Which gaming laptop is better, Acer’s Nitro 5, or HP’s Omen 15?
I’ve compared both laptops to show you all the differences!
Both of my laptops have the same specs, so AMD’s 6 core Ryzen 5 5600H CPU, Nvidia’s
RTX 3060 graphics, a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen and I’ve tested both with the same 16gb
kit of dual channel memory for a fair comparison.
The build quality of the Omen definitely feels better, the Nitro’s all plastic design just
feels a bit cheaper and more flexible.
The Omen is smaller in every dimension.
It’s most noticeable in the depth, the Nitro just feels a bit bigger and chonkier.
The Omen is also lighter than the Nitro 5, even when including its higher wattage power
brick.
Both laptops have 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screens, but they’re both also available with a 1440p
option.
Neither has a MUX switch to disable optimus, but the Omen has FreeSync while the Nitro
does not.
The Nitro had better contrast, however the Omen was ahead when it came to color gamut,
and the Omen was also able to get brighter at maximum brightness.
The nitro was rather dim comparatively, not even able to make it to 300 nits, but it ends
up being brighter at lower levels.
The Omen was also ahead when it came to screen response time at more than twice as fast when
compared to the Nitro, 17ms for a 144Hz panel is honestly kind of disgusting.
I don’t think I’m particularly sensitive to it, but I could still see the blur in CS:GO
on the Nitro.
This also contributes to the Omen having a lower total system latency, which is the amount
of time between a mouse click and gun shot fire in CS:GO, as Acer’s Nitro 5 is the
slowest laptop I’ve tested in this regard so far.
Backlight bleed wasn’t too bad with either, maybe a little more with the nitro, but this
will vary between laptops and panels.
Both laptops have a 720p camera above the screen, but neither have IR for Windows Hello
face unlock.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like on the Acer Nitro 5, and then
this is what things look and sound like over on the HP Omen 15.
The keyboard on my Omen just has one level of white backlighting, while the Nitro 5 has
4 levels of RGB lighting with 4 zones for customizations, but I think there’s also
a cheaper red only model.
The Nitro has a numpad while the Omen does not, and I had a hard time picking one over
the other for typing, I’d say they felt about the same.
The precision touchpads were both alright, but I preferred the larger one on the Omen
as it just felt a little less loose, but also wasn’t as loud to click.
Both have their speakers on the left and right front corners, and the Omen’s are way better,
it’s not even close.
They sound clearer, there’s more bass, and they can get louder too, but the latencymon
results were looking better on the Nitro.
On the left they both have a gigabit ethernet port and 3.5mm audio combo jack.
The Omen has one USB Type-A port while the Nitro has two.
The Nitro also has a Kensington lock and air exhaust vent, while the Omen has its power
input, HDMI 2.1 and SD card slot.
Both have an air exhaust on the right and a USB Type-C port.
The Omen has two USB Type-A ports here while the Nitro has one, so both have 3 total, and
the Nitro has its HDMI 2.1 port on this side, while the Omen also has a Mini DisplayPort.
Both have air exhaust vents towards the corners on the back, while the Nitro has its power
input towards the middle.
I also want to note that connecting the power cable on the Nitro was super annoying, it
has two levels that it can go in so you have to push hard to get it in properly.
So basically the I/O on both is very similar.
For some reason the Omen 15 only uses the slower USB 3.2 Gen1 on the Type-A ports while
the right Type-A port on the Nitro 5 is the faster USB 3.2 Gen2.
The Omen does also have an SD card slot and a Mini DisplayPort output, which the Nitro
5 does not have.
Neither laptop can be charged over USB Type-C and all three display outputs on the Omen
connect directly to the Nvidia graphics, while on the Nitro only the HDMI port does this,
and I’ll show you the speed boost both laptops give us with an external screen a bit later.
Neither laptop has any sort of groove on the front to help with opening, they’re just
flat, but I still found them both easy enough to open.
Both had some flex for the lids and keyboards, but the Omen has the edge over the Nitro.
The Nitro just feels more plasticky and cheaper, however the front corners on the Omen felt
a little sharp.
The Omen appears to have more holes for air intake towards the back when compared to the
Nitro, and we can see that this does indeed appear to be the case when instead looking
at them from this angle and seeing where the light shines through.
Inside both have the battery down the front, the Nitro’s is physically smaller as it
instead has a 2.5” drive bay for a hard drive or SSD.
Both have two M.2 slots for storage, but the Omen’s have heat shields.
Both have two RAM slots for memory, and the Nitro has an upgradeable Wi-Fi card while
the Omen’s Wi-Fi is soldered to the motherboard and cannot be changed.
