have you ever dreamed of having two screens on a laptop I'm sure I did back
in the day when I had conversations with my high school friends we came up with
some interesting designs that had two displays we jam-packed it with some high
in specs faster CPU GPU and memory available at the time I don't even know
where those sketches are right now we probably ended up throwing that out but
anyways we're slowly starting to see that dream turned into reality with a
lot of these dual screen notebooks entering into the market and it has been
generating some mixed reactions within the community some say that it is
amazing I can do so many things with that second
screen I'm gonna be a pro activity champ creators can take advantage for that
little display whereas others think that it is a gimmick why add a second screen
on notebook it adds heat to the system it's probably gonna affect battery life
and performance and potentially it also results in notebook designs that don't
look like laptops anymore so in front of me is HP's omen x 2s it's a really
powerful gaming laptop features Intel's Core i7 19 CPU six innings of RAM a
terabyte of PCIe SSD 144 Hertz g-sync display and RT X 28 Emacs cute this
thing is absolutely specked out but above all of that HP has implemented a
second display that allows gamers streamers or anyone who can take
advantage of that second screen the flexibility to run multiple apps at the
same time the starting price of the 2's is a little over 1,800 US dollars and
for that you get a smaller SSD and an rtX 2070 max-q GPU the spec that I
have over here it cost around $2,400 but you can spend nearly 4 grand to spec
this thing out but instead of making this a typical notebook review I'm gonna
be focusing on that second screen how does it actually benefit a gamer
considering that this is a gaming laptop does it affect performance battery life
does it also affect filmer issues as well basically what is it like using a
notebook with two screens well allow me to walk you through my experience but
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is a six inch 1080p 60 Hertz display with touch support when you boot up the
notebook HP scum and Center takes over the screen automatically where it allows
the user to monitor system resources you can also switch between different
performance modes like comfort default and dynamic power performance which was
the mode that was used to run the benchmarks this changes the behavior of
the CPU and GPU then you can customize the RGB lighting of the system but oddly
enough it won't let you customize the keyboard until you open command center
on the primary display so keep that in mind the next tab lets you screen mirror
a particular portion of your gameplay and I'll get to that in just a moment
the last tab offers a few more settings for the screen including the ability to
enable or disable touch support for the screen while you're in a game play now
this is a standalone display which means you can bring in any program you like to
the second screen and start working off of it the downside is that it is a
glossy display which means it's extremely difficult to view content
outdoors and the view angles are pretty terrible
I wouldn't recommend watching videos on the screen there is a weird magenta
shift when you look at it from a normal position and contrast is just way off
but if you stare at it directly overhead it's fine except you'd look ridiculous
that way HP has built a few keys right above the numpad that allows you to turn
off the display although do keep in mind that it doesn't disconnect itself from
the GPU Windows still sees it as a second screen you also have the ability
to adjust the brightness of the display and an interesting feature that lets you
switch apps instantly between the main display and the secondary display so for
instance if you're working off of the main display and you have a video
playing in the background on the second screen and you're constantly really
exciting in the video that you want to bring into your main display as quick as
possible that button is supposed to switch the video to this main screen and
then what's on the main screen to the second screen except it barely worked on
my sample sometimes I ended up getting glitches on the video on the main
display that just looked weird in other cases it just
didn't work it was a little bit frustrating to see this feature not work
especially since it is very applicable
if I or other you know casual apps and also do keep in mind that if you have a
game running in the main display and if you want to switch that it's just not
gonna work moving on to actual use case scenarios
well to be honest I have mixed feelings about using the second display let's
start off with the basic stuff like bringing in your file explorer while
working on something else on the main screen it could be useful if you want to
quickly access things but I have some difficulty weeding the text because the
screen is just way too small what's really cool is that as soon as
you drag the window from the main display to the second screen it
automatically snaps into full-screen mode although keep in mind that it does
not work with every application so that's something to keep note of I think
one of my favorite use case is browsing through my spotify playlist the app does
a pretty good job with scaling and it's fairly intuitive to navigate around with
if you're into discord the screen works pretty well with the app you can
coordinate with your fellow teammates by talking to them while playing and it
doesn't interrupt your gameplay that's running on your main screen which is
really cool if you're into streaming and if you use OBS this is a great way to
monitor your stream on the second screen while focusing on your main task
I think this would come in super handy for streamers on the go I should also
mention that you're only allowed to run one application at a time on this
