HP has been trying hard to break into the gaming notebook segment for over 3 years now without much luck. Lauching the OMEN series, a dedicated notebook brand targetted specifically for the gaming market has tanked overseas and even here in Malaysia. Unlike Acer and Lenovo, despite being late comers, have already carved a substantial slice of the pie from ealy entrants like MSI and Alienware.
But HP is not giving up- the industry is over $100 billion with eSports growing at an exponetial rate year on year- and why should it, after all being the number one PC brand in the world it has to show its in the game and the new OMEN 15 notebook could just be the ticket. It arrives at a time when the season kicks off again with eSports tournaments are being lined up across the planet. The problem many found with the previous OMEN’s were how disconnected the product was with real gamers and what they wanted in a gaming notebook. HP has never been prolific in the space, Dell knew this and bought over Alienware to understand the market, Lenovo and Acer have been learning the hard way with trial and error and succeded.
Lets look at how the new notebook is in terms of hardware, are they gaming friendly? The new 2018 OMEN 15 comes fitted with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 graphics, 8th Generation Intel Core i+ H-series quad or six-core CPUs and a 15.6-inch diagonal 144hz or 4k display. Working with Microsoft, HP has built in a Mixer for low latency streaming and Xbox Play Anywhere. But are these good enough to make the notebook as desirable as the Legion of Predator? Lets see what else comes inside.
Ask any gamer and graphic and memory is essential, the OMEN 15 comes with 32GB DDR4-2666 RAM coupled with the said GTX1070 with MAX-Q design. To keep things cool, larger fans with a 3-phase motor and fluid dynamic bearings creates less friction and consistentency fan speed control. Audio comes from the built in steroe sound system from Bang & Olufsen.
With the right mix of components, packaging and design will this year be the break away for HP? The OMEN 15 does look nice and performs well, but there are more complex issues that need to be considered before a product becomes desirable. Hopefully the kinks are straighten out this time around.
Out end July the notebook will retail for $979.99.
