HP Omen 17-an053tx
HP’s latest 17-inch gaming rig is a monster, but is that bulkiness a good sign or not?
Weighing in at a hefty 3.8kg and with a body that’s up to 3.3cm thick, the physical dimensions of HP’s latest 17-inch Omen gaming laptop are as chunky and unwieldy as the gaming laptops of years gone by.
While the outer chassis is wrapped in patches of carbon fibre that give it a futuristic aesthetic, we were a little surprised to find that, under the hood, our test model 17-an053tx only had an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 GPU. However, the Omen manages to turn a confusing spec sheet into an assembled system that’s surprisingly competent. Somehow, this thick lump manages to string together a set of components that appeared to be incongruous into one nicely-balanced monster gaming unit.
That said, it’s hard to ignore the elephant-sized form factor. It’s close to a third heavier than most other laptops we’ve tested recently, and outweighs the heaviest GTX 1070-wielding laptop we have on record — Gigabyte’s P57X v6, APC 434, page 18 — by more than half a kilo. While we were disappointed by this at first, a little digging uncovered that the bigger chassis allows it to use more modular components, so it can be customised and upgraded. The single removable back panel gives easy access to the SSD, HDD and RAM slots — and while this particular unit’s 128GB PCIe Samsung SSD, 2TB Seagate HDD and 16GB of DDR4 RAM aren’t going to need upgrading anytime soon, that’s a handy feature for future-proofing.
If you’ve read our review of MSI’s GE73VR 7RF (see page 26), we expressed some doubts about whether that unit’s Nvidia GTX 1070 was a powerful enough GPU to make the most of its 120Hz screen. So when we learned that the Omen was sporting a similarly responsive gaming display, but using only a GTX 1060 GPU, you can imagine our pessimism. Today’s graphics chips are flexible packages, designed to boost up to higher speeds when it’s thermally safe to do so — so variances in cooling systems used in gaming laptops means that some can perform better than they should on paper. The Omen is a clear example of this, netting real-world gaming benchmarks averages of 88, 68 and 57fps in the demanding Batman: Arkham Knight, The Division
and Far Cry Primal tests. That last score managed to outdo three recent MSI laptops sporting 1070 GPUs, and those impressive scores were repeated across all our other benchmark titles. Perhaps the Omen’s roomy chassis facilitates a more effective cooling array that allows for constant boosting, and significantly enhances the graphical performance.
The Omen’s PCMark 8 Home and Work scores — largely powered by a quad- core Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPU — did a decent job, too, although it only lasted 2 hours and 16 minutes in the battery benchmark. And while the Samsung 128GB NVMe SSD is on the small side, it’s excessively fast, with read speeds of up to 2,980MB/s.
What’s perhaps the most enticing is just how rich and vibrant the colours are on that 120Hz IPS display.
The Omen has turned conventional wisdom on its head, spinning a backwards David-and-Goliath story where the oversized underdog wins for a change.
Verdict
Features Performance Value An oversized 17-inch gaming unit that pulls its weight in graphical performance and supports plenty of premium features.