HP Omen 16 (2023) - unboxing and first impressions - R7 7840HS, RTX 4060, 16 GB DDR5, 1080p, 144 Hz 

@@byeeeaeeee Hi, it's still doing well. No problems whatsoever, very stable and still delivering its full performance. I had to clean vents with a vakuum cleaner, though. Device is now already a year old. Only complaints I have is that the screen brightness is a tad low on my device, but I bought the 250 nits display. Linux (Nobara) is also running well (apart from having problems with Starfield, but that's generally an Nvidia problem). I'm mostly using Windows, though, but could imagine to switch to Linux in the long term. I heard about the black screen issue, but iirc it is only happening with devices where there is IO in the back. There seems to be a defect in a sensor which is responsible for determining whether the lid is closed and if it fails, the screen stays black even if the lid is open. Please read about this and consider either buying a device without IO ports in the back (, where this problem doesn't most probably arise) or getting an extended warranty. I didn't have any black screen bugs so far. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney ah thank u

Coming soon. Stay tuned.

​@@M4Looney Yeah bro im your subscriber

Hi, the maximum capacity should be 2*48 GB. I'm not quite sure if the MB on the Omen will support 96 GB but 64 GB (2*32) should be fine. The Omen 16 uses DDR5-5600 SODIMM Laptop-RAM. If you can use higher specced RAM like 6000 oder 6400 SODIMM Idk... Maybe the higher specced RAM will just clock at 5600 then but if it will clock higher you might get instability since the AMD CPUs at least on desktop are highly sensitive to RAM speeds. The easiest way to find appropriate RAM is to input the AMD based Omen 16 models into ebay search like: "xd0174ng RAM ddr5 sodimm". Take in consideration that there won't be many results and try other HP Omen 16 (AMD)-models. What you could do, too is to order DDR5-5600 SODIMM RAM, hope the best and if it's not working for you, return the RAM. Also buy brands considered as good like Corsair, Teamgroup, G.Skill, Kingston, etc. and if there are options with lower CL-latency considere them as well (depending on the price you want to spend) Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

That's a good price. You will like it. Have fun!

Hi, da bin ich überfragt. Wie würde sowas optisch aussehen? Die SSD hat einen Kühlkörper, wenn das weiterhilft. Grüße, Looney's Tech Channel

Hi, neue Infos... Ich habe bei Jarrod's Tech ein Video über das Victus 16 2023 gesehen und Jarrod hat in diesem Video den Lappi aufgemacht. Er hat gemeint, dass der SSD-Slot im Victus zwei-seitige SSDs mit 4 tb aufnehmen kann. Das Mainboard vom Victus scheint sehr große Ähnlichkeiten zu dem Omen in meiner Config zu haben. Ich habe meins zwecks SSD-Upgrade ja bereits aufgemacht und das Layout scheint identisch zu sein (auch der SSD-Schlitten sieht identisch aus). Hier der Link: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-dZib7ciQOm0.htmlsi=gIcYA-QXfAWsFV0C Hast du dir das Omen 16 mittlerweile geholt? Oder was anderes? Kannst dich ja mal melden 👍. Grüße, Looney's Tech Channel

​@@M4Looney Ach dannke dir. Ich hatte auch übrigens letztes mal versucht auf deine Antwort zurück zu schreiben, youtube wollte es aber nicht speichern. Also vielen lieben Dank für deine Mühe. Ich werd mir den Omen 16 wahrscheinlich mit ryzen und 4070 kaufen sobald er ernsthaft reduziert wird. Scheint alles in allem ne gute Option(leider hab ich kein razer blade geld)