The Wi-Fi with the Omen was faster in terms of raw throughput, but remember it can’t
be upgraded, in theory you could install a faster card in the Nitro.
Take the Intel Nitro 5 for example, which is 2nd from the top on this graph.
Now all testing in this video was done with the exact same physical kit of memory installed
in both laptops, however when I bought the Nitro 5 it shipped with just 1 16gb stick
in single channel.
Now fortunately the memory was at least the faster x8 variant, but I have also covered
the Intel Nitro 5 and for some reason that came with 1 8gb stick of slower x16 memory,
and as we saw in this video here, that could make the 3060 in the Nitro 5 perform even
worse than GTX 1660 Ti from last generation.
So basically just keep in mind that the RAM configuration can make a big impact to performance.
Unfortunately it’s the type of thing that will vary by region based on what’s available,
so you just might have to do some research and find out what the laptop you’re buying
ships with.
The battery in my Omen 15 is about 24% larger in terms of watt hour capacity compared to
the Nitro, but there are also Omens with smaller 52.5Wh batteries, so expect different results
there.
I haven’t been able to find any larger batteries to use in the Nitro if you don’t need the
2.5” drive bay, you just seem to be stuck with that.
The Omen with its larger battery was lasting for much longer than the Nitro in the YouTube
playback test, but only a bit more in the game test.
Honestly I was expecting better from the Nitro, given the lower specced model from last year
can be seen second from the top.
Let’s check out thermals next.
Both laptops have two fans and exhaust air out the back.
The nitro also exhausts air out of both the left and right sides, while the Omen is from
one side only, but the Omen also has two shared heatpipes compared to the one in the Nitro.
Both laptops give us some level of control over the fans, and both allow for the fans
to be manually set to full speed.
The Omen also lets us swap between balanced and performance modes, while the Nitro doesn’t
have any performance mode customizations available.
These are the temperatures for both laptops, CPUs are shown by the blue bars and GPUs in
the green bars.
At idle the Omen was cooler compared to the Nitro, otherwise all other results are from
running heavy CPU plus GPU stress tests to represent a worst case.
With both just running the fans at default speed in the lower performance mode for the
Omen, the Omen was warmer now.
With the fans maxed out and the Omen now in its higher performance mode, the Omen was
a little warmer on the CPU but the GPU was about the same, then the cooling pad I test
with, linked in the description below, closes the gap a little more.
The Omen was ahead in terms of clock speeds in all of these tests, both for the CPU and
GPU, and this is a result of higher power limits.
Although the GPUs ran up to a similar 95 watt limit, the Omen could boost to 100 watts with
the CPU less loaded up.
Additionally the Omen is able to send more power to the CPU, shown in the blue bars,
which is why it hits higher clock speeds, and therefore should also perform better,
but at the expense of some more heat.
In Cinebench R23, a CPU only workload with the GPU now idle, both Ryzen 5 5600H processors
were performing very closely.
The Nitro had a little more of an edge in single core performance, otherwise multicore
was essentially the same.
Honestly it’s so close this is likely silicon lottery rather than a laptop difference, a
single threaded workload shouldn’t hit any power or thermal limits.
The single core performance doesn’t really change when running on battery power, however
the Nitro is doing better in terms of multicore performance now.
The Ryzen Omen 15 is still better than even some 8 core Intel laptops, so not bad at all,
the Nitro is just better on battery.
The Nitro was a few degrees warmer while both were just sitting there idle, matching what
the internal temps reported earlier.
They’re similar in the middle when under stress test, not bad considering the internals
of the Omen were much warmer now.
The Nitro was a little warmer in the hot spot with the fans maxed out, no real difference
and neither felt hot to the touch in any case, but let’s have a listen to the fan noise.
The fans were about the same when sitting there idle, despite the internals of the Nitro
being warmer.
The Nitro was a little louder under stress test with the fans on auto speed, but the
Omen was also hotter internally now, then the Omen was able to get a little louder with
max fan speed, but both have user fan control so you can make customizations.
Now let’s see how both laptops compare in a few different games.
Cyberpunk 2077 was tested in little China with the street kid life path on all laptops,
and I’ve got both the Nitro 5 and Omen 15 highlighted in red.
The Omen 15 was just over 4 FPS ahead, so nothing major, and this is likely owing to
its higher power limits.
Both were behind the Legion 5 just ahead of it, though that has a higher power limit 3060
and a MUX switch, however the Legion 5 result is also with its stock RAM, so its performance
could be increased further.
Red Dead Redemption 2 was tested with the games benchmark, and again the Omen 15 was
coming out ahead of the Nitro 5, though again it’s just a similar 4-5 FPS difference,
or a 7% lead by the Omen.
