HP is updating its top-of-the-line consumer productivity laptop, the OmniBook Ultra 14, with the latest silicon from both Qualcomm and Intel. At CES 2026, the company revealed a new design for the ultrabook, which the company claims is thinner than a MacBook Air.

HP is putting most of its emphasis on the Qualcomm model, which uses an exclusive variant of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X2 Elite with an NPU capable of 85 TOPS. Until now, the Snapdragon X2 Elite had an 80 TOPS NPU on the high end.

The Qualcomm model will start with the Snapdragon X2 Plus (X2P-64-100). Right now, HP is only saying that an Intel version with "Intel Next Gen AI" processors and graphics will exist, but is not naming specific chips. If the Intel models use Panther Lake, that would mean the NPU would go up to 50 TOPS on those models. All of this only matters, of course, if you're using local AI regularly.

Both systems come in an anodized aluminum finish. The Qualcomm version comes in a subtle "stone blue" color, while the Intel models come in duller gray and "sand" options. HP says the new Ultra is 14% lighter than the previous generation laptop at 2.81 pounds, and also claims that this machine is thinner than the 13-inch MarBook Air, though that's specifically at one point on the rear of the laptop and doesn't include the hinge cap or rubber feet.

Both options use a 2880 x 1800 OLED touchscreen that goes up to 120 Hz. They also have similar port layouts (the Intel models use Thunderbolt 4, the Qualcomm options use USB4), and they each feature Wi-Fi 7 and a 70 WHr battery. The designs continue HP's use of a lattice-free keyboard on high-end models (similar to Dell) and large trackpads. The chassis has passed 20 MIL-STD 810G tests for durability.

HP says the Intel version will be released this month, starting at $1,549.99. As of this writing, HP tells me the Qualcomm version will launch in the spring and that pricing will be shared closer to release.

Beyond the sleek new Ultra 14, HP is updating the entire OmniBook stack at CES, with a variety of sizes and processors from Qualcomm, Intel, and next-gen Ryzen AI chips. These include the OmniBookX, OmniBook 7, OmniBook 5, and OmniBook 3, which are set to launch throughout February and the spring. HP is also announcing updates to its Chromebook offerings, as well as its Elitebook lineup.

India has revised its unexpected decision to restrict PC and tablet imports without a license, now offering companies a three-month window to obtain the necessary documents. The licensing mandate is set to take effect from November 1, reports Bloomberg. This move comes after large PC makers halted imports due to the surprising directive.

The Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT) clarified late last week that companies could continue their electronic imports, including laptops and tablets, without a license until October 31. To facilitate this transition, the government is streamlining the licensing application process, with the possibility of approvals within just a day. This move is not just about regulation but is part of a broader initiative to boost local manufacturing and position India as a global tech manufacturing hub. 

There is a problem with local manufacturing of PCs. While major electronic manufacturing service companies like Foxconn have established their presence in India, companies like Apple cannot really make their PCs at those factories since they require advanced tools and a lot of engineering. 

India's government seems to understand that it is difficult to transfer production of state-of-the-art PCs to the country as major EMS companies do not have advanced factories in India. That's why they are rolling out a financial incentive worth $2.1 billion that aims to attract global tech manufacturers to India. The initiative may make sense, though, as many companies are looking to diversify their supply chains away from China.

The initial decision caught the tech industry by surprise, especially with significant events like India's Diwali shopping season and the back-to-school phase on the horizon. Major players like Apple, HP, and Samsung paused their imports of their desktops, laptops, and tablets to India following the abrupt order. The industry was left in a lurch, trying to navigate the sudden change and its implications for their operations in the country. 

But now that PC makers have three months to obtain import license, they can continue business as usual. Furthermore, chipmaker Intel expects limited impact on its sales in the country, partly because if a global player reduces shipments of Intel-based PCs to India, a local player will pick up the baton and will get CPUs from the blue company.

"The legal and regulatory landscape for the semiconductor industry is constantly evolving, and Intel respects the relevant regulations of the jurisdictions in which it operates," an Intel spokesperson told Tom's Hardware. "We continue to examine the new requirements issued by India's Ministry of Commerce and Industry and expect limited impact to Intel and our customers."

Today, the government of India announced immediate restrictions on the imports of tech products, including PCs, laptops, servers, smart devices, and PC components. According to various reports on this news, the aim is to curtail imports of popular tech products, which largely come from China, to promote domestic manufacturing. IT security concerns might have also influenced the implementation of extra trade restrictions.

India's government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has pursued a Make in India plan since 2014. What we see today with the new tech import restrictions likely falls under this signature policy.

Both businesses and consumers are worried about the impacts of these new restrictions. Some expect the new trading rules to delay product rollouts and price increases on desirable foreign-produced tech.

Specifically, the newly enacted policy states, "Import of laptops, tablets, all-in-one personal computers, and ultra-small form factor computers and servers falling under HSN 8741 shall be ‘restricted,’ and their import would be allowed against a valid license for restricted imports." However, an unnamed source speaking to Reuters indicated that shipments already in progress will be allowed through customs without licenses until August 31.

There are some further details about the scope of the restrictions for consumers and businesses to take in. For example, individual consumers who are bringing in a single new device either through customs after international travel, or bought via a foreign-based e-commerce portal, are exempt from import licensing. However, they will have to make import duty payments.

Businesses can also swerve import restrictions on devices categorized as 'capital goods.' The government clarifies that these products must be essential business equipment for research and development, testing, benchmarking, evaluation, repair, or re-export. Only 20 such items per consignment will be exempt from import licensing.

India's Tech Consumption

India imported nearly $20 billion worth of electronics, including PCs, between April and June this year. Counterpoint research estimates that India's PC and laptop market is worth $8 billion per annum. Only a third of these PCs are thought to be manufactured inside India. In 2020, the Indian government imposed similar import restrictions on TV shipments.

Unsurprisingly, India-based contract manufacturers like Dixon Technologies have seen their shares surge today. The HSN 8741 restrictions have yet to be commented upon by foreign tech companies like Apple, Acer, Dell, HP, or Samsung, which are expected to be perturbed by the new policy.

The market is awash in gaming laptops that promise to offer good performance for not a lot of money. Today, you can get a gaming laptop for around $1,000 that gives you playable 1080p frame rates in modern games. HP is looking to tap into the low- to mid-range segment with the Victus 16, its latest 16.1-inch gaming notebook that eschews the flashy designs and bold colors that often grace this segment with something more akin to business casual. 

Our review configuration of the Victus 16 plays it safe with a Core i7-13700H processor, GeForce RTX 4050 GPU and a 144Hz 1080p screen. However, some confusing choices regarding configurations, pricing, and store-specific SKUs make this a hard laptop to pin down. However, if you can catch the Victus 15 on sale (as it is currently), it’s worth considering among the best laptops under $1,500. 

HP Victus 16 Specifications

Design of the HP Victus 16

The Victus 16 has an understated, attractive design. The entire chassis is constructed of sturdy, grey plastic, while the keyboard is finished in a slightly lighter shade of grey. There aren’t design embellishments drawing attention to the laptop other than a large chromed “V” that graces the lid. That also means you won’t find any RGB lighting for the keyboard, just simple white LEDs.

At the top of the keyboard are a large grouping of ventilation holes. They are shaped as an alternating set of V (upright and then inverted). A similar pattern is found on the lower front corners of the laptop for the speaker grills, although the V shape is swapped out for triangles.

One thing that I’d like to point out is the obnoxious stickers that HP slaps on the keyboard deck. I get it; this is hard to avoid with Windows laptops. OEMs must satisfy advertising agreements by adorning their laptops with these Intel Core and Nvidia GeForce RTX badges. However, would it kill HP to at least put the stickers on straight? The crooked placement of the stickers is just an insult to injury.

The Victus 16’s port layout is quite robust for a mainstream system. The right side is home to two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port, a HDMI 2.1 port and a proprietary barrel-style jack for power. On the left side, you’ll find a third USB 3.1 Gen 1 port and a Gigabit Ethernet jack that retracts to accept a cable. On the one hand, the retracting mechanism is an obvious point for future failure due to its fragility. However, the fact that HP even includes a full-size LAN port should be applauded.

Nearly half of the bottom part of the chassis is dedicated to a ventilation array that supplies the twin internal fans with cool air. Hot air is then exhausted from vents positioned on the left and rear of the chassis.

The Victus 16 measures 14.53 x 10.21 x 0.90 inches and weighs 5.15 pounds. The assembled competition – the MSI Katana 15, Acer Nitro 5 and Lenovo Legion Pro 5i – are similar in size (roughly an inch thick) and weight (5 to 5.5 pounds).

Gaming Performance on the HP Victus 16

The Victus 16 has an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 discrete GPU.

I started things off by playing a bit of Cyberpunk 2077, which is a notoriously resource-intensive game that delivers a big payoff with its lush graphics. With the resolution set to 1080p, I used the High quality preset with ray tracing (including ray traced lighting), DLSS Balanced, and DLSS frame generation enabled. I averaged around 90 fps under these conditions.

We’ve only tested one other RTX 4050 laptop, the MSI Katana 15 (i7-13620H, RTX 4050), which I’ve included in this roundup. We also brought in a last-gen Acer Nitro 5 (i5-12500H, RTX 3050 Ti) along with the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8) (i7-13700HX, RTX 4060) to give some perspective for the next step up on the graphics performance ladder.

The Victus 16 comes out of the gate strong in Shadow of the Tomb Raider (highest settings), delivering 79 frames per second (fps) at 1080p. The Katana 15, with a less performant Core i7-13260H processor, wasn’t too far behind at 73 fps. The RTX 4050-equipped machines offer a notable increase in performance over the Nitro 5 with its previous generation RTX 3050 Ti.

In the Far Cry 6 (very high settings), the Katana 15 hit 81 fps compared to 77 fps for the Victus 16. Again, the RTX 4050 laptops left the Nitro 5 behind, while the Legion Pro 5i opened up a 13 fps advantage over the Katana 15 thanks to its more powerful RTX 4060 GPU.

Grand Theft Auto V (very high settings) saw the Victus 16 and Katana 15 neck and neck, hitting 71 fps and 70 fps, respectively. This represents a 10 fps advantage over the Nitro 5, while the Legion 5i Pro pulled well ahead at nearly 100 fps.

Borderlands 3 (badass settings) again saw a tight race between the Victus 16 (66 fps) and the Katana 15 (68 fps), while the Nitro 5 (45 fps) and Legion 5i Pro (90 fps) took up their usual positions as bookends for this comparison test.

In Red Dead Redemption 2 (very high settings), the Victus 16 garnered 53 fps compared to 52 for the Katana 15. These two laptops are about as evenly matched as you can get regarding gaming performance at 1080p resolution.

I rounded out the gaming tests with our Metro Exodus (RTX settings) stress test, comprising 15 benchmark loops at 1080p resolution. The benchmark ran at an average of 57.43 fps (consistently ranging between 57.26 to 57.63 fps). During the run, the Core i7-13700H averaged 3.46GHz and 2.32GHz for the performance and efficiency cores, respectively. The CPU package averaged 73.59 degrees Celsius (164.46 degrees Fahrenheit). The GeForce RTX 4050 GPU ran at an average of 2.33 GHz and measured 69.35 C (156.83 F).

Productivity Performance on the HP Victus 16

My Victus 16 review unit arrived with an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory and a 1TB SSD.

Starting with the Geekbench 5 synthetic CPU test, the Victus 16 scores of 1,913 and 12,024 for single-core and multi-core performance, respectively. The Katana 15 with its Core i7-13620H CPU wasn’t too far behind with scores of 1,787 and 12,017, respectively.

Moving on to our file transfer test, which involved copying 25GB of data, the Victus 16 bested all challengers at 1,807.92 MBps. The Legion 5i Pro was the next closest at 1,792.63 MBps, while the Katana 15 pulled up the rear at 1,045.33 MBps.

The Victus 16 fared well in our Handbrake benchmark, which involves transcoding a video from 4K to 1080p. The Victus 16 took four minutes and 40 seconds to accomplish the feat. This was 24 seconds faster than the Nitro 5 and just 13 seconds slower than the Katana 15.

Display on the HP Victus 16

The Victus 16 uses a 16.1-inch 1080p display rated for 300 nits and has a refresh rate of 144Hz. All Victus 16 configurations come with a 1080p display.

Despite the lower resolution on a relatively large display, I had no major issues with the panel. The display is rated for 300 nits by the factory, yet our light meter showed that the Victus 16 hit 313 nits. We rarely see a display exceed the manufacturer’s claim, so I was pleasantly surprised. That figure put it on an even footing with the Nitro 5’s 314 nits and behind the Legion Pro 5i’s 349 nits.

The anti-reflective coating was adept at keeping away reflections, and cranking up the brightness while outdoors (overcast conditions) allowed me to enjoy the display. Our colorimeter showed that the Victus 16’s display covers 75.2 percent of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 106 percent of sRGB, which put it well ahead of the budget panels used in the Katana 15 and Nitro 5.

