- In 2017, there's a lot happening
in the PC space that's super exciting.
But nothing is as interesting as this,
the HP OMEN X Compact Desktop.
Sure, it's a mouthful but it's a super cool PC that,
well if you can afford it, you may want to consider.
They also mention, you can wear it as a backpack?
Stay tuned.
(techno music)
All right, before we get started
I just wanted to talk a little about the OMEN X brand.
So this is HP's premium lineup for gamers.
They have OMEN and then OMEN X.
So don't roll your eyes too much at this up;
this is extreme, it's meant to be.
So it's going to be a little bit expensive
and it's going to be a little bit different
but that's the point of it
and I really like when companies push the boundaries.
That's what we're going to see here.
Now, to talk a little bit
about why this is a compact desktop;
obviously, it's smaller than most towers.
Now, they also have an OMEN brand tower,
if you want to have full expansion capabilities
and the more traditional setup.
This is for people who want a small desktop
that's super powerful.
Moreover, they have what are called three modes for it.
You have: Desktop, Living Room,
so you can take it with you into the living room
because it is portable, it is essentially
a laptop, desktop combination,
and you can strap it to your back
in case you want to use VR,
specifically Windows Mixed Reality,
although it does work with Oculus and HTC Vive as well.
Let's jump the specifications.
You're talking an Intel Core i7-7820Hk,
that means it is overclockable.
It is also a 45 watt chip, so that is the same chips
you can find in high end gaming in laptops,
not necessarily desktop class, but as you'll see here,
it's more than made up for it with the video card,
which is a GeForce GTX 1080
with eight gigabytes of video memory.
You also get 16 gigabytes of 2400 RAM
and you get one terabyte PCIe NVMe SSD for storage.
All that combined makes an awesome gaming experience.
Turning to the OMEN X itself, check it out.
Have you ever seen anything like this?
It's absolutely insane looking
and I love this design for it.
Many reasons; One, it's obviously very small.
I love how it sits upright like this,
so you get very good ventilation here
to cool off that GPU and CPU.
Let's explain what's going on here though
because it's nothing like I've ever seen before.
This is the main computer, this is the dock
and how that works, is there's a button here
which you press.
And it literally ejects the PC and that is your computer.
There's actually a battery built into this as well,
plus external batteries you can use
for wearing it as a backpack.
Looking over here, you have your intake vent
and outtake vents for the sides.
We can turn to the bottom here.
This is where some of the crazy stuff happens.
Here is the connector for that dock.
These are for external batteries
and those are just stabilizers.
Turning to the side here, we have an AC jack.
So this is if you want to plug it into the wall
without the dock, you can do that as well.
On the other side, you have two USB 3.0 ports
and there's a lot more of those.
This device has so many input, outputs it's pretty crazy.
Turning to the top here, you have a plug here,
for I believe it's the HTC Vive or Oculus
if you need to power that.
You have your power button over here.
Two more USB 3.0 ports, HDMI, Mini Display.
You have a Thunderbolt 3 USB Type-C port.
You also have a headphone jack for your headphones.
These are located on top because
when you wear it as a backpack,
you can connect your headset up to this
and have a short wire to wear.
Turning to the dock itself,
you get two more USB 3.0 ports in the front.
Another USB Type-C port here,
that's not going to be Thunderbolt 3
but just straight up Type-C 3.1.
Turn to the back, you have a Kensington Lock,
three more USB 3.0 ports.
You have a DisplayPort, HDMI out, ethernet.
There is the AC connector and this is
for charging external batteries
if you're going to use the backpack.
Assuming you buy the $500 backpack that goes with this,
which is an accessory, you don't need to buy it.
You will also get two more external batteries,
so that's four in total for the backpack
and this is the charger for it.
These just literally drop in,
they charge and they have a little meter on top
telling you how much battery life they are.
This then plugs into the back of the dock
and it's all in one system.
So here it is, the optional backpack.
It's super expensive but boy, is it really nice.
So, it is a carbon fiber system
and it has all sorts of padding and straps on it
so you don't really feel it when you're wearing it.
It's a very light system, just over 10 pounds
and there's a nice little gap here too,
so it separates the computer for your back
so you never get actually warm from it.
You have two battery packs down here
and these are hot-swappable so you can just hit a switch.
The battery slides out and while you're wearing it
you can pop in new batteries.
The total combo will last you about an hour,
which is not bad when you're running a Core i7
and 1080 completely wireless.
But you can walk around your room
playing Windows VR, Windows Mixed Reality
and it's a pretty awesome experience.
Combined altogether, you only get two hours of battery
but don't forget you can also charge
the other two batteries while you're using it.
In theory, you can just keep going for hours and hours.
Although, I wouldn't do it for more than 45 minutes myself.
Putting the backpack stuff aside, as I realize
it's a little niche for many of you guys
and you probably won't be buying that.
This is a straight up gaming desktop.
Now, you are running a 45 watt processor,
which performs about as well as
a Surface Book 2's new processor.
So as a CPU, it's not the most powerful out there,
but most video games today,
at least the high end triple-A titles are GPU intensive.
So when it comes to benchmarks, we get very good performance
and everything falls right in line where we expect it.
