The powerhouse HP Omen Max 16 packs a serious punch and can handle intensive tasks with ease. But this power has its downsides.
The HP Omen Max 16 is last year's follow-up to, packing in more powerful parts to turn this machine into a true heavyweight. It really is heavy, tipping the pre-fight scales at 5.4 pounds , while the price has also climbed a few bands, now coming in at around $2,500 thanks to the inclusion of an Nvidia GeForce RTX 50 series GPU.
But do these changes pack a big enough punch to knock out its competitors? While it has some quirks, the Omen Max overall offers premium performance and excels in tasks that give its high-end components a workout. In particular, the machine is built for gaming and can handle the latest AAA titles with ease — with its lightning-fast screen helping competitive players gain an edge. That means it's also primed to handle photo and video editing, and could potentially be a useful fixture on your desk at home.The HP Omen Max 16 leans into a typical"gamer" aesthetic, with RGB lighting underneath and the keyboard glowing vibrantly in a range of colors. The software lets you customize colors, patterns and transitions, which is a neat touch — though it's probably expected at this price point. The machine's looks are likely to be divisive, however, and it's definitely not a"professional" machine — but if lights and colors are your thing, the overall design is neat if unremarkable. The layout and looks have been tweaked since the 2023 model, expanding the keyboard to include a number pad and adding more lighting. The keys are all backlit and look excellent in dimly lit rooms, although the touchpad isn't lit and is positioned slightly left-of-center, which can make reaching for it a bit awkward at first. The matte black adds a stylish, understated finish to the chassis, and the Omen logo on the outside and"016" written on the inside are subtle enough to not disrupt the appearance. The screen has some flex, which is a bit disconcerting and adds to a slightly less-than-premium feel to the Omen Max 16. It is also easy to leave fingerprints and marks around the case, due to the color and material — but these are easy to wipe away. We found the lights and overall aesthetic struck a good balance between fun and understated, with the RGB lighting tasteful and not too over the top. They can, however, be deactivated if you find them more garish than appealing.The display is generally good on the Omen Max 16, partly thanks to its 400-nit brightness that we verified in testing with a display calibrator. This is not market-leading but is still brighter than average, making it clear even in well-lit rooms. The 97.4% coverage of the sRGB gamut is also perfectly acceptable for most use cases. Additional testing rendered 71.8% and 76.7% coverage of the Adobe and DCI P3 spectra, respectively; the results aren't bad, and just shy of what you need for professional usage — but these days, you tend to find many laptops with displays that can hit above 90%.Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors For a non-OLED screen, and to a casual eye, the colors generally pack a punch, except for a slightly washed-out black level, which scored an underwhelming 0.5 nits in our tests. This also feeds into a contrast ratio of 797:1:1, which is relatively disappointing. Where this screen really excels is its lightning-fast refresh rate of 250 Hz — making using it a pleasure. Movement across the screen is fluid and silky, while it is also quick to respond to inputs. The machine is first-and-foremost designed with gamers in mind, so this is evidently what HP has put its efforts into when it comes to the screen — and in this area, it doesn't disappoint.The keyboard layout is good overall, although the small Enter key and the slender up and down arrows take a bit of getting used to. In a departure from the 2023 model, the design is gapless, although the keys have enough space between them for comfortable touch typing. Each keystroke is springy with a pleasing level of key travel and haptic feedback, while not requiring too much effort to push down, striking a perfect balance. The backlighting on the keys is customizable, with several fun presets ranging from a pulsing glow to a rippling effect from each keystroke, like a stone dropped in a pool of water. A number pad adds more functionality over the previous Omen Max. We do, however, question how durable this keyboard is. During testing, a cat decided to try the keys and managed to prise several out — something she has not been able to do with other keyboards, notably the surprisingly tough MacBook Air 2022. The keys, which are slim and a little flimsy, quickly click back into place , but it raises doubts over how much casual wear and tear it can stand. The touchpad is large, smooth and responsive. But it's positioned awkwardly and we often activate the right-click by accident; any left clicks require an irritating amount of leaning over to activate. This is something frequent use will fix, as you adjust to the machine, but it initially feels unnatural. Let's start with the good — performance is excellent. The HP Omen Max 16 is built with power in mind, especially when it comes to gaming, and it performed excellently, handling the latest AAA titles, such as Black Ops 7, with ease on Ultra settings. Our review unit boasted an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 GPU paired with an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 375 CPU, 32 GB DDR5 SDRAM, and a 1TB SSD. And these mostly top-tier components duly stand and deliver. Some games put up a fight, however, with the frames per second on"Senua's Saga: Hellblade II" dropping into the 40s and occasionally even the 30s on maximum settings . A propensity to handle high-end gaming meant we were excited for what it meant for users looking to work with graphics-based tasks. The machine excelled when performing other video and photo editing, with its superior performance also playing out across benchmark tests — with the GPU registering an eye-watering score of 181,959 in our OpenCL test with Geekbench 6. This blows anything else we've tested completely out of the atmosphere. The CPU was also excellent in benchmarking. It registered a fantastic 2,967 for single-core and 15,420 for multi-core performance, putting it far ahead of the 2023 model and plenty of other recent Windows machines. One drawback of this power is how noisy the fans are in order to keep the machine cool. When pushing the Omen Max to its limits, they run so loudly to blast out hot air in various directions that you'll probably need to wear headphones to hear any sound. It's enough to annoy anybody unfortunate enough to be near you, let alone yourself. Meanwhile, as we all know by now, with great power usually comes terrible battery life, and the Omen Max 16 is no exception. In our standard looped video playback battery test, the Omen Max 16 lasted for just 7 hours and 31 minutes. The only thing we've ever tested that performed worse was the 2023 HP Omen 16, which survived for a pitiful 4 hours and 53 minutes. So while the 2025 model shows an improvement, it's still not good when you consider that plenty of high-end and premium Windows machines can last well above 10 hours. But poor battery performance is typical for gaming machines like this.The HP Omen Max 16 is quite chunky — standing 1 inch tall — but chunkiness means room for plenty of ports. The machine therefore has space to fit in two USB-A ports, an HDMI 2.1 port, a headphone jack,an Ethernet port and two USB-C ports. They are laid out logically and are easy to reach. Feature-wise, it comes with Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless connectivity, and a 1080p webcam that captures you well enough. The machine also comes with HP's Omen Gaming Hub software, which lets you better monitor and manage gaming performance.The HP Omen Max 16 is really quite excellent at handling graphics-heavy workloads, such as video editing or gaming. However, its screen isn't quite accurate enough for most photographers and videographers, and its noise and weight are also offputting for those tasks if you need to be using it out and about — not to mention the lacklustre battery life. Ultimately, this machine is built for gamers and gaming, and that is who it should primarily appeal to.James is Live Science’s production editor and is based near London in the U.K. Before joining Live Science, he worked on a number of magazines, including How It Works, History of War and Digital Photographer. He also previously worked in Madrid, Spain, helping to create history and science textbooks and learning resources for schools. He has a bachelor’s degree in English and History from Coventry University.Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
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