HP Victus 15 (2022) specs
Value: $799
CPU: Intel Core i5-12450H
GPU: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 512GB
Show: 15.6-inch, 1080p, 144Hz
Battery: 4:47
Dimension: 14.1 x 10 x 0.9 inches
Weight: 5.06 kilos
Put your snobbiness away for the HP Victus 15. No, it doesn’t include a killer response time, a fancy-schmancy Nvidia RTX 30-series GPU, nor a glitzy, animated RGB keyboard, however come on, you’re solely shelling out $800 for this laptop computer, so give it a break!
At this level, in the event you’ve already turned your nostril up like a petulant little one snubbing their greens, the HP Victus 15 is not for you. Nevertheless, in the event you’re nonetheless intrigued, good! This implies you’re prepared to mood your expectations. The Victus 15 gained’t attraction to skilled avid gamers who demand the newest and best, nevertheless it has sufficient razzle dazzle to win the affections of informal gamers. The HP gaming rig sports activities a twelfth Gen Intel Core i5 CPU, a 144Hz refresh charge show, up to date thermals, and a complicated, office-friendly onyx chassis that may double as a piece laptop computer. At solely $800, the HP Victus 15 is a dream for unpretentious, budget-conscious avid gamers.
Nevertheless, there’s one little hiccup. The HP laptop computer has a stiff competitor on its palms: the Acer Nitro 5 (2022) (opens in new tab) which is, as of this writing, throughout the identical worth vary. Stick round to seek out out whether or not the Victus 15 is likely one of the finest low-cost gaming laptops you will get — or maybe there’s a greater competitor that offers you extra bang to your buck.
HP Victus 15 worth and configurations
You’ll breathe a sigh of reduction while you discover out that our assessment unit solely prices $799 at Greatest Purchase (opens in new tab). It comes with a twelfth Gen Intel Core i5-12450H CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU with 4GB of VRAM, and a 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel show with a 144Hz refresh charge.
Maybe you need somewhat extra RAM. Or perhaps — and understandably — the GPU isn’t doing it for you. You’ll should shell out an extra $300 for the Intel Core i7-12650H CPU mannequin, which sports activities 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, and a 15.6-inch, full HD panel with a 144Hz refresh charge. It prices $1,100 on Greatest Purchase (opens in new tab) so it is probably not interesting because the aforementioned $800 darling, however you’ll squeeze out extra processing and graphical energy for speedier body charges.
HP Victus 15 design
The Victus 15 is the man on the occasion dressed to the nines with an urbane, refined model, however you’d be shocked to seek out out he obtained his outfit at H&M — not Neiman Marcus. The Victus 15, unsurprisingly, options an all-plastic construct, and it actually feels plasticky to the contact. Nevertheless, the onyx chassis has a mature, refined look that would slot in any workplace. Plus, it’s impressively sturdy; there isn’t a lot give whereas urgent down on the deck.
I’ve grown to understand understated, unassuming gaming laptops. Simply because you’ll be able to play with it doesn’t imply it ought to appear to be a flashy pinball machine, proper?
HP calls the hue that coats the Victus 15 “Mica Silver.” It sounds fancy, nevertheless it appears to be like like regular-degular charcoal to me with its dark-gray shade.The daring, reflective “V” on the Victus 15’s lid is hanging, however refined on the identical time. You’ll additionally discover the phrase “Victus” emblazoned throughout the hinge in a futuristic white font. Open the lid and also you’ll be greeted with a monstrous backside bezel that offers the Crimson Chin a run for his cash. Aside from the Jay Leno-esque chin, the bezels are slim. No, they’re not “barely there” skinny, however they’re not unattractively thick both.
On the deck, you’ll discover an edge-to-edge keyboard, however I can’t assist however cringe on the touchpad. Whereas the deck itself appears averse to my fingerprints, I can’t say the identical for the touchpad. It’s a neat freak’s nightmare and a felony investigator’s dream. Above the keyboard, you’ll see a patterned speaker grille sandwiched between the perform keys and hinge (I’ll dive into the way it sounds later).
The underside options two elongated toes to maintain the Victus 15 barely elevated from surfaces. In any case, with an enormous vent that takes up almost half of the laptop computer’s backside, it wants loads of respiratory room. You’ll additionally discover two bottom-firing speaker grilles.
The HP Victus 15 measures 14.1 x 10 x 0.9 inches and weighs 5.06 kilos. The Acer Nitro 5 (2022), the Victus 15’s rival on this assessment, measures 14.2 x 10.7 x 1.02 inches and weighs 5.5 kilos, so the HP gaming rig has an edge with a thinner, lighter chassis.
HP Victus 15 ports
No, at this worth level, the HP Victus 15 doesn’t characteristic Thunderbolt 4 help, however on the precise facet, you’ll discover the next ports: USB Kind-C, an Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.1 and USB 3.2 Kind-A.
