HP Victus 16 review

[ntab Configuration]
The Victus 16 is a new midrange laptop introduced by HP in the budget gaming market. Besides packing powerful components in a slim and stylish chassis, the Victus 16 also manages to fit a 16.1-inch display in a 15.6 chassis. Moreover, the HP Victus also retains the quality of its bigger brother, the Omen 15, while also being affordable like its little brother, the Pavilion Gaming 15. In theory, the Victus seems like an outstanding value for the money proposition.

Our review unit is rocking an RTX 3050 series dedicated graphics card alongside an AMD Ryzen 5000 series CPU. There are also variations of the HP Victus fitted with Intel 11th gen processors, designated by HP as the Victus 16t-d0.

[ntab General overview]

While many manufacturers often choose a “gamer look” for their laptops to attract young gamers in the hope of boosting sales, HP opted for a more mature, clean design, with no branding elements except for a stylish V on the back of the display lid. Seriously, there is no way to tell that HP makes the laptop unless its owner says so.
The build quality is reminiscent of the more expensive HP Omen 15, even though the Victus 16 is noticeably more affordable. Thus, this review will often compare the Victus to the HP Omen despite the price difference.

Overall, the all-plastic chassis feels pretty sturdy with very little flex on the keyboard deck. However, the same thing cannot be said about the display lid, which is very shaky. Of all the laptops reviewed so far by the Noteb review team, the Victus 16 suffers the most from this problem.

The backlit keyboard feels ok overall. It is similar to the keyboard featured on the more expensive Omen 15. However, unlike Omen 15, it does not have wasted space on its sides. It also seems that HP listened to its users and added a full-featured Numpad. On the other hand, the arrow keys are tiny and hard to use during gaming, a problem that other Omen laptops do not have. Another issue is raised by the function keys, which are smaller than the rest and sometimes harder to reach, a problem non-existent on Omen 15.Thus,itseemsHP had to do some trade-offsto implement a full Numpad.

The peripheral port selection is similar to that of the Omen 15. The main difference is the Type-C port, placed on the right side on the Omen 15, is on the left side on the Victus 16. Overall, the laptop has:

On the left side:

And on the right side it has:

The SD card reader is an excellent addition, and alongside the laptop’s clean aesthetic, it turns the Victus 16 into a purchase option for content creators, too, not just gamers. Something worth mentioning here is that the SD card reader worked flawlessly (unlike the one on the Pavilion Gaming 15 reviewed in the past), and it reached speeds up to 162 mb/s when copying files from the SD card.

[ntab Display]
The disappointing part of the Victus 16 is its display. It features the BOE09F1 panel, an IPS display with excellent viewing angles and a 144 Hz refresh rate. Unfortunately, the display has a meagre colour coverage of 58.8% sRGB, 40.8% Adobe RGB and 41.9% DCI P3, making it unusable for any video/photo editing. It is a shame since the laptop also features an SD card reader, and alongside the powerful components, it would have been an excellent option for content creators. Also, it seems odd that the display looks dim indoors and hardly usable outdoors, even though it has 328 measured nits on paper.

Here is a link to the calibrated display profile of the reviewed unit. Because each display is unique, this profile will not perfectly match other displays of the same model. Still, using this profile should give better overall colours.

sRGB profile and calibration

[ntab Disassembly]

[ntab Benchmarks]

Night Raid

SCORE	33721
Graphics score	50473
Physics score	11708

Fire Strike

SCORE	12366
Graphics score	13650
Physics score	20405
Combined score	5385

Sky Diver

SCORE	33062
Graphics score	43653
Physics score	16309
Combined score	25860

Time Spy

SCORE	5635
Graphics score	5473
Physics score	6778

Orange Room

SCORE	7257
Average frame rate	158.20 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Cyan room

SCORE	5435
Average frame rate	118.47 fps
Target frame rate	88.90 fps

Blue Room

SCORE	1621
Average frame rate	35.32 fps
Target frame rate	109.00 fps

Nvidia DLSS Test

DLSS Off	– fps
DLSS On	– fps

Cinebench R20

Single Core	528 pts
Multi Core	3754

Blender

CPU blend time	4m 20s
GPU blend time	1m 13s

Geekbench 4

Single-core score	Multi-core score
5798	26785

Geekbench 5

Single-core score	Multi-core score
1377	6217

PCMark 10 Web Score 9049 Apps Score 13419 Chat Score 7599 Photo Score 9905 Video Score 4848 Writing Score 7570 Spreadsheet Score 10632 Essentials 9735 Productivity 8970 Digital Content Creation 7420 SCORE 6202

Unigine Superposition benchmark
720p Low	8636
1080p Medium	7298
1080p High	6195
1080p Extreme	2968
4K Optimized	4013
8K Optimized	1217

Crystal Disk Mark

[ntab Gaming benchmarks]

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[ntab Temperatures]

The cooling solution of the HP Victus 16 consists of two heat pipes shared between the processor and the video card, two heatsinks at the back of the laptop, two average-sized fans and two metal plates covering the VRAM and VRMs. Important note: Victus 16 models configured with more powerful dedicated graphics cards, like the RTX 3060 with 95W, have an additional vent on the right side, while the lower-spec versions of this laptop, like the one reviewed here, only have two vents at the back.

