HP OMEN 16 Gaming, Core Ultra 9 285H, 64GB, 4TB SSD, RTX 5070, Shadow Black

The OMEN 16 Slim packs a 99th percentile 4TB SSD and 96th percentile 64GB of RAM into a chassis that's not actually that slim. The RTX 5070 and Core Ultra 9 285H are both strong performers, but the port selection is weak and the price is steep. It's a spec monster with some real compromises.

The Core Ultra 9 285H is a 16-core, 16-thread chip that boosts to 5.4GHz, and it sits in the 90th percentile for CPUs in our database. That's genuinely impressive for a laptop this size. The RTX 5070 with 8GB of GDDR7 lands in the 93rd percentile for GPUs, so you're looking at one of the better mobile graphics setups available right now. The 64GB of DDR5 RAM means you can run basically anything without worrying about memory pressure, and the 4TB SSD gives you room for a massive game library plus whatever creative projects you're juggling.

The 16-inch WQXGA display runs at 2560x1600 with a 240Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time. That's a strong screen, landing in the 81st percentile. The 500 nits of brightness and 100% sRGB coverage mean it's bright enough for most rooms and color-accurate enough for casual creative work. HP claims this generation is 12% quieter and 19% cooler than the previous one, which is nice if true, but we don't have independent thermal data to verify that.

Stacked against the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, the OMEN 16 has a bigger screen and more RAM, but the Zephyrus is genuinely compact and portable in a way this HP just isn't. The Lenovo Legion Pro 7i Gen 10 is a closer match on specs, and Lenovo's reliability track record tends to be stronger than what we're seeing here. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max will crush this thing in creator workloads and battery life, though it costs even more. The MSI Raider and Alienware Aurora are both bulkier desktop replacements, so the OMEN actually looks reasonable next to those. The real trade-off here is that you're getting elite storage and RAM numbers in exchange for weak port selection and a chassis that's not as slim as the name implies.

At $3,388 USD, this OMEN 16 is not cheap. Our affordability score puts it in the 7th percentile, which means almost everything else in this category costs less. But you're paying for the storage and RAM more than anything else. 4TB of NVMe storage and 64GB of DDR5 are not standard configs, and those are the two areas where this machine absolutely dominates. If you actually need that much memory and storage, the price starts to make more sense. If you don't, you're paying a premium for specs you'll never fully use.

The HP OMEN 16 Slim is a spec sheet flex, plain and simple. 64GB of DDR5 RAM puts it in the 96th percentile of our database, and the 4TB NVMe SSD is top of the charts at the 99th percentile. You're getting an Intel Core Ultra 9 285H with 16 cores and a 5.4GHz boost clock paired with an RTX 5070 with 8GB of GDDR7. That's a serious amount of horsepower for a laptop that's trying to be thin.

But here's the thing. HP calls this the "Slim" and talks about fitting it in your bag, yet it weighs 2.43kg and our compact score is a rough 45.1 out of 100, landing it in the 13th percentile. The port selection is also sparse, just one USB-C and one HDMI 2.1, which puts it in the 26th percentile. So you're getting desktop-replacement specs in a chassis that's not quite as portable as the marketing suggests.

Skip this if you need a genuinely portable laptop. The compact score of 45.1 is in the 13th percentile, and at 2.43kg, you'll feel it in your bag. Also skip it if you rely on multiple USB devices, since the single USB-C port and 26th percentile port score will have you reaching for a dongle constantly. And if you're on a budget, the 7th percentile affordability score means this is one of the pricier options in the category. The reliability score in the 33rd percentile is also worth considering if you plan to keep this machine for several years.

The HP OMEN 16 Slim is a weird mix of extremes. The storage and RAM are genuinely best-in-class, the CPU and GPU are both strong, and the display is solid. But the port selection is disappointing, the reliability score is below average, and the whole "Slim" branding feels misleading when the compact score is in the 13th percentile. If you need 4TB of storage and 64GB of RAM in a laptop, this is one of the few options that delivers both. If you don't need those specific specs, you can get similar gaming performance for less money elsewhere.