Chip shortages in recent years have exacerbated the problem of expensive gaming laptops. It offers options under $1,000 to address that problem with its new Victus 15. A Victus 16 can accommodate an RTX 3060 card, but a Victus 15 can only support an RTX 3050 Ti – and my unit had a GTX 1650. Gaming laptops with graphics that aren’t quite good may have the latest 12th-generation CPUs, but we rarely recommend them. Their unit lacked performance, but some configurations could make this a solid purchase.
Design of the HP Victus 15
A few aspects from HP’s Omen lineup find their way into the Victus 15, though it maintains a more conservative appearance. The Victus logo uses Omen’s basic geometry except for the bottom portion. On the lid and above the keyboard, the logo appears. Despite its simple design, there aren’t many gamer-friendly features on the Victus 15. You wouldn’t be surprised to see the Victus 15 on the front and side as a mainstream budget laptop with a fighter jet-like vent at the rear.
In contrast to the massive chin at the bottom of the display, both the side and top bezels have thin sides and a relatively small top bezel. In addition to Mica Silver (dark grey), Performance Blue, and Ceramic White, three other colours are available. Despite being smaller than the Victus 16, the rear edges of the Victus 15 look sleeker, giving it a cleaner appearance. Gaming laptops often look more mainstream than gaming desktops.
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and Razer Blade 15 are other examples. It’s worth considering something like the Asus ROG Strix G15 if you are looking for a laptop that looks like a gaming machine. Victus 15 and Victus 16 are made entirely of plastic. Similarly, it has a bendable lid. Despite the smaller model’s solid construction, the keyboard deck has a bit of flex.
The intense gaming action is not affected by the hinge, which opens easily with one hand without wobbling. Victus 15 is slightly better than Victus 16 but falls well short of competitors such as Lenovo Legion 5i Pro and Razer Blade 15. Its size is typical of a 15-inch gaming laptop, even with its prominent chin on the bottom. Its 0.93-inch thickness is just as thick as the Lenovo Legion 5. The HP weighs 5.06 pounds instead of 5.3. It is about the same size and weight as the Acer Nitro 5, but it is thinner and heavier (about 4.85 pounds as opposed to 0.94 inches).
HP did not aim to make a thin and light laptop, but it did not make a thick or heavy one. One exception stands out when it comes to connectivity. Besides the USB-C port, there are two USB-A ports, one HDMI port, a 3.5mm audio jack, and an SD card reader. At this price point, Thunderbolt 4 is one glaring omission. Depending on the configuration, WiFi 6 is used with Bluetooth 5.2, or WLAN 6E is used with Bluetooth 5.2.
Price And Configurations
Gaming affordable and worth buying laptops is hard to find these days. Buying cheap laptops requires digging into the configurations – and HP is making it more confusing with the Victus 15, offering pre-configured models from retailers that rely on different Intel CPUs from those available in the company’s configurator. A preconfigured model costs $600 (on sale from $880) and includes an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H processor, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and an Nvidia GTX 1650 graphics card.
Despite the $800 price and 144Hz display, my review unit was similar. It comes with a Core i7-12650H processor, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti graphics at the high end. Also available are AMD Ryzen 7 5800H and RTX 3050 graphics cards. You will get better performance with these higher-end options.
The Victus 15 can be configured further at HP.com, which lets you specify your laptop in more detail, starting at $870 and going up to $1,230. The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 and the Acer Nitro 5 are the two primary competitors to the Victus 15. Compared to the IdeaPad Gaming 3 with its Ryzen processor, the Nitro 5 costs $50 more when configured similarly.
Performance
Core i5-12450H has four performance and six efficiency cores and 12 threads, whereas Core i5-12500H has four performance cores, eight efficiency cores, and 16 lines. It appears to be faster than the Core i5-12450H in my review unit compared to the 45-watt Core i7-12700H (which has four efficiency cores and six performance cores). There are a lot of laptops out there that run the 28-watt Core i7-1260P with its eight efficient cores and 16 threads, which the Victus 15 can’t quite keep up with.
As well as being faster than the Core i5, the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H is also more energy-efficient. This resulted in mixed productivity and creativity performance for Victus 15. Compared to MSI Prestige 14 and HP Victus 16, it had the fourth-slowest Geekbench 5 scores in our comparison group. With our Handbrake-encoded 420MB video, the differences were not as pronounced as those with our video encoded for H.265.
Meanwhile, the Victus 15 scored second fastest in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, beating the MSI Prestige 14 by 10 points. A range of productivity, multimedia, and creative tasks are tested in the PCMark 10 Complete test on the Victus 15. The Victus 15 also fell behind the MSI Prestige 14 during the Pugetbench Premiere Pro benchmark that runs in Premiere Pro’s live version. A laptop’s GPU configuration heavily influences GPU performance, and that laptop had an RTX 3050 GPU compared to a Victus 15 with a GTX 1650.
