HP Omen 16 (2022) review: Great for gaming, but not much else

I also just like how the Omen 16 looks. It's not a lightweight or thin laptop, but it is sleek, coming in an all-black chassis that has very little in the way of flair. It makes this a laptop you can use in public without getting too much attention. It also has one of my favorite laptop keyboards ever.

But that's not to say this is a perfect laptop. For one thing, a lot of that performance goes away when you unplug the charger, and battery life isn't that great to compensate. Plus, the Omen line feels like it's too narrowly focused on gaming, and while competitors are opting for 16:10 displays and adding 1080p webcams, the Omen 16 continues to overlook all of that. It's a good laptop for gaming and not much else. You might want to check out the newer Omen Transcend 16 for something that feels more modern.

About this review: HP sent us this laptop for the purposes of this review. It did not see the contents of this article before publishing.

HP Omen 16 (2022): Pricing and availability

HP announced the refreshed Omen lineup for 2022 in May of that year, and it launched a few months later. However, it has since been replaced by 13th-generation models, which offer more power and efficiency. You can no longer find the 2022 Omen 16 easily through the biggest retailers, at least if you're buying new. We recommend checking out our review of the 2023 model to learn more about it.

The Omen 16 starts at $1,299.99, but prices vary greatly depending on your chosen configuration. The one HP sent me is a fairly high-end configuration with a Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which is the most powerful GPU option available for this laptop. Right now, this configuration comes to $2,299.99, though you might be able to find it on sale.

Design and ports

Thick but subdued

The first thing that surprised me about the Omen 16 was its sleek appearance. Yes, it's quite thick, but aside from that, you could easily be fooled into thinking this is just a normal laptop. There isn't much that gives away that this is for gaming aside from the large fan vents, but even those are designed to look elegant. This is a really nice-looking laptop and something I really wouldn't mind bringing out in public.

To help with cooling, the Omen 16 also has very large rubber feet, which raise the air intake vents significantly above the surface so more cool air can be pulled in. What's more, the underside of the laptop has a grid of metal that helps dissipate heat from the chassis.

This is a really nice-looking laptop and something I really wouldn't mind bringing out in public.

The build quality is alright. The keyboard deck, which is made from aluminum, feels solid. We're in winter right now, and it feels very cold to the touch when you start using it, but it's a very sturdy-feeling material. The lid, however, feels a bit too flexible. You can easily cause it to flex, even near the hinge. I often grab my laptops with one hand, but I don't feel great doing that here because the lid caves in significantly when my hand grips it.

Back to the positives, the port selection on the Omen 16 is phenomenal. You'll find two USB Type-A ports on the right, along with another one on the left, plus RJ45 Ethernet with gigabit speeds, a 3.5mm combo audio jack, and a full-size SD card reader, all of which are on the left side.

There are even a few ports on the back of the laptop, including two Thunderbolt 4 ports for your docking station or external monitor, an HDMI port, and the proprietary charging connector. Previous models had a mini-DisplayPort connection, but that has been replaced here with a Thunderbolt port, which can serve a similar purpose.

Keyboard and touchpad

A fantastic keyboard for a laptop

The keyboard on the Omen 16 is one of my favorites in terms of laptop keyboards. In terms of the layout, HP opted to leave out a number pad and instead gave all the keys more room to breathe, in addition to having full-size arrow keys, which are useful for gaming. Arguments can be made for including a number pad, but I like the layout HP went with, and it feels like a desktop keyboard with the number pad removed. It's spacious and feels pretty natural.

It feels fantastic to use, too. The keys on this keyboard have a lot of travel and feel super comfortable to press. It's one of my favorite keyboards on a laptop, though as far as gaming laptops go, something like the mechanical keyboard in the Alienware x16 is hard to top. Reducing the actuation force just ever so slightly might have been beneficial, but it wouldn't make a huge difference.

Of course, it's a gaming laptop, which means there has to be some sort of RGB effect, and this model has per-key RGB lighting that looks great. Some gaming laptops have lights that bleed out a lot around the edges of the keys, and some even have transparent edges to highlight exactly that. But the Omen 16 opts to only have the lights shine through the key labels, and on a laptop, I think this makes a ton of sense. You can see the lights under the keys if you look at the laptop at an angle, but otherwise, it looks clean.

However, a downside here is the touchpad. It's quite large, thanks to the chassis being pretty tall, but it doesn't feel great to use. It seemed to get better the more I used it, but the metallic surface felt too much like the laptop's chassis, which isn't how I want a touchpad to feel. A smoother touchpad would be better. On top of that, this touchpad seems to be very sensitive to any little bit of dust and debris, so I often found myself accidentally clicking things. Since it's a gaming laptop, I assume most people will have an external mouse, which is definitely recommended.

Display: A sharp and smooth display that's still 16:9

The display is where I feel the Omen 16 starts to feel out of date. This higher-end model comes with a Quad HD panel with a 165Hz refresh rate. This is great for gaming, and considering the specs, you probably don't need much more. 4K gaming with this GPU would just be a mistake, and while some esports games could benefit from a higher refresh rate panel, 165Hz is still very smooth.

My issues begin with the aspect ratio, which is still 16:9. This is still a very popular aspect ratio for gaming, but many modern laptops, especially higher-end ones, have started to transition to 16:10, such as with the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i. HP has finally embraced it with the Omen Transcend in 2023, and other companies like Lenovo have been doing it for even longer. It's even more frustrating when you look at the gigantic bezel below the screen on the Omen 16. There was so much space for a taller screen in this chassis. HP made the laptop taller, presumably to accommodate a larger touchpad and give you a larger wrist rest area, but it could've used that space for the display.

This display just doesn't feel like the premium product it's sold as.