display you can't split screens although that would look worse in the first place
then there is the real time screen mirroring feature that allows you to
snip a portion of your gameplay and magnify it onto the second screen it
sounds like it's pretty straightforward but it isn't because there are some
things that you have to keep in mind before trying this out first every game
that you run should be on borderless windowed mode because it is a secondary
display after all and you need to be able to move the cursor from top to
bottom secondly you have to define the specific area before the gameplay starts
because once you're in the snipping feature won't work and you can't change
it in real time so you have to hit escape assign the area and get back in
now does the screen mirroring feature make you a better gamer not really
because I take advantage of it I mean a few use
cases that you could take advantage of is probably bringing in your maps or
your health status or potentially if you want to magnify your shooting target to
target your enemy that is one use case scenario but realistically speaking guys
it is something that you're running on a flat display that's literally on a
horizontal service and you're kind of supposed to focus on what's on the main
display and if you just lose your focus for just a second and look in your
second screen someone might just snipe you within that second so you just lose
that momentum that you've been building up so far so it's it's a cool concept
but I don't think it would significantly or it would help you become a better
gamer that's just that's just my take now I did try running some creative
applications like Adobe Premiere but guys I hate to say this again but the
screen is just way too small to accommodate the timeline and the scaling
is pretty terrible it's very difficult to read text when you're viewing at a
normal distance I tried bringing in other panelists like the Lummi tree
scopes and lumetri color but unfortunately it's just difficult to
read the text on top of the glossy screen plus the not-so-great viewing
angles make it an unviable solution I also experienced some courts with the
second screen so when I'm having a video playing in the background on this
display and have something on my main display whether if it's you know running
a game or perhaps in resolve or something like that the video actually
starts stuttering which really wasn't pleasing to the eye also the screen just
stopped responding to me sometimes it just just wouldn't work if I'm trying to
bring a window from my main display to the second display it just it's
completely disabled it gets disconnected from the GPU which means I had to get it
fixed with a restart so that was a bit annoying like I said the hardware still
needs refinements and most importantly software is something that HP certainly
has to take a look into so does the second display benefit me in any shape
or form I personally can't bring it into my workflow but I think that this could
be a great solution for streamers on the go with all of that out of the way let's
quickly talk about the design of this laptop well it is a gaming laptop after
all HP has stuck with their omen mantra for a while now and they
haven't really done anything different here the front panel has an interesting
choice of textures I'm glad that it is in brushed aluminum the omen logo is
backlit and RGB and you can customize that through the command center the
build quality of the 2S is really good it's actually a little bit on the
heavier side coming in at over 5 pounds so even though that it might look like a
Finn gaming laptop it isn't necessarily light it's certainly heavier than my
razor blade 15 opening up the notebook you're greeted with the keyboard and
trackpad shift it's at the bottom this is of course to do to that second screen
the keys have a good amount of travel distance and it's tactile it's much
better than my razor blade 15 I'd say it's on par to the arrow 15X from
gigabytes so that's a good thing it's also RGB backlit and customizable
through command center the trackpad is shifted to the right hand side and to be
honest with you it's easier to get used to but I feel like it's a bit too small
again this is because I'm used to track pads that are larger on the positive
side the surface is really smooth for navigation it is one of the best track
pants that I've used on a notebook thanks to precision drivers plus you
also get dedicated left and right buttons and with the help of pressing
this button it brings up a virtual numpad on the second screen port
selection is decent on the left hand side there's power in HDMI 2.0 2 USB 3.1
gen2 a ports in such n2 that's a big red flag guys I mean this laptop cost over
$2,400 and you're getting IO that's not up to spec so basically you won't have
access to the 10 gigabits per second protocol with Gen 2 because you're stuck
with five gigabits per second with Gen 1 as for the rest of the ports there's
Gigabit Ethernet headphone and mic jack on the right hand side there's an extra
3.1 gen one port and a Thunderbolt 3 port that also functions as DP 1.4 the
display on the 2's is great it's a 1080p 144 Hertz IPS screen with
g-sync I had an absolute blast gaming on and
color reproduction is really good and I didn't notice any packwood bleed with my
naked eye so that's nice in terms of upgrade ability when you open up this
laptop you have instant access to the memory modules which are populated you
also have an additional m2 slot for expandable 'ti so that's nice this
notebook comes with a 72 watt hour battery
unfortunately battery life is not great and I expected this because it's got
high inspects a 140 for her to G Singh display and on top of that you also have
a second screen running off of that graphics card so with my light load test
I got roughly over two and a half hours and on a heavy load tests maybe close to
