Tech up! HP Omen 34C Monitor and Omen 17 Gaming Laptop (2024)

Omen 34C Monitor

This 34 inch monster of an ultrawide screen clocks in at a perfectly serviceable 1440p resolution with a stunning 160 Hz refresh rate. So at least statistically it's fantastic, but how does it hold up in practice?

First of all, the packaging is nice and minimal but protects the screen well. In the box are the warranty papers, instructions, stand, display port cable and the screen itself. Once assembled it feels sturdy (once the stand is snapped in correctly). It has nice feeling materials and a very small wire clip at the back that helps keep the connections to the monitor neat. In terms of connections, it supports 2 HDMI, 1 Display port and it has a sound output jack for headphones.

The screen image quality out the box is a bit ropey. At 160 Hz it is almost impossible to get it to work without ghosting. VRR is nice but it's Free-sync only so Nvidia users won't get the best experience they can have via G-sync, but the lower response time modes also tend to cause ghosting. Basically it was a big ghosty mess upon first use. After about 10 minutes of fiddling and referencing tweaking guidance online, a sweet spot was found at 120Hz - fast-ish response time and VRR enabled. This seemed to eliminate most of the ghosting and present a clean image.

Once set up it was initially used to produce some notes for the review, and for office work it is a decent monitor. Text was clear and colours were nicely represented. Of course splitting the screen to show two apps at a time was a good idea as it essentially renders two normal monitors. Sometimes the content looks a little weird floating in the void but for website development it offered a valuable look into the world of widescreen design. There are speakers on board too but the sound they provide is very boxy and distorted. Unless there isn't another option, investing in headphones or external speakers for sound is probably worth it.

For gaming this monitor offers a set of awesome features. It supports HDR for one, so colour levels and brightness are enhanced. This isn't a crazily fantastic HDR experience but it did have reasonable impact vs a non-HDR screen. Playing games with the ultra-wide view, where supported, was amazing; it opened up the game in a way a normal monitor can't. Having the extra wide gaming space allows for superior tracking of enemies and it lets environmental scenes present as almost panoramic.

7/10

Very Good - Bronze Award

For the reasonable price point there is little to not enjoy on the Omen 34C. The range of gaming features is impressive and the quality of the screen itself (audio aside) is excellent. It looks and feels reasonably premium, but beware the tweaking required for it to provide a clear, un-ghostly image.

HP Omen 17" Gaming Laptop (2024)

This beast of a laptop comes in some very neat packaging, again not much wasted space with minimal branding on the outside. Opening it up it revealed a rather slick black interior with the laptop itself visible in its white protective sleeve. Once removed this hefty device looks sleek and sports some very nice design sensibilities, more on them later. The box also contains the charger and the documentation for the device. The charger is not USB-C so it's vital to make sure it doesn't go missing.

The laptop itself is heavy, made of a nice sturdy plastic and sporting the OMEN logo on the back of the screen. The main connective ports are found at the back of the device, these being the power connector, HDMI and a couple of USB ports including USB-C. On the right and left it has one additional USB port, network connector and a headphone jack. So it's off to a flying start on the connection front, most laptops now rely on USB-C to do it all. 

In terms of technical ability, it sports an AMD Ryzen processor, 16Gb RAM  and an Nvidia 4060 laptop GPU. This means it's more than equipped to play the latest and greatest titles, and even in some instances make use of ray tracing. The screen is 17 inches big, meaning it has a lot of space to work with but only supports up to 1920x1080 resolution. The keyboard and touch pad are well sized and positioned with the added bonus of it being a full keyboard including the number pad. Next to the keyboard is the speaker which, it must be said, offers an excellent sound. It really has a nice range and impact without distorting even at high volumes. It has the usual webcam in the top of the screen but nicely HP have included a privacy cover for it, meaning users can be reassured they aren't being watched. Finally, on the bottom right of the body it has a nice Omen 17 logo which is subtle but sleek.

In terms of productivity this is a fantastic laptop. The clarity of the screen means that text and colours are clear and free of artefacts. The responsiveness of the hardware means productivity apps load fast and saving documents on the 1Tb hard drive is snappy due to it being an SSD. When gaming, this laptop really shines. It offers really excellent performance and seems to be able to keep itself running fairly cool. The big fans can get quite loud when playing more intensive titles like Doom Eternal (with Ray tracing on) but surprisingly it never got uncomfortable.

The performance throughout was fantastic though titles like Alan Wake 2 can bring it to its knees, so it's important to tailor settings to the laptop hardware with an eye to efficiency. As the device is a laptop it also relies on a battery and typically non-gaming use of the laptop shows the battery life is excellent. However, on battery it tends to throttle the gaming performance so it's important to use the AC adapter when playing games, or at least intensive ones.

7/10

Very Good - Bronze Award

Overall this laptop is a great all rounder. The hardware choices make sense for modern gaming and at the price point there is unlikely to be quite as robust a competitor. The added bonus of excellent speakers and the amount of available connections make this a no-brainer for the on-the-go gamer who doesn't want to sacrifice game quality. Even better, pair it with the Omen 34C and this laptop will seamlessly allow for much higher resolution gaming!