I sat down and watched Episode 5 of Secret Invasion on the Victus 16 and the image quality looked great. Secret Invasion’s overall color palette is somewhat subdued and somber, which is in keeping with the series's heavy, world-ending subject material. However, one standout during an otherwise humdrum episode was when MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth shot a Skrull posing as her superior, Director Weatherby. Her bright red dress popped on the display and was the perfect counter to the blue suits of Weatherby’s dumbfounded security detail.  

The screen looked equally as good playing Overwatch 2, with its rich, saturated colors beaming on the display, especially on the Paraiso map. The colors weren’t as vibrant as some of the higher-end IPS or OLED panels I’ve seen in high-end gaming laptops, but for a device that starts around $1,000, there’s little to complain about here.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Victus 16

The keyboard on the Victus 16 is quite comfortable, with keys that are quiet and firm in their operation. It reminded me of the latest scissor switch-style keyboards on Apple’s MacBooks. However, unlike MacBook keyboards, you get a full number pad off to the right of the laptop.

I use keyhero.com to test my typing speed and accuracy, and the site pegged me at 80.77 words per minute with an accuracy of 95.92 percent. For comparison, I hit 77.93 wpm with the Katana 13 with 95.54 percent accuracy.

The Victus 16 has a smallish touchpad measuring 5.1 x 3.3 inches. The touchpad is nice and tight, with a firm click response. However, my finger seemed to subtly drag rather than glide over the surface, which was slightly annoying.

Audio on the HP Victus 16

The Victus 16 uses a pair of B&O-tuned speakers mounted at the corner of the palm rest. Like most budget laptops, the bass is lacking, but the overall audio quality was pleasing. I played “Battersea” by Hooverphonic, which is a showpiece for Geike Arnaert’s angelic vocals. The sound was distortion free up through maximum volume levels. And to put a smile on my face at the end of the day, I played “Going the Distance” by Menahan Street Band, a magnificent cover of Bill Conti’s Rocky theme song. The song is pure perfection, and while the lack of bass doesn’t do the drumline any favors, the blaring horns came through loud and clear.

The sound was good in Cyberpunk 2077, with clear vocals and ambient sounds. However, the lack of bass means that explosions landed with a thud. However, the audio shortcoming can be easily rectified by grabbing a pair of the best gaming headsets.

Upgradeability of the HP Victus 16

The Victus 16’s bottom panel is accessible via eight small Philips screws. Once removed, I nearly broke a fingernail trying to pry the panel off – I should have just gone downstairs to get my plastic spudger tool. Once the panel is removed, you’ll find immediate access to the battery, two SO-DIMM slots (both populated on our review unit) and a single M.2 slot for an NVMe SSD.

Unlike some pricier laptops, you won’t find a second M.2 slot to for an additional SSD. However, you can upgrade the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo card.

Battery Life on the HP Victus 16

Battery life is one area where the Victus 16 stood head and shoulders above the assembled competition. Our battery test consists of web browsing, light graphics work and video streaming, all while connected to Wi-Fi with the display set to 150 nits of brightness. Under these conditions, the Victus 16 lasted for seven hours and three minutes.

This was nearly three times as long as the Katana 15, which gave up the ghost after 2:39. The next closest competitor was the Nitro 5 (5:33), while the higher-performing Legion Pro 5i called it quits after 4:54.

Heat on the HP Victus 16

The Victus can get toasty when gaming. Like most gaming laptops, keep it on a desk or table.

When running our Metro Exodus stress test (15 consecutive runs), the Victus 16 measured 38.3 Celsius (100.9 degrees Fahrenheit) between the G and H keys. The touchpad measured a relatively cool 22.8 C (73 F), while the hottest part of the laptop was the underside near the rear at 49.3 C (120.7 F).

Webcam on the HP Victus 16

HP uses a 1080p sensor for the Victus 16’s webcam, but it wasn’t up to par with other upgraded webcams we’ve seen on newer laptops. I won’t say that image clarity was down in the 720p doldrums, but it wasn’t as clear and crisp as I would have expected from a 1080p sensor.

Details in objects that came through clearly with other 1080p webcams looked blurred. My facial details (hair, moles, wrinkles) also didn’t transition from real life to digital facsimile unscathed. The camera also had a lot of trouble with my overhead lighting, resulting in lens flare and blooming. This is fine for quick calls, but if you're streaming, you might want to consider one of the best webcams.

Software and Warranty on the HP Victus 16

Like many HP laptops, the Victus comes loaded with factory apps. I noticed HP Documentation, HP PC Hardware Diagnostics, HP Privacy Settings, HP QuickDrop, HP Smart, HP Support Assistant and HP System Event Utility.

However, the utility that most gamers will interact with will be the Omen Gaming Hub. It’s a centralized location to view system vitals, launch your games and share screenshots and wallpapers with other community members.

In addition to the HP bloat, you’ll also find numerous shortcuts for apps like Spotify, WhatsApp, ExpressVPN and Dropbox. McAfee LiveSafe is also installed by default on the system.

The Victus 16 comes with a one-year warranty.

HP Victus 16 Configurations

Our Victus 16 review unit is configured with an Intel Core i7-13700H processor, 16GB of DDR5-5600 memory, a 1TB SSD, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 and a 16.1-inch 144Hz 1080p display. This configuration typically costs $1,449, exclusive from HP, but is currently on sale at HP.com for $1,199.

HP also sells store-specific versions of the Victus 16. For example, Costco sells a SKU with the Core i7-13700HX, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and an RTX 4060 for $1,399. Likewise, a Best Buy exclusive SKU with a Core i7-13700H, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD and an RTX 4060 lists for $1,412.

Bottom Line

The HP Victus 16 is a compelling budget gaming laptop. When I was initially briefed on the laptop, the $1,449 price tag didn’t make much sense. That price includes a Core i7-13700H, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, a GeForce RTX 4050 and a 16.1-inch 144Hz 1080p display. However, that is the exact same MSRP as the Lenovo Legion Pro 5i (Gen 8) with a Core i7-13700HX, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, an RTX 4060 and a 16-inch 165Hz QHD+ display.

When priced the same, the Legion Pro 5i is the obvious choice over our review unit. However, the Victus 16 makes a stronger case at its $1,199 sale price. But you’ll have to decide if the lower price is worth the drop in screen resolution. On the other hand, the Victus 16 matches the MSI Katana 15 on performance and display resolution, yet the latter costs just $999. However, choosing the latter will result in a heavy penalty for battery life.

Throwing in another wrinkle is Costco’s Victus 16 SKU, which gives you a stronger Core i7-13700HX processor, 32GB of RAM and an RTX 4060 for $1,399. That makes for a solid alternative to the Legion Pro 5i, especially with double the SSD space and RAM – if you have a Costco membership and don’t mind a 1080p display.

With that said, the Victus 16 that we reviewed is right in line regarding gaming performance relative to the competition. It has a bright display, good build quality and a business-like exterior. In addition, its battery life blows away the competition at just over seven hours. If you can find the laptop on sale, it’s worth considering for those seeking a budget 1080p gaming rig.

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One of my favorite trends among the best gaming laptops in the last several years has been that companies are making laptops that are less ostentatious. The HP Omen 16 ($1,449.99 to start, $2,809.99 as tested) is an all black gaming PC that looks like it could get down to business, but with the power to play games with its Intel Core i7-13700HX and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU.

You get decent performance from the RTX 4080, though as we'll soon discover, other vendors use higher-power versions of that GPU that perform better in some games.

Those who value a sleek notebook without tons of angles and red stripes will want to keep an eye on the HP Omen 16. But it could feel a bit more premium with a nicer touchpad and less bloatware. 

Design of the HP Omen 16

HP has made minor changes to the Omen 16 since it first released last year. The 2023 model, however, has a few aesthetic differences and also plays around with port placement.

HP has ditched its diamond Omen logo on the lid, instead focusing entirely on the name brand. It's fine, I guess. I actually prefer the diamond, as I think it looks nicer than the word "Omen" in a large font, but this is fairly inoffensive.

The plastic construction is still similar, and still plain. And I like it, too. Not every gaming laptop needs to scream in RGB lights and red stripes.

Admittedly, lifting the lid does reveal some of the Omen 16's gaming prowess. The 16.1-inch screen, with a chunky bezel (especially at the bottom), might not be the evidence, but the RGB keyboard sure is. There's also a militaristic "16" on the bottom of the wrist rest, which looks a bit chintzy.

There are ports on both sides and on the rear of the laptop. The left side has two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a headphone jack, and the right side has a single USB Type-A port. On the back, there's an Ethernet jack, HDMI 2.1 port and another USB Type-A port. Last year, HP had three USB Type-A ports, but it lost one this time around, seemingly in favor of moving the Thunderbolt 4 ports to the sides and the Ethernet jack to the back. But HP also suggests that there are larger exhausts for airflow on the sides and back. Seemingly, to allow more hot air out, a port had to go.

The Omen 16 weighs 5.4 pounds and measures 14.53 x 9.76 x 0.89 inches. That's the same weight as the Razer Blade 16, which is slightly smaller (13.98 x 9.61 x 0.87 inches). The Alienware x16 is 5.9 pounds and 14.36 x 11.41 x 0.73 inches, while the MSI Raider GE78 HX is the biggest of our comparison group, at 6.83 pounds and 14.96 x 11.73 x 1.13 inches.

HP Omen 16 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the HP Omen 16

On paper, the HP Omen 16 is a strong performer, with an Intel Core i7-13700HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Laptop GPU, 32GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB SSD.

When I played Redfall at native resolution with Nvidia's DLSS quality upscaling and frame generation, the Omen 16 ran the game between 100 and 130 frames per second, with a couple of skips below that range. As two vampires jumped me in a supper club, combat hovered around 120 fps. (With upscaling disabled, I saw closer to 70 fps).

Two of the laptops we compared the Omen to also have RTX 4080 Laptop graphics: the Alienware x16 and the MSI Raider GE78 HX. But both of those competing systems have higher boost clocks than the Omen (2,280 MHz to HP's 1,665 MHz) and use more power (while the Omen's GPU uses 145W, the Alienware needs 150W and the MSI sucks 175W). That may explain some performance differences we saw in certain games. Not every RTX 4080 is the same. Meanwhile, the Razer Blade 16 packs an RTX 4070 Laptop GPU into its thin chassis.

On Shadow of the Tomb Raider (highest settings), the Omen hit 117 fps at 1080p and 79 fps at its native 2560 x 1440. Here, it actually performed on par with the Razer Blade at 1080p, but the Alienware and MSI's more powerful 4080's outperformed at both 1080p and a higher-resolution native 2560 x 1600.

HP's gaming laptop ran Grand Theft Auto V on very high settings at 126 fps at 1080p and 78 fps at 2560 x 1440. Both the Raider and Alienware were faster, at over 150 fps at 1080p, as well as at 1600p.

The Omen 16 fell in line with the Alienware on Far Cry 6, at ultra hitting 98 fps at 1080p and 83 fps at 1440p, while the Alienware reached 97 fps at FHD and 86 fps at its native 1600p. The MSI still outperformed.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is a difficult benchmark, even on medium settings. The Omen 16 notched 85 frames per second and 56 fps at its native 2560 x 1600. That's slightly ahead of the Razer Blade 16, but the other RTX 4080 machines beat the Omen in both FHD and their native resolutions.

The Omen fell into the usual pattern on Borderlands 3, again beating the Blade at 1080p, but falling far behind the Alienware and the MSI.

To stress test the Omen 16 and check for throttling, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark 15 times in a row, simulating half an hour of gaming. The Omen averaged 85.47 fps and was fairly stable across runs, only getting as high as 86.25 fps on the first run. The last run was the lowest, at 84.95 fps.

The Core i7-13700HX's performance cores averaged 3.1 GHz during the stress test, while the efficiency cores ran at 2.33 GHz. The CPU package measured 74.67 degrees Celsius. The RTX 4080, meanwhile, averaged 1,334.5 MHz and measured 72.49 degrees Celsius.

Productivity Performance on the HP Omen 16

It didn't come as a huge surprise that the Omen, configured for review with an Intel Core i7-13700HX, 32GB of RAM and a 2TB SSD, offered a strong showing on our productivity benchmarks. It didn't do as well as laptops with Intel's Core i9-13950HX processors like the MSI Raider GE78 HX and Razer Blade 16 or the Alienware x16 and its Core i9-13900HK, but that's to be expected, and the differences weren't always huge. Those i9 laptops are also more expensive.

On Geekbench 6, the Omen put up a single-core score of 2,469 and a multi-core score of 13,940. The other laptops put up higher scores, especially in multi-core, but you'll see in our chart that the single-core scores, while greater, weren't always a huge difference.

The Omen's 2TB SSD was the fastest on our file transfer test, copying 25GB of files at a rate of 1,989.70 MBps. The Alienware was close at 1,923.59 MBps, while the others were a few seconds behind.

On Handbrake, the Omen 16 transcoded our 4K test video to 1080p in 4 minutes and 29 seconds. That's behind the Razer Blade and MSI Raider (tied at 4:08 each), while the Alienware came in last at 4:50.

Display on the HP Omen 16

HP has stuck with a traditional 16:9 screen on its Omen 16, even as much of the rest of the market is moving to taller 16:10 displays (another Omen laptop, the Omen Transcend, does use a 16:10 screen). This Omen has a 16.1-inch IPS display, with 2560 x 1440 resolution and a fast 240 Hz refresh rate.

