HyperX Omen 15 Review: A Comfy Budget Gamer Sunk by Nerfed Graphics

We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first pair, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The second two, Steel Nomad’s regular and Light subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance.

Our real-world gaming testing is based on in-game benchmarks for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at the system’s full HD (1080p or 1200p native) resolution—represent competitive shooters, open-world games, and simulations, respectively. If the screen supports a higher resolution, we rerun the tests at the QHD equivalent of 1440p or 1600p. Each game runs at two sets of graphics settings per resolution, for up to four runs total on each game.

We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Minimum graphics preset—aimed at maximizing frame rates to test display refresh rates—and again at the Extreme preset. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs to their limits, so we run it on the Ultra graphics preset and again on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset, without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 serves as our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s capabilities with and without frame-boosting upscaling technologies.

The Omen 15 took a back seat in this group. The differences versus the Katana 15 HX were particularly stark. For instance, in 3DMark Wild Life, the Omen scored less than half the Katana’s more than 45,000 points. Another example: In F1 2024 with DLSS enabled, the Omen was 30% slower. Save for a closer contest in Call of Duty, this dynamic held throughout.

What drove the Omen’s lower performance? HP capped the RTX 5050’s graphics power at 55 watts (W), lowering its performance ceiling. (The RTX 5050 can traditionally pull up to 100W, according to Nvidia.) That cuts this laptop’s graphics rendering potential by quite a bit, so these results are no surprise. For a closer to full-fat budget gaming experience, the Katana can run its RTX 5050 at up to 115W—pushing beyond Nvidia’s own standard rating by temporarily borrowing some of the CPU’s unused power share via Nvidia’s Dynamic Boost technique.