HP and gaming rarely exist in same sentence these days but some time ago, the company was actually ambitious enough to venture into that particular area of the market. The company even acquired VoodooPC, a high performance PC company in order to push its position in the gaming market.
Together, they came out with the Voodoo Omen gaming desktop in 2008 but unfortunately, HP’s gaming ambition fizzled out not long after that. Hence, it seems a bit weird that HP has decided to bring the Omen name back to life once again in 2014. This time around though, it is reincarnated as HP Omen gaming laptop instead of its original desktop form factor.
Could it be due to the recent split between its consumer and enterprise divisions which allows the HP Omen to be reincarnated once again? I guess the answer is out there but nevertheless, it is also equally surprising to see that HP has actually made some effort into the creating the laptop judging from what we’ve seen during our brief time with the HP Omen at its Malaysian launch event last week. HP Envy, this is not.
For starters, its chassis is made from aluminium. Complete with a textured lid, the HP Omen is draped in full black finish from top to bottom which gives it quite a sleek look but unfortunately, the paint job also turned the laptop into a fingerprint magnet. Additionally, there are also a set of blue tints on both ends of the laptop’s chrome hinge which were apparently inspired by the blue tints that appear on the tip of titanium exhaust pipes on high performance vehicles.
With a thickness of 19.9mm, the 2.12 kg laptop is also designed in such a way that its base is narrower than other part of the laptop but despite that, we found that it doesn’t affect the laptop’s stability. The bottom part of the laptop features a rather intricate textured design which is apparently designed to feed cool air into the laptop’s dual thermal fans while stopping hot air from entering it at the same time.
Just like many gaming laptops out there, the HP Omen also comes standard with a backlit keyboard but instead of a boring single colour keyboard, the laptop’s keyboard is divided into five separate light zones that can be customized using a software called HP Omen Control. The software also allow users to set light colours for the laptop’s power button and Beats Audio speakers in addition to shortcut keys.
As pretty as the laptop might look though, we are quite baffled to see all of its I/O ports which include a HDMI, mini DisplayPort, four USB 3.0 and even its 3.5mm audio port are positioned at its back. We reckon that it might not be convenient for some users since they have to lower down the laptop’s display or turn the laptop around in order to access those ports.
In terms of internal components, the HP Omen should not have any problem churning out the necessary frame rate needed to play most of the games in the market in full HD. Apart from its 15.6-inch full HD touch display, the laptop is also equipped with 2.5GHz Intel Core i7-4710HQ processor, 16GB 1600MHz DDR3L RAM, Maxwell-based NVIDIA GTX 860M GPU with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM, and a 512GB solid state drive.
Price-wise, the HP Omen carries a rather hefty price tag at RM6,999. As nice as it might look, the HP Omen will definitely face tough challenges not only from gaming laptops that are positioned at the same price level but also against plenty of mid-range GTX 860M-based gaming laptops in the market that cost way lower including the Acer V15 Nitro Black Edition, ASUS RoG G551 series, Lenovo Y50-70 and MSI G Series.
If you are curious about 2014’s reincarnation of the HP Omen and want to see the new gaming laptop yourselves, it is expected to arrive at HP Concept Stores throughout Malaysia starting from tomorrow, 10 December. Alternatively, you can learn more about it over at HP Malaysia’s official website as well.
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