I watched the Barbie trailer in 1440p (yes, it's in YouTube at this laptop's native resolution!), and the bright pink colors came across nice and bright on the Omen's display. A green hill with different shades of emerald vegetation popped on the blue sky.

In contrast, Redfall is a dark game, but the Omen's strength was in showing the game's emphasis on the color red. That included in menus, red smoke throughout the game, and in leaves that fell around the town. Layla's purple umbrella shield popped when I launched it to block projectiles.

On our light meter and colorimeter, the HP Omen's display wasn't quite as nice as what you could get on some other laptops, but was slightly ahead of what Alienware offered.

The Omen 16's screen covers 78.1% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 110.3% of the sRGB gamut. The Alienware x16 covered 75.3% and 106% of those gamuts, respectively. Both the Razer Blade 16 and MSI Raider GE78 HX covered wider gamuts (the Blade has a mini-LED display and costs much more).

The Omen and Alienware were close on brightness, too, with the Omen reaching 305 nits and the x16 hitting 302 nits. The Blade 16 was the brightest at 511 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Omen 16

The keyboard on the 16-inch Omen is offset to the left, with detached arrow keys and a cluster for insert, home, page up, page down, a dedicated calculator key, and a button to launch the Omen Command Center app. Depending on the configuration you get, there's single-zone white backlighting or four-zone and per-key RGB lighting. Ours came with the fanciest option.

The keys are slightly smaller than I'm used to, particularly with short caps lock and enter keys. I was able to move past this in short order, eventually hitting 120 words per minute on the monkeytype typing test with a 98% accuracy rate.

The touchpad is large, especially for a gaming notebook, which is nice for when you're using the Omen for tasks other than gaming. But I found the click to feel both hollow and shallow, which isn't a great combination. There was also a bit of flex around the top of the touchpad when I clicked higher than the very bottom.

Audio on the HP Omen 16

HP's continued partnership with Bang & Olufsen on speakers has made its way to the HP Omen 16.

Dashboard Confessional's "Vindicated" has clear guitars and keys backing up the vocals, though there was a lack of bass (which is common, unfortunately, in laptops). I did find that at the loudest volumes, the sound could get a bit distorted, but I didn't need to set it that high to fill my apartment with sound.

In Redfall, the audio (like vampires hissing at me and Layla joking as I adventured solo through the town) was solid. Some background music was quiet, but firefights sure weren't.

I was surprised to see that there wasn't an audio program preinstalled to tune the speakers to my liking. HP usually includes one. Perhaps it instead hopes for people to use a HyperX headset (one was included with our review unit, see the configuration section, below) and the HyperX Ngenuity software.

Upgradeability of the HP Omen 16

There's plenty of opportunity to upgrade the components in your HP Omen 16 down the line.

To get the bottom cover off, there are eight Phillips head screws to remove (you can use the same P1 driver bit for all of them). The front four are very tiny, while the back four are slightly longer, so be sure to keep them separate.

In its maintenance video, HP recommends opening the clamshell and pushing on the wrist rest to help release the base. I'd never seen anything like that before, but I did it! Couldn't hurt. Doing it helped release one of the corners, though I wasn't thrilled about flexing the keyboard with my fingers.

From there, when you close the laptop again, you'll still need to pry as usual. That freed corner helped, and while some of the base came off with my fingers, having a guitar pick tool helped remove the rest of the base.  

Both RAM slots are available — nothing soldered here — and there are two PCIe slots for SSDs. Those SSD slots have heat shields held on with two additional Phillips head screws each. Only one of our slots was filled, so someone who bought our configuration could easily add more storage down the line.

The networking card is also replaceable (albeit at a slightly diagonal angle, but nothing you can't reach), as is the battery. I appreciated that the battery was labeled with a part number to search for when buying a replacement.

Battery Life on the HP Omen 16

The Omen 16 lasted for 4 hours and 8 minutes on our battery test, which browses the web, streams videos and runs OpenGL graphics tests. That's longer than the MSI Raider, which ran for 2:32, but both the Alienware x16 and Razer Blade 16 lasted over 5 hours.

Heat on the HP Omen 16

 HP told me that the Omen 16 is designed to push more air out of the rear and sides and that it has a refined cooling system. Still, in our testing, the laptop got pretty toasty.

The center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, measured 51.8 degrees Celsius (125.24 degrees Celsius), which is hotter than we like to see. I could feel it when I played Redfall. My left hand got uncomfortably warm on the ASDF keys, while my right hand was nice and cool on my gaming mouse.

On the bottom, the hottest point reached 66.5 C (151.7) which is pretty hot, even for some gaming laptops. Use this one on a desk while you're gaming.

Webcam on the HP Omen 16

In the bezel above the screen, HP has a 1080p webcam with a physical privacy shutter. There's no option for facial recognition to sign in with Windows Hello.

The webcam is a vast improvement over last year's model, which had a blurry 720p lens. In challenging lighting, including a nearby open window, the Omen accurately captured the color of my shirt and eyes, individual hairs on my head, and unfortunately caught imperfections in my skin.

Software and Warranty on the HP Omen 16

HP puts too much software on its laptops, especially for something that's supposed to be premium.

Let's start by counting the junk. There's a "Dropbox promotion" and ExpressVPN in the Start menu, and McAfee LiveSafe is pinned to the desktop. The Start Menu also includes a link to sign up for LastPass and a link to Amazon.com with HP's referral code. Some of these follow you to the Edge browser as pre-filled bookmarks, including ExpressVPN, LastPass, Amazon and Booking.com.

Some of HP's own software is decent, but the amount is overwhelming. The Omen Gaming Hub is the most important piece of software. It serves as a game launcher, lets you customize RGB lighting, and allows you to check system usage and prioritize bandwidth. It also has a boost mode that HP claims gets the most performance out of games. It's a shame that HP has filled this with shopping links and ads, though.

HyperX's Ngenuity software is also on board, which lets you make customizations to your peripherals. HP owns this company, so maybe it should start moving these integrations into Omen Gaming Hub.

Meanwhile, there's plenty of HP-branded software, from the Support Assistant to HP Privacy Settings, HP Documentation and HP Smart, the last of which is designed specifically to set up printers. There's also HP QuickDrop, which lets you move files between your phone and laptop with an associated Android or iOS app.

HP sells the Omen 16 with a 1-year warranty.

HP Omen 16 Configurations

 We tested a beefed-up version of the Omen 16, with an Intel Core i7-13700HX, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SST storage, a 240 Hz, 2560 x 1440 display, and Windows 11 Pro. This model, which costs $2,809.99, also comes bundled with a HyperX Cloud II Core Wireless gaming headset (this comes with any configuration with a 13700HX and RTX 4080) that's pre-paired to the laptop.

There are small areas in our configuration that add to the cost. For instance, bumping to Intel Wi-Fi 6E from a Realtek networking card is an extra $10. Switching from Windows 11 Home to Pro adds $70.

The base configurable model on HP's website costs $1,449.99. For that, you get the same CPU, but an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU, 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 1080p screen with a slower 165 Hz refresh rate. (This also includes the Realtek wireless and Windows 11 Home).

In between, HP's website also has configuration options for an RTX 4070 ($250 over the base model) and a 1TB SSD ($90 over the base model).

The cheapest options are at Best Buy. For $1,249.99, you can get the Omen 16 with a Core i5-13420H, a 1080p, 144 Hz display, 16GB of RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. For $1,399.99, that's bumped up to a Core i7-13620H and 1TB of storage. 

Bottom Line

The HP Omen 16 is a slim gaming PC with a large display and a design that is simple and unpretentious. There are plenty of ports (even if it is down one USB-A port from the prior model) and you get decent performance for the price. I do, however, wish HP would add a nicer touchpad and would cut down on the bloatware.

If you want more performance from your gaming PC, there are other RTX 4080 gaming PCs that are more powerful, because those variants use more power and offer higher boost clocks. Both the Alienware x16 and the MSI GE78 HX work that way. But in the case of the MSI, that also means a way bigger laptop. Alienware's laptop offers some bells and whistles like a mechanical keyboard, though you have to pay extra for them.

If you want something relatively thin (look, gaming laptops only get so svelte), with adult stylings and plenty of expandability and repairability down the line, the Omen 16 is well worth a look. You'll just have to spend a bit of time uninstalling extra software.

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Global PC shipments declined by 13.4% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2023, according to initial data from the International Data Corporation (IDC). This downturn marks the sixth straight quarter of shrinkage, spurred by macroeconomic factors, diminished demand across consumer and commercial sectors, and a shift in IT expenditure away from device acquisition. Still, IDC claims that the market outperformed the projected estimates for the quarter.

The industry shipped 61.6 million PCs in Q2 2023, down from 71.1 million computers in the same quarter a year ago. Lenovo shipped 14.2 million systems and remained the world's largest computer supplier in the second quarter of 2023, but its sales contracted by 18.4%. As a result, HP came close to besting leader by shipping 13.4 million desktops and laptops in Q2 2023. Dell came in third, with 10.3 million PCs, and Apple remained the world's fourth-largest PC supplier with 5.3 million machines sold during the quarter. Acer shipped approximately four million computers, based on data from IDC.

"The roller coaster of supply and demand the PC industry has faced over the past five years has been extremely challenging," said Ryan Reith, group vice president for IDC's Client Device Trackers. "Companies don't want to be caught with short supply like they were in 2020 and 2021, but at the same time, many seem hesitant to make the big bet on a market rebound. On the consumer side, we're seeing a return to pre-pandemic habits where computing needs are shared across multiple devices, and we firmly believe the consumer wallet will favor smartphones over the PC. On the commercial side, workforce reductions (for many big companies) as well as the introduction of generative AI only add more confusion as to where to place an already reduced budget."

Except for Apple and HP, all large PC makers suffered double-digit decreases during the quarter. Apple enjoyed a favorable year-over-year growth due to supply constraints in Q2 2022, as a result of COVID-related supply chain disruptions. HP, meanwhile, has dealt with an excess of inventory in the previous year and is now nearing normalized inventory levels, resulting in a better growth rate amid this slowdown, according to IDC.

Still, persistently weak demand has led to inventory levels remaining high for an extended period, affecting both completed systems at the channel level and the supply chain.

"Elevated channel and component inventory are once again dragging down the market," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "And despite these issues slowly easing, many component suppliers continue to offer reduced pricing in an effort to clear their inventory though PC makers and channels are still cautious about new systems due to the reduced demand."

AMD unveiled its Ryzen 7000 Pro series chips today for both the mobile and desktop PC segments. It has a streamlined portfolio of Zen4-powered mobile chips for workstations and traditional commercial notebook applications that will come in new laptops from the likes of Lenovo and HP, along with three new Ryzen Pro desktop models that drop into all flavors of socket AM5 motherboards, thus leveraging an established motherboard ecosystem. 

As is the norm for AMD's Ryzen Pro models geared for the commercial segment, these chips have a robust feature set of technologies geared for the professional segment to ensure longer lifecycles and refresh cycles, but they leverage the same silicon foundation as their Zen 4 consumer-oriented counterparts. The laptop chips employ the 4nm process, and the desktop chips are etched on TSMC's 5nm silicon. Additionally, select Ryzen 7000 Pro laptop processors include AMD's Ryzen AI engine that will eventually expose new functionalities for business users. 

AMD Ryzen Pro 7040 Series Mobile

The Ryzen Pro 7040 HS-Series ‘Phoenix’ chips slot in as the solution for mobile workstations and creator systems with three processors in Ryzen 9, 7, and 5 flavors that adhere to a 35-45W TDP envelope. Like their consumer counterparts, all three models boost to 5 GHz or beyond and come with up to eight 4nm cores and 16 threads paired with the RDNA 3 graphics engine.

The Ryzen Pro 7040 U-series chips are geared for traditional commercial notebook platforms and have a 15-28W TDP envelope, but also come with up to eight cores and 16 threads. 

AMD claims that its slimmed-down six-SKU product stack is flexible enough to compete with Intel's wide-ranging portfolio of competing processors, and the 7040 models come with the company's integrated Ryzen XDNA AI engine. The XDNA AI engine is a dedicated accelerator that resides on-die with the CPU cores. The goal for the XDNA AI engine is to execute lower-intensity AI inference workloads, like audio, photo, and video processing, at lower power than you could achieve on a CPU or GPU while delivering faster response times than online services, thus boosting performance and saving battery power.

For now, the Ryzen AI engine works with the Windows Studio Effects suite to process video in real-time for features such as background blurring, gaze correction, and auto-framing, but the company envisions a future where the onboard AI engine assists with other tasks, like data analytics, personal AI assistants, computer vision, and enhancing creativity workflows. Naturally, these use cases will rely upon further development of the AI-accelerated application ecosystem, but AMD says the enablement work is well underway. 

The integrated AMD Pro Technologies suite is the key difference between these chips and the standard consumer models and features like AMD Pro Security, which include multiple layers of security that leverage proprietary OEM solutions and in-built Windows 11 features, AMD memory guard, Microsoft Pluton, and the AMD Secure processor. The AMD Pro Manageability features ease provisioning, system imaging, and deployment tasks, while the AMD Pro Business Ready suite ensures stability and includes a quality and reliability guarantee.

