HP Victus 16: This 16-inch gaming laptop delivers solid value

HP’s Victus 16 gaming notebook keeps your focus on the screen, not what’s under your fingers.

- MARK HACHMAN

The HP Victus 16 joins a small but growing crop of gaming notebooks whose solid, comfortable keyboards are complimented by a clean, minimalist design aesthetic. These elements make them suitable for work as well as play. Combine that with the relatively inexpensive $1,200 price tag and you get a recipe for an intriguing midrange gaming notebook that won’t hit your wallet too hard.

Yes, HP tossed the RGB bling out the window. That said, we weren’t overly impressed by the audio, and the included GeForce RTX 3050Ti GPU certainly falls on the low end of the GeForce RTX 30-series spectrum. Still, the Victus 16 delivers substantial value overall for a mainstream gaming PC.

BASIC FEATURES

HP’s Victus essentially replaces HP’s Pavilion Gaming brand. The “V” logo is extracted from the diamond it uses for its more hardcore Omen gaming brand. Essentially, it’s a gaming PC designed for a variety of tasks, which both the badging and the design reflect.

The Victus 16 ships in three configurations from HP.com: the $1,129.99 16-e0097nr (fave.co/32bf9bI), with a Ryzen 7 and an Nvidia RTX 3050 Ti GPU; the $809.99 16z-e000 (fave.co/3mgvK4T), with a Ryzen 5 and an Nvidia GTX 1650; and the $729.99 16t-d000 (fave.co/3pYmun6), which includes a Core i5 and GTX 1650. Our review unit is the 16-d0097nr (fave.co/3E0oK21), the highest-tier version.

We also found the 16-d0020tg (fave. co/3p3cCcm), with a Core i5-11400H and Nvidia RTX 3050Ti, for $1,049.99 at Target as well as the 16-e0010nr (fave.co/3IYUh8j), with a Ryzen 5600H CPU and a RTX 3050 GPU, for $919.99 at Newegg.

Processor: Intel Core i5-11400H, Core i7-11800H (i7-11800H as tested)