Let me tell you a secret about hardware reviews. Most of the time, we get our review units from PR agencies and because we’re like the delinquent kids of South African games media, NAG is at the back of the queue. So when we get a review unit in, it’s got cooties on it from every other local games magazine or website review writer including Darryn from Critical Hit who lives in Port Elizabeth, so who even knows what kind of bonus extra subtropical microbes or existential ennui are clogging up the USB ports.
But not this one, nuh-uh. For whatever reason, I got it first-dibs out the box, the un-cootied plastic exuding a subtle but intoxicating bouquet of… whatever un-cootied plastic smells like. I realise now that smell of plastic, un-cootied or not, is hard to describe. It smells like plastic, you know? New. Sterile. Probably not safe for babies.
Mmmmm.
Uh. Anyway. I suppose it’s not super relevant for the purposes of this review, but I got to be Cootie Prime. It feels important, okay.
The HP Omen 15 I got for review is the 2020 15.6-inch model of HP’s Omen gaming laptop series, debuted in 2014. In fact, Regardt reviewed the 2019 HP Omen 15 model in – guess what, you guessed it! – 2019, but the 2020 model (which, yes, I’m reviewing in 2021, but don’t forget I’m Cootie Prime) is revamped with a new design and updated hardware.
Most immediately obvious, perhaps, is that the 2019 model’s anxiety-inducing (just me?) middle hinge has been swapped out for a more conventional setup, and the screen bezel is squared at the bottom instead of angled up. The top is finished with matte grey anodised aluminium and a discreet reflective logo. Very minimalist, even almost austere in comparison with the previous model, but I’m into it. Other aesthetic differences are less obvious, but because the 2020 model doesn’t include a numpad, there’s more space on each side of the keyboard. Also, big boi cursor keys! If you’re a left-handed gamer like me, you’ve got to have those big boi cursor keys.
My review model features an AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti GPU, and 16GB RAM, but you can choose from multiple custom hardware configs – an Intel i7 CPU, for example, or up to 64GB RAM. You’re stuck with one of the GTX 16-series GPUs, however, and that’s going to limit some of your graphics options.
I tested the HP Omen 15 with Remedy’s trippy dream logic sim Control, because I’ve been playing the recently released next-gen update on my Xbox Series X and wanted to find out how it measures up on PC.
MAD SCIENCE, YOU GUYS.
The console version of the game has two visual modes, upscaled from 1440p to 4K on supported displays – a 30 frames-per-second “Graphics” mode with ray-tracing enabled, or a 60 frames-per-second “Performance” mode without. Both modes work exactly as expected, but I should add that one, the “Graphics” mode is a totally consistent 30 frames-per-second on Xbox Series X and presumably also on PS5, and two, Control’s implementation of ray-tracing is extensive even on console. It’s like the ray-tracing game.
On the HP Omen 15, though, not so much. With ray-tracing enabled even on medium settings, the frame rate clocks mostly at about 20-25 with visible ghosting and the PC’s fans dialling up to cyclone level. Bummer. With some tactical adjustments – dropping the texture res and filtering, flipping the SSAO and MSAA – I bumped it up to 30+ or even 40+, but the ghosting remains a problem. Disabling ray-tracing, with max graphics settings, the frame rate jumps up to a decent 50 or so and can be boosted with the same tactical adjustments.
Remember that this is a worst case scenario because Control is a GPU nuke – on most other games out now, the HP Omen 15 should comfortably exceed an average frame rate over 60 on max graphics settings.
For “#productivity” and other less glamorous applications, the HP Omen 15’s top-class Ryzen 7 CPU and gorgeous 144Hz display makes it a versatile choice for the work-from-home gang and content creators. I’d recommend an increase to 32GB RAM for Photoshop and editing purposes, and a 1TB SSD because 512GB is just not enough in 2021. Audio is okay, but not even Bang & Olufsen tuning can do much with 10W laptop speakers. Battery time is also okay, at about three hours for games but up to eight hours of browsing Reddit when Eskom is very sorry, but there’s been a loss of generation capacity.