HP Omen Transcend 16 review: sleek gaming laptop is not quite transcendental

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If you’re going to walk astir £2,000 connected a laptop, you’ve sewage a batch of options. There's Alienware, of course, pinch Dell’s gaming marque providing a batch of portable powerfulness that’s easy repurposed for imaginative apps. There are entries from MSI and Razer, Acer and ASUS, ohio my, and that’s earlier we get to Apple and Microsoft, who will some liberate galore thousands from your wallet if you fto them. 

However, HP has a bully sanction and estimation successful this sector, truthful its caller releases are worthy your attention, and nan Omen Transcend 16 is nan company’s thinnest and lightest gaming laptop yet. Inside, location are immoderate bully value components too, on pinch a 1TB SSD which is ever bully to see.

HP Omen Transcend 16: Key specifications

Design, build and display

While immoderate gaming laptops tin thin toward nan fierce aliases gaudy successful their styling, HP has opted for restrained achromatic elegance for nan Omen Transcend 16. There's nary lighting beyond nan keyboard and it’s disconnected by default - moreover nan Omen logo connected nan backmost of nan lid doesn’t ray up - unless you instal nan Omen Light Studio app and commencement tinkering. Do this, and nan keyboard abruptly erupts into rainbow colours from its per-key RGB array that are particularly clear connected nan WASD keys, arsenic these are much transparent than nan others. It’s nan activity of a fewer clicks to group nan backlighting to fixed white, but you’ll ever person those 4 brighter keys.

A 16-inch laptop chassis makes a awesome companion to a 16:10 screen, which is what we person here. It’s an IPS, not nan mini-LED that immoderate US build-to-order models tin beryllium upgraded to, but it doesn’t do a bad occupation pinch a rated brightness of 400 nits. The solution - 1920 x 1200 aliases WUXGA - is simply a small debased compared to immoderate of nan creator laptops we’ve seen recently, but arsenic this is simply a 165Hz surface driven by a GeForce spot it’s astir apt expected that users will beryllium much willing successful framerates than precocious resolution. This doesn’t mean it’s off-limits for imaginative software, arsenic nan HDMI 2.1 larboard connected nan backmost allows you to connect an outer surface pinch a much superior number of pixels successful it.

HP’s figures declare it tin show 100% of nan sRGB gamut, and our tests backmost this up, on pinch 77% of AdobeRGB and 78% of P3. While nan second 2 are not rather pro-level figures, they will do for immoderate casual imaginative work.

The Transcend sits astatine nan ultrabook extremity of HP’s laptop hierarchy, pinch nan Omen 16 (non-Transcend edition) being thicker and heavier, while nan lower-cost Victus machines connection thing for much budget-conscious buyers. A top-end laptop for illustration this nets you a magnesium-aluminium chassis pinch a master look but a heavy bezel astatine nan bottommost of nan screen, which tin look a spot retired of spot fixed nan thinness elsewhere. 

Desktop users will admit that nan charging, Ethernet and HDMI ports are connected nan backmost of nan machine, on pinch a azygous USB-A, truthful it tin beryllium easy connected up without excessively galore cables snaking crossed nan desk. The Thunderbolt 4 ports are some connected nan aforesaid side, nan left, pinch conscionable a azygous USB-A connected nan right. 

Keyboard and trackpad

The glowing WASD keys are ever going to beryllium noticeable, but could travel successful useful if you person shortcuts bound to them, aliases conscionable bask a spot of Rainbow Six Seige successful your downtime. The keys themselves are a bully size, and arsenic nary effort has been made to compression a numpad successful alongside them, there's room for them to breathe. The arrow keys use astir from this, arsenic not only are they full-sized, but are easy accessible connected nan right-hand broadside of nan keyboard without nan problem of clipping different cardinal arsenic you scope for Left.

The keys consciousness bully to type on, pinch a fewer mm of recreation and immoderate patient guidance from nan switches. The laptop has immoderate beardown sustainability credentials, pinch HP boasting of recycled water plastics and (somehow) cultivation discarded that person gone into its construction. There's recycled metallic successful nan keyboard system too.

The trackpad is an HP Imagepad pinch four-finger motion support. It’s wide and smooth, pinch capable of a click that you won’t sound it by accident. There's nary fingerprint scholar connected nan Omen Transcend - it uses Windows Hello look nickname via nan 1080p webcam instead, and nan powerfulness fastener is 4 keys successful from nan correct broadside of nan keyboard, betwixt F12 and Del, an different position that places nan dedicated keys for nan calculator and Omen Gaming Hub person to nan edge. 

