A Ryzen 9 8940HX laptop for less than $950

OMEN 16 – Gaming Laptop – Review with HP Live Experts [2024] – YouTube

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This is a screamer of a deal. HP has slashed the price of the Omen 16z by nearly half to just $950; that’s a saving of $850 (was $1700). I chose it because of its CPU, the Ryzen 9 8940HX is a power user dream with 16 cores (32 threads) and a staggering 64MB L3 cache. The next cheapest laptop with this CPU costs almost 50% more. This HP deal is THAT good!

I cannot stress enough how powerful that 16-core, 55W CPU is. Although it ranks 10th in AMD’s own leaderboard of mobile CPUs, it is faster than all but two of Intel’s laptop processors (the 275HX and the 285HX).

Its score of 51,300 on CPU Benchmark propels it ahead of the Apple M2 Ultra (the chip inside the $7000 Mac Pro desktop workstation) and the 350W AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 7945WX workstation CPU.

The rest of the component list isn’t shabby as well. An Nvidia RTX5060 GPU with 8GB of RAM (note it is the laptop version, so don’t expect any miracles), two 8GB of DDR5 memory modules, a 512GB PCIe Gen4 SSD, a 16-inch 2K 300 nits IPS display and a 6-cell, 83Whr battery accompany the Ryzen 9 CPU.

There are loads of connections and upgrade options as well. You can add another SSD and there are six I/O ports (including a GbE LAN one). One area that falls a bit short of my expectations is the wireless tech used: a Realtek Wi-Fi 6 chip simply doesn’t cut it on a $1000 laptop; it’s not even a Wi-Fi 6e while others are already on Wi-Fi 7.

On the other hand, I like the full HD IR camera (will be useful for Windows Hello), and the backlit keyboard with a dedicated numeric keypad. My colleagues on TechRadar reviewed an earlier version of the Omen 16z back in 2023 and said that it’s a great choice for people looking to game on a budget.

I couldn’t agree more, except for the fact that it is an absolute beast of a bargain for anyone who can afford it. Oh and you can get an RTX 5700 version for just $120 more.

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Désiré Athow

My early years and upbringing mean that I have always had a bias towards thrifty tech products. I chase the deal, rather than chase the brand. This is probably why most of the deals I will chose are often very different from my peers’ selection.

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