HP Omen 16 (2022) Review (16-b1011TX, Core i7-12700H and RTX 3060)

Today, many people prefer to play games on their laptops, which is why we are seeing an increasing number of these laptops. The competition for gaming laptops is also getting tougher by the day. Famous computer manufacturing companies like Acer, Asus, HP, Dell, and MSI are now heavily into gaming laptops.

Recently, on Chinese New Year, many manufacturers introduced their new and powerful gaming notebooks with great discounts. The gaming notebook we decided to review today was also released a few days before, named “HP Omen 16 (2022 Model),” the latest 2022 model of the Omen Gaming Series from HP. The new Omen 16 2022 series features the powerful combo of Intel Core 12th-Generation CPUs and Nvidia’s RTX 30XX Series GPUs, most probably the most potent combo in the history of Gaming Notebook or any other segment notebook. It has been observed that the CPU and GPU are powerful, but other specifications like Display, Storage, and Battery are also excellent.

The overall hardware package is great, while the body’s design is also eye-catching. The body has all the characteristics and aesthetics of a premium E-Sports notebook, so gamers can experience the proper gaming environment. The model we got for reviewing purposes comes with a combination of Core i7-12700H and RTX 3070Ti (carries the model number 16-b1008TX). The notebook has been discussed in detail under the specs table.

HP Omen 16 2022: Specifications

HP Omen 16 2022: Design and Appearance

After a long look at the body, we can say that the Omen 16 2022 still follows all the aesthetics of the HP Omen series. The body also shares many similarities with the 2021 model. In addition, most areas of the laptop are covered in black with a metallic finish, which looks decent and restrained when interacting with the body of the laptop.

The logo on the display shell is still the same but feels more distinctive and now carries a blue-green gradient color shade, highlighting the game genes. With the new hardware, the company still maintained the same weight and a less thick body (only 22.5mm). Overall, the term portability is only improved in terms of thickness.

Coming to the display and keyboard area, the design language feels familiar to the predecessor models. The display has a size of 16.1 inches. Above the keyboard, we have a speaker unit (powered by B&O), and some brand logos are placed (denoting the specifications) on both wrist rest areas. We can say that HP successfully maintained the Omen series aesthetics overall in this notebook.

HP Omen 16 2022: Display

The HP Omen 16 2022 uses a 16.1-inch IPS display that supports a higher 2K Resolution and a 165Hz refresh rate. The 16:9 aspect ratio also helps the display provide a broader screen view and delicate visual presentation, which strengthens immersion and significantly improves the game experience.

As we know, the display has high specifications. That’s why we are also expecting a higher color gamut percentage on testing. After testing the display, we found that the display has 100% sRGB, 77% AdobeRGB, and 79% P3 color gamut. The average color accuracy △E is 1.03, which helps provide accurate colors while doing rendering and graphic designing. During the testing, the measured brightness was 338.8nits which seems decent, being a gaming laptop. It is worth mentioning that the display is certified by TUV Rheinland and eye-safe Display and also supports DC Dimming at the same time. All these factors ensured that gaming for a long time would not affect the user’s eyes.

HP Omen 16 2022: Keyboard and TouchPad

The keyboard on HP Omen 16 (2022) is a full-sized keyboard which is naturally one of the most eye-catching things on HP Omen 16 (2022). On a bit deep observation, it can observed that the surface of the keycap is a bit lower and only cover the area of the finger’s pulp. Moreover, the key distancing is reasonable, while the elastic feedback is also decent. Both these characteristics build a premium keyboard experience. Moreover, the numeric keyboard is also there, which also creates ease in the daily use of gamers.

There is a large-sized touchpad under the keyboard that adopts an integrated design. After some usage, we can say that the touchpad’s surface is relatively smooth and delicate, while the positioning also seems a lot more accurate. It is worth mentioning that the touchpad also has various controlling gestures of Windows 11 OS. The use of an external mouse will no longer be required after familiarity with it. Another positive point of the touchpad we found is that precise control can be achieved even if our fingers are a bit wet.

HP Omen 16 2022: Ports

Surprisingly, while comparing this model with its predecessor, we found that each port’s placement is the same as in the 2021 model of HP Omen 16. We have two USB Type-A 3.0 ports (HP SuperSpeed Port with 5Gbps Signaling Rate) on the right side of the body.

While on the left side, there is a considerable number of ports. Starting from the top, there is a charging port (discussed in the battery section), an RJ45 Network port, another single USB Type-A 3.0 port with the same transfer speed, a mini-DP port, an HDMI 2.1 port, a single USB Type-C Port (with 10Gbps signalling rate and Thunderbolt 4 support). Then, the 3.5mm headphone jack and an SD Card reader are placed within a bit of distance.