@@w1redonkey Um dir die Entscheidung evtl. bisschen schwerer zu machen😅: Die RTX 4070 (mobile) ist halt etwas langsamer als als die RTX 4060 Ti (desktop), während die RTX 4060 (mobile) ca. genauso schnell ist wie eine desktop 4060 (desktop Variante ist etwas höher getaktet, hat aber im Vergleich zur mobile weniger Cache). Wenn du also paar Hunnies sparen willst, wäre die 4060er Variante evtl. eine Alternative. Im echten Leben sind es halt etwa 15 % Unterschied und etwa 6 % lassen sich im Performance-Profil mit ocuv aufholen. Aber, es kommen da noch ein paar Punkte hinzu, die man beachten sollte: - der Bildschirm der 4070er Variante ist 50 nits heller - 300 vs 250 nits. - Außerdem ist der Bildschirm der 4070er Variante 1440p. Hier muss ich sagen: hat beides Vor- und Nachteile. Bei dem 1440p Display wirst du eine höhere Schärfe haben, was Vorteile hat, wenn du mit dem Gerät arbeiten solltest. Aber alleine fürs Gaming, würde ich (persönlich) bei dieser "kleinen" Diagonale eher zu 1080p greifen, da selbst die 4070 mobile (4060 Ti desktop) einfach nicht genug Leistung für hohe Details in 1440p und hohe FPS liefert und 1440p mit 1080p-Inhalt (ob DLSS oder FSR oder GPU-Skalierung) einfach schlechter aussehen würde als 1080p nativ. - nächster Punkt ist, dass die 4070er Variante halt mehr Ports bietet und wie ich leidlich feststellen musste, kann die kleinere Variante "nur" 5 gbit/s USB3 - Ansonsten und da bin ich mir nicht sicher, könnte es sein, dass die größere Variante einen zweiten SSD-Slot bieten könnte. Meine 4060er-Variante hat definitiv keinen 2ten SSD-Slot. Ob dir diese Punkte über 250 Euro Wert sind, muss ich zum Glück nicht entscheiden ^^ Grüße, Looney's Tech Channel

@@w1redonkey PS: den Omen 16 mit RTX 4070 und dem 7840HS gibt's gerade für 1499 € bei notebooksbilliger. Da ist aber kein Windows dabei. Installation ist aber kein Problem und Keys gibt's auch schon für etwa 20 €. Edit: bitte darauf achten welche Speccs der Lappi genau hat. HP scheint bei manchen Modellen je nach Ausstattung an dieser zu sparen...

Hi, that sounds like a very good deal! Temps look good on mine. Should be similar with the RTX 4070 like I read. So there are three default profiles (Eco, Balanced, Performance). Didn't try Eco for long but usually good when using battery. For gaming / CPU / GPU tasks: The balanced profile will run up to 200 MHz slower on the GPU compared with performance profile. Might be that RTX 4070 will then use less wattage. Different story on the RTX 4060, though. The RTX 4060 is allowed to pull 120 W but hardly ever exceeds 90 W. The performance profile will run its fans at screaming loud 6200 RPM as the temp target will be decreased significantly. So temp will not exceed like 78 - 80 °C on both GPU and CPU. Btw. "reasonable" operating temps are 87 °C on the GPU and over 90 °C for the Ryzen processor. The balanced profile on the other hand temps will be quite the same (not exceeding 80 °C) but fans will be at around 4200 RPM. It is audible but not disturbing. Compared to many laptops out there that would be considered silent (as laptops are often more annoying than Desktop-PCs - squeeze vs humm for example - decibels are not the only factor here). So to sum up for gaming: "balanced" is the way to go if you don't want to tune fans manually (you can). Using the GPU as reference is also possible btw. The Omen 16 has a lot of cooling headroom but prefers higher clocks in the performance profile so fans get loud then (but still then has a lot of headroom). If you want ever lower fan speeds than on balanced profile just set the "hot to cold"-slider more towards hot in Omen app. Also if you know that the CPU is not the limiting factor just set the reference to GPU (like for single player games) effectively allowing the device to keep the GPU cool and only considering the CPU if it gets to hot for it. Normal browsing in no problem. RPM will either be minimum or if a highspeed download / Windows update is being performed will go up to 4000 RPM for a short period. Again the laptop doesn't need such low temps like HP set the fan curve to. Even 0 rpm can be set in BIOS for example. All in all a very capable cooling solution considering the competing laptops. There isn't a refreshed version of the Omen. The Omen is just differently configured. Or is there already a 2024 version out there? Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney Thanks for the detailed answer, appreciated! Yeah maybe it's not really a refresh per say but a different configuration, I guess it varies from country to country, I'm just not 100% sure this one has a second M.2 ssd slot. About the wattage of the 4070 from what it says on HP's website it points to 140w, although it's been already tested that these gpus don't really benefit from such high wattage in terms of performance or can even reach them, 100w or so is where the performance stagnates looks like. Anyway, and about the overall feeling of the construction, does it feel solid and premium or you can see some weaknesses? And one last thing, does HP allow you to fiddle around with undervolting and overclocking the CPU and GPU either through it's software or other software, or even in the BIOS? I've always heard not so good things about HP that's I'm asking so many questions to someone with experience with one ahah

Hi, build quality is very good and it feels very premium, too. Overclocking / undervolting is possible for the GPU but not the CPU. There are no BIOS options for it. As far as I know the AMD CPUs in this generation are locked. However there is the possibility to use curve optimizer but Idk if the options have any effect. For the second SSD slot. I would suggest that you read reviews for the special model of interest. Google the specific model name. My Omen 16 doesn't have a second SSD slot but I read a review at notebookcheck that the 4070 version do have a second SSD slot. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney Thank you, will take everything you said in account!