The left facet affords a microSD slot, a 3.5mm headphone jack, one other USB 3.2 Kind-A port, and an AC energy port.
HP Victus 15 show
The HP Victus 15 has a 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080-pixel, anti-glare show with a 144Hz refresh charge and 9-millisecond response time. The Victus 15’s panel renders particulars like a boss, making visuals look crisp. Nevertheless, this isn’t a show you’ll wish to use in the event you’re an expert artist. Nevertheless, shade richness and brightness just isn’t this show’s forte — and our check outcomes replicate that.
Earlier than I dive into the numbers, let’s delve into my anecdotal expertise with the Victus 15. I performed Prey (2017) on the HP Victus 15 for a number of weeks, and I typically discovered myself reaching for the brightness button to get extra illumination throughout darkish scenes, however was dissatisfied to see that it was already maxed out. On the plus facet, due to the 144Hz refresh charge, gameplay felt easy, zippy and brisk, whether or not I used to be taking down aliens in zero-gravity environments or flattening zombie-like freaks inside a spaceship.
I additionally examined the HP Victus 15 show by watching The Little Mermaid trailer. Sea turtles that weaved via coral reefs appeared tangible as underwater solar rays danced on their ridged, rough-textured shells. Because the sea-dwelling, mystical beauté Ariel swam previous a shipwreck, the invasive vegetation on the dilapidated ruins may’ve been extra verdant. When actor/singer Halle Bailey’s face got here into view, I used to be impressed with the refined particulars on her face, together with a number of scars — and a cute little mole — on high of her eyebrow. I may even spot the physique glitter positioned throughout her decolletage. Colours fell somewhat flat within the trailer, and as talked about, our check outcomes clarify why.
In line with our colorimeter, the HP Victus 15 reproduced 45% of the DCI-P3 shade gamut, which stumbles behind the common entry-level gaming laptop computer (52%). The Acer Nitro 5, nevertheless, gained by a landslide, providing a show-stopping 0.4% of extra DCI-P3 protection with a determine of 45.4%. And sure, that was sarcasm. The Nitro 5’s edge over Victus 15’s show is damn-near imperceptible. I’m positive the HP is respiratory a sigh of reduction that its Acer-branded rival additionally delivered below-average stats. They’ll have fun their mediocrity collectively. Yay!
The HP Victus 15 emanated an embarrassing 235 nits of brightness (this falls under its marketed 250 nits), which is way dimmer than the common price range gaming laptop computer (284 nits). The Acer Nitro 5 is not any shining star itself, nevertheless it has a brighter, 314-nit show. When you prefer to play video games whereas sitting in your yard, or your desk is stationed close to an unshaded window, you’ll seemingly discover it tough to see the display screen (on each laptops), particularly on sunny days. Nevertheless, the Victus 15’s anti-glare panel helps to replicate a few of the mild.
HP Victus 15 keyboard and touchpad
You’ll discover white characters and symbols superimposed on the black keys of this edge-to-edge keyboard. It additionally contains a numpad, a pleasant addition if the video games you play demand one. As talked about on the outset, this keyboard doesn’t have RGB lighting, however you’ll be able to activate a white backlight in the event you want it. One facet of the keyboard I don’t love is that urgent the “enhance quantity” key prompts the next message to pop up: “Activate caret searching?”
After a number of seconds of befuddlement, I noticed I wanted to press the FN key and the quantity key concurrently to amplify sound. I discovered it bizarre that caret searching, which solely requires a single key press, is extra simply accessible than the quantity setting, however erm, no matter. Swimsuit your self, HP! You’ll additionally discover a diamond formed key, too, which conveniently launches the Omen Gaming Hub.
Throughout the 10FastFingers.com typing check, my common dropped to 80 phrases per minute (I sometimes have a typing velocity of 87 wpm). Why? I think that the keyboard doesn’t have sufficient “bounce again” to propel my fingers to the subsequent letters quickly. Additionally, the keyboard is simply too rattling loud and clacky. I wouldn’t wish to sit subsequent to a co-worker with an HP Victus 15 — that’s for positive!
The 4.9 x 3.1-inch touchpad is spacious. It feels low-cost, sure, nevertheless it does the job. It carried out all of the Home windows 11 gestures properly, together with three-finger swipes to revisit earlier pages and pinch-to-zoom.
HP Victus 15 audio
Hear, so long as you’re not a music producer or an audio engineer, the HP Victus 15’s mediocre Bang & Olufsen-tuned audio system shouldn’t be a dealbreaker. There’s an upfiring, edge-to-edge speaker on the deck in addition to two twin audio system on the laptop computer’s underside.
