If you’re looking for a gaming laptop on the cheap, the HP Victus 15 is definitely something worth taking a look at. It’s an entry-level gaming PC, which means you won’t see any RGB lighting, 360Hz displays, or high-end RTX graphics. What you will get is a lot of bang for your buck.
It still has a 16:9 display, and it’s reminiscent of old gaming laptops that sacrificed color gamut in favor of a higher refresh rate. But the performance was much better than I expected, considering HP sent me the base model with a Core i5, GTX 1650, and 8GB RAM, which costs less than $800.
I actually had a great time, and since the games automatically adjust their graphics based on your hardware, I found the gameplay was actually smoother than on some gaming laptops. For casual gamers looking for value, the Victus 15 is a good choice.
HP Victus 15 is a casual gaming laptop with proper gaming design, 12th-gen Intel processors, and more.
Browse this review:
HP Victus 15 Pricing and Availability
- As an entry-level laptop, the HP Victus 15 starts at $549.99, although the Intel model starts at $799.99
- It’s available now, and comes in mica silver, ceramic white, and performance blue
The HP Victus 15 was announced earlier this year, and it’s now available. You can get it in your choice of AMD Ryzen 5000 or Intel 12th-gen, although Intel processors, as usual, come at a great premium. The AMD Ryzen model starts at $549.99, while the Intel model starts at $799.99.
These base models come with either a Ryzen 5 5600H or a Core i5-12450H, both of which will be paired with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650. At the higher end, it can come with an RTX 3050 Ti or Radeon RX 6500M graphics card.
It comes in three colors: Mica Silver, Ceramic White, and Performance Blue. For the most part, you’ll find a full range of colors at HP.com.
HP Victus 15 مواصفات Specifications
| Healer | Intel Core i5-12450H (up to 4.5GHz, 18MB L3 cache, 12 cores, 16 threads) |
|---|---|
| Graphics | Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Laptop Graphics Processor (4 GB) |
| the body | 14.09 x 10.04 x 0.93 inches, 5.06 lbs |
| Show | 15.6″ diagonal, FHD (1920 x 1080), 144Hz, 9ms response time, IPS, fine edge, anti-glare, 250 nits |
| RAM | 8 GB DDR4-3200 SDRAM (2 x 4 GB) |
| storage | 512 GB PCIe NVMe TLC M.2 SSD (4 x 4 SSD) |
| battery | 3-cell Li-ion battery, 52.5WHr |
| ports | 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-C 5Gbps signal rate (DisplayPort 1.4, HP Sleep and Charge) 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-A signal rate at 5Gbps (HP Sleep and Charge) 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-A signal rate at 5Gbps 1 HDMI 2.1 1 RJ-45 . port 1 AC smart pin 1 headphone/microphone combo 1 Multi-format SD media card reader |
| Webcam | HP Wide Vision 720p HD Camera with Temporary Noise Reduction and Dual Array Digital Microphones |
| My voice | Audio by B&O; Dual Speakers HP Audio Boost Technology |
| keyboard | Full size mica silver backlit keyboard with numeric keypad Touchpad support accuracy |
| the color | silver mica |
| The operating system | Windows 11 Home |
| price | $799.99 |
Design: It is designed for games without bells and whistles
- It has two USB Type A ports, Ethernet, a full-size SD card slot, HDMI and USB Type C
- Silver mica is black only
The HP Victus 15 feels like a gaming laptop, which surprises me a bit. Due to the nature of the entry level, it can be assumed that customers who buy one will also use it for something else, such as school. They may also edit some photos or videos on it.
But like I said, you only need one look at the HP Victus 15 to know it’s for gamers. It has vents all over the back, and there are angled edges that raise the bottom for better airflow. And of course, the Victus logo is stamped into the cap, rather than the HP logo or the HP OMEN logo.
The color of the unit HP sent me is called Mica Silver, which is similar to the Dark Ash Silver color the company used on Specter laptops. In other words, it’s not silver at all. It’s really only black, or maybe dark gray. It also comes in Ceramic White and Performance Blue, which is very stylish for a laptop like this. It makes it more personal.
Now, let’s talk about ports, because the choice is interesting. First of all, I just want to say that I am disappointed that none of them are in the back of the laptop. By its very nature, a gaming laptop has things attached to it while it is in use; At least, you’ll be connected to power. And when you have cables sticking out of the sides of your laptop, they get in the way. This is worse on a gaming laptop, because there is only one power port.
Other than that, I like the port selection. On the left side, you’ll find the power port, the 3.5mm audio jack, a USB Type-A port, and a full-size SD card slot. This SD card slot is actually a strong indicator of value if you are also using this laptop for editing photos and videos. Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like that Just A gaming laptop.
On the right side, you’ll find the HDMI, USB Type-A, USB Type-C, and Ethernet ports. Wired internet is another thing I wouldn’t expect to see from a laptop like this. Obviously, a more stable connection means better gaming performance, faster downloads, etc.
Unfortunately, all USB ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1, which means they offer data transfer speeds of 5 Gbps.