Ach ja: USB-Stick mit Windows 10 als bootfähiges Image wurde bereits erstellt und ist eingesteckt.

Hi, hast du es mit dem Mauspad / Maus versucht? Grüße, Looney's Tech Channel

​@@M4LooneyKonnte es umgehen, indem ich in den ca. 0,5s vor dem Auswahlbildschirm gedrückt habe und so ins BIOS gekommen bin. 😂

Hi, for 4k video editing I don't know actually. Is x264 benchmark a valid tool to bench performance for you? Here a benchmark comparison from notebooks check (but it's from the 13500h vs 7840hs): www.notebookcheck.net/R7-7840HS-vs-i5-13500H_14948_14727.247596.0.html The 13500hx is a 6 core (!) plus 8 "efficient" cores (without multithreading) whereas the 7840hs is a "full" 8 c/16 t. The 13500h is actually slower than the 7840hs in multicore performance but chances are that the 13500hx is a tad faster than the 7840hs (should only be a little bit faster though). For example: assume 6 cores Intel are like as fast as AMD ones, so: 6 / 8 = 0.75. But Intel has efficiency cores which contributes to that equasion by a little (efficiency cores are a lot slower than the real cores - they're like a core 9gen performance, we are now at the 14/15 gen). So against the 13500h the AMD 7840hs is a tad faster in considering all benchmarks at notebookcheck: 46 vs 41 whereas they have no results for the 13500hx but they have the results for the 13700h which has the same core config as the 13500hx. Also see results in notebookcheck: www.notebookcheck.net/i7-13700H-vs-R7-7840HS_14721_14948.247596.0.html The 13700h is also a little slower than the 7840hs on notebookcheck's benchmark suite (46 vs 44) but on x264 benchmark the Intel 13700h is a little faster than the the 7840hs (100 % vs 89 %). So with Intel you get 6 core CPUs which are accelerated by slow core by a bit and on AMD you get a full 8 core CPU. Yes, the 13500hx should be faster than the 7840hs in video editing but the 13500hx needs to power 14 cores (which turns out to be a little faster in encoding but slower in other workloads and it runs at much higher clocks than AMD) whereas the AMD 7840hs is a very efficient CPU with its 8 real cores. For gaming Intel might be faster but at a price: temperature and noise levels. I previously owned an Asus Tuf Gaming F15 with the 11800h and it ran mega hot. I couldn't even get it significantly cooler by undervolting (to the max) and it bluescreened heavily. I assume that the cause of system crashes were the high temperatures (90 - 100 °C even in games) and that thing was loud (!) now with the Omen the CPU hits 80 °C at full load in cinebench and 80 °C in games (CPU and GPU share heatpipes) and the Omen is half as loud as the old Asus. So, no, the Intel has 6 + 8 cores and not 14 (as the cores are not compareable) and the 7840hs should be only a little slower than the 13500hx in video editing (and most likely the GPU will help a lot with acceleration of those workloads) and fast enough for video editing plus the AMD having the lower power budget and can be cooled well (especially by the Omen). The Omen 16 also has Intel variants with the 13700h. And another important part is also how thr two devices compare apart from that. The Omen 16 that I got don't have fast USB for example (only 5 gbit/s) but there are faster 10 gbit/s options (Idk if there are AMD options with thunderbolt, though). That would be my only real downpoint as everything else is real good (materials, battery, performance, cooling), ok, the 250 nits screen that I got could be brighter for my likings but I'm indoors most of the time and nightactive anyway ;-). Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney Thanks a lot for this explanation 👏 , but I have some other questions like:- 1 . Is ryzen heat more than Intel ? 2 . Is ryzen good for long term ? 3 . What's ur thoughts about which is better for video editing and gaming 4 . Hp omen 16 or acer Helios Neo 16 ?

