HP Omen 17: a powerful gaming laptop that lacks audacity

Construction

This Omen 17 remains very classic in its approach. We indeed regret his lack of personality; the lines could have been more worked and the materials more original. We are facing a most traditional 17.3 "gaming laptop, with a chassis entirely made of black plastics with a soft-touch coating in places. The look is only confirmed by the presence discreet stripes, red Omen logo on the hood and backlit keyboard in the same color.

The measurements of this Omen 17 are average for laptops of this type (41.6 x 27.9 cm by 3.29 cm thick). These dimensions and weight (3.35 kg) completely include it in the transportable category.

As input devices, HP integrates a full chiclet keyboard, with numeric keypad, which proves to be rather pleasant to use thanks to keys which proposes a clear and precise typing despite a shortened stroke. Too bad the backlight is only offered in one color and on one intensity level, and that it is impossible to program macros or disable Windows keys in the context of a "game" mode. The wide numeric keypad would have benefited from being a little higher. We would also have liked the buttons integrated in this touchpad to be more straightforward.

This Omen 17 concentrates all of its connectivity on the edges. Left: a USB 3.0 port and two 3.5mm Jacks in addition to the Kensington security port. Right: a card reader, HDMI and mini-DisplayPort video outputs as well as two USB 3.0 ports and an RJ45 port. It's pretty complete, even if HP made the strange choice for a PC at the end of 2016 to zap USB 3.1 Type-C. There is also no optical drive.

As usual, we were particularly attentive to the performance of this chassis in terms of cooling, this criterion being eminently important for a gaming laptop whose powerful components tend to heat up. Verdict, if it is effective and manages to keep the GPU at 72 ° C in charge, ventilation is not the most silent, far from it. Blowing slightly but constantly - even at rest - it accelerates very frankly when you start a game, raising noise levels to some 46.8 dB. It is quite high, but the Omen 17 has the good taste of blowing at fairly low frequencies, which slightly moderates the nuisances. With our thermal camera, we noted 53 ° C at the hottest point under the computer after a long period of heating, while on the keyboard side all the elements remain quite cool.

Regarding power consumption, we noted 0.5 W in standby, 39 W at rest on the Windows desktop and up to 166 W in play.

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Screen

This Omen 17 is equipped with a 17.3 "IPS Full HD screen (1920 x 1080 px) which is not tactile. Its finish is matte and it is compatible with Nvidia's G-Sync technology while providing maximum refresh rate of 75 Hz. This provides a perfectly fluid image in all circumstances Delta color E = 4.8 gamma 2.2 temperature 7095 K

The maximum brightness is 348 cd / m² and the contrast is 844: 1; very correct figures for a laptop PC dedicated to the game and which guarantee good readability. In addition, the slab is relatively well calibrated at the factory and displays a colorimetry which deviates slightly from the perfect shades (delta E to 4.8). The gamma is set to 2.2 and the color temperature is measured at 7095 Kelvin and therefore causes the tints to draw very slightly towards blue.

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Performances

Like all major gaming laptops, or almost, the Omen 17 adopts an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor. With its Skylake architecture engraved in 14 nm, this quad-core chip with HyperThreading runs basic at 2.6 GHz and can go up to 3.5 GHz in Turbo. An extremely powerful processor which is here associated with 16 GB of DDR4 at 2133 MHz. Storage is for its part entrusted to a 256 GB SSD which ensures excellent responsiveness to the system, while a 1 TB HDD (7200 rpm) is also on board to inflate the proposed capacity.

Of course, with such a configuration, the Omen 17 is indeed the expected power monster. Nothing can resist it, not even the heaviest photo or video work, while it will make a mouthful of all daily tasks in office or multimedia. This large processor is also there to maximize the performance of the game machine, while avoiding to limit the possibilities of the on-board GTX 1070.

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Games

As a gaming PC incorporating a powerful GeForce GTX 1070, the Omen 17 and its Full HD screen obviously allow you to play all the biggest recent games in native definition without any difficulty with graphic settings pushed to the maximum. To be convinced, you just have to launch a game as demanding as The Witcher 3 in Extreme quality with all the most demanding options activated and see the 70 fps average displayed.

Our tests conducted under Rise of the Tomb Raider (75 fps), Star Wars Battlefront (124 fps) or Crysis 3 (60 fps) only confirm the situation, as does the score obtained under 3DMark Fire Strike (12359 points). If the GPU of the integrated GTX 1070 is theoretically capable of running up to 1645 MHz in Boost, we must however be satisfied with a stabilized frequency in play of 1463 MHz on our test copy, which is very slightly higher than the base frequency of the GP104.

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Mobility / Autonomy

With its imposing format and its high weight (3.35 kg, remember), the HP Omen 17 immediately falls into the transportable category. If its feed "brick" turns out to be quite fine, it remains relatively bulky and does not help mobility. Its Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 95.8 Wh, on the other hand, gives it good autonomy for this kind of machine. Our streaming video playback test (under Chrome, brightness at 200 cd / m², plugged-in) resulted in a score of 4.28. In fact, we manage to work around 5:30 on the Omen 17 in mixed use before recharging. Of course, playing will drain the battery much faster, but we still exceed around 1h45 of play.

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Audio

The Jack output of the Omen 17 blows hot and cold. Very powerful (340 mVrms), it suffers on the other hand from a lot of distortion (0.1%). Crosstalk is average (66 dB) while the dynamics are excellent (96 dB). It is therefore acceptable overall, even if we regularly see better headphone outputs.

The Bang & Olufsen branded speakers are quite a pleasant surprise. Rarely, the covered spectrum includes part of the bass and high midrange, and if the highest notes of a part of the instruments are not correctly reproduced, just like the lowest bass, we benefit from a rendering which - by ear - avoids over saturation, even at high volume, and which offers an interesting dynamic for a laptop. Not enough to replace real speakers, but what to troubleshoot in many situations.

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Conclusion

Sometimes it's the details that make the difference. With a more modern connection, a quieter cooling system and a more sophisticated keyboard / touchpad duo, the Omen 17 could have claimed much better. There remains a chassis conforming to the standards of the category, solidly equipped with extremely high-performance components and a good screen suitable for playful use. It even offers very good autonomy for its category. HP now knows what remains to be done to perfect this good base and rise to the level of the best 17 "gaming laptops.

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