Ey? What? Am I seriously recommending you buy an RTX 5080 gaming laptop over a much-cheaper RTX 5050 machine this Prime Day? They’re not even in the same zip code, never mind the same price range.
No, I haven’t entirely lost the plot this early into the Amazon Prime Day sales, which have begun with the early July 4 pre-show deals today. I’m merely pointing out a bad deal next to a good one.
👉Shop all the early Prime Day deals on Amazon👈
So what’s going on? HP has unveiled a slew of gaming laptop deals, that’s what, which is great news for those of you looking for great Prime Day deals on gaming laptops. It’s not just Amazon that lowers prices over the Prime Day period, y’know, and HP has led the charge this year with some tasty discounts.
Quick links
- Don’t buy: HP Omen 16 RTX 5050 | $950 @ HP
- Do consider: HP Omen Max 16 RTX 5080 | $2,650 @ HP
Don’t buy
I really can’t stand behind this RTX 5050 HP Omen 16 for the cash. While we haven’t had a chance to test one for ourselves yet, the mobile RTX 5050 is a fairly meagre gaming GPU on paper, with specs that suggest it delivers RTX 4060-ish performance. The TGP here is missing from the specs sheet (like many of HP’s gaming laptops, unfortunately), but even if it’s technically a high-power variant, it’s unlikely to give you much gaming grunt for your cash.
And while Multi Frame Generation is a salve for many frame rate-related wounds, it doesn’t scale too well further down the stack in our experience, which rules this HP machine out, even if it is now under a grand.
Do consider
If we really want to get into “desirable gaming laptop for less” territory, how about this RTX 5080-touting HP Omen Max 16 for $2,670? Yes, it’s still a lot of cash even with a $700 discount—but most RTX 5080 gaming laptops are at this point, and we can verify that this machine has a full-fat 175 W GPU, as we tested an Intel chip-equipped version of the HP Omen Max 16 for ourselves.
Our experience wasn’t perfect, as we experienced some odd 1% low figures in our benchmarks, but there’s a good chance that was down to some early driver/firmware tomfoolery. The screen is excellent, though, and it’s the same 240 Hz 1600p panel you’ll be getting here.
The 175 W variant of the mobile RTX 5080 is a seriously good gaming GPU when matched with a 1600p display, and while ours had the odd wobble, I’d still say this laptop’s a good shout for the cash.
Oh, and it’s also got the AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 365 under the hood, a 10-core firebreather of a mobile CPU, in conjunction with the correct 32 GB dose of DDR5. Wrap all this hardware up in a slim and sleek all-black chassis, and this laptop’s ready to sit in both your next meeting, and on your desk at home when you’re ready to do some serious gaming.
It’s the rough with the smooth here, I’m afraid, but at least HP has made my early gaming laptop deal search this morning slightly easier than I expected. Small mercies, and such.
👉 All of HP’s gaming laptop deals are right here 👈