Ryzen Pro 7040 and 7030-powered systems will come from AMD partners such as HP and Lenovo, with an extensive array of options listed in the above slides, including new HP EliteBooks and Probooks, along with new Lenovo ThinkPads. Meanwhile, Lenovo will continue to offer its ThinkPad workstation models, like the P15v, P16s, and P14s, but new HP ZBooks will also join the Ryzen Pro workstation portfolio. 

As with all vendor-provided benchmarks, you should take the comparisons in the above album with a grain of salt. We have included the test notes in the above album with system and benchmark details.

AMD's benchmarks include several comparisons to the Apple M2 Pro processor present in the MacBook Pro. AMD claims an overall performance advantage of 6% over the M2 Pro, with a 5% lead in Cinebench, 11% in Passmark 11, and 3% in the Cinebench multi-thread test. 

On the Intel front, AMD put the Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U up against the Core i7-1370P in a multi-tasking test that consisted of using Microsoft Office applications during a Teams video conference, with 12% faster performance while delivering 29% better performance-per-watt and using 15% less battery power. Other highlights include the 7840U facing off with the Core i7-1365U, i7-1360P, and i7-1370P, with up to 4% more performance in single-core GeekBench, and up to 16% more performance in PCMark 10. The 7840U also beats all but the Core i7-1370P in the Passmark 11 CPU test. 

AMD also included battery life benchmarks comparing the Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U against two Core i7 models and the Apple M2 Pro, with the former both having a battery capacity of 54 Wh, while the latter had a 69.6 Wh battery. Meanwhile, the Ryzen 7 Pro 7840U system was equipped with a 51.3 Wh battery yet managed to deliver longer battery life than all three competing laptops, with the highest delta being a 70% advantage over the Core i7-1370P.

AMD's Ryzen Pro 7000 series desktop chips come in three Zen 4 flavors, with the 12C/24T Ryzen 9 Pro 7945, 8C/16T Ryzen 7 Pro 7745, and 6C/12T Ryzen 5 Pro 7645 comprising the entire lineup. All three models drop into standard AM5 platforms and come with integrated Radeon graphics, a new addition over the prior-gen Zen 3 models. These chips all adhere to a 65W TDP to improve power efficiency and feature many of the same specifications as their Ryzen 7000 consumer counterparts, like the 5nm process, 5GHz+ boost clocks, PCIe 5, and DDR5. These chips also come with the AMD Pro Technology suite. 

AMD shared a few gen-on-gen performance comparisons against the Ryzen 5000 series chips, showing impressive performance gains, and also highlighted the Ryzen 5 7645's performance gains over Intel's Core i5-13400, with solid improvements in all areas. 

The Ryzen Pro series is available to OEMs now, and systems will come from the company's partners in the coming months. 

Following the launch of the HP Dragonfly Pro, HP is now launching even more laptops geared at freelancers. Today, it announced a series of Envy-branded laptops, including the Envy x360 14-inch 2-in-1, the Envy x360 15.6-inch 2-in-1, and the Envy 17.3-inch Laptop, which it is pitching as a mix between work and personal machines.

Computer manufacturers have been making claims about how people mix personal and work machines for years. (Whether that's a smart idea on an enterprise machine is another story. For freelancers, it makes more sense). But what's perhaps more interesting here is that one of those machines is the first ever to be IMAX.

What do the IMAX Enhanced certification and freelancing have in common? Not a lot! But it's an interesting certification that's available on certain configurations to the HP Envy x360 15.6-inch 2-in-1. The certification includes using a variant of DTS:X technology to get an IMAX-style theatrical mix. It also allows for IMAX's expanded aspect ratio, though services like Disney Plus have been offering that on all kinds of devices for a while now. Notably, material supplied to the press about the certification says a Disney Plus subscription is required. Regardless, it’s hard to believe any laptop is going to offer an experience akin to IMAX, unless HP has somehow found a way to shrink its customers down to the size of an insect. 

The new devices are all using 5 megapixel webcams, and all but the 14-inch 2-in-1 will also get IR cameras. (Oddly enough, the old 13.3-inch 2-in-1 had an IR camera. It's been replaced here with a fingerprint reader.)

The HP Envy x360 14 will go up to an Intel Core i7-1355U, 16GB of DDR5-3200 RAM, and 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD with a 1080p display. The 15.6-incher will have both Intel Core and AMD Ryzen options, but only the Intel version will have an optional NVidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU. Those also have 1080p displaysand also claim IMAX certification. (I'm pretty surprised IMAX doesn't require higher resolution than that, but here we are).

Lastly, the HP Envy 17.3-inch laptop will use either a Core i7-1355U, Core i5-13500H or Core i7-13700H. Graphics go up to an RTX 3050, with up to 32GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of PCIe SSD storage. The 17-inch display comes in 1080 or 4K resolutions.

The 14-inch Envy x360 is available today on HP's website starting at $849.99. The 15-inch 2-in-1 is expected to launch later this month, beginning at $949.99 for AMD Ryzen R5 and Intel Core i5 ($1,199.99 for i7 and R7), while the 17-inch laptop will start at $1,149 and ship in May.

Intel has confirmed the company’s plan to pull the plug on another non-core business: servers. The chipmaker is quitting the server-building business and will sell it off to MiTAC, a leading Taiwanese electronics manufacturer and parent company of Tyan.

Dell, HP, and Inspur are the juggernauts of the server market, while Intel is one of the smaller fish in the pond. The chipmaker has multiple facets, and one of them is — or rather, was — building server products. Intel has killed off a fair share of non-core businesses since CEO Pat Gelsinger took the reigns in 2021. Some of the more notable exits include Intel’s Optane business, SSD business, networking switch business, and the company’s more recent departure from 5G modems. Intel has a strong server product portfolio, but the chipmaker’s strongest suit is obviously selling silicon.

“In line with Intel’s continued efforts to prioritize investments in its IDM 2.0 strategy, we have made the difficult decision to exit our Data Center Solutions Group (DSG). As part of this plan, MiTAC, an edge-to-cloud IT solutions provider and longstanding ODM partner of DSG, will have the right to manufacture and sell products based on our designs. We are focused on ensuring the DSG team and its stakeholders are supported during this transition,” one Intel spokesperson told ServeTheHome.

Intel has sold very few server units over the years — DSG hardly brought in significant revenue numbers for the company. So it doesn’t really come as a shock that the server-building business is the next head on the chopping block. Intel posted a net loss of $644 million in the Q4 FY2022, so this latest withdrawal from server-building is unlikely to be the last cost-cutting measure the company takes.

Intel recently launched the highly-anticipated 4th Generation Sapphire Rapids Xeon processors and some Sapphire Rapids-based servers. But now it looks like those may be the last Intel-built servers on the market — or perhaps the chipmaker is just white-boxing them for its partnering OEMs to rebadge. At any rate, Intel has transferred its server designs over to MiTAC. Tyan, a subsidiary of MiTAC, will definitely put those designs to good use.

IDC reports that diminished demand, surplus stock, and a declining macroeconomic environment all played a role in the significant decline in traditional PC shipments in the first quarter of 2023. Shipments of PCs declined by 29% year-over-year, hurting all PC makers. Yet surprisingly, Apple was hurt the most. 

Global PC shipments totaled 56.9 million, a 29% decrease compared to the same period in 2022, based on initial data from IDC. Analysts believe these results signify an end to the COVID-induced demand period and a temporary revert to pre-COVID trends. Shipments in Q1 2023 were substantially lower than the 59.2 million and 60.6 million units in Q1 2019 and Q1 2018, respectively. 

While all PC makers lost sales in the first quarter, Apple was perhaps the biggest loser, with a 40.5% year-over-year decline. Apple's primary focus in recent years has been on its iPhones and services businesses, which could have diverted resources and attention away from its traditional PC lineup. Indeed, the company launched its M2 Pro and M2 Max-based laptops in early Q1 (a slow season typically) and never updated its desktop lineup that still features its M1-series system-on-chips from 2020.

Even though Apple's M1 may still offer great performance-per-watt and single-thread performance (given its eight-wide decoding architecture), it is now three years old, and those customers who wanted to get an M1-based PC have already obtained one.  

As far as the whole PC market is concerned, the rankings did not change. The top five PC manufacturers by market share were Lenovo (23.9%), HP (21.5%), Dell (16.0%), Apple (7.5%), and Acer (6.4%).  

"Though channel inventory has depleted in the last few months, it's still well above the healthy four to six week range," said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager for IDC's Mobility and Consumer Device Trackers. "Even with heavy discounting, channels and PC makers can expect elevated inventory to persist into the middle of the year and potentially into the third quarter." 

IDC says that the stagnation in growth and demand allows supply chains to adapt as PC OEMs investigate manufacturing alternatives outside of China. Concurrently, PC manufacturers are adjusting their strategies for the rest of the year and placing orders for Chromebooks in anticipation of increased licensing fees later in the year. Nevertheless, short-term PC shipments will probably struggle, with a resurgence expected by year-end due to global economic improvements and users considering upgrading to Windows 11. 

IDC notes other factors in the PC market's stagnation. Analysts believe that the stall allows supply chains to adapt as factories investigate manufacturing alternatives outside of China and adjust their strategies for the rest of the year.  

Nevertheless, short-term PC shipments will probably struggle, with a resurgence expected by year-end due to global economic improvements and users considering upgrading to Windows 11, according to IDC.

"By 2024, the aging installed base will be due for a refresh," stated Linn Huang, research vice president, Devices and Displays at IDC. "If the economy is on an upward trajectory by then, we anticipate a significant market boost as consumers upgrade, schools replace worn Chromebooks, and businesses transition to Windows 11. However, if economic stagnation persists in key markets into next year, recovery may be a slow process."

The Lexar Professional NM800 Pro is a high-end PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs that enters a crowded market but can set itself apart with its high efficiency and low temperatures. This drive is best caught on sale and particularly at 2TB, where it would be great for the PlayStation 5 or a gaming desktop. It sets no new performance records and has some inconsistent performance results, which keep it off the best PS5 SSDs and best SSDs overall lists, but on the whole it performs well enough to get the job done. With PCIe 5.0 SSDs on the horizon, this drive may best be suited to adding extra fast storage to your system.

SSD prices have been dropping fast for a while now so it’s important to score the right deal. This drive should be included in your list if the above characteristics fit your criteria. Another drive in this class that’s been priced low in recent sales is the Crucial P5 Plus, but the NM800 Pro is the superior choice as it generally performs better and comes with a stylish heatsink. The non-heatsinked version should be okay in a laptop if you really want full PCIe 4.0 bandwidth.

On the other hand, there are many drives faster than the NM800 Pro, even if the performance gap can be difficult to subjectively feel in the day-to-day. Our recommendation is to put this drive in your PS5 or as a secondary PC drive when it’s priced right, particularly at 2TB. The NM800 Pro does not really stand out in any other way.

The Lexar Professional NM800 Pro is available in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The prices at the time of review are $69.99, $83.49, and $129.99, respectively. This pricing is competitive at 1TB and especially 2TB, but the market has been volatile. This is a drive that you might have to catch on sale, regardless of capacity.

The NM800 Pro can push PCIe 4.0 bandwidth at up to 7500/6500 MBps and 1300K/1200K IOPS for sequential/random reads and writes, respectively. Lexar warranties this drive for five years and 1PB of writes per TB capacity. This endurance rating is more than the industry average, although that is generally not a significant factor.

Software and Accessories for Lexar Professional NM800 Pro

Lexar does not offer any special downloads or accessories for this drive, beyond the optional heatsink variant. We recommend Clonezilla or similar for imaging/cloning and CrystalDiskInfo for general health analysis.

A Closer Look at Lexar Professional NM800 Pro

Our sample arrived with a heatsink, which is a nice addition. Some competing drives lack a heatsink which is beginning to be an issue with high-end drives that can experience thermal throttling without one. Lexar also sells a version of this drive without a heatsink. Either one would work fine for PlayStation 5 use. Underneath the heatsink, the drive is essentially identical to the non-heatsinked version.

Beneath the label, we spot a controller, a DRAM package, and two NAND packages. Even at 2TB this drive manages to be single-sided which is particularly challenging at this capacity. This makes it an option for certain tricky builds, including some laptops and HTPCs.

The controller is the InnoGrit IG5236, a popular 8-channel design that’s used for high-end PCIe 4.0 drives. Usually these drives are cheaper than competing SSDs built around Phison’s E18 or proprietary solutions. In the future it will have to tackle faster, 4-channel controllers that can max out the interface, such as the Maxio MAP1602 found on the Acer Predator GM7. Some other examples include the TenaFe TC2201 and SMI SM2268XT. These controllers are DRAM-less with fewer, faster channels, which makes them particularly competitive on price and for application in laptops.

The DRAM is labeled FLXC2002G-N2, which is LPDDR4X. This is extremely efficient DRAM, which should allow the NM800 Pro to run more efficiently as a whole, although DRAM is just one component. This will also help a little with thermal management, with or without a heatsink. This is 2GB of DRAM, which is an excellent amount for 2TB of flash.

