits) at 5 hours and 17 minutes. However, that’s a non-gaming test. The time dropped to 1 hour 36 minutes on the gaming version of the test. However, with a laptop of this size, I doubt it will be going on any road trips anytime soon.

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Should you buy the HP Omen 17 (2024)?

You should buy the HP Omen 17 (2024) if:

• You want a gaming laptop that can deliver high frame rates
• You want a laptop that can kick out great performance
• You want a gaming laptop with a quality webcam

You shouldn’t buy the HP Omen 17 (2024) if:

• You want a gaming laptop with a flashier design
• You want a lighter 17-inch laptop
• You want a gaming laptop with a better keyboard

I love a good desktop replacement and the HP Omen 17 (2024) falls neatly into that category. AMD and Nvidia teamed up to deliver some stellar overall and gaming performance. It’s something that I’d love to see more often. The display is pretty color accurate, although it could be brighter. And the webcam can definitely be used to livestream your glorious victories or crushing defeats. Although five hours isn’t great by non-gaming standards, on gaming laptops that’s pretty good.

Although I’m not a huge fan of the black slab of plastic aesthetic, some gamers don’t want all the flashing lights. And speaking of flashing lights, it’s a bummer that you’re paying almost $1,900 for a laptop with a one-zone keyboard lighting setup. Gamers looking for a pick-up-and-go system will be sorely disappointed with the Omen’s heft and girth. Also, I know you can grab a gaming headset, but a laptop with these proportions should have better sound quality.

If you want something a bit more powerful, there’s the Lenovo Legion 7i 16 (9th Gen). But keep in mind it’s a bit more expensive at $2,000. But if you’re looking for a desktop replacement with relatively good battery life and muscle to spare, you can’t go wrong with the HP Omen 17 (2024).

HP Omen 17 (2024)

Beefy body with specs to match