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The HP HyperX Omen 15, which I first saw at CES, replaces the HP Victus 15, a longtime bestselling budget gaming laptop. The Victus cost just $800, or less when on sale, and was a good entry point to decent laptop gaming.<\/p>\n
The Omen 15 has nice little upgrades over the Victus. Its RTX 5050 Laptop GPU can play 2026\u2019s latest games, albeit on low-ish settings. But it\u2019s also got a brighter 16:10 aspect ratio display with higher refresh rate, and a 1080p webcam to make it a little better for non-gaming stuff.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d call it a working-class gaming laptop, but thanks to RAMageddon, the Omen 15 starts at $1,200 \u2014 a far cry from the $800 that made its predecessor so appealing. But laptop prices are way up across the board, and if you want current-gen gaming hardware, this is about as cheap as you\u2019re going to find it.<\/p>\n
$1199<\/span><\/p>\n Our HyperX Omen 15 review unit is a $1,199 configuration sold through Walmart with an eight-core Intel Core 5 210H \u201cRaptor Lake\u201d chip, RTX 5050 discreet GPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and 512GB SSD. There are pricier Omen 15 configs out there with RTX 5070 GPUs and OLED screens, but that\u2019s like spending Acura money on a Honda Civic. On the lower end, HP still has a Victus 15 config with the RTX 5050 for $900, but it has 8GB of RAM \u2014 that\u2019s not really tenable, especially for playing the latest games.<\/p>\n The good news is that the Omen 15 with an RTX 5050 is pretty serviceable for playing games at its 1920 x 1200 native resolution. Last-gen games like Control<\/em> can get a smooth 70 to 80fps on High preset while using DLSS. Cyberpunk 2077<\/em> can run on the Ultra preset (no ray tracing) with DLSS set to Quality and get 60 to 70fps\u2014 sometimes dipping down to 40 while driving with lots of stuff onscreen. Standard frame generation boosts it to 95 to 105fps, and 70s to low 80s in a car. Multi Frame Gen, which you don\u2019t get on last-gen GPUs, can push that ever further if you don\u2019t mind more \u201cfake frames.\u201d<\/p>\n Newer games are a more Medium to Low affair. For example, Helldivers 2<\/em> runs comfortably at just above 60fps on its Medium preset with DLSS set to Quality \u2014 though it dips into the 40s when the bug guts hit the fan. But Battlefield 6<\/em> was lower, down in the 50fps range while running Medium preset with DLSS cranked to Performance. I also tested Halo: Campaign Evolved<\/em>, which defaulted to its Very Low preset, where it looked like a potato. On Low settings, with DLSS set to Medium, it mustered between 50 to 60fps, but with frequent drops into the 40s with lots of enemies onscreen.<\/p>\n On the right, an ethernet jack and one USB-A.<\/em><\/p>\n On the left, a 3.5mm audio jack, one USB-A, and the power connector.<\/em><\/p>\n On the rear, HDMI 2.1 and one USB-C. Seriously, where\u2019s the rest?<\/em><\/p>\n While playing all these games, the fans kicked up to a decent volume, but they weren\u2019t obnoxiously loud, and the chassis stayed reasonably cool. The hottest point, a small spot under the chassis, rose to 113 degrees Fahrenheit \/ 45 Celsius. But the main areas that normally make contact with your hands or lap didn\u2019t get too warm \u2014 pretty good thermals for a somewhat compact gaming laptop.<\/p>\n So the RTX 5050 GPU and its 8GB of VRAM can get by with the latest graphically intense games, so long as you\u2019re not expecting a visual powerhouse. But what about living with the rest of the laptop?<\/p>\n Much of the Omen 15\u2019s price has gone to its specs. That means there are some rough edges showing in the usual areas. The trackpad has a responsive mechanical click, but if you pick up the laptop by either of its front corners the chassis flexes and causes an accidental click. This is common in mostly plastic laptops, but still annoying.<\/p>\n The keyboard has decent enough tactility when typing. But even though I know gamers love a number pad, it makes this 15-inch laptop feel cramped. I don\u2019t enjoy typing on it like I have other HP laptops. The speakers? A little muddy-sounding \u2014 especially for music. And the ports? It has HDMI 2.1 and gigabit ethernet, which is great, but only one USB-C to go with its two USB-A ports. And all of them are a modest 10Gbps \u2014 not particularly speedy compared to USB4 or Thunderbolt 4. Gaming laptops are supposed to have ports aplenty, but this is just ports apassable.<\/p>\n 1\/7<\/strong>The screen does a decent job controlling glare.