Last year I said the HP Omen 15 was the second best Ryzen gaming laptop of 2020, and now
it’s time to see what changes have been made with the new 2021 model!
Both the CPU and GPU have been upgraded, we’ve now got the latest Ryzen 5000 and Nvidia RTX
3000 graphics here, and although mine has a 1080p 144Hz screen, there’s also now a
1440p 165Hz option too - you can find other configurations and updated prices with the
links below
The overall design looks the same as last gen, dark finish with reflective blue Omen
logo on the lid with a clean interior.
The laptop alone weighs 2.1kg or under 4.7Lb, then 2.8kg or 6.2lb with the 200 watt power
brick and cables for charging.
The dimensions are pretty standard for a 15” gaming laptop, it’s just an insignificant
amount thicker than last year’s model.
Mine has a 15.6” 1080p 144Hz screen, unfortunately you can’t disable optimus for a speed boost
so no G-Sync.
It does have FreeSync, but with a 40Hz to 60Hz range it’s only going to be useful
in demanding titles with low frame rates.
The colour gamut wasn’t that great at 88% of sRGB, and brightness was just above 300
nits, so not too bad but not amazing, but expect different results with the 1440p option.
There aren’t any panel overdrive modes available, so by default my 144Hz screen had an 8.35ms
average grey-to-grey response time, below the 6.9 for transitions to occur within the
refresh window.
It’s not doing that well when compared against others, but it’s only slightly behind the
LG panel in last year's Ryzen Omen 15.
The same AUO panel was used in the Intel based HP Pavilion 15, and that had a similar result.
Backlight bleed was only minor, not something I ever noticed during regular use, but this
will vary between laptops and panels.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the middle, no Windows Hello support though.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like, here’s what it sounds like
to type on the keyboard, and this is what it sounds like if I set the fan to full speed,
so you can still hear me ok over the fan noise.
My keyboard just has white backlighting, it illuminates all keys and secondary functions
and can either be turned or off, there’s no brightness adjustments, there’s also
a 4-zone RGB keyboard option though.
There’s no numpad, but the arrow keys aren’t small and have plenty of spacing.
I liked typing with the keyboard, it felt a bit softer compared to Lenovo’s Legion
series that I’m currently using.
The power button is right next to delete and backspace, but despite the Windows defaults
saying a press will put it to sleep, I found it to do nothing in case of an accidental
press.
Both sides of the keyboard have these small stands, presumably to prevent the screen from
bending when the lid is closed, and these weren’t present in last year’s model.
The precision touchpad clicks down anywhere, is using all available space, and worked well,
no problems there.
On the left from the back there’s the power input, gigabit ethernet, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A
port, HDMI 2.1 output, 3.5mm audio combo jack and a full sized SD card slot.
The right has a USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support, mini DisplayPort
output, air exhaust vent on this side, and two more USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports at the
back.
The laptop cannot be charged with Type-C, but all three display outputs including HDMI,
Type-C and mini DisplayPort connect directly to the Nvidia GPU, bypassing optimus.
The back just has vents for air to exhaust, while the front is all smooth.
There’s no spaces for getting your fingers in but due to the angle it’s still easy
enough to open the lid with one finger and the screen goes the full 180 degrees back
for sharing.
There still seems to be quite a bit of flex to the screen, just like last year, but it
hardly moves when typing and using it, and as mentioned the flex with the lid closed
should be improved.
There’s also some flex to the keyboard, but nothing you’ll notice during normal
use.
The front edge and corners were sharp feeling if you brush up against them, and I would
notice this while typing, it just felt uncomfortable at times, but this may be because I have larger
hands.
Underneath we’ve just got air exhaust vents towards the back, directly above the fans
and over the heatpipes.
Getting inside requires removing 8 phillips head screws, and the 4 down the front are
shorter than the rest.
It was easy enough to open using the tools linked in the description.
Inside we’ve got the battery down the front, two M.2 storage slots on either sides with
metal heat covers, two memory slots above the battery, and WiFi 6 appears to be soldered
to the board, which wasn’t the case with my last gen Ryzen 4000 model.
The speakers are underneath on the left and right sides towards the front.