All the tests were performed at an ambient temperature of 26° C (78.8° F).

During the standard 30 minutes AIDA64 stress test (CPU, FPU, cache), the processor reached an average temperature of 94.1 °C (201.3 °F), with a maximum of 97.6 °C (207.6 °F). At these temperatures, the processor managed to keep an average frequency of 3.94 GHz, with occasional dips to as low as 2.81 GHz on some of its cores. Despite the higher-than-average temperatures, the laptop performs well as the average 3.94 GHz speed is noticeably higher than the 3.30 GHz minimum base speed and not far from its maximum boost speed of 4.20 GHz.

In the combined AIDA64 + Unigine Superposition stress test (which had both the processor and the dedicated graphics card under heavy load for 30 minutes), the processor reached a maximum temperature of 101.4 °C (214.5 °F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 97.1 °C (206.7 °F). During this test, the processor kept an average clock speed of 3.58 GHz with occasional dips to as low as 2.81 GHz. The dedicated graphics card maintained an average clock speed of 1555 MHz with a maximum boost of 1935 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered between 78.5 °C (173.3 °F) and 84.1 °C (183.3 °F). This time, the temperatures were much higher, but still, the processor managed to output higher clock speeds than the marketed base 3.30 GHz.

Finally, the laptop was tested with the AIDA64 stability test, another combined stress test for the video card and processor. The results were very similar to the previous stress tests. The processor reached a maximum temperature of 101 °C (213.8 °F) and throttled until it settled at a temperature of 95 °C (203 °F). Despite its throttling, the processor still managed to keep an average clock speed of 3.40 GHz with occasional dips to as low as 2.81 GHz. The dedicated graphics card maintained anaverage clock speed of 1780 MHz with a maximum of 1897 MHz. Temperature-wise, the video card hovered between 80.7 °C (177.2 °F) and 82.4 °C (180.3 °F).

Interestingly, in the synthetic tests meant to push the laptop to its absolute limits, the CPU still manages to output the marketed performance despite the very high temperatures. The performance is similar in real-life testing, like gaming, where the CPU maintains maximum boost speeds on certain occasions—more on this in the results on the Noteb Youtube Channel. However, even though the maximum temperature limit of Ryzen processors is higher than the Intel ones, constantly running at these higher than average temperatures will most likely affect the laptop’s life span for anyone planning to use this machine for more than five years.

[ntab Noise]
Installing the Omen Command Center app from the HP website will allow users to choose between Auto and MAX fan profiles. Selecting Auto will dynamically change the fan’s RPM based on needs. However, the fan curve made by HP is not very good, with the fans sporadically starting to rotate when simply opening a web browser, then suddenly stopping. It is an unoptimized behaviour that HP can quickly fix in the future with a simple software update. Selecting the MAX fan profile will do just that, set the fans to their maximum RPM at all times. Very useful when gaming if the user also has a pair of headphones to act as a sound barrier. Using the MAX fan profile in classrooms, for example, is not recommended as the noise will become very annoying to others.

The LatencyMon test evaluates if a laptop is suitable for video/audio editing and recording. The machine did not experience any high latency throughout the test, making it ideal for sound recording. The test was run multiple times to eliminate any flukes, and it constantly returned with the same results.

LatencyMon test – WIFI	LatencyMon test – LAN

[ntab Battery life]

Since most laptops are used on battery for mundane office activities and web browsing, the laptop was tested using a simulated continuous web browsing session over the WiFi. The browsing session involved checking emails/news, social media and accessing multimedia websites, similar to the behaviour of an average user. The level of brightness was set according to visibility and usability. At 50% brightness, the laptop provided an enjoyable viewing experience. The sound volume was also set to 50%.

With its 56 WHr battery, the laptop lasted 4 hours and 46 minutes. The machine was tested using both Firefox and Edge and yielded similar battery life results regardless of the browser.

Charging the laptop from 5% to 95% took 2 hours.

[ntab Conclusion]

Pros:

• good 1080p gaming performance
• high refresh rate display
• decent keyboard
• SD card reader

Cons:

• low colour coverage display
• wobbly display lid
• runs hot

In conclusion, is the HP Victus 16 worth it? Well, it depends on the price. At ~799$, Victus 16 offers excellent performance without the Pavilion 15’s quality control issues. However, if the Omen 15 goes on sale, that would be a better deal since the Omen has a significantly better cooling system. Overall, the laptop offers excellent 1080p performance while having a stylish chassis, a solid purchase option for any gamer on a budget.

[ntab Videos]