HP Omen Max 16 Review: Burning Bright and Fast

Although designed for gaming, the Omen Max 16 surprises with its all-around utility. Underneath its gamer aesthetic, this machine powers through spreadsheets and creative workloads just as comfortably as it handles the latest AAA fragfests.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Thanks to the thick chassis and top-mounted hinges, the Omen Max 16’s display sits closer to eye level than most mainstream laptops. While I didn’t sample the Omen’s IPS display panels, I can say that the 2,560-by-1,600-pixel OLED is worth the $190 upcharge. It produces rich, vivid imagery at a 240Hz refresh rate, minimizing frame tearing in games and refreshing everyday tasks. And it scrolls through content so fluidly that your last computer might seem like it was in slideshow mode. The glossy surface is the only downside, tending to attract dust and suffer from reflections in locations with lighting you can’t control.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

This laptop uses its generous chassis well by including a nearly full-size number pad. While the mismatched arrow keys are irksome, you’ll find handy layout perks, like Fn+F10 and Fn+F11 shortcuts to turn off the Windows key and touchpad, plus dedicated buttons above the number pad for access to the Omen Gaming Hub, Windows 11 settings, and the calculator. While the light, rubbery key feel isn’t a recipe for precision tactile feedback, I easily hit my personal best of 120 words per minute in the MonkeyType typing test. I’d nonetheless like to see HP provide the option for a mechanical keyboard.

The Omen Light Studio app allows you to configure lighting settings for the per-key keyboard backlighting and the light bar. HP includes many presets, such as wave, breathing, and color cycle, and several interactive modes, such as an audio visualizer. You can also create your own layered effects, and their brightness is adjustable.

HP’s Omen Gaming Hub goes beyond basic tuning with granular overclocking controls, including per-core CPU multipliers, voltage adjustments, and GPU core and memory offsets. Additional tools include a macro key editor, a fan-cleaning utility, and a schedulable junk-file cleaner. On the social side, the app features a user-generated wallpaper gallery and the option to upload your own.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The chassis remains comfortably lukewarm even while gaming. The Omen runs quietly in daily use, with its fans only occasionally ramping up (within expectations for a gaming laptop). HP’s built-in speakers deliver clear sound quality and enough volume to overpower the fans. The only real knock against the everyday usability is its fleeting battery life, which struggles to last more than a few hours off the plug, as I’ll explore next.

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