so, when they first came out with the original omen gaming laptop in like 2015,

I liked it, did a good review on it

And then they did two years like the 2016 version and the 2017 version were just ehh

I just didn't recommend them. I did reviews on them. I just told people honestly not to buy them

2018 model kicks ass. Straight up, this is such a big improvement over the previous generation

That, well, I'm pretty excited to do this video. Okay

So the design of this thing is very OMENy still. It's got the red face, and the classic red accents for HP omen

But the design is a little bit different from before.So the whole chassis is a little bit smaller

It's a little bit more compact and they've redesigned this whole product. The bottom half of

This laptop has an aluminum keyboard deck and a plastic bottom panel both well-made both quite sturdy

But the top half of the laptop isn't as sturdy. It's still well built

It's just there's a little bit more flex to the materials and stuff. There's just no aluminum on the top part of it

So the screen has a little bit of flex and I also don't love the hinge. Some companies do this hinge really poorly

They didn't. And HP actually has and like there's no clicking or there's no like weird tension or anything like that.

But we've seen some companies in the past put hinges close together like this and they develop some weird play that just causes the hinge

To fail over time. I don't think that's gonna happen on this one. It just feels actually like a good hinge.

Okay, this whole device isn't an ultra premium super thin laptop, right?

It's built pretty well considering the price but there are a lot of plastic components and it starts at

$800 if you get the base model that's with the i5 and in gtx 1050

But even fully specced out,. I think it hits like eleven maybe twelve hundred dollars in amazon

that's with the gtx 1060 and I feel like that's really

reasonable for what you're getting.

and I think the biggest change this year in terms of the aesthetics is actually the screen. It used to have really thick bezels and

It's no longer a member of the thick bezels club. It's got a nice and thin top and side bezel

The screen uses a 144 hertz panel, excellent for games and pretty usable for a color accurate work

Now this model is running the gtx 1060

It's not like the fastest GPU out there but a very respectable card even right now in

2018 despite this GPU being a couple years old

It still delivers really good performance for most AAA titles. Another big change

This year is the thermal performance . The 2016 model and the 2017 model had

Not great thermals to the point where I just didn't recommend those devices

2018 model has significantly improved. I'm not seeing thermal throttling under benchmarks

Now the temperatures still run hotter than I'd like, but at least we're not seeing thermal throttling. That being said

I don't love the fans

So for one, on idle, this thing doesn't run silent and that's something that is important to me

Not everyone cares about that stuff. But when this thing's not doing anything if I'm just like browsing the web, I don't like that

I can still hear the fans they're quiet but it's still audible and that's with the

Kind of default profile. If you go for the more aggressive profile, it's even worse

The other thing is even when this thing's running full tilt in games the fans don't get super loud

But I wish there was more thermal Headroom

Honestly, if they'd given more granular control with the fans like being able to just ramp it up manually

I think that would have solved it alone. But yeah the fans maybe they can fix this with software

So I will say that but in its current state, I wish the fans were a little bit better. The keyboard is pretty good

It's comfortable, lighting in zones, not individually lit

But it's a good layout and I think most people can get used to it quickly the trackpad

However is something that I don't like it doesn't use windows precision drivers

I really wish they did because so many manufacturers are using Windows precision drivers nowadays. It just feels like a bit of a miss

It's not the tracking. It's more the gestures like, sometimes it won't pick up whatever you're doing with your gestures, and that's a driver thing

Port selection there's a handful of them located on the back

Including a thunderbolt three port, and you get some usb on the sides as well as an SD card slot. The speakers

They're located on the side like the bottom side. So they're not in the best position, but they sound pretty good

Not bass-heavy or anything like that, but considering that this is kind of like mid tier gaming laptop

I'm happy with the speaker's. The internals

These are really easy to get into. It's a handful of Phillips screws and you have access to both of your drives

RAM, Wi-Fi card, and you also have your battery.

So this battery is a reasonably large one at 70 watt hours, but I'm not getting amazing battery life looking at four

Maybe four and a half hours. It's still respectable. But because this is a relatively compact 15-inch laptop

I think a lot of people are looking at as like a daily driver they bring to school or for work

And for most people that are doing that you're going to bring the charger to last the full day

Overall thoughts on this device though. I really like it. It's so much more improved compared to the 2016 and 2017 models like those ones

I did not recommend. This one, I highly recommend

So, yeah. One last thing. The mouse that I used when I was playing games on this thing was actually the HP omen

Reactor mouse. So here's the tale.

This thing was sent as a demo for me to kind of check this the whole thing out with and

Usually when computer companies or computer manufacturers make mice they're not great

But I saw this thread on reddit where a bunch of people were praising this thing

I was like really? Is it? Is it actually legit ? And

It's a really good Mouse. It looks weird

If I'm being honest, this is totally not my design aesthetic but people love the performance the cables wrapped in this metal braid

Which prevents fraying. It's got optima mechanical switches and optical sensor and this height adjustable air for the back where your palm goes

It's a strange-looking Mouse, but the performance is good

I understand why other people that have picked this up loved it because it says

Unconventional Mouse like 'HP mice' who would ever thought that it'd be a good mouse, but it's a good mouseI Okay

Hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time