@@Vishwash76 1) no the ryzen 7840hs produces less heat due to lower core count and wattage limit (compared to compareable Intel CPUs. Already wrote about that. 2) Ryzen CPUs are very stable if not overclocking or undervolting (which you can't do anyway on Laptop Ryzens 7000h series) 3) For editing Intel 13500hx is a little faster but not meaningfully. For gaming they are on par. The Intels don't keep their high wattage limits for long (if you run Cinebench for example multiple times, scores will go down). 4) never owned a Helios laptop. Just compare the speccs (material quality, battery life, screen, performance, support, etc.). Read reviews. I can't tell which is better (I didn't know that Helios exists btw.). In many points it's highly subjective what device fits better for you. Some do prefer a high material quality or looks, others don't care. Some need a long lasting battery, others don't even unplug the devices. Some need a high performance CPU, others just need good GPU performance, etc. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

Hi, it's doing fine. No crashes or slowdowns. No throtteling. Cooling is good, noise levels are ok - better than on many competitors. Sound system is loud without much distortions but bass is lacking a bit. Battery is like 4 hours of twitch streaming on 60 % screen brightness. Material quality is very good, seems like a mix of plastic and metal. Cool device to play around with its features: you can use Radeon features alongside Nvidia rendering games like AFMF, you can play emulators on battery without the need to use the RTX 4060 (longer play sessions), etc. The screen on my model is only 250 nits but there are better configured models. Screen is ok overall but not very bright (not suitable for outside use). USB is only 5 gbit/s on my model. BIOS does not support CPU undervolting. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

Thank you for sharing your experience, btw I’m gonna go for ryzen 7 7840hs rtx 4050, as it suits my budget. Mainly going to use for video editing and casual gaming

@@rayan8847 Hi, good choice, have fun! The CPU is a monster and is very efficient. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

Hi, 105 + 15W. The TDP will most likely not be reached anyway in most games as the GPU is voltage limited. Typical power draw is 80 - 90W. There are exceptions to this but not many (not one I've found so far). Unfortunately one can't increase voltage above 1V (iirc). So for now it doesn't really matter if the RTX 4060m GPU is TDP-limited at 90W or higher. But RTX 4060ms with a lower TDP than 90W will be TDP limited. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney Ok thanks you

Colors are vibrant, white is good, black is good, too, not the best, it's an ips panel. Black light bleeding is almost not present. Contrast is not very good. Colors are a tad off. Overall a lot better than with my previous Asus Tuf Gaming F15 where everything was washed out. The screen is very sharp despite being bigger than the Asus Tuf Gaming F15. It seems sharper idk why this is. One could be happy with the screen. It's just not the premium screen. There are def better screens out there but consider that this special screen is the lowest sku in the Omen lineup and there are better Omen screens out there. Device is only at 1249 € (taxes included). Similar specced machines are above 1499 € here (and this is an Omen after all whereas other Laptops at this price point are mainstream this is a highend machine which is being sold at much higher prices up to 3000 €). If screen estate is important to you there is the 300 nits model with 100 % srgb. This one got around 60 % srgb. It's ok for movies but it's not mind blowing.

@@M4Looney thanks, i think im going to buy the new lenovo loq 16 (with 1440p screen and 100%srgb)

Yeah the Lenovo LOQ seems good, too. I could've bought the Lenovo, too but prefered the Ryzen 7 instead of the Ryzen 5. Have fun.

Let me know about the LOQ. Will keep the Omen 16, though. One can fiddle around with "color poppiness" (by increasing contrast and saturation. You can see it in the review video I posted few days ago. Edit: my Omen 16 has the R7 7840HS which I need for certain tasks. The operation temps are really low, too (or the noise if you want to sacrifice some °C). Idk 'bout the LOQ, though. Similiar LOQ would've cost me 100 € or more so Omen 16 it is. Greetings

@@M4Looney i hear the batttery life is really good, is that true?

Not easy to answer: - which display (device) size suitable for you? - display resolution: 1080p might look good on a low display size like 15 or 16" and performance will be better. With upscaling or using 1080p resolution you'd have a more blurry image (1080p screen vs 1440p screen). RTX 4080 should deliver enough performance for 1440p for now (but will change later in time). Also if the 17" is only 1080p the screen will be a tad blurrier than on 16". - I would go with an AMD CPU 'cause Intel ones might run with a higher power target / run hotter. There are contraverses about stabilities with recent Intel CPUs. AMD CPUs run at a comparable performance level like Intel ones at a lower TDP. I had an Intel laptop from Asus which was bluescreening like crazy in games every 5 - 20 mins but it could've been an exception. Also Intel CPUs have efficiency cores and these are much weaker than performance cores (Intel skimps on "real" cores and when the comparable AMD CPU has more cores it's preferable). - if I were you I'd try to search for an AMD 7840HS and 16" 1080p Omen. The 7840HS also has a very good iGPU and you could also use AFMF upscaling even together with the NVidia GPU (made a video about that recently) and when using the device on battery you could also use the 780m iGPU solely (for emulators for example).