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n Aside from its gaming performance, the Omen 15\u2019s other strength is its screen. The 1920 x 1200 IPS panel isn\u2019t particularly special, but at 400 nits it\u2019s decently bright and it has nice contrast and colors. It\u2019s good for games, and fine for productivity work and light content creation. I did a bit of Lightroom Classic editing on the Omen 15, and my 50-megapixel RAW files were workable at a modest clip. (It helped that I was editing a batch of under 50 images, and not, like, 2,000.) The bigger problem with trying to do creative things was the Omen\u2019s paltry 512GB of storage. It fills up quickly when games like Battlefield 6<\/em> take up 142GB. There\u2019s a second M.2 slot for another drive, just as there\u2019s a second RAM slot, which is great for future upgrades \u2014 but boy will that cost you right now. You can hold out for RAM and SSD prices to come back down to Earth, but if that takes as long as it\u2019s expected to, the Omen 15 might feel pretty outdated by then.<\/p>\n The Omen was also fine for my everyday work: Chrome tabs, four virtual desktops, Signal, Slack, music streaming, etc. While the 1080p webcam is a little grainy and slightly low in saturation, it looks fine on video calls. The main barrier to getting work done on the Omen 15 is that its battery never lasted me more than five and a half hours. That\u2019s far from the worst for gaming laptops, but keep that chunky power adapter with its barrel plug nearby.<\/p>\n That HyperX lid logo still doesn\u2019t look great to me, but I\u2019m getting used to ignoring it.<\/em><\/p>\n The HyperX Omen 15 is a decent gaming laptop. It\u2019s just not the value the Victus 15 used to be. But neither is anything else. Absent a really good sale, you\u2019re going to pay over $1,000 for anything<\/em> with the RTX 5050, and usually a lot more. But buying into even the bottom rung of the 50-series gets you all of Nvidia\u2019s latest features, like Multi Frame Gen and whatever DLSS 5 eventually shapes up to be. Last-gen 40-series or AMD GPUs aren\u2019t bad options, but Multi Frame Gen can help keep frame rates playable for longer.<\/p>\n It\u2019s still worth looking for those sales, though. HP, Best Buy, and Walmart often have deals on most of HP\u2019s product line. Even now, there\u2019s an Omen 16 with an RTX 5060 GPU and slightly larger (but dimmer) screen for just $100 more than the Omen 15.<\/p>\n RAMageddon makes buying a new gaming laptop daunting. If you need to buy now and you don\u2019t want to go open-box or secondhand, you just have to come to terms with the fact that you\u2019re going to be paying higher prices than equivalent models from a year or two ago \u2014 even in the \u201centry level.\u201d Considering the circumstances, the Omen 15 is an okay value at $1,200 for getting into laptop gaming.<\/p>\n Photography by Antonio G. Di Benedetto \/ The Verge<\/em><\/p>\n CPU cores888610248GPUNvidia RTX 5050 Laptop GPU (2,560 CUDA cores)Nvidia RTX 5060 Laptop GPU (3,328 CUDA cores)Intel Arc 140V(8 GPU cores)A18 Pro (5 GPU cores)M5 (10 GPU cores)Nvidia RTX 5080 Laptop GPU (7,680 CUDA cores)Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Laptop GPU (4,608 CUDA cores)Geekbench 6 CPU Single2314241227693402417531132897Geekbench 6 CPU Multi914411381109308508165671970912566Geekbench 6 GPU (OpenCL)87168107523285561979847661200189122744Cinebench 2026 Single404518Not tested518727Not testedNot testedCinebench 2026 Multi21003444Not tested14663413Not testedNot testedPugetBench for Photoshop65807398Not testedNot tested1151384827560PugetBench for Premiere Pro (2.0.0+)5757671225Not testedNot tested61861Not tested109757Blender classroom test (seconds, lower is better)5946Not testedNot tested462134Blender cosmos test (seconds, lower is better)359295Not testedNot testedNot testedNot testedNot testedPremiere 4K Export (lower is better)11 minutes, 20 seconds6 minutes, 25 seconds7 minutes, 28 seconds8 minutes, 30 seconds2 minutes, 53 secondsNot tested2 minutes, 18 secondsSustained SSD reads (MB\/s)6996.156963.856391.511735.917049.456832.065280.31Sustained SSD writes (MB\/s)5586.036112.855524.221684.057480.556550.214560.473DMark Time Spy graphics score802110331Not testedNot testedNot tested2097713422Price as tested$1,199$2,299.99$599.99$699$1,799.00$3,299.99$2,524Follow topics and authors<\/strong> from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Good<\/h4>\n
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The Bad<\/h4>\n
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HyperX Omen 15 specs (as reviewed)<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
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Benchmark comparisons<\/h2>\n
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HP HyperX Omen 15 \/ Intel Core 5 210H \/ 16GB \/ 512GB<\/h3>\n
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) \/ AMD Ryzen 9 270 \/ 16GB \/ 1TB<\/h3>\n
Acer Aspire 14 AI \/ Intel Core Ultra 7 256V \/ 16GB \/ 1TB<\/h3>\n
MacBook Neo \/ Apple A18 Pro \/ 8GB \/ 256GB<\/h3>\n
MacBook Air 15 \/ Apple M5 \/ 16GB \/ 1TB<\/h3>\n
Asus ROG Strix Scar 16 \/ Intel Core Ultra 9 275HX \/<\/h3>\n
Framework Laptop 16 (2025) \/ AMD Ryzen AI 7 350 \/ 16GB \/ 1TB<\/h3>\n
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