The HP, however, was not held back by GPU performance. Despite its slower CPU performance in the CPU-dependent video playback section, the HP Victus 15 tied the Prestige 14 in the GPU section. An $800 laptop still delivered solid mainstream performance. It is capable of handling low-end creative tasks as well as demanding productivity workflows. Using the CTO system, however, will result in faster results. A performance setting is available in the Omen Gaming Hub app but isn’t available in the GTX 1650 version of the Victus 15.
Gaming
In general, the GTX 1650 GPU performed as expected. It would be best to have low expectations when you fire up this laptop since it has the lowest-end graphics card. The Victus 15 had the lowest 3DMark Time Spy score compared to other comparable devices. Accordingly, the card had a much lower performance than MSI Prestige 14’s RTX 3050. Our tests at 1080p and higher graphics settings showed that the Victus 15 performed well.
Civilization VI and Fortnite are playable. However, to play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, you’ll need to lower the settings. In Cyberpunk 2077 at 1080p with Ultra graphics and DLSS disabled, the Victus 15 achieved 45 frames per second (fps). Our benchmark titles averaged more than 30 frames per second on the laptop. To get more comfortable frame rates at higher graphics settings, you’ll need to configure the RTX 3050 Ti.
Display And Audio
On Victus 15, three non-touch Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) IPS displays exist. The panels have a luminance of 250 nits at 60Hz, 300 nits at 144Hz, and a low blue light luminance of 300 nits. As I tested the laptop while powered on and with the 144Hz display, it seemed to work fine. In addition, the display didn’t get too bright, and the colours were muted. A colourimeter seems to confirm this. Our preferred 1,000:1 contrast ratio went above our preferred 1,150:1 contrast ratio.
Brightness was 236 nits, below our 300-nit threshold. A Delta-E of 3.04 is considered average for creative work, while colours were only 65% sRGB and 49% AdobeRGB. Aside from the Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey, the Victus 16 had a brighter and more accurate display. If you’re looking for a laptop under $1,000, these results aren’t terrible, but as you get closer to $1,000, they become less appealing.
Despite the high contrast, the display is less than ideal for creators. It uses two downward-firing speakers well, providing plenty of volume without being too distorted up top. In terms of midrange and clarity, the speaker sounded good, but there were zero basses, so if you plan on playing or binging intensely, you’ll need some headphones to keep your ears comfortable.
Keyboard, Touchpad, And Webcam
Unlike HP’s Omen gaming lineup, the Victus 15 lacks RGB lighting per key. There’s only one backlight setting, which is quite bright. Despite its gamer-oriented font, the keys are large enough and have enough spacing. Even though it’s not a mechanical keyboard, the switches are light and have a satisfying click. As expected, the keyboard felt similar to that on the Victus 16. There was a touch of resistance to the touchpad’s surface, and the texture was large.
Despite Windows 11’s multitouch gesture support, it was responsive and reliable, with solid, confident clicks. As expected from a laptop webcam, the 720p version performed well. Low-light conditions were OK, but good lighting preserved details. There is no passwordless login option available on Victus 15. Fingerprint readers and infrared cameras are not available.
Battery Life
Despite having a discrete GPU, the battery on my review unit was only 52.5 watt-hours. A 70-watt-hour battery is available on higher-end models via HP’s CTO system. Considering how small the battery is, I didn’t expect much. Victus 15 failed to perform well, as was expected. A local Full HD Avengers trailer looped for five hours in our web-browsing test and managed just 4.25 hours in our video test.
This laptop couldn’t quite reach five hours of battery life in the PCMark 10 Applications test. Those results are at least doubled on average by the laptops in our database. Comparing the Victus 15 to other gaming laptops, it performed similarly. Batteries on the Razer Blade 14 with its AMD Ryzen 9 5900HX and Samsung Galaxy Book Odyssey were the only ones that lasted longer.
Are There Any Alternatives?
Given its wide range of configurations, it isn’t easy to rate the HP Victus 15. In my review unit, I tested the $600 setup (on sale for $870) with the AMD Ryzen 5 5600H and GTX 1650. Regarding the configuration, its $800 price barely justifies its worth. The Victus 15 is a solid budget gaming system that performs well and is built well.
Choosing between the options will require comparing them. It is Victus 16 that is the best alternative to Victus 15. The screen is slightly better, but a little larger, and the GPU is much faster. You can get a faster configuration for just $100 more, with an AMD Ryzen 5 6600H and an RTX 3050. Intel 12th-generation CPUs aren’t available in many gaming laptops under $1,000.
One has an aggressive gaming design and a similar configuration, the Acer Nitro 5. Besides the Victus 15, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 offers a similarly conservative design and matching components for a bit more money. AMD Ryzen 6000 models are the newest models you should look for.
If you choose carefully from HP’s confusing purchase options, the Victus 15 is a good value. While the lid bends and the keyboard deck flexes a little, the Victus 15 offers good performance for the money. You should be able to play it for years to come. Despite a one-year warranty, the industry-standard remains disappointing.
Edited by Prakriti Arora