I fired up Harry Types’ “As It Was” on Spotify, and the snappy tune’s beats sounded flat and tinny, however Types’ vocals had been as easy as honey. No worries, although, since you’ll seemingly pair the HP Victus 15 with the most effective gaming headsets. At max quantity, the pop music stuffed my medium-sized testing room.
Whereas enjoying Prey (2017), I used the HP Victus 15’s sound to my benefit. On one mission, I may hear the buzzy sounds of an electrified alien monster lurking within the distance, permitting me to get the drop on the ugly, voltage-filled brute. Whether or not my adversaries had been proper underneath my nostril or a number of toes away, the Victus 15’s audio system did an excellent job at conveying the proximity of Prey’s evil antagonists.
HP Victus 15 efficiency
The HP Victus 15 comes with a twelfth Gen Intel Core 12450H CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD.
To check its multitasking capabilities, I launched Netflix and Peacock within the background whereas flooding Google Chrome with 30 tabs from varied web sites. The Victus 15 didn’t even flinch. Sadly, once we threw the Victus 15 into the ring with a formidable competitor, it didn’t accomplish that sizzling.
The Victus 15 obtained its butt whooped on the Geekbench 5.4 total efficiency benchmark, outputting a rating of 6,902. Positive, it beat the common gaming laptop computer (5,623), however filled with an Intel Core i5-12500H CPU, the Acer Nitro 5 obliterated the HP competitor with a rating of 9,148.
On the Handbrake check, which requires the laptop computer to transcode a 4K video to 1080p, the HP accomplished the duty in 8 minutes and 9 seconds. This doesn’t beat the common price range gaming laptop computer (7:17) nor the Acer Nitro 5 (5:58). Yikes!
On our file switch check, the Victus 15 (512GB SSD) took 36 seconds to duplicate 25GB of mixed-media recordsdata at a charge of 741.24 megabytes per second (MBps). The Nitro 5, additionally paired with a 512GB SSD, took solely 23 seconds to perform the identical process at a switch charge of 1,160.7 Mbps. Not solely did the HP fail to maintain up with the Acer, nevertheless it additionally struggled to bypass the 912 Mbps switch charge of the common price range gaming laptop computer. Oof!
HP Victus 15 graphics and gaming
The HP Victus 15 comes with a three-year-old Nvidia GTX GeForce 1650 GPU with 4GB of VRAM. When you’re eyeing a price range gaming laptop computer, you’re clearly not in search of a machine that may plow via triple-A titles with the zippiest body charges and envelope-pushing graphics efficiency, however you seemingly need one thing that makes you say, “OK, that is ok!”
However the query is, does the Victus 15 have sufficient oomph to make you utter such phrases? Sadly, on three video games we examined, the Victus 15 fell under our 30 frames per second (fps) playability threshold. On Murderer’s Creed Valhalla (Very Excessive, 1080p), Metro: Exodus (Very Excessive, 1080p) and Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 (Very Excessive, 1080p), the Victus 15 hit solely 27 fps, 26 fps and 23 fps, respectively. To present you a greater perspective on the Victus 15’s efficiency, the common price range gaming laptop computer managed to notch 42.4 fps for Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, 39 fps for Metro: Exodus and 38 fps for Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2.
Including salt to HP’s wounds, the sub-$1,000 Nitro 5, sporting an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti GPU, unsurprisingly crushed the Victus 15 on the AC Valhalla, Metro: Exodus and RDR2 benchmarks, reaching 44 fps, 41 fps and 39 fps, respectively. Yikes!
Nevertheless, the HP Victus 15 managed to jump over the 30 fps hump on the Grand Theft Auto V and Far Cry New Daybreak benchmarks, hovering round 39 fps and 54 fps, respectively. It doesn’t fairly beat the everyday price range gaming laptop computer, which averaged 58 fps for GTA5 and 69 fps for New Daybreak. It additionally doesn’t outpace the Nitro 5 (61 fps for GTA5 and 79 fps for New Daybreak), however at the least it will possibly preserve its head above water for some video games.
It’s additionally value noting that we couldn’t run Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the Victus 15 as a result of the GTX 1650 in our unit doesn’t have ample VRAM.
On the 3DMark Hearth Strike Extremely graphics check, the Victus 15 reached 1,970, however unsurprisingly, the Acer knocked its HP rival down with a rating of three,394. The HP additionally did not surpass the common price range gaming laptop computer (3,189).
Whereas the check outcomes for the HP Victus 15 look grim, my private gaming expertise with the Victus 15 was largely constructive whereas enjoying Prey. I persistently hit 48 fps to 60 fps (all settings had been maxed to “Very Excessive”). Why did I expertise extra body charges whereas the check outcomes had been disappointing? Effectively, Prey is much less graphically demanding than video games like Crimson Lifeless Redemption 2 — it’s simply that easy.
