HP's latest assault on the PC market is focused on catering to the competitive gaming market, and in particular so-called esports athletes. With that in mind, this week HP announced a brand new range of desktop PCs, laptops, displays, and accessories all of which carry Omen branding.
Omen is a mix of the conventional and unconventional when it comes to offering PC platforms. On the one hand, there's a standard Omen Desktop PC and Omen 15-inch and 17-inch laptops. Then there's the Omen X Compact Desktop, which is a docking desktop PC that also doubles as a backpack computer.
Let's start with that Omen X Compact Desktop. It's a small desktop PC that can be docked to act as a standard desktop machine, but also worn on the back for VR. Inside you'll find an overclocked GeForce GTX 1080 GPU allowing for 4K resolution output coupled with a choice of Kaby Lake Core i7 CPUs. HP engineered the Omen X to cater for additional CPU overclocking even though this is a very compact, back-friendly machine. The thermal exhausts are positioned on the top of the PC and angled away from the wearer so as not to cause any temperature issues for the PC or the person.
It ships with the dock and four hot-swappable batteries meaning you can continue to play wires-free without having to worry about running out of power. The dock allows for two batteries to be charged at once while the other two are powering the Omen X. Short cables are also supplied to allow for easy and trip-free connection to a VR headset.
If VR isn't your thing and you just want a high-end gaming rig, then HP offers the Omen Desktop. A choice of Kaby Lake Core i5,Core i7, or AMD Ryzen processors are coupled with dual GeForce GTX 1080 Ti or dual Radeon RX 580 Crossfire cards. PCIe SSD, SSD, and HDD storage options are on offer as is overclocking through HP's Omen Command Center software (also available on the Omen X.
Next up are the Omen laptops. The Omen 15 will offer up to Radeon RX 550 or GeForce GTX 1060 GPUs coupled with a Kaby Lake Core i7 quad-core processor. The Omen 17 ups the GPU choices to include a Radeon RX 580 or GeForce GTX 1070. For both laptops, 4K displays are options, but the 120Hz 1080p panel may be more to a gamer's liking. You'll also get a red backlit keyboard, red WASD keys with white backlight, and upgrade potential through easy access to storage bays and RAM slots.
One final piece of performance PC hardware comes in the form of the Omen Accelerator. This is a plug-in device for any machine with a Thunderbolt 3 port. It will include a Nvidia or AMD graphics card and can be configured with a 2.5-inch 1TB hard drive or 256GB SSD. It relies on a single cable connection, offers up to 60W of charge back to the PC, and includes four USB 3.0 Type A ports and one USB 3.1 Type C ports as well as a network port. Both the storage and graphics card can be easily switched out.
HP would like you to match your accessories to the Omen PCs, so it is also offering a mechanical keyboard called the Omen Keyboard 1100 with N-key rollover, the Omen Mouse 600 with customizable weight, mechanical switches, and 50 million clicks guarantee, and finally the Omen Headset 800 with, "thicker ear cups and boosted the overall acoustic performance for clear high, low, and mid-tones, and a specifically tuned audio profile for clear speech."
Last, but certainly not least, there's two Omen-branded monitors with 25-inch and 27-inch options. The Omen 25 offers a 144Hz refresh rate, AMD FreeSync, two USB 3.0 ports, DisplayPort, HDMI, and uses an integrated cable management system. The Omen 27 ups the refresh rate to 165Hz, the resolution to QHD, and uses Nvidia G-Sync. Both displays can be overclocked to allow for a 1ms response time and no ghosting.