A good gaming Omen
Why HP is so interested in the gaming PC market in Australia
WHEN you’re playing in a tournament where the final prize pool is millions, your gaming device would want to be good. Very good.
For most of us, a mobile phone, Xbox or PlayStation is more than enough to play games, but when micro seconds can determine whether you win or lose thousands of dollars each week, having a great gaming laptop is almost an essential.
For those parents lamenting the number of hours their teens are ‘investing’ in Fortnite, consider this.
The gaming industry is expected to be worth more than $180 billion by 2021.
By 2023, the gaming laptop market is expected to be worth a staggering $29 billion.
For HP alone, gaming has become a billion-dollar business for the PC market along with its Pavilion and Omen ranges.
PC performance has to be lightning-fast, the graphics super smooth while the keyboard responsiveness and durability is critical.
HP South Pacific product evangelist Paul Burman says much of the innovation in the gaming market is being driven by gamers themselves.
While 4K displays are becoming the standard for consumers, for gamers resolution takes a back seat to super-fast frame rates of 144 frames a second.
The keyboards are also a big focus of attention – not surprising when you consider a gamer may be doing 200 to 300 presses a minute.
The 17-inch Omen laptop we checked out to play everything from shoot’em-ups to car racing offered super crisp displays with no lag.
Omen by HP 17 features a 1920 by 1080p anti-glare display. It has NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB GDDR5 dedicated graphics rounded out with Bang & Olufsen dual speakers. Driving all of that is an 8th Gen Intel Core i7 processor with up to six cores to allow for intensive gaming, streaming video and multitasking.
As a package, it worked well to create a superbly realist gaming experience – especially with a set of headphones on.
The Omen Laptop is available via hp.com.au. Select models are available from JB Hi-Fi, starting from $1999 to much more for higher specs.