I tested the HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition — and it's possibly the best way to experience the shooter

When HP offered me the chance to check out the HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition gaming laptop I leapt at the opportunity. Despite a reputation as a game for degenerates, Valorant is one of my favorite multiplayer shooters right now. I’m not good at the game — silver for life! — but I enjoy it all the same.

This machine is more or less an HP Omen Max with a Valorant skin, which is fun, and offers the same slick features you’ll find in the best gaming laptops. The Nvidia RTX 5070 GPU and 32GB of RAM in the laptop can run most graphically demanding games at a decent frame rate. And games look great too, thanks to the 16-inch 240Hz LCD display.

I’m focused on gaming here but if you need something a bit beefier for work, the Omen 16 won’t let you down. Despite a tight keyboard it has plenty of ports for connecting necessary peripherals like the best gaming keyboards and best gaming mice to bolster your productivity.

My HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition review will help you decide if this Valorant-themed gaming laptop will give you a tactical advantage on the digital battlefield.

HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition: Cheat Sheet

• What is it? The HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition is a high-end gaming laptop featuring Valorant designs and decent performance.
• Who is it for? It’s for those with deep pockets and a specific love of Valorant who want a 16-inch gaming laptop powerful enough to play the game.
• What does it cost? The HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition costs $3,049, which is expensive but comparable to similar offerings from competitors.
• What do we like? The sleek design, smooth gaming performance and Valorant easter eggs make for a fun laptop
• What don’t we like? This is a hefty, costly and surprisingly loud laptop.

HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition: Specs

HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition: The ups

The HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition is a fun celebration of Riot Games’ first-person tactical hero shooter. It comes with a slick design, decent gaming performance and a bright 16-inch LCD display.

Valorant easter eggs abound

The best way to think about this laptop is that it’s an expensive skin you can buy. Nicely, there are a lot of little details on the surface celebrating the game. It makes for a fun-looking gaming laptop with a little flavor compared to the usual black and gray monsters you see in the wild.

That said, if you've ever seen the HP Omen Max 16, the essential design is basically the same. This HyperX Valorant version is less heavy at 5.5 pounds, but measures about the same overall. Otherwise, it has an aluminum lid and bottom that help make it feel sturdy while opening smoothly.

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The touchpad is pretty large and fairly responsive for when you’re not using a mouse. Likewise, the keyboard is fun with the highlighted WASD keys, but I’ll dig into that more below.

Like the Omen Max 16, this thing is a smudge machine that will soak up your body oils. So if you want a pristine device, you’ll want to have a cleaning cloth nearby.

Run and gun performance

Valorant doesn’t take much to run well; I’ve run Riot’s game on low-end laptops, the PS5 and high-end laptops like the Razer Blade 14. But you can feel the difference when you have a decent setup like the Omen 16’s RTX 5070 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 CPU and 32GB of RAM.

I spent most of my time with the Valorant Edition playing Valorant and had a blast even when I bumped the settings as high as they could go.

To compare to other laptops, in our lab tests we use Cyberpunk 2077, Black Myth: Wukong and Assassin’s Creed: Shadows. At the highest settings, you may not walk away impressed, especially those who insist on 60+ FPS without frame generation.

I often commit the PC gamer sin of not really caring if the FPS is over 60 or at 60 or if my graphics are in 4K or even 2K. But in comparison to laptops running higher-tier RTX 5080 and 5090 GPUs, I think the RTX 5070 holds its own in the HyperX model.

If you’re willing to lower the settings to medium, you can hit up 78 FPS on Black Myth and 62 in Assassin’s Creed.

The included HP Omen Gaming Hub will let you optimize the laptop’s performance, customize the RGB lighting and organize your gaming library. Doing so will let you squeeze some more performance out of this machine if you’re a tinkerer.

Lovely 16-inch display

Once you go OLED, it’s hard to go back, but I’ve never made that leap. The 16-inch LCD display features a 240Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time and over 500 nits of brightness, which is higher than the OLED-paneled HP Omen Max 16.

The panel gets decently bright, and I found that colors popped off the screen without being uncomfortable over a long gaming session. It’s not beating laptops like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed; I wasn’t.

To my eyes, games ran smoothly, and I never noticed any hitching or lag with the 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. It’s especially helpful with an FPS like Valorant where you want smoothness and no input lag.

HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition: The downs

I’ve had a lot of fun with the HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition, but there are some downsides that could make or break it for you. I won’t get into the heft at 5.5 pounds, because it’s a gaming laptop and I almost expect that kind of weight at this point.

Instead, the tight keyboard, short battery life and loud fan can be annoying. I’ll also note that at $3,049 this is not a cheap laptop. And it only comes in one configuration. However, that is comparable to similar configurations like the Razer Blade 16.

Tight keyboard

My colleague Tony Polanco praised the keyboard on the HP Omen Max 16 laptop describing it as roomy with thick keys. I don’t have that laptop on hand to compare, but with this HyperX version, I found the keys way too close together, which made typing annoying even with the included number pad, something I’d usually praise.

To compare I do have a Lenovo ThinkPad 14s as my work laptop. I measured the distance between the W, A, S and D keys on both machines.

On the Valorant laptop I got about 3mm, while my Lenovo measured around 4mm. The Lenovo also has slightly curved corners on the bottom of the keys which adds a bit more space.

That extra millimeter, give or take, really makes a difference when you’re trying to type. I wouldn’t describe my fingers as particularly sausage-esque but it’s not a comfortable fit.

However, when I was playing Valorant I didn’t have any noticeable slips. So for gaming it might not be a problem. For everything else, it’s not great.

Short and hot battery

In 2026, there are laptops with more than 20 hours of battery life. The MacBook Pro 16-inch, one of the best laptops for battery life, tested at over 21 hours. Unfortunately, gaming laptops have yet to get the memo.

In our lab tests, we got exactly 90 minutes in our PCMark 10 Gaming test, but that figure did manage to bump up to 2 hours and 42 minutes in our web surfing test.

As you can see, the Valorant laptop is comparable to other laptops if you’re gaming, but much weaker for more general use. However, I expect to plug in gaming laptops so the flaw for me is the 280W power brick. I don’t have a thermometer gun but after some sessions the brick was so hot that I legitimately didn’t want to touch it. It’s also hefty, meaning I can’t really hang it up without some structure.

Playing games like Monster Train that don’t require much of the laptop didn’t pull on the power as much, but even Valorant was pushing it.

Loud fan depending on the game

Again, I mostly played Valorant to stick with the theme of the laptop. The laptop as a whole proved pretty cool over long sessions (power brick aside). For laptops we generally say that anything over 96 degrees is uncomfortably hot. The underside of the Valorant edition peaked at 87.5 degrees during a lab test running Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition.

However, I found the fans to be quite loud. The machine actually warns you that depending on what performance setting you utilize the fans will run loudly. During some of my tweaking, I noticed that I could get the noise down a bit by focusing on balance or eco modes. Anything higher brings the noise.

Maybe it won’t bother you, but it’s something to be aware of.

HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition: Verdict

While the HP HyperX Omen 16 Valorant Edition has some flaws, most of them from the price to the low battery life are things I consider par for the course when it comes to higher-end gaming laptops. The keyboard may be an annoyance, but it could be mitigated with a good peripheral. Past that, I think it’s a fine gaming laptop that I enjoyed my time with especially if you enjoy Valorant.

The Omen 16 Valorant Edition delivers a great gaming experience thanks to the RTX 5070 GPU and bright LCD display. Sometimes you want some flair that isn’t just RGB lighting, and I think the little easter eggs here are a delight.