All the devices we use on a daily basis can easily be connected with this gaming notebook, plus there is no need for an additional USB dock at all.

HP Omen 16 2022: RAM and SSD

The new HP Omen 16 2022 is equipped with the all-new DDR5 2x 8GB RAM modules (clocked at 4800MHz). It is worth mentioning that the last year’s model used DDR4 RAMs. We used the AIDA64 Memory & Cache benchmark test to test the RAM capability. Its Read Speed is 63366MB/s, Write Speed is 58459MB/s and Copy Speed is 55408MB/s.

While comparing it with the last generation model, we found that the read and write speed increased by around 50% while the copying speed increased by 60%. The latency rate is slightly higher than last year’s DDR4 Memory. However, the overall performance has been improved (thanks to the high speed of reading and writing in RAM).

After the RAM testing, it is time for SSD. The new HP Omen 16 (2022) is equipped with the PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD (Solid State Drive) carrying 1TB storage space and manufactured by Western Digital (model number: SN810). In addition to SSD, the laptop is also equipped with 32GB Intel Optane Memory for further quick data processing. For testing the SSD, we used the CrystalDiskMark (v8.0.4) software.

On testing, the measured Read Speed was 6584MB/s, and the Write Speed was 5199MB/s. While the 4K Random Read speed and write speed were 69MB/s and 172MB/s, respectively. In the end, we can say that the SSD in HP Omen 16 (2022) has performed better than the average PCIe 4.0 SSD-powered laptop. The all-new Core i7 12th Generation CPU also played an essential role in these high scores.

HP Omen 16 2022: Battery and Charging

While buying gaming notebooks, most buyers ignore the battery specifications as most of them do gaming while putting the notebook on charge. But still, the new HP Omen 16 2022 has a solid 6-cell 83Wh Li-ion polymer battery. For charging, the company has provided a 230W AC Adaptor in the laptop’s retail box, which can charge 50% of the battery in just 45 minutes. Compared with last year’s model, the charging power has been upgraded. However, the battery capacity is still the same.

HP Omen 16 2022: CPU and GPU

The new 12th Generation Core i7-12700H CPU is one of the main highlights of the all-new 2022 model of HP Omen 16. The chipset has a total of 14 cores and 20 threads, of which six are performance cores with a 3.5GHz base frequency and can achieve a turbo frequency of up to 4.7GHz. The other eight cores are energy-efficient cores that are limited to a frequency of 3.5GHz. Moreover, we would like to mention some essential highlights, like the chipset also has L3 Cache memory up to 24MB, and the basic CPU power consumption is 45W.

In addition to the 12th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, the laptop is powered by the all-new NVIDIA RTX 3070Ti Mobile GPU. It is worth mentioning that the new Ti models in the RTX 3000 series were recently launched, almost at the same time as Intel’s 12^th Gen CPUs launch. The GPU has 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM with 115W power consumption. Some of the highlights of GPU are 5888 CUDA Cores, 256bits bus width, and 384GB/s Bandwidth. The GPU has a 510MHz core frequency, 1500MHz memory frequency, and 1035MHz boost frequency. It is worth mentioning that the GPU supports Max-Q technology and dynamic enhancement 2.0 technology.

CPU Testing

After a brief introduction of CPU and GPU, it’s time for CPU benchmark testing. The following are the conducted tests:

• CPU-Z: 668.7 points on Single-Core and 7365.2 points on Multi-Cores
• Cinebench R15: 258cb on Single-Core and 2746cb on Multi-Cores
• Cinebench R20: 682cb on Single-Core and 6663cb on Multi-Cores
• Cinebench R23: 1785 points on Single-Core and 17862 points on Multi-Cores
• Geekbench 5: 1635 Single-Core Score and 12264 Multi-Cores Score
• 3DMark CPU: 985 on Single Thread, 1888 on 2 Threads, 3309 on 4 Threads, 5438 on 8 Threads, 7291 on 16 Threads, and 7770 on Maximum (20) Available Threads

Compared with the last generation Core i7-11800H CPU, the benchmark scores of Core i7-12700H are relatively high.

GPU Testing

After CPU’s turn, it’s time for GPU’s benchmark testing. Following are some benchmark tests:

• 3DMark Time Spy: 10055 Points in DirectX12 Mode
• 3DMark Port Royal: 6178 Points
• 3DMark Extreme Test: 12391 Points

After all these benchmark results, it has been revealed that the new Omen 16 (2022) can run almost every today’s game with a smooth experience of more than 50fps at the highest graphics settings.

HP Omen 16 2022: Gaming Test

Being a gaming laptop, it is necessary to test some games on this notebook. We have tried three famous games on this gaming notebook which are the following: “Rainbow Six: Siege,” “Total War: Three Kingdoms,” and “Cyberpunk 2077.”

