Omen 17 Gaming Laptop, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070, Intel Core i7-11800H, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 17.3” Quad HD 165 Hz Display, Windows 10 Home, RGB Keyboard, Long Battery Life (17-ck0020nr, 2021)

perfect

My old laptop started power throttling in April, and I've been on the hunt for the perfect laptop replacement for me since then. Finally found it in the Omen 17.EDIT: Took 1 star off for slow warranty. See end of review.SummaryPros:- Keyboard- Full Power 140W 3070- Powerful 8-core processor- Fast SSD- Relatively quiet on balanced profile and fast on performance profile.- Mux switch- Port selectionCons:- Wish they fully embraced TKL instead of the weird delete key, pause, and prt sc locations.- Can't see the power button in the dark because it's part of the keyboard (but I can just press keys on the top row until I hit the correct one)- Single Rank memory (can be easily upgraded)- Huge power brick (like the size of a Mac Mini)My Thoughts:Keyboard:I'll start with the keyboard because it was the main reason I went for Omen as opposed to any of the other gaming laptops out there. Keyboard is great to type on. Has that laptop mechanical feel. Not quite the same as an external mechanical keyboard, but still nice. Most of it is just slightly clicky, but the top row feels more like browns than blues with a noticeable tactile press without the click. The clicking isn't very loud like more traditional blues would be. I have used it at night while my wife is sleeping next to me, and I've heard no complaints from her on noise like I did actually hear for an external brown keyboard I was using with a tablet before I got this laptop.Contrary to the only other review on here at the moment, I find the keyboard brightness to be perfect, but it does seem like there is only one brightness level from what I've found so far. I attached a picture of the keyboard during the day with sunlight coming in through the windows. I think you can clearly see the coloring in the day, and you can certainly see it at night. I also really like that when you hold the function key the lights turn off on the bottom rows to only show the Macro Keys, Number keys, and Function Keys.Lastly on the keyboard, I'm a software developer so I really appreciate the TKL keyboard with physical home, end, page up, and page down keys in the same location I would have them for my regular desk keyboard. I just wished they had fully embraced the TKL feel by removing the calculator key, putting the omen key where the delete key currently is, and having the right keys mirror TKL exactly.Performance:The second biggest thing for me was getting something that I could play the most demanding games on. I haven't stressed this to the limits yet, but I can provide some preliminary numbers at least. In Performance mode I was getting 13000+ points on Cinebench Multicore (1493 single core). Star Citizen I was able to average 40 fps in Huston (which is about the best you can get for Star Citizen). At this setting the noise was noticeable to me, but not ridiculously loud. During my Cinebench run fans were at 3000 RPM. With headphones on in a room with an AC or fan, it's not even noticeable. On "Balanced" mode I was getting 10910 points on Cinebench, around 80-90 fps in Valheim, fans were no more than 2000 RPM, and I could only hear them in a very quiet room. It should be noted that when I maxed out the fans, they hit 4900RPM and were quite loud. Temperatures for me I don't think ever went past low 80s. Speaking of power, the power brick is the biggest I have ever seen for a laptop. It's literally the size of a Mac mini, but for that size it delivers 330W of power. It truly is in the category of portable desktop (which is fair as HP advertises it as such). Lastly on performance the SSD seems very quick. See the attached crystal mark benchmark.Upgradeability:This was important to me, mainly because I wanted 64GB of RAM, and hardly anything comes with that as a configuration option. This laptop is very easy to upgrade. I've attached a photo of the internals. Two SODIMM slots so the RAM can be changed out. Two M.2 slots for SSDs with heat sink and screws included. Should be possible to replace the wifi card as well, but I have no interest in doing so.Screen:Not much to say on the screen. QHD is really nice. Refresh rate is really nice. Looks gorgeous. There is some noticeable light bleed when the screen is dark with max brightness in a dark room, but I only notice this when I'm looking for it.Final Thoughts:Price is among the best I've seen for 11800H + 3070. Size is surprisingly compact for a 17" laptop (This is not your Dad's bulky 17" laptop). Both HDMI and Mini DisplayPort are connected directly to dGPU. USB-C sadly goes through the iGPU. Overall, very happy with this laptop! Looking forward to getting a good 5 years or more of use out of it.----------- Update 08-27-2021 ------------So literally a few hours after I wrote this review, the screen on my laptop began exhibiting a vertical and horizontal line of stuck pixels (indicative to me of a TAB error). That sucks, but manufacturing defects happen. Support on Amazon was unhelpful. They suggested I contact the manufacturer, and because they didn't have any stock couldn't offer replacement, only a return.I hoped that by doing a warranty repair I could get my laptop back quicker than if I had to return and re-purchase, and was elated when HP phone support initially told me it would be an 11 day turn around.Fast forward a week, on the day they are supposed to ship the laptop back to me, and they give me an update that they are waiting on components for the repair and that they would probably have it returned to me by October 15th! That's nearly two months after I sent it in. Very unhappy that they promised on an 11 day turn around knowing what the issue was. I suppose that the support rep didn't know there were supply issues, but still... No of course I can't return it because by the time I get it back I will be outside the return window, so I'm stuck with no laptop for 2 months. Incredibly disappointed by this. I get that there are supply shortages, but better communication from the start would have been appreciated.So minus 1 star today for communication issues with support. Still great laptop, and I assume most other units have been fine, but it sucks to get the one that wasn't. I will be subtracting more stars if I see this unit on sale here before I have received mine back.

