Beside launching the HP Spectre Folio today, the PC maker also showed off its latest gaming laptop in Malaysia, the HP Omen 15. Packing Intel’s latest 9th generation processors and Nvidia RTX GPUs, it’s a reasonably powerful premium gaming machine.

If you’re in the market for a new gaming laptop, the Omen 15 is worth a consideration, and you won’t have to wait too long to get it either: it is coming to Malaysia as early as next month. I’ve spent some time with the Omen 15 earlier today, and here are my first impressions of it.

Aesthetically, the Omen 15 is a little bit more understated than its predecessor. Gone are the red accents on the laptop’s lid for a more minimalist single tone design. Personally, I quite like the new design, but I do wish the Omen logo was done in a different colour to make it stand out a tad bit.

Build quality of the Omen 15 is very impressive too. The all-metal chassis gives the laptop reassuring durability, and almost every part of the laptop is nice to the touch – almost. For some reason, HP decided to use plastic for the Omen 15’s screen bezels, which slightly take away from the premium build of the laptop.

Plastic or not, I do dig the relatively minimal bezels of the Omen 15. Yes, the bottom bezel is a little bit too big for my liking, but the overall bezel size is small enough to give this gaming laptop a modern appearance. On top of that, there’s enough space for HP to pack a webcam at the top of the screen.

Speaking of which, the Omen 15 for the Malaysian market will receive a pretty darn good display. Only one screen option is available here, which is a 15.6-inch IPS display with a fast 144Hz refresh rate. It’s a screen befitting of a premium gaming laptop like the Omen 15, and the laptop’s GPU should be able to take advantage of the high refresh rate.

There are two GPU options for this gaming laptop in this side of the world: you can either get it with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 or RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics card. Both are highly capable GPUs, and they should be able to deliver good frame rate in modern AAA titles effortlessly. This is especially the case for the RTX 2070, even though it’s the Max-Q version.

Choice of processor for the Omen 15, on the other hand, are available in three options: an Intel Core i5-9300H, a faster Core i7-9750H, or even the very powerful Core i9-9880H processor with eight cores. Unfortunately, HP Malaysia did not specify which of the three chips will be fitted in the Malaysian-specific Omen 15 – not yet, at least.

Connectivity wise, this gaming laptop offers three USB 3.1 ports, a USB Type-C connection with Thunderbolt 3 support, an HDMI output, a mini DisplayPort, and an RJ-45 port. Oh, there’s also an SD card slot – an increasing rare feature in today’s laptops.

And then we have the keyboard of the Omen 15, and…it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The key travel is quite limited, lending to a shallow typing experience, and the keyboard layout feels quite crammed too. Thankfully, the keys don’t require a lot of force to actuate. This, combined with the good tactility of the keys, actually make it a comfortable keyboard to type on despite the short key travel.

As for the trackpad, it’s pretty good. It can track my fingers accurately, it can recognise gestures well, and there are no glaring faults with it. If I were to nitpick, it would’ve been great if the trackpad itself wasn’t static. It’s quite odd to not be able to click on a trackpad, even if it’s on a gaming laptop.

The HP Omen 15 is set to arrive in Malaysia sometime in July next month, and it will retail from RM6,399. The exact specification of the base model has not been revealed yet, so it’s a little tough to compare it to other laptops in this price range.

Chances are, however, the most affordable Omen 15 will come with an RTX 2060 GPU. That’s a reasonably good price tag for a RTX 2060 laptop, but whether or not it offers good value for money will depend on what kind of processor it gets – the RAM and storage capacities will play a vital role too.

But as far as first impressions go, the Omen 15 does appear to be a competent, premium gaming laptop. If you’re keen to get it, you’ll have to wait until July 2019 to see exactly what RM6,399 gets you.