HP Omen Gaming Series: Insanely Fast, Powerful & VR-Ready Units Revealed [VIDEO]
HP is once more bringing its champion to the gaming market, this time in the form of a couple of laptops, a powerful desktop and a dedicated gaming monitor under the company's Omen brand. Featuring formidable specs and relatively reasonable prices, HP's new line is set to take the gaming industry by storm.
The new Omen line debuted on Thursday, headlined by two laptops that echo much of the favorites from the first Omen gaming laptop that HP unveiled back in 2014. According to HP, the new notebooks, a 15-inch and 17-inch model that are simply called Omen laptops, exhibit the best of what the company could offer in a stylish, slim frame.
The exterior of the new Omen laptops looks very attractive, thanks to a relatively slim frame that houses the raw power from the latest Intel processors. At 25mm thick for the 15-inch model and 30mm thick for the 17-inch variant, the new Omen laptops are pretty slim by gaming standards. Indeed, the Omen units would look far more stylish than the traditional gaming notebooks such as Dell's Alienware.
The frame of the laptops themselves is rather simple as well, with the notebooks clad in a black "shadow mesh" shell with red accents. The keyboard is, of course, backlit with a special color that HP fondly refers to as "Dragon Red."
The magic of the units lies inside, however, as HP was able to equip the unit with Nvidia's GeForce 950M, with some variants sporting the newer 965M. Though the GPUs are not Nvidia's current flagships, they are nonetheless extremely capable. Indeed, HP asserted that the GPUs are good enough to run any graphics-heavy game at mid-to-high levels.
Considering their specs, the HP Omen laptops start at a rather reasonable $899 for the 15-inch variant. The 17-incher is set to start at $979.
Apart from the two Omen laptops, the hardware manufacturer also unveiled a high-end gaming desktop. Essentially a revamped version of the HP Envy Phoenix, the Omen tower was designed with virtual reality in mind. According to HP, the Omen is specifically designed to support the HTC Vive. The Omen is also expected to fully support the Oculus Rift.
Inside, the Omen desktop is a full-on monster, with specs going as high as an overclockable Intel Core i7-6700K and Nvidia's most powerful GPU to date, the GeForce 1080. Variations with the AMD R9 Fury X will also be available.
The HP Omen desktop is set to be paired with a 32-inch monitor called the HP 32 Display. According to HP, the 32-inch, Quad HD unit promises a 5-millisecond response time and a refresh rate of 75Hz. The monitor is also certified with AMD's FreeSync.
Unfortunately, HP has not announced the prices of the Omen desktop and the HP 32 Display. Nevertheless, considering their features, the Omen series' presence alone is certain to make significant waves in the high-end gaming market.