This product WILL come in broken and HP WILL NOT help you. First it was the touchpad. It would stop working every few minutes. Sent it in. They said I had to wait 3 months for a part to come back in. Okay, fair enough. Covid is causing shortages for all of us. Eventually it came back and it was not only still broken, but they had managed to break the LCD screen along the way. Sent it back. Got it back. Screen was fixed. Touchpad was STILL BROKEN!!! Sent it back. They called me to explain they thought it was the motherboard and it should be a week. Great!! Except I later got a text saying it would be another three months. Worried they were just going to replace literally the same part, I called. Eventually I got to an escalation manager who told me it was literally impossible for her to call or shoot an email the tech department and remind them not to replace the same part. “Techs don’t talk to clients”. Well they do because every time I’ve sent it in they’ve called me. When I asked if SHE could do it, nope. Also literally impossible. I then asked for a replacement. No replacement because of part shortages, but they could custom build one. Sounds great! When she linked me to a 15” one I was frustrated and told her I had been really patient with them but had explained that I did not want to downgrade. She then lectured me about how she was “allowed to ask questions“ as though I told her she wasn’t— which I never said. We later emailed back and forth about custom build potential. I got frustrated again and decided to call back and get a refund so I could be done with it. While on the phone, she read parts of my email back to me in a mocking tone. They did refund me and said the old one was going to go to a recycling center. Okay, fine, get the thing out of my sight. Well they couldn’t even do THAT right as a few months later the stupid thing showed up on my doorstep. AND IT WAS STILL BROKEN!!! The touchpad finally worked but for some reason it thinks it doesn’t have a battery. Except it does and I know it does because it works while unplugged. Did I mention it was gone in their shops for a total of 5 months and then an extra month after the refund before it showed back up at my house? So yeah. Stay AWAY from this piece of junk. You’re on your own if things go wrong.

I wouldn’t recommend bothering with this one. After a month or so waiting it shows up and has issues out of the box. The fans continuously cycle up and down like an engine revving every few seconds. Not under load even - just sitting there. Of course fans crank up with games but it’s still this up and down speed variation every few seconds - terribly annoying. Day 2 the left fan started buzzing and clanking. This is not a cheap machine. I tried the lower end HP Victus and aside from a weaker graphics card and floppy display panel it was a better product for half the price. And the power supply size and weight is very large even for a gaming machine. Got maybe an hour of gaming (performance was definitely reduced) on battery only. Not a big surprise there but to be aware of. This one is going back which is unfortunate bc on paper the specs are very good. I hope that helps other buyers.

The track pad is garbage. Battery drains super fast when you're just typing things. It can play games pretty good. Seems sturdy and hasn't broke yet so that's nice. Keys are pretty loud and fan can be at times. It's an alright laptop overall.