HP Has Treats for Gamers on a Budget: Omen 16 and Victus 15 Notebooks Are Coming This Summer

HP is leveling up its gaming laptop lineup, and gamers on a budget have two more laptop options.

The company is introducing Victus 17, a new model that is intended for entry-level gamers who don't need to play every game at Ultra settings at 300 frames per second. With a base price of $799, this handsome unit already has some decent components.

If you're after a more powerful notebook, you can turn it into Omen 16. It was introduced last year, and now, it's getting thermal upgrades. Omen 16's price starts at $1,199.

Both models will be available from HP's website and other retailers this summer.

Omen 16: Powerful Unit at a Lower Price

The Omen 16 is gaming laptop gamers would want to lay their hands on. It has a clean design, inoffensive branding, and four-zone RGB keys. It comes in two colors, with Intel-powered models in Ceramic White, and the AMD options in Mica Silver. It weighs 5.3 pounds and is 0.9 inches thick.

It has a good selection of ports to choose between, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports (or standard USB-C on AMD models), three USB Type-A inputs, an HDMI 2.1, an SD card slot, and RJ-45 Ethernet jack, and a headphone/mic jack.

HP made a lot of cooling improvements to this year's model. The company added a fifth heat pipe and a fourth outflow vent, which resulted in 3% lower GPU and 14% SSD temperatures.

The Omen comes with options from each of the major chipmakers: on the CPU front, you can choose between an AMD Ryzen 9 6800H or Intel Core i7-12700H CPUs, while the GPU is left to Nvidia or AMD in the form of up to an RTX 3070 Ti or Radeon RX 6650M GPU. Whichever CPU/GPU combo you pick can be paired with up to 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM and up to a 2x 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, as per Gizmodo report.

With 16.1-inch, 1440p resolution IPS display, it has a 165Hz refresh rate at a 16:9 aspect ratio. HP says it goes up to 300 nits, the bare minimum in this price range, according to Gizmodo. There are also two 1080p options at either 144Hz or 60Hz.

Victus 15: A Treat for Gamers on a Budget

The Victus 15-inch version appears like an acceptable budget gaming laptop.

Victus 15 has a similarly understated design with a handsome V-shaped logo centered on the lid. Again, HP promotes improvements to the thermals (7% better airflow). It promises that the Victus will stay cool under a heavy workload.

Victus is inspired by the Omen design, but it has one advantage over the Omen. The Performance Blue color option joins the Mica Silver and Ceramic White.

When it comes to the specs, the Victus 15 is powered by either Intel Core i5-12500H or AMD Radeon RX 6500M CPUs and up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM. You'll enjoy your game at 1080p rather than 4K on the RTX 3050 Ti or Radeon RX 6500M, but most titles will run well above 60 frames per second, Gizmodo reported.