Performance

The Raptor Lake Core i7 CPU successful nan Omen Transcend has 16 cores and is tin of processing 24 threads simultaneously. It’s a measurement up nan processor ladder from nan CPU successful nan MSI Prestige 16 Studio, and this is borne retired successful its benchmark scores. Its Geekbench scores put it astir level pinch nan M2 spot successful nan 15-inch MacBook Air, a much costly instrumentality erstwhile you’ve accrued its specs to lucifer nan Omen’s. Apple’s laptop whitethorn person nan separator successful slimness and artillery life, but these matter astir to those who want to usage their instrumentality connected nan move - if it’s axenic powerfulness you’re after, nan Omen is simply a contender.

Having nan other Nvidia GPU complete nan CPU’s Intel HD spot gives it a large boost successful nan graphics department. It whitethorn only beryllium an RTX 4060, but if you’re looking for thing to accelerate Adobe package aliases different contented creation apps it’s precisely what you need. It gives a important boost (32%) complete nan RTX 4050 laptop GPU, which intends shorter export times, faster-moving advancement bars, and amended framerates erstwhile you prime up a controller. Our reappraisal exemplary came pinch nan Game Ready driver installed, but switching to nan Studio driver is simply a matter of conscionable a fewer clicks successful nan GeForce Experience app.

An annoyance came successful nan shape of nan Nvidia package utilized to switch betwixt nan GeForce GPU and nan Intel HD graphics spot built into nan CPU. It has 3 modes, Auto (the default - does what you’d expect), Optimus (also an auto-switching mode, but different somehow) and Nvidia Only. The past 1 leads to a little artillery life, but Auto led to changeless notifications during benchmarking arsenic it switched backmost and distant betwixt rendering solutions, each 1 coming pinch a chime. It besides moved nan benchmarking app into and retired of windowed mode. Switching it to Optimus mode successful GeForce Settings seemed to hole this.

When it’s being made to activity hard, nan cooling strategy is intelligibly audible. Thankfully, nan double-fan Omen Tempest cooler produces a soft rushing sound without nan whining sound a instrumentality centrifugal tin sometimes make. It tin beryllium further quietened by utilizing nan Omen Gaming Hub app to prosecute Eco mode, but this will impact performance. There are besides Balanced and Performance modes, and we utilized nan erstwhile for each testing here.

Connectivity is arsenic accelerated arsenic you’d expect, pinch a brace of Thunderbolt 4 ports offering 40Gbps of bandwidth for outer SSDs, Wi-Fi 6E giving speedy wireless, and immoderate modular USB 3 Type-A ports for everything else. The 70Wh artillery kept nan instrumentality moving pinch nan surface connected for conscionable 2 and a 4th hours, which doesn’t comparison good pinch different laptops pinch akin specs though isn’t an uncommon fig for gaming machines. Charging comes via a dedicated ceramic which is successful nan box, alternatively than via a Thunderbolt port, and there's a quick-charge mode that tin spot it capable up to 50% successful 30 minutes.

Price

The UK unit value astatine nan clip of penning is £1,799. For £1,800 you tin besides get immoderate beautiful bully laptops from different manufacturers, but nan Omen is somewhat cheaper than galore pinch akin specs. There's nan Razer Blade 15 (i7, RTX 4060) astatine £2,499, aliases nan Alienware x16 (i7, RTX 4070) astatine £2,099. Creatives will beryllium lured toward nan MacBook Air 15-inch (£1,999 pinch 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD) which will decidedly do nan job, past longer, and look bully while doing it, while Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Yoga Gen 8 offers a 2-in-1 acquisition and i5 CPU, but nary GeForce chip, for £2,090. It’s a crowded marketplace, and you’ll get immoderate bully capacity wherever you look, truthful you mightiness arsenic good bargain connected price.

Should I bargain nan HP Omen Transcend 16?

Laptops that costs conscionable nether £2,000 are plentiful, and connection a singular grade of capacity for portable machines. There is simply a batch of choice, however, truthful a PC needs to do thing typical to guidelines out. The Omen Transcend manages this by bridging nan spread betwixt gaming and master laptops, its capabilities arsenic beardown successful either camp. There whitethorn not beryllium immoderate eye-catching header features for illustration i9 processors aliases 4090 GPUs connected connection here, but nan Omen Transcend does conscionable capable correct to make itself a likeable machine, contempt its thirst for charging.