What’s significantly hanging are the textures. I used to be impressed with the glimmer and luminescence that emanated from alien goo after obliterating my enemies into smithereens. Even once they’re alive, I used to be barely mesmerized by my adversaries’ fleshy tentacles, electrical, high-voltage our bodies, and fiery silhouettes. I typically discovered myself saying, “You’re all evil, annoying trash luggage, however dammit, you’re all unusually stunning, too.”
HP Victus 15 battery life
With potent, power-hungry {hardware}, don’t anticipate the HP Victus 15 to final too lengthy. On the Laptop computer Magazine battery check, which entails steady internet browsing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits, the Victus 15 lasted 4 hours and 47 minutes.
Though the Victus 15’s quick battery life was anticipated, it’s barely under common in comparison with different laptops in the identical class. The typical price range gaming laptop computer lasts 5 hours and 31 minutes. The Nitro 5, however, lasted for five hours and quarter-hour. That is nonetheless under common, however the Acer managed to outlast the HP by 44 minutes.
We additionally examined the Victus 15’s battery life whereas gaming (PCMark 10). It lasted solely 52 minutes whereas the Nitro 5 survived for 1 hour and 14 minutes. I’d recommend leaving it plugged in whereas gaming; you don’t need your laptop computer to close down unexpectedly.
HP Victus 15 warmth
The Victus 15’s thermal efficiency deserves an applause. Even after spending hours upon hours gaming on it, it managed to stay cool underneath stress.
On our non-gaming warmth check, which entails operating a fullscreen HD video for quarter-hour, the Victus 15 reached 74.5, 77.5 and 79.5 levels Fahrenheit for the touchpad, keyboard middle and underside, respectively. The most well liked area of the laptop computer was some place close to the underside vents, reaching 80.5 levels. All of those temperatures hovered under our 95-degree consolation stage.
On our gaming warmth check, the touchpad and keyboard middle stayed cool at 77 levels and 86 levels, however temperatures climbed for the underside, reaching 99 levels. Though the laptop computer’s backside surpassed our 95-degree consolation stage, it’s impressively temperate for a gaming rig. Plus, HP managed to channel the warmth to the a part of the chassis you’re hardly touching anyway. Intelligent!
HP Victus 15 webcam
Haha, the 720p webcam on the Victus 15 is laughable, however hey, look on the intense facet: at the least it has a digital camera. Some gaming laptops we’ve reviewed, just like the Asus ROG Zephyrus G14, don’t have a webcam. Is the bar that low at this level? Sure, however while you come throughout a lot absurdity with laptop computer webcams as a reviewer, you’re grateful for the small issues.
Whereas colours look positive on the Victus 15’s webcam, the image appears to be like too blurry. The ornamental flowers in my room are barely perceptible on the digital camera. Particulars lack crispness and sharpness — to some extent the place I believed that there should be a smudge on the digital camera. Sadly, wiping it clear did completely nothing. You need to try our finest webcams web page for higher choices.
HP Victus 15 software program and guarantee
There may be some bloatware on the HP Victus, together with McAfee Private Safety, Easy Solitaire, and Solitaire Assortment, however apart from that, you’ll simply discover your commonplace fare of Home windows 11 apps, together with Microsoft Information, Microsoft Workplace, Whiteboard, Cellphone Hyperlink, and a bunch of Xbox apps.
As an informal gamer, an important app for you may be the Omen Gaming Hub. Right here, you’ll be able to verify on the laptop computer’s GPU, CPU and RAM utilization in addition to storage. It’s also possible to use this app to prioritize and block apps operating within the background. You may even monitor the temperatures of your CPU and GPU — and regulate the fan velocity.
The HP Victus 15 comes with a one-year restricted guarantee. See how HP carried out on our Tech Help Showdown and Greatest and Worst Manufacturers rating.
Backside line
So long as you don’t plan on operating Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is understood for bricking GPUs, Shadow of the Tomb Raider (there’s not sufficient VRAM), or every other recreation that requires loads of graphical juice, try to be positive with the Victus 15.
My solely reservation with the HP Victus 15 is that its rival, the Acer Nitro 5, is usually repeatedly discounted. At one level, it was solely $50 greater than the HP ($849 at Greatest Purchase (opens in new tab)). And in keeping with our testing, the Nitro 5 blows the Victus 15 out of the water — and it has a contemporary Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series GPU.
The HP Victus 15 is repeatedly discounted, too. I’ve seen it drop to $699 on Greatest Purchase! (opens in new tab) At that worth level, the Victus 15 is a complete steal. That is $150 cheaper than the Nitro 5, which makes it way more interesting. Lengthy story quick, anticipate the HP Victus 15 to hit a sub-$700 worth level in the event you can. If not, the Nitro 5 affords higher worth, particularly in the event you handle to snag one at $850.