So when I play Gears of War 4,
I can do it on Ultra Setting
and get around 94 frames per second,
which is pretty fantastic.
Playing something like Destiny 2,
you can easily hit 60 frames per second on all high settings
or if you're using like a high end monitor,
like we are with G-Sync,
you can easily do over 100 frames per second.
The same comes down to Doom,
where you can play that on Ultra
and hit 90 to 100 frames per second as well.
So this is a straight up gaming desktop
and I really like using it.
When it comes to thermals, nothing too exciting here;
we're talking 130 degrees Fahrenheit,
or 54 degrees Celsius for the actual chastise
or about 150 degrees Fahrenheit
and 66 degrees Celsius for that external vent.
So no worries there.
For sound, it looks like around 52 decibels,
which is not too loud at all,
that's actually below most gaming laptops.
So, all you'll hear is a little bit
of a whooshing noise as you're playing a high end video game
and if you're using headphones, like me,
of course you won't hear it at all.
One super cool thing here HP has done
is the OMEN Command Center.
So, it's a simple app that launches
and you can do all sorts of cool things
like control the LED for the casing,
which I thought was a really nice touch.
You can customize the color options and have it flash.
It's not as robust as say, Razer's Chroma
but it's a cool thing to have.
You can also overclock the CPU and it's pretty simple here.
It's a slider; you move it up and down.
You can change the core voltage
and do a couple other little tricks.
Now, if anything actually breaks with this,
it's just going to reboot the PC
and it'll go back to your default settings.
So, there should be no concern here for damaging the chip
and since this is an overclockable chip to begin with,
it is made to do that.
It's actually a lot of fun to play with
and you can even benchmark internally
and compare your results to see how well it improves.
When it comes to networking, HP is trying to take on
Killer with their own prioritization service so you can
put your video game as a priority for your WiFi connection.
Or you can also do a double-shot,
so you can connect up ethernet and WiFi together,
have your games stream only over ethernet
and have background services prioritized for WiFi.
It's a pretty cool system and I like having it built in.
When it comes to Windows Mixed Reality,
you can of course use HP's own spatial computing headset,
which is really nice.
What makes this one a little bit special
is the removable plug here,
so this is the standard cable that comes off of it.
HP includes two in the box including a very long one,
so you can tether to a desktop PC or in this case,
we're going to want to use this shorter cable,
since we're just connecting to the backpack itself
and we don't really want to have a really long cable
interfering with our connection.
So let's talk about the Windows Mixed Reality experience.
Overall, it was a lot of fun to use.
You simply pop off the computer or slide onto the backpack
and strap in and you're good to go.
Swapping out batteries was super easy
and with the HP headset,
you can flip it up to see your room around you
and that raises a secondary concern;
you don't have boundaries while wearing this.
Normally, when you set up Windows Mixed Reality
with a desktop PC, you set up boundaries around that PC
so you don't walk into walls.
They create virtually into the world itself.
You're not doing that here, it is boundary-free since
you are the computer essentially and so,
you have to be a little bit careful walking around your room
as you may stub a toe or bump into a TV,
and yes that did happen to me.
So make sure you have plenty of space.
Overall, the experience was quite liberating.
It feels great not to be actually tethered to the PC
with a cable; you can just walk around freely.
It is a lot more fun.
The backpack was super comfortable.
I had no issues whatsoever, barely felt it was on.
I couldn't hear it at all
and swapping the batteries was super simple.
Now, I wouldn't really personally game
for more than two hours in virtual reality
as it's a long time to be emersed in that world
but if you can, go for it.
It's a pretty awesome experience.
Alright, so what do I think of this device?
Well it is super cool.
Now let's talk about price tag.
It goes for $2500, you can order it now,
get it in time for Christmas.
It's still an extra $500 for that backpack,
so this is a super expensive system,
there's no argument there and I know a lot of you
are going to tell me in comments,
"I could build a cheaper system that's way more powerful."
And that's totally true,
but that's kind of beside the point here.
HP purposely made this to push boundaries and try new things
so it is very niche but that's kind of the point here.
Desktop PCs can get pretty boring
so every once in a while, you want to see a company
try something new and don't forget,
yeah, it's super expensive but in a couple of years,
stuff like this will trickle down
to the regular consumer market if it succeeds.
Speaking of, for engineering, HP did a bang-up job here.
I didn't read the instructions, I just opened the box,
started putting it together.
There's probably about 9000 ways
they could have screwed this thing up
and it just worked all the time, I had no issues with it.
That's a straight up gaming PC, which is a blast to use.
I really love the compact design here,
it looks great on a desk and you can pick it up
and bring it to the living room with ease.
And sure, if you want to strap onto your back,
you could do that too.
I mean not everyone's going to want to do it but if you can,
you're not going to want to try
any other virtual reality out there.
Overall, if you're looking for a compact gaming desktop,
I suggest taking a look at this.
It's going to be super expensive
but you're getting a really premium experience
and there's nothing else like this
out there in the market today.
So there's a quick look at the HP OMEN X Compact Desktop.
Now, if you want more information about it,
head to Windows Central and you can read my full review,
get benchmarks and photos and get more information about it.
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Thanks for watching, take care, everybody.