HP Omen 15 best mid-range gaming laptop?

Calneon

Calneon

Calneon

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Hi, it looks like the HP Omen 15 is a bit of a no-brainer for a gaming laptop in the £1000-£1500 range, though options and availability is very limited in the UK at the moment.

  • It is reviewing very well, and seems like a major step up from HP's previous offerings.
  • AMD 4800H is a much better value proposition than any Intel chip.
  • 2060 version incredibly well priced compared to competition. It seems OcUK is the only place to get this variant in the UK right now (other places either have the 1660Ti or 2070 version).
  • Looks great, no garish 'gamer' aesthetics.
  • Only 8GB RAM but OcUK says it has capacity for 16GB so that's great.
In terms of other options at this price/performance point, there's:
  • Lenovo Legion 5i - Much worse Intel i5 CPU, less drive space, and my gut says HP > Lenovo though I am not sure what I am basing that on. It is a bit cheaper though. I am mainly put off by the CPU.
  • ASUS Zephyrus G14 - Reviews well, aesthetic is nice, but you're looking at >£1500 for the 2060 variant.
  • ASUS TUF A15 - Hasn't reviewed as well, some citing poor thermals (haven't done much research though). It's the 'cheaper' variant of the Zephyrus line but still significantly more than the HP Omen 15.
  • MSI/Razer - Haven't looked much into these, but from first glance the price is too high compared to the other options.
So, if the HP Omen 15 was in stock right now I would buy it, but it's on pre-order for the 7th August from OcUK and not available in that configuration anywhere else in the UK that I can see. I am not too familiar with pre-order items on OcUK, does that date mean if I order it now, it will be shipped on the 7th? What's the chance of it being delayed? Is there a pre-order queue, and is there a chance I might have to wait for a restock even if I buy now?

Thanks!
 
Got an email from OcUK saying the HP Omen 15 2060 variant is delayed a month due to AMD supply issues. It's a shame, but since I can't wait a month I will buy the 1660 variant from the HP store I think, I only really miss out on DLSS possibility which I don't mind since this is only an auxiliary machine and I have my desktop for proper gaming.
 
JDR82 said:
Slight deviation but a positive for HP customer support, if anyone here did buy the HP Omen 15 2020 prior to them adding the 3 year care pack in for free (like me), just email customer support they have given me the 3 year care pack for the grand total of £0.01.

Pretty happy, all I did was email them saying I purchased the laptop upon release and noticed they had quickly added in the free, 3 year care pack and asked if I was eligible.
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I got the free care package when I ordered yesterday, thought that was nice.

However, device arrived today (great delivery time!) and the diamond accent on the front was severely scratched below the surface:

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Needless to say I requested a replacement. Hopefully their support has a quick turnaround.
 
chipps101 said:
That is not a good omen :D
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Hah, nice.

New Omen arrived yesterday and no issues with it that I can see! Some initial impressions:

  • Build quality is fantastic, feels very solid and the finish is very nice.
  • Didn't come with too much crap pre-installed, was easy to remove stuff I didn't want (McAfee trial, Office trial, etc).
  • Screen is wonderful, and I haven't calibrated it yet. Took a while to find and disable the adaptive brightness which was incredibly annoying when in a dark room (since the amount of white on screen would cause the ambient brightness to increase, causing the screen brightness to increase). It ended up being 'Vari-Bright' in the Radeon control panel.
  • Keyboard feels very nice to type on. Some keys are in un-optimal positions, such as the backslash to the right of the keyboard instead of to the left of Z, and # below backspace instead of the top part of the enter key. No big deal though.
  • You can hear the fans whine even when idle, which isn't great. I knew this was a known issue before purchasing but it is a bit more irritating than I thought it would be. Not a deal breaker though.
  • Audio seems slightly worse than my previous laptop (from ************) but that one did have particularly good speakers. Not expecting anything special here.
  • Haven't played any demanding games on it yet but can't forsee any issues with the 1660 at 1080p.
 
Update: Internal speaker stopped working yesterday. Seems like a hardware problem, as a full Windows reset, BIOS rollback, didn't help. Requested a refund again.

I think I'll order a custom laptop from 'the-place-that-shal-not-be-named' instead of trying a third time for an Omen. I did like it a lot, but a combination of having to return two of these laptops, the slightly annoying idle fan noise, keyboard layout, and poor audio (ignoring the internal speaker failure, some YouTube videos were clipping at high volume which annoys me), makes me not want to order another one.

@chipps101 definitely not a good Omen :D
 
benparker said:
Dont they usually have ugly chassis? What config are you going for? Do they have a 4800u and 1660ti config?
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I think their chassis are probably the weakest point, yeah. My current (the one I want to replace) from them has lasted 5 years and the chassis is falling apart at the hinges. Other than that it's survived really well though. I haven't ordered anything yet but was leaning towards the Recoil since from reviews it looks like a good compromise between slimness and thermals. Vyper apparently has apalling thermals because it's so thin. None of the mid-range laptops have AMD chips unfortunately which bumps the cost higher than the Omen 15 for otherwise similar specs :(.

I might also consider the Lenovo.
 
Final update (I hope - oh god)

Decided on the Lenovo Legion 5 from OcUK in the end (looks like it went out of stock just after I got mine). Decided I didn't want to spend £300+ more for a mid-high GPU when the 1650Ti will do for light gaming which is all I plan to do on this. I knew I wanted 4800H for workload stuff (mainly code compiling) and the comparable Intel CPUs at this price point benchmark much worse.

Have to say I am very happy so far, I think it is a much better device than the Omen 15 (ignoring the issues I had with returns on those).
  • Very close to silent when idle, even watching videos the fans aren't audible. Much better than the Omen 15 which had a fairly high pitched noise even when idle which was irritating.
  • Keyboard layout is better, enter and backslash keys in the right place, and has a numpad. Feels great to type on.
  • Screen is great, though couldn't say if it is better or worse than the Omen. Will say I didn't have to faff around trying to turn off the adaptive brightness setting like I did on the Omen.
  • Speakers maybe slightly worse than the Omen, though not saying much as both are terrible standard gaming laptop speakers.
  • Build quality feels fantastic, though so did the Omen.
 
benparker said:
I think the Legion 5P would have been a better choice for the same money with 2060. Saying that, 256gb SSD and 8gb ram but the 2060 makes it worth it.
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I wasn't aware there was a variant with a 4800H and 2060 available, where is this from? In any case, I think given my use-case I would trade GPU performance for the 500GB SSD and 16GB RAM.
 
chipps101 said:
Its from the place named after an indian meal.

I believe the 2060 in it is an 80w variant.
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I see it. At the risk of sounding like I'm just trying to console myself for my purchase, I do think I may have still gone for the 1650 variant. Not only for the extra RAM and SSD (and RAM is important for multithreaded workloads like code compiling), but the 1650 is also going to run cooler and use less power than the 2060 if I don't need that extra GPU power.
 
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