I’ll get right into it. HP via their Omen Transcend 16 laptop has a slim laptop which allows you to take your gaming experience anywhere. That’s important because gaming laptops tend to be big, bulky, and heavy. But slimmer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re giving up power. Here’s why, starting with the specs:
HP IR Camera Which Is Windows Hello Compatible and has a manual privacy shield
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 with 8GB of VRAM
Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200 (2×2) and Bluetooth 5.4
Gigabit Ethernet
That on paper is a pretty powerful gaming computer. I’ll get to the performance in a bit. But let’s go over the laptop itself.
Here’s the HP Omen Transcend with one of the bigger power supplies that I have seen lately. It uses a barrel connector that connects to the back of the laptop to power it. While the keyboard with the A, S, D, and W keys highlighted is a nice touch (I should not that the keyboard is also capable of RGB backlighting), the real star of the show is the 16.0″ WQXGA mini-LED Display which does 1180 nits, with a 240Hz refresh rate. With such a fast refresh rate and the sort of advantages that a mini-LED display brings in terms of deeper blacks and brighter colours, the graphics that this laptop can produce should make you a better player as you’ll be able to spot or react to enemies much easier. Especially in games where enemies may be hiding in the shadows.
Or put another way. If you buy this laptop and you still suck at Call Of Duty, it’s not the laptop’s fault.
On one side you get a 5Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A port.
On the other side you get a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack.
On the back you get gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, and another 5Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A port. Thus the port selection is quite good. There’s also a ton of ventilation along the sides and the bottom. Plus the laptop’s design raises the back end to put the keyboard at a good angle. That makes typing on the keyboard a bit more comfortable. I should also mention that I like the feel of the keyboard as well as it has really good feedback. The large trackpad is a diving board design and is best used from the bottom of the trackpad.
Now this laptop comes with BANG & OLUFSEN audio. I have to admit that it was just okay but not spectacular. But I don’t think that this will matter to most people as in the box were a pair of HyperX Cloud II Wireless headphones which is a $189.99 CAD value. Having recently reviewed the HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones, I feel safe in saying that this might be a better option for audio for competitive gamers rather than using the speakers. Besides, every gamer that I know uses headphones so the built in speakers are surplus to requirements so to speak.
In terms of weight and build quality, the laptop weighs just under 5 pounds. That makes it as heavy as my 16″ MacBook Pro. And as far as I am concerned, that’s impressive as a lot of gaming laptops that I have seen lately are heavier than that. In terms of build quality, the laptop is made of metal and it feels solid. Nothing creaked of moved during my testing. So I would say that the Omen Transcend 16 is going to survive long gaming sessions. The other thing that I will say is that it fit into my backpack and I didn’t find it to heavy to lug around as long as I didn’t take the power supply with me.
Let’s get to the good stuff as I am sure you’re reading this review to see how it performs. Much like the HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones, I decided to subject this to a Zwift team time trial race. If you read the headphone review, you can get a better understanding of what a team time trial is all about. But the reason why I chose this as a performance test is that I have an M2 Pro Mac mini that is capable of doing around 120 frames per second on Zwift. Thus I had something that I can do a direct comparison to. So I set up the Omen Transcend 16 to do a 30 KM team time trial to see what it was capable of. This is what I found out:
This laptop is capable of running Swift’s “Ultra” graphics setting which gives you the best visual detail possible. That’s something that the Mac mini, or any Mac isn’t capable of for reasons that only Zwift or maybe Apple can explain to me. The net result is that Zwift simply looks better on this laptop. Not that you notice when you’re suffering like a dog from going all out in a team time trial.
At 4K, I managed to get 160 FPS as a maximum. And I averaged 145 FPS. Both beating the Mac mini easily.
The one thing that I did notice is that 10 minutes into this team time trial that lasted 53:42 and put our team third in our time zone and category, the fans spun up significantly. Which wasn’t a surprise to me as gaming laptops have less thermal headroom when compared to desktops. Which means that a long gaming session will result in you hearing a fair amount of fan noise.
The second last area that I want to cover is the 1080P webcam. It will do if you need to use a webcam for a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting. But I have to admit that you need to have good lighting to get decent results out of it. Thus my recommendation would be to get a dedicated camera if you plan on live-streaming your gameplay on Twitch. Having said that, the fact that it includes a privacy shield is a very nice touch. And the fact that this supports Windows Hello is cool as well as I found it fast to recognize my face and log me in.
The last area that I will touch on is battery life. I used this as my daily driver for a week and found that I got about 5 to 6 hours of battery life. This isn’t a surprise to me as gaming laptops tend not to have the best battery life specs. But this would have been something that would have been easier for me to live with if the power adapter (which by the way is a 280W charger which explains why it is so big) were lighter. If I could give HP one piece of advice, maybe in the next version of this laptop they could use a GaN charger to reduce the size and weight. Because by doing that, this laptop would be perfect for those who want a powerful laptop for productivity as well as gaming as the power adapter wouldn’t be a size and weight penalty to those who need to plug in to charge it when required. Bonus points if that power adapter abandoned the barrel connector at the back and used USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 for charging instead as that would open things up to third party chargers as well.
So to conclude, the ideal user of this laptop would be someone who not only plays games, but does a lot of productivity work that needs a fair amount of horsepower. The HP Omen Transcend 16 is a very capable laptop that you won’t be disappointed by. HP has models with screen sizes from 14″ to 17″ and start from $1699 CAD. That gives you a fair amount of room to find a laptop that works for you needs. My Transcend 16 is available at Best Buy $2,799.95. Which I think is a good price given what you get in the box. If you’re the target user of this laptop, I’d be making a point to check it out today.