The NM800 Pro uses Micron’s 176-Layer TLC, or B47R. This flash is typically sold with 64GB dies which implies each 1TB NAND package contains 16 dies in a HDP or 16DP configuration. This is usually the most amount of dies one can reasonably stack per package.

Lexar has the option of swapping to other flash, such as the efficient YMTC TLC found on the Predator GM7, but reports are that the IG5236 SSD controller has firmware issues with YMTC flash. The efficiency of that flash would be a nice fit on this drive and it seems other flash manufacturers have taken notice of the possible advantages found with such a design.

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Comparison Products

We are putting the 2TB Lexar Professional NM800 Pro against some of the best drives we’ve reviewed, all high-end PCIe 4.0 options. This list includes the HP FX900 Pro, the Adata Legend 960, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus-G, the Solidigm P44 Pro, the Samsung 990 Pro, the WD Black SN850X, and the Acer Predator GM7000. The NM800 Pro is most similar to the FX900 Pro and Predator GM7000, which use the same controller and flash. Historically this combination performs well and can undercut the competition on price by a small amount. Phison, for its part on drives such as the Rocket 4 Plus-G, offers more flexibility to the manufacturer.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The NM800 Pro finishes dead last in 3DMark. It should perform at least on the level of the FX900 Pro and GM7000, but instead it falls short. This begins a pattern of sometimes inconsistent performance on this drive, possibly driven by firmware tuning.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The picture looks a bit better in PCMark 10 as the NM800 Pro gets a middle-of-the-pack score. This is certainly good enough.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The NM800 Pro performs as expected in DiskBench, matching the FX900 Pro and GM7000. This is below other high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs but is sufficiently fast.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The NM800 Pro shows weak performance with sequential reads in both ATTO and CDM, matching the pattern of the FX900 Pro. This appears to be a facet of InnoGrit controllers, including the IG5220 which is used on the HP FX900. Sequential writes are satisfactory. Random performance in CDM is solid for reads, an important benchmark, but unusually poor for writes. This is more of the NM800 pro’s inconsistency.

There are many possible reasons for this, but it’s possible that Lexar’s choice of LPDDR4X for the DRAM cache and its firmware tuning creates this outcome. LPDDR4X is very efficient and typically bandwidth does not matter for DRAM’s application on SSDs. However, this DRAM has significantly higher latency, and DRAM is most useful for random writes on SSDs. Lexar appears to have optimized the NM800 Pro to run efficiently and at lower temperatures. This could be a worthwhile tradeoff for many applications.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. 

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 2TB NM800 Pro writes within pSLC at 6.55 GBps for over 97 seconds with a cache of 640GB. This is almost the entire drive in pSLC mode, making for a very large cache. TLC shows a write speed of 2.57 GBps for just over 64 seconds before the drive enters folding at 1.4 GBps. This is a good result and in line with the FX900 Pro and GM7000, with some minor differences. The drive is able to recover back to TLC mode without too much difficulty.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states via sensor and an infrared thermometer. The typical ambient temperature is at 24C. The load state involves sustained writes at maximum speed with measurement ensuing if and until throttling is demonstrated to discover the equilibrium temperature.

The NM800 Pro is quite efficient, which is nice. The included heatsink makes for an SSD that would work well in a PS5 or desktop environment. The non-heatsinked version would also be usable for reasons elaborated above, including for laptops.

The drive idled at a sensor reading of 34C which is a very cool temperature. Despite the large cache, the drive only reached 62C after 1TB of writes. This is an excellent result and the drive would operate well with any workload. It stays far cooler than the FX900 Pro with its graphene thermal pad, reinforcing our suspicions that Lexar designed the NM800 Pro to run efficiently and cool.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Lexar Professional NM800 Pro is a typical high-end PCIe 4.0 SSD that manages to set itself apart in some ways without impressing on the whole. It runs incredibly cool and is very efficient but has inconsistent performance results. It’s placed in a difficult market which ultimately makes it an alternative choice whenever it appears on sale, especially attractive at 2TB. The heatsinked version would be good in a desktop or PS5 while the non-heatsinked version could work in a laptop, thanks to Lexar’s optimizations.

Compared to similar drives, like the HP FX900 Pro, the NM800 Pro is more efficient thanks to its single-sided design and the use of LPDDR4X. This also helps it run cooler as a whole, and a lot cooler with its heatsink. The drive cannot directly compete with the best but it doesn’t have to if it’s priced right. Lexar also gives a boost with the drive’s TBW rating, which would perhaps entice you over its direct rivals when all else is equal. We think the option of a heatsink is a better selling point, though.

The SSD market has been long trending downwards in terms of pricing which makes it challenging to make a wise purchase. It’s perhaps best just to look for the right deal and grab it. It’s better to focus on figuring out what you really need. The NM800 Pro is still viable in some cases. With PCIe 5.0 drives and new hardware coming in the near future, this SSD is probably an impulse buy for your PS5 or for extra storage on your main machine, and that’s okay. It’s just not something worthy of a high score.

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Most of the world's renowned PC brands left Russia after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. Despite this, the country keeps getting PCs with Apple, Dell, and HP badges through grey market imports. Foreign-controlled brands commanded over 90% of the Russian PC market last year, with only 9% coming from local brands, according to CNews. Interestingly, CPU sales remained flat in 2022 even though neither AMD nor Intel officially shipped products to Russia, reports Kommersant. 

According to data from GS Group cited, Chinese brands remained the leading PC suppliers — including Lenovo and Huawei — in Russia in 2022, with about 38% market share. On the other hand, Taiwanese vendors — such as MSI, Acer, and Asus — captured a 35% share of the Russian PC market, whereas U.S.-originating PC OEMs (Apple, Dell, HP, etc.) controlled approximately 19% of the market in 2022, down from 36% in 2021. By contrast, Russian vendors supplied 9% of PCs sold in the country, up from 4% in 2021 and 3% in 2022. 

While the majority of well-known American, Chinese, and Taiwanese PC makers officially left Russia after it started the war against Ukraine, their products now flow to Russia through other countries, including Turkey and the UAE, to name a few. PCs carrying badges of domestic PC vendors are primarily produced in China as barebones, shipped to the country officially, and configured locally. While their popularity is increasing, this does not mean that the country is expanding its production of computers. Instead, some companies have started selling PCs under their own brands more aggressively.

GS Group does not disclose how many PCs were sold in Russia in 2022. Meanwhile, analysts from Marvel, a major distributor in the country, estimated that sales of PCs in the country reached 1.18 million units in the first half of the year. While it is hard to say how many units were supplied in the second half of the year since many brands left, it is reasonable to assume that the Russian PC TAM exceeded two million units in 2022. 

Interestingly, but based on the numbers from the Federal Customs Service, only about half of the CPUs powering those systems were supplied to the country legally. 

Kommersant reports that about 1.027 million CPUs were shipped to Russia in 2022. Some 782 thousand of them were made by Intel (up 9% year-over-year), 143 thousand carried the AMD trademark (down 2x compared to 2021), whereas another 102 thousand were developed by other vendors, which probably includes some Chinese names.

Lenovo is the latest major PC company to feel the heat from a shrinking PC market. The biggest computer manufacturer is planning to cut jobs after seeing its net profits fall for the first time in almost three years, the Financial Times reports.

The number of jobs the company intends to cut wasn't mentioned.

According to Lenovo's fiscal year Q3 report (PDF), "revenue declined by 24 percent year-on-year to US$15.3 billion."

The company's biggest issue is its Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), which includes computers, smartphones, tablets and other hardware. Revenue dropped by 34% and operating profit fell by 37% year-on-year, respectively. The company's report states that PC sector shipments "regressed to pre-COVID levels" while there was still too much product in the channel, though Lenovo claims IDG still maintained its leadership in market share.

On a conference call with investors, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing and chief financial officer Wong Wai Ming said that the company needs to cut $150 million in costs, which "includes overall reduction in operational spending as well as workforce adjustments where necessary and appropriate," the Register reports.

If Lenovo moves ahead with layoffs, it wouldn't be the first in the space. Dell recently announced 6,650 cuts, and HP said it would drop between 4,000 and 6,000 employees over the next three years. In addition, many other tech industry companies have had layoffs, including Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Coinbase, Amazon and Salesforce.

Lenovo does have some optimism in its results. It says that IDG is still a market leader and the company still has plenty of cash. Lenovo also claims that "the market might stabilize sooner than many expected in 2023," though the company doesn't cite reasons to believe that will happen.

In December, analysts at Canalys published a report highlighting a 12% decline in PC shipments in the US in Q3 of 2022. Only Apple and Acer saw annual growth in the US, while Dell, HP, Lenovo and others all fell. If you include tablets, Apple was the number one PC  vendor in the country (without it, that honor went to Dell at the time).

"Looking ahead, the US PC market will face further headwinds," Canalys analyst Brian Lynch said in the report. "Despite the Q4 holiday season, the market will suffer a continued downturn. Cash-strapped consumers will cut spending on expensive technology products. Retailers have ramped up promotions in recent months to make room for new device launches as the holiday season approaches. But overall retail inventories are still growing faster than sales. The education segment will begin a slow recovery in 2023, but the bulk of device refreshes are now likely to occur in 2024."

Meanwhile, Lenovo and its competitors are still producing new devices, having updated a large swath of their lineups at CES 2023. Despite inflation, fears of a recession and the fact that many people bought new computers in the last few years, all major PC manufacturers face a tough road ahead as they navigate a path back into people's wallets.

Layoffs are sweeping across the tech industry as PC sales falter and companies button down for a looming recession. Dell is not immune to these concerns and will lay off 6,650 employees in the coming months. According to Bloomberg, this represents roughly 5% of the company’s global footprint.

Over the past six years, Dell’s global headcount peaked at 165,000 in 2020. However, the latest cuts will see that figure fall to just 126,300 employees.

In a memo to employees this morning, Dell Vice Chairman and Co-Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clark stated, "What we know is market conditions continue to erode with an uncertain future. The steps we’ve taken to stay ahead of downturn impacts – which enabled several strong quarters in a row – are no longer enough." 

Dell will streamline its operations, including realigning its Regional Sales and Dell Technologies Select teams reporting to one “leader” as a cost-efficiency measure. Changes are also being made to the Infrastructure Solution Group and Client Solution Group to reduce customer service costs.

Clarke added that while Dell will be sad to see valued employees leaving the fold, he added that it was a tough decision “we had to make for our long-term health and success.” 

According to IDC, global PC shipments cratered 28 percent in Q4 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. Shipments of desktops, laptops, and workstations fell to just 67.2 million units for the quarter. At the time, the research firm claimed that “the pandemic boom is over for the PC market.

Dell is not alone in widespread layoffs in tech. Microsoft will eliminate 10,000 positions during 2023 after quickly ramping up hires during the pandemic. Hewlett-Packard said it would part ways with 6,000 employees in November 2022, and Lenovo announced layoffs across its U.S. workforce in December.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence senior analyst Woo Jin Ho, Dell’s actions could “cut annual expenses by $700 million to $1 billion, helping to preserve margin and limiting the dent to EPS.”

Sabrent's Rocket 2230 is a tiny but capable PCIe 4.0 SSD designed to fit in special devices as an internal storage upgrade or replacement. These devices include Valve’s Steam Deck, Microsoft’s Surface series of products, some ultrabooks, NUCs, HTPCs, and more. This drive exhibits good all-around and sustained performance, and our testing showsit's also quite efficient. There are multiple capacities offered, but it’s a shame that a 2TB model doesn’t exist yet. This M.2 2230 drive will cost you significantly more than its longer 2280 cousins, but the promise of a retail product with a name behind it is probably worth the premium.

The Inland TN436 was the first retail PCIe 4.0 M.2 2230 NVMe SSD that we reviewed, and it’s good to see another option. The Rocket 2230 is faster, more efficient, and also has 256GB and 512GB SKUs. The latter are useful for those on tight budgets who want to upgrade a 64GB eMMC Steam Deck or other storage-limited device. If you just want to toss a terabyte into your Steam Deck, though, either drive will do just fine. The Deck is not particularly demanding, although other devices might be able to make better use of the Rocket 2230’s power. We are more interested in seeing additional competition in this space to lower prices, and we'd also like to see a 2TB option.

Most alternatives are OEM drives, which are often second-hand with weaker warranties. Our TN436 review lacked M.2 2230 drives for comparison and that is one reason why.  For this review, we only have the Rocket 2230 and the Inland drive as direct 2230 comparisons. However, we have addressed the most popular OEM options in various ways throughout the review. A quick example would be the WD Black SN770 being a substitute for the OEM SN740, since they are effectively the same drive aside from length. Being shorter can make cooling more difficult, but the performance characteristics are the same. We also have the Team Group MP44L to show that against the Rocket 2230.

We can recommend the Rocket 2230 within its class of drives, as it takes proven hardware and simply puts it into a shorter form factor. Our only caveat is price which, to be fair, is still generally competitive. Although this is a PCIe 4.0 drive, it will work perfectly well in 3.0 and even 2.0 systems. However, the newer hardware should make for a more efficient package, so the 4.0 interface is just a bonus in those cases.