two hours but interestingly enough I decided to run these tests with the
second display turned on and that also significantly brings down the battery
life so certainly not the best and something to definitely keep note of the
i7 9750 h6 scored 12 thread CPU performs like a champ the clock speeds were
hitting 4.4 gigahertz on all six course and it is the fastest notebook sleepier
than i've seen as you can see with the Cinebench r15
r20 and blender tests it takes the lead compared to the Allegiant Wi-Fi 45
featuring that same CPU moving on to my Adobe premier benchmark unfortunately it
did not do well the system took over 20 minutes to render our 13 minute 4k
project and I expected this because it's running a decent display and you HD
Graphics is disabled and the user does not have the option to disable G Singh
to enable you H to graphics like what you were able to do with the Y 740 from
Lenovo so yeah when it comes to Adobe Premiere the rendering performance is
not that great however if you plan on editing with DaVinci Resolve the studio
version to be exact this thing is gonna fly because you've got that RT X 28
Emacs q2 to take advantage of gaming on the other hand was as expected fantastic
you can easily push over a hundred frames per second in pretty much every
triple-a title like battlefield one overwatch and apex legends far cry 5 and
Shadow the to mirror also did really well but I thought to myself since this
laptop comes with a second display does it actually impact gaming performance
well it certainly does but nothing significant to a point where it's
unplayable I ran a 4k video on that screen and ran
these benchmarks taking a look at temperatures and things are not looking
good guys you see when I was briefed on this notebook HP mentioned that they
used liquid metal from thermal grizzly on the CPU and GPU and it was really
excited about that until I put it to the test as you can see the CPU gets to a
whopping 97 see and guys this is just when
rendering a video using Adobe Premiere that's disappointing and really odd
considering liquid metal supposed to bring down those temps significantly
interestingly enough I didn't notice the clock speeds throttle while running
these tests so it looks like the CPU was being pushed to its limits but that
application seemed to work really well with the GPU the max temp I saw in the
r-tx 20 max queue was 68 C and that's damn good for a GP of that caliber and
the clock speeds on the GPU were hitting about 1600 megahertz so that's up to
spec I should also mention that that secondary display adds heat to the
system so as you can see by these thermal shots back and forth there is a
significant difference between the two when the display is turned off and
turned on with a game running in the background fan noise is respectable
under gaming scenarios it doesn't sound like a jet fan which is nice but during
idle scenarios you can still hear the fans ramp up I'm just gonna stay silent
for a second so you guys can listen for yourselves
so hopefully that gave you a rough idea there is unfortunately no way to control
the fan RPMs through command center I still feel like the software is a little
bit limiting in that area so hopefully HP could update that in the future oh
and for those of you wondering about performance differences between comfort
default and dynamic power performance well here are the numbers on my cinnamon
jar 15 run yes there is a difference so it really depends on what you want to do
at an instant so I guess this brings us to the conclusion and guys I know it's
been a long one but I hope I was able to answer a lot of the questions that you
guys might have had with this laptop but let's kick things off with that second
display it's a cool implementation I got give HP the credit for implementing and
thinking out of the box in terms of implementing one in a gaming notebook
but it still has a lot of work to be done first and foremost it's glossy it's
small the text is very difficult to read especially on a normal viewing distance
and I wish HP was able to extend the display all the way to the left and the
right so you get a little bit more virtual screen real estate the battery
life is also pretty terrible on this notebook but that is to be expected
considering the specs and it just isn't your typical gaming
laptop that you can lug around with it's more of a temporary plug-and-play
solution and that's obviously due to the trackpad and the keyboard shifted
towards the bottom so you also lose the lap ability which is certainly something
to consider especially if you plan on taking this to say university or your
work place things there are a lot of factors to consider before pulling the
trigger on this laptop not to mention it starts at $1,800 and for that you get an
RT X 2070 max Q and a 1440 hurts juicing display and I'm glad that they aren't
charging a boatload of cash for that second screen but my biggest issue with
this laptop are those CP temperatures they just run
way too hot especially on a regular workload like rendering a video and
Adobe Premiere it just doesn't make any sense they say that they have applied
liquid metal on the CPU but I just can't see that working that well especially on
this notebook on the other hand it does cool that our TX 28 max Q really well I
mean 60 Hz under full load that's that's just amazing so with all of that being
said I want to know your thoughts about the Omen X 2S gaming laptop what do you
guys think about it I wonder thoughts about this second
display is it something that you can take advantage of if you're a streamer
who's watching this video I want to know her thoughts about that second screen do
you see yourself taking manage of it especially if you're on the go again
chiming in the comments down below I'm here with hybrid connects thank you
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signing off and I'll see you guys in the next one