It's also not a very bright display, and it's hard to understand how this is HP's top-of-the-line gaming laptop. This is the top-tier configuration for the Omen 16, which only goes up to 300 nits, according to HP. In my test, the display actually went well beyond that, reaching 375 nits, with a contrast level of 1250:1, which is pretty good for an IPS panel. Even more impressive is that that contrast level stays fairly consistent at different brightness levels, which many displays can't say.

This lags behind some other laptops, like the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i, which can go up to 500 nits (on some configurations). But then again, the Omen 16 starts with a Full HD 144Hz panel that can only hit 250 nits, so in both cases, Lenovo comes out on top in terms of display quality. This display just doesn't feel like the premium product it's sold as.

Color coverage is solid enough for a gaming laptop, with HP touting 100% coverage of sRGB. I can confirm that with my tests, but the display doesn't go much further than that, hitting just 78% of P3, 77% of Adobe RGB, and 72% of NTSC.

And the same can be said for the webcam. In 2022, HP led the charge regarding webcam quality, putting 5MP webcams in almost all of its premium laptops, plus some Pavilion models. But the gaming laptops were neglected once again, so you'll be stuck with a 720p webcam without Windows Hello support. In 2023, almost every laptop has a 1080p webcam, so this is very much unimpressive. On that note, there's not even a fingerprint reader here — you have to type in your PIN every time.

For sound, the Omen 16 has a set of dual stereo speakers, which get pretty loud. This is good for a gaming laptop where the fans can get loud as well.

Performance: Plenty of gaming power, as long as it's plugged in

HP sent us a fairly high-end configuration that featured an Intel Core i7-12700H processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, which is still one of the most powerful laptop GPUs out there. It's also the most powerful GPU you can get with this laptop, though you can upgrade the CPU, RAM, and storage if you want more than what this unit has.

HP made some notable improvements to the cooling system here, adding more blades to the fans and increasing the exhaust vent, which results in more airflow and quieter operation overall. This setup feels effective. The laptop blows out a lot of hot air when it's pushed to its limits, and while it can get a bit loud during those times, it's not that bad. It's very quiet during normal use, so I have nothing to complain about there. The fans have a slight whine to them at max speeds, but again, it's not a big deal.

Performance is also great, at least when the laptop is plugged in. I tried running a few games I usually test on gaming laptops, and they all ran very well, even with the Quad HD display. Only a few games managed to hit very high frame rates at high settings, but that's to be expected. Here's a rundown of the average frame rates I saw in some games.

I tested a few different settings for Hellblade because the game ran with significant stutters, even after I enabled DLSS and got better frame rates. The game runs much better when you use DirectX 11 for whatever reason, and while some stutters still happen, it's less noticeable.

Performance is also great, at least when the laptop is plugged in.

However, it needs to be mentioned that this laptop only works for gaming when it's plugged in. When I tried to play a game on battery power, the laptop became nearly unusable, and looking at Task Manager, CPU speeds dropped to around 0.5GHz when a game launched, something I verified with Halo Infinite and Rocket League. HP says you should only game on this machine while plugged in, and it's true. Even closing out of a game takes a while if you launch it while on battery power. Everything slows down to a crawl.

I also ran the usual set of benchmarks, and this is where things get interesting. When the laptop is plugged in, performance is as great as expected. The scores are high and pretty much in line with other high-end laptops. I tried to render an 8K video, which is around 4 minutes and 2 seconds long, and it exported in 6 minutes and 31 seconds. Then, I ran the following tests.

Those are good results for these specs, but that's only until you unplug the laptop from the outlet. We mentioned gaming performance above, but thankfully, it doesn't get as bad with other tasks. Still, if you compare the Omen 16 to the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 5 I reviewed recently, you can see how performance takes a huge hit, and the Omen 16 is actually slower despite the more powerful specs.

It's expected that performance is slowed down to provide better battery life, but unfortunately, that battery life is still pretty bad. In my tests, battery life lasted anywhere from 1 hour and 22 minutes to 3 hours and 40 minutes, which is a pretty big spectrum, but both ends are pretty bad. This was always during normal use, though that sometimes involved video calls that can use a lot of battery. I should also note that this extremely low result was an anomaly, and most of the time, I got at least 2 hours.

That's with my usual settings: brightness at 40%, balanced power mode, and power saver kicking in at 20% battery. However, it's worth mentioning that I did use the display at the maximum 165Hz refresh rate, so you can squeeze more time out of this machine by stepping it down to 60Hz, especially since you won't be gaming on battery power anyway.

Still, this is far worse battery life than what I got with the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Extreme, despite that laptop's higher performance while just on battery. The Omen 16 really is a laptop that's almost always meant to be plugged in, which is surprising considering it doesn't have the newer HX-series processors.

Should you buy the HP Omen 16 (2022)?

You should buy the Omen 16 if:

• You want a fast laptop that can handle all your games (while plugged in)
• You're looking for a great keyboard on a laptop
• You want something that looks sleek and doesn't get too loud during normal use

You shouldn't buy the Omen 16 if:

• You want a laptop that excels at more than gaming
• You want something you can use on the go without too many compromises
• You plan on using the webcam often
• You care about Windows Hello support

While I like the performance of the Omen 16 for 2022, I have a bit of a hard time recommending it compared to other gaming laptops that cost about the same. If we compare it to the Acer Predator Triton 500 SE, for the same price and with the same internal specs, you'll get a much better display and webcam.

It depends on your priorities, though. The Omen 16 is better for gaming, but the Predator Triton is a better laptop overall and a much better laptop for creators. The performance sacrifice is there, but it's not that big. Plus, gaming is basically impossible on the Omen 16 when on battery power.

This is a laptop that looks great and performs even better, plus it has a fantastic keyboard. But it falls short in a few key ways that let competing laptops take the lead, even if they make their own sacrifices.