Display and keyboard: The screen is Full HD at 144Hz, but that’s the whole story
- There are only three display options, and they are all FHD
The model HP sent me has a 15.6-inch screen with a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution with a 144Hz refresh rate. Obviously, a 16:9 screen isn’t something we see often these days, with many brands switching to 16:10, but again, that’s more entry-level. In fact, there are three options, all FHD. The other two come in 250-nit and 300-nit brightnesses.
Even the 144Hz refresh rate is something aimed at more casual gamers. If you’re a competitive gamer, you’re looking at QHD displays with 240Hz refresh rates or FHD displays with 360Hz refresh rates. Still, 144Hz is solid if you’re gaming as a hobby, and I highly recommend it over the 60Hz options. It makes a difference in the way you play.
According to my testing, it supports 65% sRGB, 46% NTSC, 48% Adobe RGB, and 48% P3. These numbers are not particularly good. Historically, a lot of gaming laptops sacrificed things like a wide color gamut in favor of refresh rate. In fact, the idea was to sacrifice anything necessary for gaming performance. The gaming laptop market has improved a lot, but this laptop is still a beginner.
Brightness maxed out at 261.4 nits, well above the promised 250, and contrast was a healthy 1,190:1. For a gaming laptop, the screen is generally fine. It’s not ideal for things that require color accuracy like photo and video editing, which is unfortunate considering it has an SD card slot.
Unfortunately, the webcam is 720p. I know that 1080p webcams tend to be reserved for more premium devices, but I really don’t take that as an excuse. In this day and age of working from home, webcams are important. You can get a smartphone for half the price of the base model Victus 15 which has a much better front camera than this webcam. The difference is that while selfies were popular on mobile from day one, webcams on computers weren’t important at all until 2020.
The keyboard has standard Chiclet-style keys and a white backlight. You won’t find any RGB lighting here, and that’s fine. HP went with its usual design of including all buttons as part of the keyboard, and that includes the power button. There’s also a dedicated button to launch the OMEN Gaming Hub, which you can use to access your gaming library, or to customize lighting if you have any HP RGB accessories.
Performance: Contains 12th generation Intel processors and mainstream Nvidia graphics
- With Core i5 and GTX 1650, gaming performance is surprisingly good
When companies send out a laptop for review, most of the time, it comes with a Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. This time around, HP sent out a base model with a Core i5-12450H, Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. My first thought was, who can play with 8GB of RAM?
You have already succeeded. I got pregnant Forza Horizon 5 And I played with the beautiful new hot wheels expansion pack. The default graphics setting was average, and it ran fine. I also recently decided to play again through all Hello Campaigns as a way to test a mixture of local games and cloud games, so I played through a large part of Combat aura evolved as part of Halo: The Master Chief Collection On the Victus 15. That was great too.
Obviously, most games will do their best to tune their graphics to match your hardware. Some games have higher minimum requirements than what’s available here, and that’s to be expected as well. If you want better performance, there is still the RTX 3050 Ti.
For benchmarks, I ran PCMark 10, 3DMark, Geekbench, Cinebench, CrossMark, and VRMark. The units I compared it to weren’t actually gaming laptops at all, but you can see by the scores that some are better at certain things.
| HP Victus 15 Core i5-12450H, GTX 1650 |
Acer Swift X Ryzen 7 5800U, RTX 3050 Ti |
HP Pavilion Plus Core i7-12700H |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| PCMark 10 | 5,988 | 6019 | 5682 |
| 3DMark: Time Spy | 3,621 | 4046 | 1,676 |
| Geekbench 5 (Single/Multiple) | 1,584 / 6,759 | 1,447/8,104 | 1,747 / 8658 |
| Cinebench R23 (Single/Multiple) | 1,694 / 9,937 | 1,434/10568 | 1,660 / 9,725 |
| CrossMark (Total / Productivity / Creativity / Responsiveness) | 1,454/1,469/1,486/1,320 | 1,695 / 1,664 / 1,793 / 1,512 | |
| VRMark (orange/cyan/blue) | 5,190 / 3,332 / 1,037 |
For example, while the Pavilion Plus is the best photo-editing laptop with its OLED display, and better CPU scores than the rest, it doesn’t have the same graphics power, so there’s a huge difference in your 3DMark score. The Acer Swift X gets better overall results, but as with AMD Ryzen processors, the single-core CPU’s results can’t beat the competition.
Overall, the performance on the HP Victus 15 was great and exceeded my expectations. I thought a Core i5 and 8GB RAM would be real bottlenecks.
Should you buy the HP Victus 15?
The HP Victus 15 offers a lot of value for your money, but it’s not for everyone.
Who Should Buy HP Victus 15:
- Frugal players looking for a lot of value
- Casual players who only play in their spare time
Who should not buy the HP Victus 15:
- Creators who need color accuracy for their photo or video editing workflow
- Competitive players
The HP Victus 15 is an excellent entry-level gaming laptop, with plenty of value and plenty of power. However, you may need more power, or a better screen, and there are higher end options for that. That’s why HP has its own brand, OMEN, for enthusiastic, competitive gamers.
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