HyperX OMEN 15

When it comes to gaming laptops, there is often a wide split between models meant to be performance powerhouses and those priced in a more affordable bracket that lack the same punching power but are perhaps more applicable to a wider audience. You can spend hundreds of pounds on a gaming laptop or well over £4,000, and while both devices will do the same job as a functioning laptop, one will be far more capable at running video games, especially the very demanding titles of today.

It's with this in mind that the HyperX OMEN 15 stands out as a very admirable gadget. There are a few different options of this device you can snag, but for the purpose of this review we find ourselves testing perhaps the most affordable variation, bringing a combination of a 2K/165Hz display, an Intel Core i5, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5050 GPU, and 16GB of RAM. The point is, all of these combined components are not nearly as pricey as their more powerful alternatives, meaning you can get this 'base' HyperX OMEN 15 model for as little as £1,200. Now that's still not cheap, but PC gaming hardware hardly ever is these days, and this is a far cry from the £4,400 you can sink into an ASUS ROG Strix Scar model, for example.

Normally, I'd talk about price points and how they effectively determine what you should expect from a device in question to essentially set reasonable expectations, and yet with this laptop I found myself increasingly impressed by how it punched above its weight class. Throughout my time putting the HyperX OMEN 15 through the ringer, I tested the gadget with a variety of games, all across the AAA to indie spectrum. Simply put, it handles every task with class. For the case of Borderlands 4, a game that on PC still causes some absolute battle stations nightmares, without the aid of DLSS or OMEN's Boost system, we could get the game running at 55 FPS on its lowest graphical settings and as high as 27 FPS on Ultra graphics, all at 2K resolution. With the help of DLSS 4 and OMEN Boost, the performance on Ultra almost doubled to 46 FPS, which for Borderlands 4 is pretty spectacular, especially on a laptop.

But we also tested the game elsewhere, with Marvel's Spider-Man 2 (with the aid of OMEN Boost) offering 75 FPS on the lowest possible graphical settings, 62 FPS on the highest, and then 93 FPS when DLSS 4 was enabled. Frankly, the game ran wonderfully and the HyperX OMEN 15 handled the challenge of Insomniac's latest with grace. And for the indie lovers out there, we tested Hades II and Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, two games that ran at 360 FPS and 192 FPS, respectively. There isn't even any point of either game running at this frame rate as the display the HyperX OMEN 15 offers cannot match it, but it's impressive all the same.

And it should also be said that all of this information is taken from games that aren't supported by the OMEN AI feature, which will automatically adjust system settings to ensure a game runs as smoothly as possible, without you needing to figure it out yourself. We tested this feature to see how it works on Overwatch and for any multiplayer gamer who prioritises performance over visuals, you'll fall in love with how the AI optimises your system without any interference on your part.

So long story short, from a gaming perspective, which we assume is important to any prospective buyers of the HyperX OMEN 15 else you'd likely choose a gadget with more of a productivity stance like a MacBook, this device passes our tests with flying colours. For a laptop that costs around a quarter of the current flagship models, you get a huge amount of bang for your buck from a performance standpoint.

But gaming aside, let's talk about the regular user experience of the HyperX OMEN 15. While it may only have a 15.3" display, it's certainly not a small device and it has a noticeable mass to it. It's quite hefty and you notice its presence, even if there aren't any silly gamified accents and design choices that make it look like something ripped from the U.S.S. Enterprise. The design is subtle and classy, and if it wasn't for the enormous vents on the rear of the laptop, you'd have little reason to guess this was a tool for serious gaming.

The vents are also not a huge issue as they are effective parts of the wider cooling solution in place. There's a hyperbaric chamber that pulls cool air in and uses it to cool the increasingly heated internals, with the Tempest Cooling suite then combining to ensure that the temperature change never becomes too extreme and maintains consistency to keep your gaming performance equally regulated. Again, I don't mind extreme cooling solutions if they work, keeping the device cool and also quiet, and both are achieved with the HyperX OMEN 15 so I'll excuse the rather monstrous vents.

If there was one area that I do think there's room for improvement it would be the connectivity of the HyperX OMEN 15. There are two USB Type-A ports and a singular USB Type-C, plus a HDMI 2.1, an Ethernet, an audio jack, and the power cable. I can't help but feel as though there is room for expansion here, perhaps combining the power into an additional USB connection port. But at the end of the day, to deliver such an effective device at such a compelling price point, decisions need to be made to reduce costs, so I'll let the port variability slide in the same way that I won't dedicate too much time to wishing it had a more detailed display. The screen it uses works wonderfully for playing games smoothly, so do you really need striking 4K as an additional option?

Coming full circle, it's evidently clear that the HyperX OMEN 15 was a device built with a clear creative vision in mind. This is a gaming laptop made for playing games in a fluid and effective manner first and foremost, and under those pretences, it simply excels. It doesn't give you the choice between 4K/30FPS gameplay and 2K/60FPS gameplay as it assumes from the get-go that if you've bought this gadget you want the latter, and frankly I find that hard to fault. Again, it's the intention behind the design, the desire to offer a device at a reasonable price bracket when considering PC hardware and then simply crafting a product that excels within the specified parameters. The HyperX OMEN 15 does what it sets out to achieve and it does so brilliantly. What more could you ask for?