Interestingly the Omen was scoring very close to the Legion 5, but again the Legion 5 could
also see gains with better memory too.
Control was tested walking through the same part of the game on all laptops.
The Omen 15 was ahead here too, but with a larger 12% gain to average FPS this time.
This is generally a more GPU heavy test, so I expect the GPU power limit difference matters
more here, which is also likely why the Legion 5 is now further ahead of the 3060 Omen 15
this time compared to the previous two games.
Unfortunately it’s not possible to disable optimus on either of these laptops as they
don’t have a MUX switch, I suppose that would increase the cost further, but that
said as mentioned it is possible to bypass optimus by connecting an external screen with
either laptop, so let’s find out what sort of a speed boost that gets us.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark, and I’ve got the external
screen results highlighted by the green bars.
The Nitro 5 with external screen was able to match the Omen 15 at stock with its own
screen, while the Omen combined with external screen only ends up being 1 FPS behind the
higher tier 3070 Omen, but we could of course also then boost the 3070 omen with an external
screen too.
Now let’s check out some content creator workloads.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark, and both laptops are highlighted
in red.
The Omen was slightly ahead, but it’s not very much of a difference at all.
The Omen was also ahead in Adobe Photoshop, but again the difference isn’t super massive
or anything, I’d be focusing more on the Omen for the better color gamut screen at
this point.
The differences in DaVinci Resolve were very small, technically the Nitro was ahead here,
but honestly less than a 10 point gap is within margin of error so I’d call them equivalent
here.
My Omen came with a 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD while the Nitro came with a 512gb drive, and the
Omen’s was performing much better.
The write speed for the Nitro was pretty terrible compared to the reads and is one of the slowest
I’ve tested in some time.
The Omen also has an SD card slot which the Nitro does not have, and speeds were alright
there.
Linux support was tested with an Ubuntu 21 live CD.
The Nitro’s keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness, keyboard brightness and volume
all worked, while the Omen’s did not.
That said, Wi-Fi on the Nitro didn’t work, probably because the Mediatek card needs some
drivers that aren’t there by default.
Alright let’s discuss price next, this will of course change over time so refer to those
links in the description below for updates.
At the time of recording, the Nitro 5 with the same CPU and GPU that I’ve tested here
is $1150 USD, though it’s not clear if the 16 gigs of memory is single channel.
The Omen 15 on the other hand is $1120 for the 5600H and 3060 combination, though it’s
$50 to upgrade to 16 gigs of memory in dual channel, but hey at least the lower RAM option
still specifies that it’s dual channel.
All things considered, I think the HP Omen 15 is the better gaming laptop.
The Nitro 5 is generally one of the cheaper options available, but in this particular
case the Omen 15 doesn’t end up being all that more expensive.
The Omen’s just winning more tests than it’s losing.
Maybe if the 3060 Nitro was a bit closer to that $1000 price point it might be a bit more
attractive, but for similar money, in my personal opinion, the Omen 15 is definitely worth paying
more for compared to the Nitro 5 at a similar price point.
The Omen doesn’t have a numpad, but I don’t personally use that.
The Omen’s design looks a bit more professional compared to the aggressive gamer feel of the
Nitro.
The Omen otherwise has a better screen with FreeSync that gets brighter with better color
gamut and is half as quick in terms of response time.
Performance in most applications was generally better on the Omen owing to its higher power
limits, plus it’s also got a bit more control over the performance through the software.
The SSD was faster on the Omen, plus it has an SD card slot for creators.
I/O was otherwise similar, but the Omen also has a mini DisplayPort, and all of its three
display outputs bypass optimus, whereas only HDMI does this on the Nitro.
The Omen’s battery life is better as the Nitro has a smaller battery due to its 2.5”
drive bay.
I suppose that drive bay can be considered either a positive or a negative based on whether
or not you want it.
Personally I think it’s a bit unfortunate that Acer didn’t take the approach of Lenovo’s
Legion 5.
That still gives you the option of running with a smaller battery and a 2.5” drive
if you want it, or you can pull out the 2.5” drive and install a larger battery, but as
things currently stand I can’t find a larger battery for the Nitro 5, so it seems that
you’re stuck with that 2.5” bay regardless.
It’s also important to note that the Omen 15 has all these advantages while also being
smaller and lighter, so yeah that’s why I think the Omen 15 is better than the Nitro
5, but let me know which of these two laptops you thought was better down in the comments
below.
If you need any further information on either of these two gaming laptops then check out
my full review videos over here, as I go into even more depth in those.
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