Specifications

The Sabrent Rocket 2230 is a PCIe 4.0 SSD available in the M.2 2230 form factor in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. 2TB is possible in this form factor, but is more difficult to achieve with a single-sided drive, as many devices require. It can reach up to 5,000/4,300MBps for sequential read and write and up to 450K/545K random read and write IOPS. The former is plenty to saturate devices that are limited to PCIe 3.0 x4, but these devices can still benefit from other performance and efficiency improvements.

The Rocket 2230 comes with a 5-year warranty when registered (disappointingly, it's just two years if you don't register) with 200TB, 300TB, and 600TB of TBW, depending on capacity. This is an ample amount and is close to the standard. At the time of review, pricing was $49.99, $89.99, and $159.99 for each of the three launch capacities. There has been some initial fluctuation in the 1TB price, perhaps due to the popularity of that specific capacity, but it currently sits somewhere in-between the Micro Center and Amazon prices for the 1TB TN436. This is higher than similar 1TB M.2 2280 drives, but is competitive with second-hand 2230 OEM alternatives.

Software and Accessories

Sabrent sells this drive as being compatible with its OEM version of Acronis True Image. This software makes it easy to clone, image, and backup data, but is limited in functionality. We would recommend something with sector-by-sector copy, such as Macrium Reflect Free if trying to clone something like a Steam Deck SteamOS installation.

Sabrent also offers its own SSD toolbox with the Sabrent Rocket Control Panel, which should support this drive in the future, if and when any firmware updates become available. This software can also monitor drive health and other data, but it is possible to download and use the free CrystalDiskInfo application to get this information, as well.

A Closer Look

The Sabrent Rocket 2230 is a diminutive, single-sided SSD in the M.2 2230 form factor. The top side of the drive sports a DRAM-less controller and a single NAND package. This is nice because double-sided drives can cause issues in some devices, like Valve’s Steam Deck, and the same is true of M.2 2242 drives. It’s possible to modify a device to fit such drives but that is not recommended.

There is not really room for DRAM on a drive like this unless it is as part of a single ball grid array (BGA) package. Although there are such drives, like Samsung’s PM971, more commonly these are DRAM-less designs like SK hynix’s BC711 or Kioxia’s BG4. These drives often but do not always support host memory buffer (HMB) functionality.

Although a single-package BGA SSD is convenient to mount for the M.2 2230 form factor, the technology has limitations. Such SSDs can be more expensive to manufacture and support, plus managing thermals can be more difficult. Managing heat dissipation essentially results in strict performance caps. On the flip side, such drives do tend to be quite efficient, which can be useful in space-limited devices. We have not tested the BC711 or BG4 but as BGA drives they may be a bit more snug than a stock drive in the Deck’s EMI sleeve.

The Rocket 2230 is using Phison’s E21T controller, which has proven to be quite excellent. We have tested the Silicon Power UD90, Team Group MP44L, and the Corsair MP600 GS, all using the same controller and getting good marks. This is a four-channel DRAM-less design with HMB support and a fast enough bus to hit 5GBps or more on a PCIe 4.0 system, which we'll soon see in testing. As demonstrated with the QLC-based Crucial P3 Plus and Crucial P3 comparison, the Rocket 2230 should actually be a bit more efficient when limited to 3.0.

The 1TB Rocket 2230 is utilizing Micron’s 176-Layer TLC (B47R), in this case with sixteen 512Gb/64GB dies in a single package (16DP). This flash has good performance and efficiency in our testing so is a good match for the intended application - a storage upgrade for battery-dependent devices. However, it would also be a good choice for some HTPC motherboards and NUCs, some of which have shorter M.2 slots, often on the rear of the motherboard, which can prove challenging for thermal management. It is also possible to extend this drive to M.2 2242 with an appropriate adapter, as it has advantages over the older, double-sided Rocket 2242.

Generally, sixteen dies is the maximum for a single package, so offering a 2TB model of a single-sided drive would require 1Tb/128GB dies. This is possible with SK hynix’s TLC, typically 128-Layer, and with Kioxia’s 112-Layer BiCS5 TLC. The latter is present on the SN740, essentially an OEM WD Black SN770, which is available in 2TB and 2230. If Sabrent is to bring out a 2TB SKU down the road, there is also the possibility of using Micron’s 232-Layer TLC (B58R), first demonstrated in our Phison E26 Preview. Hopefully the popularity of such drives will encourage that eventuality.

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Comparison Products

The 1TB Sabrent Rocket 2230 is up against some of the most popular mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, including the WD Black SN770, the Team Group MP44L, the HP FX900 and the Solidigm P41 Plus. The last of these is QLC-based and is comparable to the OEM Micron 2400. The MP44L has the same makeup as the Rocket 2230, and the SN770 is a good stand-in for the OEM SN740. The Rocket 2230 is tested at 4.0 to demonstrate its full potential, but would have abbreviated sequential performance if run at 3.0.

Also tested is the PCIe 3.0 Samsung 980, as the Rocket 2230 may make its way into a 3.0 device. The 980 has some similarities to the BGA Samsung PM991a but, as mentioned above when discussing BGA SSD options, the latter would be slower in every way. The SN530 is a popular M.2 2230 OEM drive and is represented by the similar WD Blue SN570, which was a replacement for the retail WD Blue SN550 with a faster bus and BiCS5 flash. 

Lastly, we are comparing the Inland TN436, the other retail 2230 NVMe SSD currently on the market, which has the same makeup as the OEM Kioxia BG5. The OEM Micron 2450 has the same controller - the Phison E19T - as these two, but instead pairs it with 176-Layer TLC. This would be objectively inferior to the Rocket 2230’s E21T, as the E19T has a slower bus and is less powerful and efficient due to the process node difference.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The Rocket 2230 is average to above average in 3DMark, only falling significantly behind the Black SN770. It’s very close to the MP44L, which of course has the same basic hardware. Games should load fast with any of these drives but the Rocket 2230 may be a bit quicker than typical stock drives.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The Rocket 2230 is average among the tested drives in PCMark 10, but is clearly faster than the Blue SN570 and TN436. It’s a match for the FX900, which as a budget drive offers more than enough for everyday desktop use. The SN770 is the clear winner here.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The Rocket 2230 impresses with its write speed, but falls behind the Black SN770 in overall copy transfer rate. It’s on par with the MP44L with this result, as expected. This is plenty fast, and the drive is able to take advantage of the PCIe 4.0 interface. Reads are typically more common than writes and there, the Rocket 2230 is within reach of the best.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Phison controllers tend to do well with sequential reads in ATTO, and that is the case here. The Rocket 2230 has an excellent read curve and also holds up with sequential writes, minus the anomaly at 64KB. Sequential performance in CrystalDiskMark is good to great, getting close to the fastest drives everywhere except with QD1 sequential read. Results would be lower on a PCIe 3.0 host, but still better than the lower-scoring competitors.

Random performance is also above average to great, particularly with queue depth. While not realistics workloads, high queue depth 4KB tests do demonstrate that the E21T is a powerful controller. With a queue depth of 1 the Rocket 2230 falls behind the FX900 and SN770, although only by a very small amount with writes. This drive will be responsive and, when compared to the TN436, we can see that a new controller with newer flash can offer significant benefits.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. 

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 1TB Rocket 2230 writes in pSLC mode at 4.83GBps for more than 15 seconds, for a cache of 75GB. This is approximately the same size cache that the 1TB MP44L and 1TB UD90 carry. The cache is dynamic, so will shrink as the drive is filled, but is still ample enough in size to handle bursts of random writes. Recovery, as on the other two listed drives, is relatively slow, but this drive should have sufficient idle time in most use cases. Not moving data immediately has benefits, such as reduced wear and the ability to pull reads from pSLC.

The smallish cache is not a huge hindrance, in part because the TLC performance is quite good, especially for an M.2 2230 drive. The Rocket 2230 writes at 1.79GBps in this mode and can do so for a long period of time. Folding is a rather slow 277MBps, albeit still faster than the TN436 is when it is outside of pSLC, which does enable the drive to eventually recover back to TLC mode. It doesn’t quite write as much as the MP44L over time, due to a longer folding stage, but it beats the TN436 by a considerable amount.

Write performance is not something super relevant for a device like the Steam Deck, but this drive demonstrates consistent performance past pSLC, which indicates it should handle edge cases better, such as with a fuller drive. Since this drive will be a popular choice to expand storage, this is a definite positive. This is also one area where the TN436 is incredibly weak. Use of the Rocket 2230 for other things, such as write caching, is also possible, but the shorter physical length would make it more difficult to keep cool.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle, while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states, via a sensor and an infrared thermometer. The typical ambient temperature is at 24C. The load state involves sustained writes at maximum speed with measurement ensuing if and until throttling is demonstrated to discover the equilibrium temperature.

The Rocket 2230 is exceptionally efficient, beating even the MP44L and coming very close to the FX900. The TN436 and PCIe 3.0 drives are left behind. This drive would be a little bit more efficient if limited to 3.0 in this test.

Idle power consumption is higher, but this is with the best power management features disabled, reflecting desktop rather than mobile device use. Most NVMe drives will idle with very little power usage in a laptop or other battery-dependent device, so load power consumption is technically more relevant. However, most of the time the storage will be in lower power states, such that the impact on battery life is minimal.

We measured the idle temperature at 49C and the load temperature at up to 82C. The latter is the throttling temperature, which was reached after about 400GB of writes. That is not a realistic workload but does indicate the drive would need additional cooling for specific applications. These temperatures are close to what we got with the TN436, although performance remained higher on the Rocket 2230 at maximum temperature.

The temperatures are a bit higher when compared to M.2 2280 drives with the same hardware - the MP44L and UD90 - which is a limitation due to the components being closer together t to fit into the M.2 2230 form factor. This should not be an issue in mobile devices where you will not be pushing massive workloads, and this hardware is efficient enough to match or likely beat any stock storage or OEM options. For heavier use - such as caching in a NUC - we would strongly recommend a DIY heatsink.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Sabrent Rocket 2230 takes everything that’s great about the company's PCIe 4.0 hardware and packs it into a shorter form factor. Performance remains good, efficiency is better if anything, and it’s sold in a retail package with software and warranty support. It’s not the first on the market - the Inland TN436 holds that accolade - but it offers a higher level of performance without any compromises. OEM drives are largely fast enough and can be found for around the same price, at least in some regions, but carry some risk. For regions with expensive OEM options and no Micro Center, the Rocket 2230 may be especially attractive.

There’s arguments to be made for scoring this drive a notch lower than the Team Group MP44L and Silicon Power UD90, like we did with the Corsair MP600 GS for being late to the party at a higher cost. However, we believe that this drive’s unique form factor more than makes up for those shortcomings. We were also hard on the TN436 for its cost, but for 1TB in M.2 2230 it’s not that unusual. What sets the Rocket 2230 apart from that drive is its excellent performance and high power efficiency. If you’re going to upgrade your internal storage it’s worth investing in the newest hardware when you do it.

The Rocket 2230 and TN436 do still cost more than larger M.2 2280 alternatives, despite having the same respective hardware as their peers. This means a premium is paid to, at least in part, help manufacturers deal with the inevitable RMAs. Hopefully more competition in the future will bring prices down. The Rocket 2230 has more capacity options than the TN43,6 but we would like to see a 2TB SKU in the future. OEM options exist, but the WD SN740 is essentially the only one with TLC at this time. We would recommend that drive if you need 2TB in 2230, although it is ever so slightly thicker with that capacity.

Then again, many of the destination devices can take external storage through USB or microSD. Performance is not an issue for game loading, but is useful for the operating system and applications. Internal storage also has the benefit of using quality flash, which can last a lot longer. 1TB can also go a long way, especially for 64GB native Steam Decks. As such, we think the Rocket 2230 is a sign of good things to come for the Steam Deck 2 and beyond. 

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HP is on a big refresh kick at CES this year. The company is updating much of its Omen gaming line, but there aren't any new designs, just plenty of new internal components.

The Omen 17 is the only gaming laptop seeing a refresh right now, with a move up to Intel's new HX-series processors, the 24-core Core i9-13900HX and 16-core Core i7-13700 HX. HP was being coy about the GPU at launch, only saying it will have the latest laptop graphics cards from Nvidia.

On the Core i9 model, RAM will go up to 32GB of DDR5-5600, while on the i7 it will be DDR5-4800. SSD storage will range from 512GB to 2TB (or a pair of 512GB SSDs).

We've already seen a handful of gaming laptop manufacturers bumping displays up to 16:10, but the Omen is sticking with a standard 16:9 panel, starting at 1080p and 144 Hz with 2560 x 1440 versions at 165 Hz and 240 Hz.

This laptop will be HP's first with optical mechanical keys, which should make for a comfier, and faster gaming experience.

Meanwhile, HP still has Omen desktop chassis in three sizes: 25L, 40L and 45L. The two larger models are now going to include options for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 and RTX 4090. HP has a company making its own cards, including an RGB Omen diamond on top. It has also developed a support that goes across the entirety of the case to ensure the cards don't sag.

Additionally, the 45L will now go up to 360 mm liquid cooling in its cryo chamber. Previously, HP had stopped at 240 mm, despite having the room for the bigger radiator.