Hi, I already wrote about the longterm experience in the comment section of this video (search for rayan8847's comment). Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

Hi, I would tend to AMD CPU if I were you. Intel's CPUs usually need higher power budget thus running either hot or loud. For the Legion: the RTX 4060 is like 15 - 20 % faster like RTX 3060 Ti performance. It strongly depends on the price point and you're missing on DLSS3 frame gen but FSR3 is on the rise and many new games support it. Raytracing is also faster on 4000 Nvidias vs 3000 ones. Greetings Looney's Tech Channel

One more point to consider is the overall specs of the device like material quality, screen quality, battery life, audio system.

Thanks for reply brother my budget is around ₹110K

@@sarikakashyap7210 What is that in €/$? Apart from that in some countries laptop devices might be more expensive compared to other countries.

No.

Hi, yes there is: www.hp.com/us-en/shop/pdp/omen-gaming-laptop-16-xf0087nr That is at least directly from HP. If this model is available in retail in your country is another question. The model is "xf0087nr". It has the RTX 4060 with the AMD R7 7840HS. Surely there are options with Intel CPUs and or higher / lower specced GPUs. Intel CPUs do run at higher temperature, though (and can't hold boost clocks as long as AMD CPUs). Also the RTX 4070 mobile is ofc faster but only around ~15%. If you find a good deal go with the RTX 4070 but when for example the 4070 model is over 200 $/€ more expensive the RTX 4060 option is also viable. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

Hi, never had blackscreen issues, bluescreens or overheating. Everything is fine with my device. Issues may arise on every device, but some laptops are better built than others, it also differs from manufacturer to manufacturer and device to device. Had bluescreen problems with my Asus Tuf Gaming F15 (2021) and even within RMA they didn't find the issue (GPU?), sent it back to me unfixed and I had the pleasure to chat with their support in numerous emails until the RMA period expired. I wanted to go with the Asus ROG Ally first, bc there were no alternatives for performant handheld PCs, but fortunately I didn't and bought the Omen 16. Wise decision. I mean that is a sample size of 1 considering Asus (never had any products from them before), but I read a lot reddit-posts that the issues with their laptops were firmware related, but even two years later there was no fix for my problem. Sry, for this long (unrelated) answer, but like I tried everything with the Asus device several hours a day for months, they should have paid me "insury money" ^^... Only had the HP Pavillion Gaming 15 (2017?), the Omen 16 and the Asus Tuf Gaming 15 as laptop devices. The HP laptops were fine (the HP Pavillion would bluescreen under very heavy load but once in a month or so and I didn't renew thermal paste for years and I don't remember ever cleaning it from inside), the Omen is a year in possession approx, no problems so far, the Asus was garbage. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looney can you tell do have fullvents in the back or ports in back

@@senseiie My device doesn't have any ports in the back. Vents are in the back but a big portion is shielded. Other Omen 16 variants have ports in the back, though (where the shielded part of vents is).

1249 € with 19 % VAT but actual device is not being sold here anymore.

Hi, the device should have a second SSD slot. There is a review from notebookcheck with the RTX 4080 configuration. If the devices are similarly build there should be a second SSD slot. On another side it says that this device has a second SSD slot: nanoreview.net/en/laptop/hp-omen-16-2023?m=c.6_g.3 I didn't open the device, though. Greetings

Oh ok thanks@@M4Looney

Hi, I ordered a 1 TB Samsung 980 SSD for the device. It was a struggle to get the back open. The only way was to use a suction cup (used the car smartphone holder). I don't think there is any other way for doing that. The next big disappointment was that my HP Omen 16 actually has only one NVMe slot. Like all other HP Omen 16 configurations have two SSD slots. So, I just wanted to let you know about that. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel

@@M4Looneywhat about the ram slot?

It got two RAM slots (DDR5). Both upgradeable.

Hi, depends on usecase / user. For me it's enough / I got used to it. Sure there are better display options out there. Went to a local tech shop today (Saturn) to buy a VR headset and looked at their gaming laptop section while waiting. The laptops I've seen were similar specced but most of them had an inferior build quality. Asus was okay and Medion (Aldi's brand here) but the Lenovo and the Acer were looking or feeling quite 🤷. Not saying these are bad devices but each vendor must save somewhere to deliver compatible prices (on midrange or budget lineup). Everyone has different priorities I guess. The ROG Ally was interesting. Would've been a pretty nice device even wouldn't have a problem using touch to navigate through Windows but the size... Far too big for my likings and there could've be definitively more screen in the same package. The Omen also has some downsides e.g. 250 nits screen, only 5 gbit/s USB and lockdown BIOS. All in all still happy with the Omen since it runs stable as hell (hello Asus Tuf Gaming from bsod-hell). Returned home with a Pico 4 btw. Must set it up these days and find out how to record VR. Greetings, Looney's Tech Channel