They sound about average for a gaming laptop, tinier compared to the Legion 7 I’m testing
at the same time with only minor bass, but still clear at max volume rather than distorted,
and the latencymon results were looking alright.
The Omen 15 has a 6-Cell 70.9Wh battery.
I’ve tested it with all lighting off, background apps disabled and screen set to 50% brightness.
It’s stacking up quite well compared to others, lasting for 8 and a half hours in
the YouTube playback test.
There was noticeable battery drain while I was running my stress tests and game tests.
After a couple of hours of maxing it out the battery charge had dipped to 79% while being
plugged in, so it seems like the 200 watt power brick might not be enough for the 5800H
and 3070 configuration at full load.
I’m not sure if this would be the case with a lower specced option though.
Let’s check out thermals next.
There are a couple of heatpipes shared between CPU and GPU, and it looks like we’ve got
VRM coverage too.
The Omen software lets us swap between two performance modes, balanced and performance
from lowest to highest respectively.
You can also change fan speed, either with manual mode to a specific RPM value, or just
enable maximum fan speed.
I did all testing here with auto fan mode, because as you’ll hear later, performance
mode with auto fans for my tests was the same as using max fans anyway, so no need to test
both.
The idle results down the bottom were fine.
I’ve run stress tests with both the CPU and GPU loaded up to represent a worst case,
as well as playing an actual game.
The GPU, represented by the green bars, was never hitting thermal throttling, and was
actually running quite cool in performance mode.
The CPU on the other hand was under 90 degrees in performance mode, and then lower still
with the cooling pad I’m testing with, which is linked in the description.
These are the clockspeeds for the same tests just shown.
Not terrible results, but other Ryzen laptops have been able to surpass 4GHz in these tests,
so the 5800H in the Omen is a bit behind.
This seems to be because the processor is limited to 35 watts when the GPU is active,
most others are able to at least run up to 45 watts, but it appears that the Omen is
preferencing a lower power limit, and thereby lower performance to get lower temperatures.
I tried using Ryzen controller to boost it, but it had no effect.
The GPU was hitting peaks of 100 watts in the stress tests, which is what the Nvidia
control panel reports, but dynamic boost doesn’t seem to be doing as well in this particular
game comparatively, only averaging 80 watts.
Here’s how the different modes perform in Cinebench R23.
There’s not too much difference but performance mode does clearly have an edge here.
It’s not doing super well compared to others, yeah the result still looks good and it’s
above the 4800H last gen models, but it’s behind other 5800H results.
We’re not losing too much performance on battery power, it’s doing better than the
XMG Neo 15 now both in single and multicore performance at least, whereas it wasn’t
doing this when plugged in.
The keyboard was in the low 30s when idling, normal stuff compared to others and cool to
the touch.
It rises to high 30s in the middle when under stress test, so only a little warm worst case.
Performance mode wasn’t too different, we’re still not seeing above 40 degrees in the hot
spots which is a great result and likely in part due to the lower 35 watt limit on the
CPU, let’s have a listen to the fans.
It was pretty much silent when idling in balanced mode.
It’s a fair bit louder with the stress tests running, the 2021 model doesn’t have the
lower comfort mode like last year’s model.
Performance mode was then running the same as with the fan set to max speed in this particular
test, which is why I didn’t bother testing different fan speeds earlier.
Now let’s find out how well this configuration of HP Omen 15 performs in games, but use this
as a rough guide only as laptops were tested at different times with different drivers.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the Omen 15 is highlighted
in red.
The result isn’t bad or anything, but compared to the 3070 in the Intel based Aero 15, well
that was reaching 11% higher average frame rate in this test, while the Neo 15 with higher
GPU power limit was 21% higher.
It’s only just behind the 3080 in the ASUS G15 just above it, but both are capped to
100 watts and don’t let you disable optimus.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset, and the Omen 15 is sitting in the same position relative to the same
laptops we just looked at.
It’s the lowest result I’ve got from an RTX 3070 laptop so far, but although not as
good as others, it’s not like this is bad performance or anything, it’s just that
you might be able to get better performance from a different laptop with the same GPU
- it all comes down to cost difference.