All of the systems now have Intel's 13th Gen core desktop processors. The Omen 25L starts at the Core i5-13400 and goes up to the Core i7-13700 on air, while topping out on the Core i5-13600K on 120 mm liquid cooling.  Both the 40L and 45L go up to the Core i9-13900K and KF. 

Omen Gaming Hub is also getting access to Nvidia GeForce Now, which HP will use to promote game streaming on both its gaming and productivity devices. The company says that the optimizer portion of Omen Gaming Hub will be able to improve performance by ensuring you have the best connection and other software isn't using bandwidth. Gaming Hub will let you mix GeForce Now Games with local games to launch them from one big library.

The HP Omen 17 is planned to launch in January starting at $1,699.99, while the Omen desktops are set to ship "this winter" with pricing coming closer to the release date.

HyperX, HP's peripherals brand, is launching a new line of cutetastic keycaps, headset stands, microphone holders and other personality-driven accessories that are manufactured using the company's industrial-strength Jet Fusion 580 3D printers. The new line of "personalized" accessories will be known as HX3D, with the first accessory, a Cozy Cat keycap, available for $19.99 on HyperX.com later this month.

At HP's pre-CES demo, we got to take a look at number of sample keycaps, headset stands, headset clip-ons and other models that may or may not be available for sale at some point. Most of them had a very cutesy design, with bright pastel colors and the shapes of adorable cartoonish animals such as rubber ducks or unicorns. 

Some of the sample accessories also looked like skeletons or demons. But they were still cutesy in a Hello Kitty sortof way. 

The Cozy Cat itself is an adorable 3D cartoon cat with a blue, snow-flake scarf that's adorned with the HyperX logo. You definitely wouldn't want to do any serious typing with this keycap, but maybe  you could place it on the Esc key or one of those Scroll lock keys you never use.

HyperX announced that it plans to have limited-time keycap sales like the one with the Cozy Cat throughout the year. It also released a YouTube video that shows some of the sample accessories in action, including a headset add-ons, stands and keycaps. 

The company says it will be working with designers and esports personalities to come up with more fun accessories to sell. But despite what HyperX says in its press materials these don't really "take hardware personalization to a new level," because while they allow you to decorate your gear, they aren't unique to each consumer; they just are whatever the company chooses to sell.

The fact that these HX3D products are manufactured by 3D printers is interesting, but not particularly relevant to the consumer who buys them. HyperX told us that it is using HP Jet Fusion 580 Color 3D printers and printing the accessories in nylon. These printers cost around $50,000 new (or $32,000 used on eBay) so it's not like you could 3D print these models at home with the same quality. Also, HyperX has not revealed any plans to share the design files it's using so, even if you have one of the best 3D printers for consumers, you couldn't attempt to make one of these accessories at home.

Finally, it's clear that HyperX isn't printing these accessories to order, but just making them in these limited edition batches. So whether your keycaps is made in a mold or on a 3D printer doesn't really change anything for you. If you could design your own HyperX accessory online and then have it printed for you, then this would be a really unique and interesting use of the technology.

HyperX Pulsefire Haste 2 Mice

If you're looking for a lightweight gaming mouse, HyperX has two new choices coming in the Pulsefire Haste 2 and Pulsefire Haste 2 Wireless.  The Haste 2 (wired) tips the scales at just 53 grams and uses a special 26K DPI sensor, along with an 8,000 Hz polling rate. 

Designed to compete with the best wireless mice, the Haste 2 Wireless is slightly heavier at 62 grams but has the same 26,000 DPI sensor. It can connect via 2.4 GHz wireless, Bluetooth 5.0 or USB-C. Its 370 mAh battery lasts up to 100 hours on a charge.

Both mice are available in black or white colorways and have built-in RGB lighting you can control via software. They use PFTE skates that are intended to provide a smooth glide.

The Pulsefire Haste 2 and Haste 2 Wireless will be available in April for $59 and $79 respectively.

HyperX Clutch Gladiate Xbox Controller

HyperX is also coming out with its own wired Xbox controller called the Clutch Gladiate. This controller has rear buttons you can remap, textured grips, a 3.5mm audio jack and two trigger locks. It will launch in March for $34.

HP’s Dragonfly family has been around for a few generations as a premium business laptop to stand toe-to-toe with the Dell XPS 13 range and Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 family. The company is currently on its third generation Dragonfly lineup, of which we’ve already reviewed the Elite Dragonfly G3. Today, we're looking at the Dragonfly Folio G3, which returns to the 2-in-1 convertible form factor first introduced in 2019.

Weighing in at 3.09 pounds, the Dragonfly Folio G3 is nearly a pound heavier than the more conventional Dragonfly G3. You might think that's the price you pay for the more complex hinge mechanism necessary for a 2-in-1 convertible, except the original 2019-era Dragonfly was also a convertible and just 2.2 pounds. For that extra weight, you get a taller 3:2 display, but it's not entirely clear where the extra heft comes from, considering the 53 Whr battery in the new Folio is also slightly less than the 56 Whr one we saw in the original fold-over Dragonfly back in 2019.

HP manages to pack in some pleasing features, like an 8-megapixel webcam, a magnetically-attached stylus, a comprehensive HP-branded software suite and a potent B&O-tuned audio system. On the other hand, there are some misses, like the smaller battery (compared to the Dragonfly G3) and the overly reflective glossy display.

For those looking for a high-end business-oriented convertible, the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 ticks many of the requisite boxes for consideration among the best ultraportable and premium laptops. However, be cognizant that stepping into the Dragonfly Folio G3 domain doesn’t come cheap. The convertible starts at just under $2,400, and our review unit nearly hit $2,800 when equipped with a Core i7-1265U processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and a 5G modem.

Design of the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

The magnesium chassis of the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 is sturdy with minimal flex. It has a high-quality finish in dark gray with just a hint of shimmering flakes embedded. That sparkly finish extends to the backlit keyboard. It's a full-size keyboard, but due to the trim dimensions of the device, it does not have a number pad. A large glass Microsoft Precision Touchpad is included. Dominating the show is a 3:2 display measuring 13.5 inches across with a WUXGA+ resolution of 1920 x 1280 and an 88.3% screen-to-body ratio.

The back of the display is covered in a synthetic leather material (polyurethane) with contrasting stitching and an embossed HP logo. It wraps around the display hinge and extends just under the bottom rear of the chassis. This choice of material gives the Dragonfly Folio G3 a premium feel and the appearance of a closed book when the lid is closed.

Given its trim dimensions (11.67 x 9.22 x 0.7 inches), there isn't much room for external connectivity. All you'll find on the Dragonfly Folio G3 are two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one of which is used for charging the device with the included 65-watt USB-C power adapter. The only other physical port is a 3.5 mm audio jack.

If you want to use wired Ethernet or connect multiple peripherals to the Dragonfly Folio G3, you'll need to live the dongle life or invest in a good USB-C or Thunderbolt hub. There is a nano SIM slot on the left side of the chassis for WWAN connectivity. Our review unit came with an Intel 5G Solution 5000 modem, but a lesserr Intel XMM 7560 R+ LTE-Advanced Pro modem is also available.

The Dragonfly Folio G3 has three operating modes. It has a standard laptop mode, which is self-explanatory. A Media mode angles the display halfway down the deck, just below the keyboard and above the touchpad. This mode is useful for watching videos or other content while still having access to the touchpad for navigation. Finally, there's a Creative mode (tablet mode), where the display is slightly inclined above the keyboard and touchpad. In this mode, you can use the included Dragonfly Folio G3 Pen to take notes or sketch.

Since you have a sturdy base in all the modes, the Dragonfly Folio G3 makes a better lap partner than detachable tablets.

HP Dragonfly Folio G3 Specifications

Using the Various Operating Modes on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

The "Standard" laptop-style mode is probably how most people will use the HP Dragonfly Folio G3. There's nothing out of the ordinary in this mode, as it operates just like a traditional laptop.

Things get interesting when you shift the display into "Media" mode. It took a little practice, but adjusting the screen requires placing your thumbs about two-thirds down on either side of the display and then bending it back. This exerts enough force to pry the display from its magnetized backplate. You can then move the display into position (there are two small rubber nubs to help you properly align the display). I found myself using this mode to watch YouTube videos and even caught up on a few episodes of “Star Wars: Andor.” The angle of the display proved ideal for consuming content, or perhaps giving a presentation if you don't have a bigger screen around.

The "Creative" mode lays the display down at a slight incline, which is conducive to writing and drawing. I had no trouble using Microsoft Whiteboard to sketch designs I had in mind for revamping our backyard, and the palm rejection worked as advertised.

Productivity Performance on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

The HP Dragonfly Folio G3 review sample that we received features an Intel Core i7-1265U CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a 512GB SSD. This configuration is identical to the Elite Dragonfly G3 laptop we reviewed back in September. This is a low-power U-Series processor, so HP doesn't have to be as aggressive with its cooling solution, which means lower noise levels for users (which we’ll talk about later).

Kicking things off with the Geekbench 5 synthetic benchmark, the Dragonfly Folio G3 traded blows with its more traditional Dragonfly G3 counterpart. The former scored 1,488 in the single-core benchmark, while the latter took the first-place spot with a score of 1,657. Things were reversed with the multi-core score, with the Dragonfly Folio G3 scoring 6,879 versus 6,501 for the Dragonfly G3 Folio. 

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 7) features an Intel Core i7-1260P processor and took second place in the single-core benchmark with a score of 1,644, while it ran away from the competition in multi-core performance with a score of 8,632. The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (Microsoft SQ3 SoC) brought up the rear with single-core and multi-core scores of 1,125 and 5,849, respectively.

Surprisingly, the Dragonfly Folio G3's SSD lagged far behind its Elite Dragonfly G3 counterpart in the file transfer test. The former mustered 674.5 MBps versus 1,157.23 MBps for the latter (both are 512GB PCIe SSDs). The ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 7) took second place at 955.09 MBps, while the Surface Pro 9 brought up the rear at 414.8 MBps.

Our Handbrake test, which involves transcoding a 4K video to 1080p, saw the ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 7) take top honors. It completed the test in 10 minutes and 35 seconds, compared to 11 minutes and 16 seconds for the Dragonfly Folio G3. The Dragonfly G3 finished the test in 13 minutes and 9 seconds, while the Surface Pro 9 came in at a smidge under 13 minutes.

Our stress test involves running the Cinebench R23 benchmark 20 times in a loop on the Dragonfly Folio G3. The HP machine scored 6,444 on the first run. Subsequent runs were lower, settling in at just under 5,700 for the rest of the stress test.

Our review sample features the Core i7-1265U with two performance cores and eight efficiency cores. During the Cinebench R23 stress test, the performance cores averaged 2.28 GHz, while the efficiency cores averaged 1.71 GHz. Our testing showed that the CPU package averaged 57 degrees Celsius. Surprisingly, during the stress test, the fans were barely audible. I had to hover my ear above the keyboard to make out the faint noise emanating from the spinning fans.

Display on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

Although HP offers the Dragonfly Folio G3 with up to a 3000 x 2000 OLED display, our test unit came with a 1920 x 1280 touch panel. HP says the panel is rated for 400 nits, although it came up short in our testing.

The 3:2 aspect ratio still isn't typical among laptops, as 16:9 remains the dominant configuration. However, I appreciated the extra vertical real estate, especially when working on Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

The Dragonfly Folio G3 covers 114 percent of the sRGB color space, putting it just ahead of its Dragonfly G3 sibling (113 percent). DCI-P3 coverage came in at 80.5 percent, putting it ahead of all competitors here.

But, the Dragonfly Folio G3 pulled up the rear in the measured brightness, coming in at 332 nits in our testing, versus HP's claim of 400 nits. That performance was lower than the Dragonfly G3 we recently tested (370 nits). The Microsoft Surface Pro 9 was the best of the pack, coming in at 439 nits.

My primary issue was the glossy display, which introduced unsightly reflections, even with the panel brightness maxed out. In my home office, where I have a lot of overhead LED lighting, reflections are a problem with darker content on the screen. Working on Word documents or entering data in Excel wasn't an issue. However, watching "Wednesday" on Netflix proved somewhat annoying as the reflections were distracting, particularly with the larger borders at the top and bottom of the content due to the 3:2 aspect ratio.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

The HP Dragonfly Folio G3 employs a keyboard nearly identical to the one found on the HP Dragonfly G3. Although the keyboard was a little cramped for my hands, the biggest issue I had to get used to was the half-height directional keys. It’s a necessary compromise for such a compact convertible, but I’m not fond of it.

While the Elite Dragonfly G3 we reviewed back in September had a fingerprint reader in place of the right control key, the Dragonfly Folio G3 ditches that biometric security method. A fingerprint reader isn’t even available as an option here. You’ll need to rely on the excellent webcam for facial recognition on the Dragonfly Folio G3.

I use keyhero.com as my go-to resource for testing typing accuracy with keyboards. There, I managed a score of 80.04 words per minute with an accuracy of 96.83 percent. That was below the 85 words per minute and 90 percent accuracy I achieved with the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3’s larger keyboard.

