HyperX Omen 16 (Valorant Edition) - Built to Game

If you're a gamer, you have some pretty specific requirements when it comes to a purpose-built laptop.

Lots of processing power. Lots of RAM. Dedicated graphics card with grunt and a really big screen.

Simple formula, right? And if we can get that price tag down under three grand, that'd be great too.

The HyperX Omen 16 (Valorant Edition) ticks a lot of those boxes.

The last time I reviewed an Omen, it was an HP and technically, this one still is too. HP seems to have realised it's painted itself into a bit of a branding corner, trying to market a line of high-end gaming laptops called Omens and a range of HyperX gaming accessories at the same time.

Going by the decals on this machine, HP has brought HyperX and Omen together - but then complicated things again with this Valorant colab.

If you're not familiar, Valorant is one of those team-based first-person shooters where you have to plant a "Spike" in the other team's territory while keeping them from deactivating your own - I guess similar in some ways to Capture the Flag from back in the days when you played games with real people in real places in real life.

As seems to be par for the course with a game like this, it's controlled by keyboard and mouse, so obviously the WASD keys are highlighted in Valorant red and there are various other industrial looking splashes of colour on the lid and around the rest of the chassis.

That aside, physically this is a similar beast to other Omen 16s of the past - and I do mean a beast; big, heavy and it doesn't care who knows it.

The Valorant Omen 16 is full of vents and loud, powerful fans to keep everything as cool as possible. My review unit runs an AMD Ryzen 9 processor, 24GB of RAM, 1TB of PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSD storage and a dedicated NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 graphics module.

So yes, it goes like a bomb.

The display is especially worthy of mention. A massive 16-inch IPS screen, obviously, with a 240Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time and pleasingly slim bezels. But it's the glare-free nature of this display that impresses me most - if you're somewhere with a lot of windows or bright lights, it won't make a damn bit of difference.

There are things I have been less impressed with - particularly the dual speaker system. For such a juggernaut of a laptop, the power of these two speakers is woeful, especially when streaming video, which is a shame because the display looks so good. Even when I wind the volume right up to 100, there's some content I almost can't hear at all, depending on what app I'm using.

When gaming, things are more audible but don't expect bone-shaking thuds or window-rattling explosions. It really has me mystified. I suppose it's possible, much like modern TVs, few users rely on the built-in speakers and pair external sound systems or headphones instead. A cynical person might wonder if this is a ploy to push people towards HyperX audio accessories - I use one of their gaming headsets myself and it's pretty great.

The 1080p FHD camera is far from the best I've encountered too, although the dual-array digital mics do a very good job - rather crucial when it comes to chatting with your Valorant teammates. It's not a Windows Hello camera either  - nor is there any fingerprint sensor so you'll be left to log in with a pin or a passkey I'm afraid.

Despite the few shortcomings I've just listed, they're soon forgotten once you start using the HyperX Omen 16 Valorant for what it was made for. The RGB keyboard is responsive and spaciously laid out - including a full number pad.

The HP Imagepad (trackpad) is simply enormous, ensuring precise cursor control anywhere on screen if you haven't brought a mouse with you.

There are plenty of places to plug that mouse in though; a USB-A slot on each side and one around the back, where you'll also find an HDMI 2.1 port and an ethernet jack for a hardline connection. Perhaps a little disappointingly, there's only one USB-C on the left-hand side, although it does offer a 10Gbps data rate and DisplayPort 3.0.

Another very-nice-to-have is the Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 wireless card. If you're connecting to the latest routers and bluetooth accessories, you'll definitely notice the lightning fast, super-stable connectivity.

Sadly, there's been no such breakthrough in battery technology. Well, not on this laptop, anyway. Look, nobody expects to get eight-hours non-stop gaming on a power-hungry beast like this but it really is quite shocking to see battery percentage points disappearing before your eyes - especially if you've pushed all the performance settings to max - and let's be honest, what's the point of owning a rig like this if you're not going to do exactly that?

So you'll have to lug around the 280W AC power brick with you wherever you go which means although this is portable gaming, it's not that portable.

One final little niggle; because this is not just an Omen, but also a HyperX and yes, fundamentally an HP as well, there's a slightly confusing jumble of maintenance apps pre-installed to navigate if you want to tweak settings, control the keyboard lights or even just keep your drivers updated. Actually, now I think of it, throw NVIDA's control panel in there too.

I guess it's good to have options - then you can try each tool out, keep the ones you like and uninstall the ones you'll never use.

Unfortunately, none of them seemed to allow me to turn the volume of the speakers up, so it's just as well I've got that cool headset.

Don't let me put you off though; once you're plugged in and set up, there's no doubt this is a high-performance piece of tech - and pretty good value too. I do believe there might be a tasty special on right now at the time of publishing.

Massive screen, plenty of power, cool colours... what's not to love?

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the HyperX Omen 16 (Valorant Edition).