Far Cry 5 was also tested with the games benchmark tool at max settings.
The Omen 15 moves down a bit in this test, still around 100 FPS and realistically there
isn’t too much difference between it and some of the 2070 Max-Q and 2070 Super Max-Q
laptops from last generation such as the Aorus 15 and Legion 7i just above, however those
are Intel based and it does seem that Intel based laptops have an edge over Ryzen in this
specific test.
I’ve also connected an external monitor and retested tombraider, and we’re able
to get more than a 9% boost to average FPS with this simple change which helps demonstrate
the performance we’d be getting if the laptop let us disable optimus, as using the external
screen with any of the three ports bypasses the iGPU.
Overall gaming performance is decent, as we would expect from an RTX 3070 laptop.
It’s just not doing quite as well as others due to that 100 watt GPU power limit, 35 watt
CPU power limit, and the inability of disabling optimus, but that might matter less with the
1440p screen option - again links to different configurations can be found below.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike, Timespy and Port Royal from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want
a detailed look at these results.
Adobe Premiere was tested with the Puget Systems benchmark.
It’s actually scoring 7% above the MSI GP76 just below it, which has RTX 3070 graphics
too but at higher wattage, though that one has a 6 core Intel processor.
Adobe Photoshop generally depends more on processor performance, and we might be limited
by the lower power limit of the processor as it’s behind other Ryzen 5000 machines,
and only just above the last gen 4800H in the RP-15 under it.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, and the 3070 is doing about as expected here, scoring
pretty much the same as two other 3070 laptops just under it, granted those have higher GPU
power limits.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
The drive speed for the 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD was doing fairly well for both reads and writes,
we can always install a second drive in the spare slot.
The SD card slot was doing alright for the reads, but very poorly for the writes.
I don’t think this matters much though as most people would use the slot to dump footage.
The card clicks in and sits most of the way into the machine.
There wasn’t anything special in the BIOS, mostly the standard options that you’d expect
for the most part.
I booted an Ubuntu 20 live CD to test Linux support.
Out of the box the WiFi, keyboard, touchpad and camera work, but screen brightness with
the keyboard shortcuts was not working, it probably just needs an update.
Let’s discuss price, you can check the links in the description for updated prices, as
these will change over time.
At the time of recording, the lowest model with 6 core Ryzen 5 5600H processor and Nvidia
RTX 3060 graphics starts at $1120 USD, then you can pay more for higher CPU or GPU options
or for a 1440p screen.
Alright so with all of that in mind, let’s summarise both the good and the bad to help
you decide if the HP Omen 15 gaming laptop is worth considering in 2021.
All things considered, it’s pretty much the same laptop as last year but with new
CPU, new GPU, and that 1440p screen option.
I don’t think there’s too much wrong with not making any changes given I did say this
was the 2nd best Ryzen gaming laptop of last year, but at the same time this does also
mean that they’ve missed the chance to improve it and push it to the next level.
The only changes that I actually noticed apart from the newer specs were that WiFi is soldered
to the motherboard now, and there are these stands on the sides to prevent screen flexing
when the lid is closed.
If there are any other differences, then they’re probably equally as subtle as those.
It runs alright, but there’s performance being left on the table as a result of the
35 watt CPU power limit, 100 watt GPU power limit, which was running up to 80 watts in
some of my game testing, and again the inability of disabling optimus, and despite those limits
in place, I still found the battery to drain on the 3070 model when under heavy CPU plus
GPU load, so at least it seems that the 3070 model could probably benefit from a larger
power brick than the 200 watt one that it comes with.
Depending on how the 3060 model runs, it might be a better sweet spot, both in terms of price
to performance ratio but also hopefully using less power and draining the battery.
I’m meant to be getting that one soon so we’ll see.
The only other thing I didn’t personally like while using it was the front edge could
feel sharp while typing.
I am planning on comparing the new Omen 15 against the new Lenovo Legion 5 gaming laptop
soon, so make sure you’re subscribed for that upcoming laptop comparison.
Come and join us in Discord and get behind the scenes videos by supporting the channel
on Patreon, otherwise for now you can find out how well this Omen 15 gaming laptop performs
in 13 different games.