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HP, while making its way through the consumer and enterprise PC market, has not forgotten the nascent gaming market with its Omen gaming lineup. The HP Omen Transcend 16 is their latest offering in this space, and here’s what this laptop has to offer.
Design
HP Omen Transcend 16 Laptop | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
The Omen Transcend 16 is thin at 19.9mm and feels as compact as a 14-Inch ultrabook. While not exactly light at 2.1 kg, the Omen Transcend 16 is still quite decent enough to carry around without noticing the weight too much in a backpack.
Made of Magnesium Alloy, the chassis can take regular dings of day-to-day carrying around. The only spot of bother is that the body tends to pick up smudges while carrying it around which are quite noticeable against the Shadow Black colour variant that I reviewed.
Display
HP Omen Transcend 16 Laptop | Photo Credit: BIJOY GHOSH
The Omen Transcend features a 16-inch WXGA Mini-LED display with a 16:10 aspect ratio. The colours are accurate, and it was a joy to enjoy the Taylor Swift concert videos on. The panel has good contrast and deep blacks can be easily experienced. With 100 per cent sRGB colour accuracy, the Omen can easily double up as a video editing laptop for budding gamers and content creators.
Sound
I found the speakers to be average at best without a particular sound signature that stands out - it’s neither too bass heavy nor too treble heavy. This works well for those gamers looking for a balanced sound package between voice and ambient sounds. The laptop ships with the HyperX Cloud II Core wireless gaming headset that delivers a great surround sound experience along with good fit over the ear for long gaming sessions.
Keyboard
HP Omen Transcend 16 Laptop | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
The key travel on the keyboard is quite good and works well for both gaming and typing this review. The keyboard, while great in terms of feel, felt cramped at times with me often hitting the adjacent key in the first few days before getting used to the keyboard. The keyboard features RGB lighting which can be used to assign different colours to individual keys, as well as keyboard zones through Light Studio as part of Omen Gaming Hub.
In terms of ports, It comes with two Thunderbolt 4 with USB Type-C, 2 USB Type-A, one RJ-45 port, one headphone/microphone combo, an AC smart pin and an HDMI 2.1 port, making it quite a rounded selection of ports for a gaming laptop. Some of the ports are located towards the back of the laptop, but without clear icons on the back display hinge, one might not be able to easily access these ports without turning around the laptop.
HP Omen Transcend 16 Laptop | Photo Credit: Bijoy Ghosh
Performance
The HP Omen Transcend 16 features an Intel Core i7-13700HX with Intel Turbo Boost Technology, 30 MB L3 cache, 16 cores, 24 threads, paired along with a NVIDIA RTX 4070 with 8 GB RAM GDDR6 making the Transcend 16 a gaming powerhouse. On the synthetic benchmark Cinebench R23, the Omen Transcend 16’s i7-13700HX topped the single-core scoring 1,765 on single-core and achieving 12,878 on multi-core, placing it fourth after the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX, Intel Xeon W-3265M, and AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X.
The Omen Transcend 16 delivered consistent 80 FPS in Halo Infinite and 100 FPS in Hitman 3. The other spot of bother that came here was that the magnesium alloy chassis tended to get hot quite quickly and I felt it the most on the top half of the keyboard near the WASD keys.
The Omen Gaming Hub helps customise the performance profiles including undervolting, optimus switching, and tweaking the webcam and sound settings.
Battery
The laptop features a 97 Wh battery which supports fast charging. The battery lasts 4 to 4.5 hours unplugged with typing work documents, curating social media and viewing self-help tutorials on colour grading on YouTube. While gaming, the battery lasts 1.5 hours unplugged thanks to the Nvidia Optimus which switches intelligently between the Integrated GPU and the Nvidia RTX 4070. The bulky 230 W charger helps charge the laptop in under 2 hours, and it’s most likely going to be a permanent fixture on your table if you are mostly gaming on this device.
Conclusion
The HP Omen Transcend 16 is a powerhouse of a gaming laptop with the right blend of power, portability and features for the unit. The only hiccup one would say before its otherwise stellar performance is the price which seems a little steep considering the similarly-specced Lenovo Legion Pro 5i and the Dell Alienware m16 R1 are priced more reasonably. Still the HP Omen Transcend 16 is a solid gaming laptop with a great display.
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