This entry was posted on June 26, 2024 at 9:02 am and is filed under Commentary with tags HP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Review: HP Omen Transcend 16
I’ll get right into it. HP via their Omen Transcend 16 laptop has a slim laptop which allows you to take your gaming experience anywhere. That’s important because gaming laptops tend to be big, bulky, and heavy. But slimmer doesn’t necessarily mean you’re giving up power. Here’s why, starting with the specs:
That on paper is a pretty powerful gaming computer. I’ll get to the performance in a bit. But let’s go over the laptop itself.
Here’s the HP Omen Transcend with one of the bigger power supplies that I have seen lately. It uses a barrel connector that connects to the back of the laptop to power it. While the keyboard with the A, S, D, and W keys highlighted is a nice touch (I should not that the keyboard is also capable of RGB backlighting), the real star of the show is the 16.0″ WQXGA mini-LED Display which does 1180 nits, with a 240Hz refresh rate. With such a fast refresh rate and the sort of advantages that a mini-LED display brings in terms of deeper blacks and brighter colours, the graphics that this laptop can produce should make you a better player as you’ll be able to spot or react to enemies much easier. Especially in games where enemies may be hiding in the shadows.
Or put another way. If you buy this laptop and you still suck at Call Of Duty, it’s not the laptop’s fault.
On one side you get a 5Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A port.
On the other side you get a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack.
On the back you get gigabit Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, and another 5Gbps USB 3.1 Type-A port. Thus the port selection is quite good. There’s also a ton of ventilation along the sides and the bottom. Plus the laptop’s design raises the back end to put the keyboard at a good angle. That makes typing on the keyboard a bit more comfortable. I should also mention that I like the feel of the keyboard as well as it has really good feedback. The large trackpad is a diving board design and is best used from the bottom of the trackpad.
Now this laptop comes with BANG & OLUFSEN audio. I have to admit that it was just okay but not spectacular. But I don’t think that this will matter to most people as in the box were a pair of HyperX Cloud II Wireless headphones which is a $189.99 CAD value. Having recently reviewed the HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones, I feel safe in saying that this might be a better option for audio for competitive gamers rather than using the speakers. Besides, every gamer that I know uses headphones so the built in speakers are surplus to requirements so to speak.
In terms of weight and build quality, the laptop weighs just under 5 pounds. That makes it as heavy as my 16″ MacBook Pro. And as far as I am concerned, that’s impressive as a lot of gaming laptops that I have seen lately are heavier than that. In terms of build quality, the laptop is made of metal and it feels solid. Nothing creaked of moved during my testing. So I would say that the Omen Transcend 16 is going to survive long gaming sessions. The other thing that I will say is that it fit into my backpack and I didn’t find it to heavy to lug around as long as I didn’t take the power supply with me.
Let’s get to the good stuff as I am sure you’re reading this review to see how it performs. Much like the HyperX Cloud Stinger 2 Wireless Headphones, I decided to subject this to a Zwift team time trial race. If you read the headphone review, you can get a better understanding of what a team time trial is all about. But the reason why I chose this as a performance test is that I have an M2 Pro Mac mini that is capable of doing around 120 frames per second on Zwift. Thus I had something that I can do a direct comparison to. So I set up the Omen Transcend 16 to do a 30 KM team time trial to see what it was capable of. This is what I found out:
The one thing that I did notice is that 10 minutes into this team time trial that lasted 53:42 and put our team third in our time zone and category, the fans spun up significantly. Which wasn’t a surprise to me as gaming laptops have less thermal headroom when compared to desktops. Which means that a long gaming session will result in you hearing a fair amount of fan noise.
The second last area that I want to cover is the 1080P webcam. It will do if you need to use a webcam for a Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting. But I have to admit that you need to have good lighting to get decent results out of it. Thus my recommendation would be to get a dedicated camera if you plan on live-streaming your gameplay on Twitch. Having said that, the fact that it includes a privacy shield is a very nice touch. And the fact that this supports Windows Hello is cool as well as I found it fast to recognize my face and log me in.
The last area that I will touch on is battery life. I used this as my daily driver for a week and found that I got about 5 to 6 hours of battery life. This isn’t a surprise to me as gaming laptops tend not to have the best battery life specs. But this would have been something that would have been easier for me to live with if the power adapter (which by the way is a 280W charger which explains why it is so big) were lighter. If I could give HP one piece of advice, maybe in the next version of this laptop they could use a GaN charger to reduce the size and weight. Because by doing that, this laptop would be perfect for those who want a powerful laptop for productivity as well as gaming as the power adapter wouldn’t be a size and weight penalty to those who need to plug in to charge it when required. Bonus points if that power adapter abandoned the barrel connector at the back and used USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 for charging instead as that would open things up to third party chargers as well.
So to conclude, the ideal user of this laptop would be someone who not only plays games, but does a lot of productivity work that needs a fair amount of horsepower. The HP Omen Transcend 16 is a very capable laptop that you won’t be disappointed by. HP has models with screen sizes from 14″ to 17″ and start from $1699 CAD. That gives you a fair amount of room to find a laptop that works for you needs. My Transcend 16 is available at Best Buy $2,799.95. Which I think is a good price given what you get in the box. If you’re the target user of this laptop, I’d be making a point to check it out today.
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This entry was posted on June 26, 2024 at 9:02 am and is filed under Commentary with tags HP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.