HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) test: our full opinion –

HP is betting a lot on the gaming segment. It is not for nothing that the brand bought HyperX and that the mention of Omen comes up very often in esports competitions around the world. However, in France, Asus and its ROG range remain largely in the lead. Is it due to a lack of interest in the products themselves? The 2023 HP Omen Transcend 16 doesn’t quite agree.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Technical sheet

The machine is on loan from HP for this test.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Design

What is really striking when you first pick up the HP Omen Transcend 16 is how… It absolutely does not have the usual trappings of gaming configurations. In truth, it looks like a professional laptop PC, with its extremely sober metal chassis that Razer would not completely deny. It is even rather thin for its category at 2 cm thick, and weighs “only” 2.17 kilos.

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

The 16-inch format is a good compromise here for deploying a powerful machine, but still easily transportable. Finally, what we will especially remember about this HP Omen Transcend 16 is the lower border of its screen, which is still very thick. But unfortunately, most gaming PCs have kept it, so it is part of the current machines.

Keyboard and touchpad

The “gamer” argument in terms of design is found only on the keyboard, where the usual ZQSD keys are the only transparent ones to allow the backlight to pass through more easily. These are fairly classic switches, with full-size keys, whose travel is still greater than most references on the market, but whose lightness of rebound is not typically gamer. Comfortable, yes, but precision suffers. We are also on a TKL keyboard format, which therefore skips the numeric keypad, but integrates the direction arrows and associated shortcuts at the top.

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

The touchpad itself is very large and comfortable to use, although its glide would have benefited from a glass covering rather than plastic here. It’s a detail, however: the HP Omen Transcend 16 at least makes the effort to integrate a good diagonal, when many competitors assume that their buyers will plug in an external mouse anyway.

Connections

On the left of the device we find two Thunderbolt 4 compatible USB-C ports as well as the combo jack port. On the right, a simple USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 is integrated. It is on the back that we can benefit from the power port, an HDMI 2.1 port, an Ethernet port and a second USB-A port.

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

Source: Brice Zerouk – Frandroid

The configuration is quite large, and the only thing missing is an SD card reader. It is nice to see that despite this very thin format, HP has been able to integrate so many connectors in various orientations and placements which can suit many office configurations. This is all very well thought out.

Webcam and audio

This is where the HP Omen Transcend 16 doesn’t stand out, with a very basic 1080p webcam whose processing isn’t particularly brilliant. You know the drill: videoconferencing and nothing more. At least facial recognition is supported. The B&O speakers, on the other hand, are surprisingly accurate. If the bass is missing, as always, the treble is very good and the midrange is not completely erased from the score. Without being the best on the market, the speakers of the HP Omen Transcend 16 are more satisfying to the ear than most other gaming machines.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Screen

Our test device is equipped with a 16.1-inch mini LED panel with anti-reflective treatment, which supports a maximum definition of 2560 x 1440 pixels, i.e. Quad HD with a 16:10 ratio. It is capable of reaching a refresh rate of 240Hz, which is supported by G-Sync technology.

Under our probe and with the DisplayCal software, we were able to measure 146.4% coverage of the sRGB space for 103.7% coverage of the DCI-P3 space. Maximum brightness was measured at 775 cd/m², for an almost infinite contrast ratio thanks to Mini LED technology. The average color temperature is found at 6875K, a little cooler than the expected NTSC standard, but the average Delta E00 measured at 1.66 proves that the panel has been very well calibrated from the factory.

This is simply excellent, and proof that Mini LED technology has a bright future ahead of it. As long as someone can afford it one day, since it contributes to the big increase in price of this test configuration.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Software

On this point, HP still has work to do. In addition to pop-up advertisements which are far from rare, the Omen management software itself offers everything you would expect in terms of settings… But how messy it can be to use. We feel here that the developer wanted to offer an all-in-one platform, but through this effort, he has just complicated what should be much simpler to manage on a daily basis.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Performance

In our test configuration, the 2023 HP Omen Transcend 16 is equipped with the latest Intel Core i9-13900HX, an SoC with 24 cores — 8 performance and 16 efficient — for 32 threads that can turbo up to 5.4 GHz. It is coupled with 32 GB of DDR5 RAM at 5600 MHz on two SODIMM ports, as well as a 1 TB PCIe Gen 4 disk. On the graphics computing side, we find the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 with 8 GB of GDDR6 whose TGP is slightly lowered to 130W (compared to 140W usually).

Benchmarks

We still find the same duel that separates Intel and AMD since Ryzen emerged. Under Cinebench R23, the Intel Core i9-13900HX shows its teeth with single core performance of 2102 points, but falls a little short on multi-core performance with a score of 24589 points. It’s not in this chassis that it is able to spread its wings, but it remains incredibly efficient to provide us with a PCMark 10 score of 8201 points.

In game, we find 2964 points on Speed ​​Way, 7521 points on Port Royal and 6200 points on Time Spy Extreme from 3D Mark, with DirectX ray-tracing performance rated at 36.11 FPS. Everything is within the margin of what we expect from an RTX 4070, although not as good as most computers equipped with this GPU. Storage is one of the most efficient integrated into modern configurations.

Stake

The 10W difference observed on the TGP is clearly responsible for this. In game, we observe a drop of around 10 FPS on average across all of the games tested, compared to a machine that did not suffer this small loss. And if DLSS 3 greatly helps to find a playable framerate, it will be better to be a little more conservative with your settings or deactivate ray-tracing on a daily basis. Still, for such a thin PC, finding such performance is excellent.

Cooling and noise

We better understand the drop in TDP and TGP by observing the thermal management of the device. Certainly, the HP Omen Transcend 16 of 2023 tends to reach fairly high temperatures on its chassis, with a maximum of 56°C found at the bottom of it, but on the other side… What is he knows how to remain discreet. Even when running at full power, its fans never achieve the “helicopter takeoff” effect that we are used to on gaming configs. If we had to sacrifice 10 average FPS for that, we would accept the offer without batting an eyelid.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Autonomy

The 2023 HP Omen Transcend 16 is equipped with a large 97 Wh battery, almost the maximum possible for a computer before it gets stopped at customs. To take full advantage of its power, you will necessarily have to connect it to its 280W power supply.

And as always on these configurations, we find use between 4 and 5 hours in an office setting. In itself, this is perhaps even good news as we could expect that the Mini LED screen would be more energy efficient than most of the IPS LCD panels integrated into these configurations. But here’s the thing: it won’t really make an afternoon of work for you. No surprise then.

HP Omen 16 Transcend (u0000nf) Price and availability

The HP Omen Transcend 16 can be found from 1799 euros. But for the configuration with Mini LED screen and RTX 4070 that we have in test, you will have to pay no less than 3225 euros. At least you get a HyperX Cloud II Core headset for that.

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