Rainbow Six: Siege

The famous game “Rainbow Six: Siege” doesn’t require high hardware specifications, but as it is a shooting game, the higher the FPS, the better the player’s gaming experience. We tested the game at both 2K (1440p) and Full-HD (1080p) resolution.

On 2K resolution (2560x1440p), the average frame rates were 242fps. When we set the resolution to Full-HD (1920x1080p) in the same scene, the average frame rates were 291fps. At the start of this test, the GPU’s temperature was around 72°C, while the maximum temperature we observed was 85°C.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

It is the game through which we can adequately test the gaming capabilities of Omen 16 (2022), as this game relies more on the CPU’s performance. In some scenes (like after the troop scale), we have observed that the processor can get higher load pressure. In this testing scenario, we set the video quality to the maximum and the army size to the maximum (in graphics settings). Moreover, we used the game’s own benchmark test feature, set at battlefield mode.

On the 2K resolution (2560x1440p), the average frame rate was 48.1, while on Full-HD (1920x1080p) settings, it was 75.2 fps. It is observed that the HP Omen 16 (2022) can easily handle this game as well.

Cyberpunk 2077

The last game we tested is the all-new “Cyberpunk 2077.” We set the graphics at the following settings for testing this game: the light pursuit mode was switched to Super, the picture’s quality was set at the highest, and the DLSS was set to Automatic. The beautiful and realistic video quality can be achieved through these settings, plus each detail will be fully displayed.

While testing the game on 2K (2560x1440p) resolution, the frame rates were around 55fps, while on Full-HD Resolution (1920x1080p), the frame rates were stable at 78fps. Thanks to the 165Hz refresh rate display, the entire gaming experience was silky smooth, bringing pleasure to players.

HP Omen 16 2022: Heat Dissipation and Stress Test

It is known that the new Intel’s 12 Generation CPUs have been improved in terms of performance while the power consumption has also increased to a certain extent. This increase also brings particular challenges to the heat dissipation design of the notebook.

It is worth mentioning that the new HP Omen 16 (2022) uses almost the same heat dissipation system as in the previous model. The heat dissipation system consists of a 12V Three Phase motor, 4x Dual 8mm heat pipes, and high-density low-noise fans. Moreover, the blades and the liquid-bearing material complement each other to bring low noise and large air volume.

We also did stress on both CPU and GPU combined and separately, discussed below:

CPU Stress Test

We used the AIDA64 Only CPU Stress Test for stress testing. The temperature of all cores was between 81°C and 89°C, while the power consumption and frequency were stable at 91.21W and 2.75GHz, respectively. During the peak performance of the CPU, the core temperature was controlled at a reasonable level.

GPU Stress Test

We used the Furmark application for this test, and the resolution was set at 2560*1440p. On reaching the maximum temperature of 114.06W (the best RTX 3070Ti can do), the GPU’s temperature was only 73°C.

CPU and GPU Combine Test

While testing both CPU and GPU together, the core temperature of CPU was between 83°C – 89°C, and core frequency was stable at 2.15GHz. At the same time, the GPU temperature rose to 78°C. Moreover, the power consumption of both reaches 55W (CPU) and 115W (GPU).

After all of these tests, it has been observed that the heat dissipation system in HP Omen 16 (2022) is quite firm and maintains the temperature at a lower Celcius degree with ease.

HP Omen 16 2022: Overall Test

For our final test (all components combined benchmark test), we used the PCMark 10 Extended mode, and the results were following:

• 9871 Points in Common Basic Functions, including Web Browsing, Video Calling, and Application Startup
• 9215 Points in Productivity Project Test
• 11682 Points in Digital Content Creation, including Video, Photo Editing, Graphics Rendering, and related stuff
• 19,296 Points in Gaming Test

The higher score in the common basic function shows that the laptop can easily do all everyday office tasks, while the Productivity Project test shows the CPU’s efficiency rate is high. Moreover, the gaming score is also great. Being a gaming laptop, this is something must thing. Overall, we found no shortcomings in this test as well.

Summary

Thanks to the all-new Core i7-12700H CPU, the HP Omen 16 (2022) has performed a lot better than its predecessor model (in terms of speed and energy efficiency). The all-new RTX 3070Ti GPU also helped much in extending the capabilities of the CPU. Both play an important role in creating a smoother gaming experience and quickly coping with the AAA (3A) gaming masterpieces. Moreover, the second powerful combo of DDR5 RAM and PCIe 4.0 SSD also forms a high-speed storage environment, effectively reducing the system and software delays and improving the overall smoothness. If you are looking for a new Intel 12^th Gen CPU-powered gaming laptop with the latest RTX 30XXTi GPU model, then the HP Omen 16 (2022) is the most premium option on the market.