HP’s new Victus gaming laptops aim to fill the gap between its affordable Pavillion and flagship Omen series. Our HP Victus model arrived with an 11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU, an RTX 3060 mobile graphics card, and a 16-inch 144Hz IPS panel.
The HP Victus features a starting price of Rs 74,990 in India, going all the way up to Rs 1,19,990, for our model. On paper, there’s no doubt that the Victus has what it takes to deliver on the gaming front. Although looks can be deceiving and impressive specifications don’t always translate to impressive performance. So stick around for our full HP Victus 16 review to see if this notebook has what it takes to deliver in the real world.
Design and Build
Let’s start with the design. The HP Victus embraces the 16-inch form factor, which strays away from the standard 15-inch and 17-inch sizes. The Victus come in Ceramic White, Performance Blue, or Mica Silver. The laptop has the ‘V’ (Victus) logo on the lid, which features a reflective diamond-like finish. However, other design traits of the Victus are much too subtle for a gaming laptop.
The laptop weighs around 2.48 kg and measures 0.93 inches thick. The Victus features an all-plastic build, but the chassis still feels quite sturdy, which does lend it a premium-looking feel. While the hinge design does look solid, it actually isn’t, I found that the screen easily wobbled with minimal force or even if you lift the notebook up and move around with it. I also found some keyboard flex.
Connectivity
The HP Victus 16 has multiple ports to connect accessories. There are two USB-A 3.2 ports on the right, while the rest of the ports are located on the left. These include a USB Type-C port, another USB-A port, an HDMI port, an Ethernet port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an SD card reader. The laptop also comes with Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.1 wireless connectivity. The only disappointment here is the lack of Thunderbolt 4.
Keyboard and Touchpad
Moving on to the keyboard, which is one of the few to integrate a full Numpad. The keys have a nice travel distance but don’t get the full RGB treatment, leaving you with a white backlight. Additionally, you cannot adjust levels of brightness as well, it only goes on and off. And while the keyboard was generally comfortable to use, it did take some time getting used to as the keycaps were smaller than usual, more so than on other laptops I’ve used, which did lead to more typos than I’d normally make.
You do get a bit of resistance while pressing down on the keys, which is rather satisfying. The touchpad is quite large and has a comfortable surface. It was quite responsive and comes with a full set of Windows 11 multitouch gestures. The buttons on the touchpad also seemed a bit loose, and I often had to disable it when using a mouse on account of its size. Overall, the keyboard and touchpad on the Victus 16 are very reliable but nothing to write home about.
Display
For the display, the Victus opts for a 16.1-inch IPS LCD screen that has relatively narrow bezels. The panel has a 144Hz refresh rate and a 7ms response time. The display also features 300 nits of brightness, which is well above the 250 nits gaming laptop average. Plus, the 16.1-inch screen size is noticeable, giving you a little bit of extra screen real estate. The panel also reproduces accurate and vibrant colours, clear and sharp image quality.
It has an anti-glare coating and is Low Blue Light certified. The display has an older 16:9 aspect ratio, a large chin, and a 720p webcam that is serviceable for video calling. So far as 1080p screens are concerned, this is pretty much as good as it gets, making it excellent for gaming, good for productivity, and reliable for more creative work.
Performance
Our HP Victus 16 model arrived with an 8 core Intel Core i7-11800H CPU paired with 16GB of dual-channel memory clocked to 3200MHz RAM. Our model was fully tanked out with an Nvidia RTX 3060 laptop GPU. It also packed 512GB of PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD storage. While the specs of the Victus are impressive, let’s take a look at how they fare in the real world.
First, let’s start with the multiplayer titles. In Valorant, the Victus managed 165fps on average, well above the 144Hz the display could pump out. In Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War I got around 110 to 130 fps on average with the settings on high in multiplayer mode. Overwatch easily delivered 140fps on average on Ultra settings.
Moving on to some AAA titles and the Victus continued to impress with 100fps in Gear of War 5 on high settings. Assassin's Creed Valhalla delivered around 60fps on average on high graphics. In Battlefield V, the laptop managed to deliver an average of 80fps on Ultra settings in multiplayer mode. You can also enable ray tracing on the Victus 16 and still achieve playable frame rates in almost every title you throw at it.
In Cinebench R23, the Victus 16 managed a single-core score of 1523 points and a multi-core score of 10,112 points. In Geekbench 5, the Victus achieved a single-core score of 1555 points and a multi-core score of 9095 points. However, the improved cooling is the real star of the show here. During intensive multiplayer gaming, the CPU temperatures drifted between 75 to 90 degrees but mostly stayed under 85 degrees, while the GPU also rarely crossed 75 degrees.
Apart from the vents on the back and the right, the Victus is also equipped with powerful fans that run quite loud, delivering effective cooling. The cooling system also keeps the surface temperatures of the laptop relatively cool. The integrated HP Omen software features three power modes and also enables easy and convenient undervolting to squeeze out that extra bit of performance.
Battery Life
As is the story with most gaming laptops, the Victus 16 did not impress with its battery life. You can expect around four to five hours of battery life, depending on the task at hand. I got a little over 3.5 hours while multitasking between MS Word and Google Chrome (7 to 8 tabs including YouTube) with screen brightness set at 70 percent.
There are a few battery tweaks that can be made in the integrated Omen software. Attempting to game on the battery only yielded around an hour of playtime, but that was pretty much expected. I think the Victus does fall short in the battery department, although I feel the AMD version of this laptop might do a better job with battery life. For a gaming laptop, I’d say battery life is bang-on average.
Audio
The HP Victus uses two downward-firing speakers with sound tuned by Bang and Olufsen. You can also access an EQ to fine-tune the audio depending on what you are listening to. The speakers push out good mids and highs with no distortion at high volumes. Speaking of high volume, the speakers here don’t get too loud, and the audio can be drowned out by the high volumes of the fans on max. I’d recommend using a pair of headphones or external speakers if you are gaming or watching movies.
Verdict
The HP Victus 16 does an excellent job in the performance and visual departments but falls short in build quality and battery life. I didn’t particularly like the keyboard on the laptop, while the speakers were often drowned out by the fans. In my experience, this wasn’t a well-rounded laptop. However, that doesn’t change the fact that the Victus is a powerhouse under the hood. The primary use-case for a gaming laptop is ‘gaming’ and in that area, the Victus doesn’t disappoint.
It is easily one of the best-performing mid-range laptops I’ve reviewed this year. And the fact that you can undervolt the CPU directly from the software makes things all even better. There are certain things I’d improve about the Victus, but performance isn’t one of them. The Victus 16 doesn’t come cheap but makes little concessions when it comes to performance, earning it an easy recommendation. If you are in the market for a mid-range powerhouse and willing to make a few compromises, then you can’t go wrong with the Victus 16.
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