The touchpad measures 4.75 x 3.12 inches and was large enough to navigate around Windows 11 easily. It features a glass surface and was a pleasure to use.

HP Dragonfly Folio G3 Stylus

A stylus is included in the box with the Folio G3, and it has a nice size and heft. It contains a tiny magnetic charging connector that extends when it nears the port on the right side of the Dragonfly Folio G3’s chassis. Once connected, the stylus can go from a 0 percent to 100 percent charge in roughly half an hour.

While the magnetic connection is strong enough to keep the stylus in place to charge, I often found myself knocking the stylus off its perch when moving the ultraportable around. I would have preferred a solution like the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Yoga, where the stylus hides in a silo inside the system when not in use (though that does leave you with a far smaller pen). With the Dragonfly Folio G3, you’re left with yet another easily-lost accessory.

The stylus has one flat edge to keep it from rolling off a flat surface. There are also two programmable buttons that can be customized using the HP Pen Control app.

HP Dragonfly Folio G3 Webcam

By now, I'm used to subpar webcams with a 720p resolution proliferating the laptop space. The pictures and video almost always come out muddy, with horrible color and poor low-light performance. However, the 8MP camera on the Dragonfly Folio G3 bucks that trend with excellent detail resolution, colors and overall exposure. Throw in a 100-degree field of view, and you have a capable webcam for video conferencing duties.

There's also an HP Privacy Camera feature that lets you quickly disable the camera using a dedicated key on the keyboard next to the power button. I would have preferred a simple physical sliding shutter (as seen on various Lenovo laptops and previous Dragonflys) to confirm that the webcam is disabled, but that's just a tiny nitpick.

I did, however, run into an issue occasionally where the webcam would stop recognizing my face to sign in to Windows 11 with Windows Hello. After attempting to scan my face for 15 to 20 seconds, it would eventually give up, saying that it couldn’t initialize the webcam, forcing me to sign in with a passcode. Rebooting the machine solved the problem. Hopefully this is a hiccup solved by software updates soon.

Audio on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

The HP Dragonfly Folio G3 is equipped with a relatively stout audio system for a business-oriented device. It features quad speakers tuned by Bang & Olufsen. Two speakers are mounted above the top keyboard row, while the remaining two fire down from the underside of the chassis.

The sound from the speakers was generally good; however, the audio profile will alter depending on the configuration mode of the Dragonfly Folio G3. For example, Media mode, where the display hovers at an angle above the keyboard, had a minor impact on audio output and quality. And configuring the device into full tablet mode drowns out the top-mounted speakers, leaving the bottom speakers to do the heavy lifting.

I spent time listening to an eclectic mix of music, including the haunting “Little Lies” by ODIE, “Me&Youphoria” by Royksopp, “Doncomatic” by Gorillaz, “The Living Daylights” by A-ha and “Underneath the Tree” by Kelly Clarkson to get into the upbeat Christmas spirit. I had no complaints with the audio quality or bass levels, as long as I stayed out of the tablet mode, which obviously muffled the top-firing speakers.

Upgradeability of the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

Opening the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 isn’t for the faint of heart. It involves removing a couple of stubborn plastic endcaps on the hinge, then two Philips screws, prying the faux leather cover’s multiple clips from the casing, and loosening five T5 Torx-head screws. Once that delicate ballet is complete, the entire bottom panel lifts off.

From there, you have access to the M.2 SSD and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module, both of which are replaceable. Unfortunately, the DDR5 memory is soldered onto the motherboard. In other words, you’ll want to ensure that the amount of preconfigured memory suits your needs for today and in the future before purchasing the Dragonfly Folio G3.

HP provides a handy video to guide customers through the opening process if they wish to perform hardware upgrades on their own. This is far more difficult to open than most laptops. If you don't have experience in opening these kinds of devices, you may want to consider professional repair services.

Battery Life of the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

Our battery life test encompasses web browsing, OpenGL tests and video streaming, while connected to Wi-Fi with display brightness set 150 nits. Under these conditions, the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 lasted nine hours and 33 minutes before it gave up. That result placed it ahead of the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (9:01), but behind the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 (11:50) and Dragonfly G3 (14:20).

Before you start scratching your head about the runtime disparity between the two HP machines, the Dragonfly G3 has a 68 WHr battery, while the Dragonfly Folio G3 comes with a smaller 53 WHr battery. Again, this makes us wonder why the Folio G3 weighs nearly a pound more than previous Dragonflys.

Heat on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

Given the small stature of the HP Dragonfly Folio G3 and its extremely low noise levels, you’d be forgiven if you were a bit concerned about the chassis generating excess heat.

During our Cinebench R23 stress test, we measured the hottest point on the keyboard near the backspace and delete keys (which is directly above the right-side exhaust port) at 38.2 degrees Celsius (100.76 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature was lower near the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, at 35 C (95 F). The touchpad kept its cool at just 24.7 C (76.46 F), while the hottest portion of the bottom chassis measured 39.5 C (103.1 F).

Software and Warranty on the HP Dragonfly Folio G3

Like just about every Windows-based laptop that we test, there are the usual preinstalled third-party apps like Disney Plus and Spotify. However, there are a plethora of HP-branded apps installed on the machine.

Some of the preinstalled apps include HP Easy Clean, HP Wolf Security and numerous others. Many of them are quite handy, including Easy Clean, which temporarily disables the keyboard, touch screen and touchpad for two minutes so that you can clean them (although you could also just turn the laptop off). Wolf Security provides “endpoint security” with malware protection at the firmware/memory level and within Windows. HP Battery Manager lets you view vital battery statistics, including factory/current battery capacity and temperature, and gives you various settings to help maximize battery health and longevity.

The Dragonfly Folio G3 comes with a limited one-year warranty.

HP Dragonfly Folio G3 Configurations

A quick visit to HP.com reveals two preconfigured options for the Dragonfly Folio G3. The cheapest include an Intel Core i7-1255U processor, 16GB of memory and a 512GB SSD for $2,379. Stepping up to the Core i7-1265U, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD bumps the price to $2,749, which represents our review unit.

HP also gives customers a build-to-order option, which starts at $3,373. When configured with a Core i7-1265U processor, 32GB of RAM, 3000 x 2000 OLED touch screen display, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD and Intel 5G broadband, the price jumps to an eye-popping $4,810.

Conclusion

The HP Dragonfly Folio G3 is a lightweight and versatile ultraportable with a lot of functionality and good overall performance. I had fun using the device in tablet mode, and the pen was easy to handle and charged conveniently using a magnetic docking mechanism.

While the Dragonfly Folio G3 won’t win many CPU-intensive benchmarks, the fact that it can perform these tasks while remaining virtually silent is a boon. Throw in the lightweight design premium (yes, that includes the faux-leather wrappings) and this is a compelling ultraportable for road warriors.

However, not everything is rosy with the Dragonfly Folio G3. Its battery life comes in well below its Dragonfly G3 counterpart (9:33 versus 14:20) due to its smaller battery (53 WHr versus 68 WHr). And while not exactly heavy at 3.09 pounds, it's definitely heftier than previous Dragonfly models, which have flitted around the 2.2-2.49-pound mark. At some point, as the weight goes up, the Dragonfly no longer fits with its iridescent, quad-winged insect namesake.

And while the Dragonfly G3 comes with a bevy of ports, including USB-A ports and HDMI 2.0, the Dragonfly Folio G3 only includes two Thunderbolt 4 ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. You’ll need to plan accordingly when it comes to peripheral use or learn to live the dongle life while traveling.

But perhaps the biggest knock against the Dragonfly Folio G3 is its price. The machine starts at $2,379 in its base configuration with a Core i7-1255U, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. Our review unit with a Core i7-1265U, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and 5G wireless card rang in at $2,749. A similarly specced ThinkPad X1 Yoga (Gen 7) costs around $1,700 on sale direct from Lenovo. That’s a huge price chasm that is hard to ignore.

At the end of the day, the Dragonfly Folio G3 is a sleekly-designed ultraportable that should be appealing to a large segment of on-the-go business users. However, its premium pricing and mid-range battery life puts it at a serious disadvantage to competitors that are just as competent.

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The Inland TN436 is a specialized retail SSD designed to fit small devices such as Valve’s Steam Deck, Microsoft’s Surface, and certain ultrabooks. It will also work in computers and other devices that have the proper fittings for a 2230 drive. Drives of this size are usually single-sided and weaker in performance than most of the best SSDs, but may as a result produce less heat with lower power draw. 

The small form factor makes it challenging to pack in a lot of capacity, but the TN436 delivers an ample 1TB - albeit at a relatively high price. Devices like the Steam Deck use OEM drives and replacement is usually not supported officially, but a retail drive like the TN436 has the advantage of a full-fledged warranty.

The TN436 appears to be a retail variant of the OEM Kioxia BG5 which uses relatively new hardware but nothing cutting-edge. There’s certainly worse drives out there. Buying OEM drives from secondary sites involves some risk, so having a retail option is nice. The success of the Steam Deck means that such drives should be more commonly offered. If so, newer controllers - like the Phison E21T and SMI SM2269XT - may be paired with newer flash on other retail 2230 drives in the future.

These drives will necessarily carry a bit of a premium. A higher level of performance than the TN436 would be nice but is not a requirement; often there’s more of a focus on power consumption and heat generation. This is because battery life and performance throttling are very real issues on higher end portable devices. For now, though, the TN436 at least offers you the opportunity to upgrade without the hassle of dealing with after-market OEM SSDs.

Specifications

The Inland TN436 is only available at 1TB. Although technically a PCIe 4.0 drive, it is only rated for up to 3,400 / 2,400 MBps for sequential read and write, respectively. It is also rated for up to 320K / 500K IOPS, read and write. What makes it special is its form factor, 2230 or 22 x 30 mm, which allows it to fit in special devices like Valve’s Steam Deck and Microsoft’s Surface series. 

Inland backs this drive with a decent 6-year, 600TBW warranty. The drive retails for $139.99 at Micro Center’s site - currently much more on Amazon - which is a bit on the expensive side, carrying a premium due to being one of few retail drives currently available in its form factor.

Software and Accessories

Inland’s SSDs are generally sold barebones without any software support.

A Closer Look

The Inland TN436 is a tiny drive in the M.2 2230 form factor. This makes it ideal for certain devices that can only take shorter SSDs. Its NAND package is separate from the controller, and there is no DRAM present. Some smaller drives will embed the controller and even DRAM in a single package, although that has some drawbacks. A separate controller is likely cheaper and easier to cool, plus the flash can be changed. This drive is single-sided which is particularly important for the right fit into devices like the Steam Deck.

Many motherboards will have standoff or offset holes for 2230 drives, so the TN436 may also be advantageous for HTPCs and other minimalist devices. NVMe enclosures will also generally take 2230 drives which might make your life easier when working with this SSD.

The TN436 is using the DRAM-less Phison E19T controller. This is a 28nm controller with a 1200 MT/s bus, which is ostensibly PCIe 4.0 but not appreciably faster than a PCIe 3.0 controller like the Phison E15T. It’s still an improvement over the older Phison E13T which is often used with 2230 form factor drives, including an OEM in the Steam Deck. However, it’s likely that the newer, faster, and more efficient 12nm Phison E21T will be available for this form factor in the near future.

The TN436 looks remarkably similar to the Kioxia BG5 and should therefore be employing 112-layer BiCS5 TLC. This flash has performed well on the WD Black SN770, the WD Black SN850X, and the 8TB Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, but is generationally behind TLC made by other manufacturers such as that used on the SK hynix Platinum P41, the Samsung 990 Pro, and many other SSDs.

Some excellent budget drives have paired the Phison E21T with Micron’s newer 176-layer TLC, such as the Silicon Power UD90 and Team MP44L. This leaves open the door for such a combination in this form factor, which would be a superior option. Of course, BiCS5 has the option for denser dies and capacity is limited with just one NAND package on a single-sided 2230 SSD. While OEM options abound, the Inland TN436 is one of the few retail alternatives, at least for now.

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Comparison Products

The 1TB Inland TN436 is up against an array of other 1TB SSDs including the WD Black SN770, the SK hynix Gold P31, the  HP FX900, the Inland Prime, the Solidigm P41 Plus, the Samsung 980, and the WD Blue SN570. These drives are all DRAM-less aside from the Gold P31, with the P41 Plus and FX900 being PCIe 4.0.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files and recording gameplay video streams.

The Inland TN436 comes in second-to-last place, beating only the Inland Prime in 3DMark. The Inland Prime uses a similar controller that’s limited to PCIe 3.0, as mentioned above, but it is paired with different flash. The TN436 can stretch its legs a bit more than to the PCIe 4.0 interface, although it’s basically on par with the Blue SN570.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The Inland TN436 once again only beats the Inland Prime, this time in PCMark 10. This is an expected result for these two synthetic benchmarks. It’s worth remembering that this is a 2230 drive that will sometimes be used in less-demanding devices.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

DiskBench reflects bandwidth potential and, as such, the TN436 does better in this test. It is still below average, but bandwidth is often not a big deal for its intended host devices. Valve has in fact used half-bandwidth SSDs on some models and claims there’s no significant impact.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO and CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. These tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The TN436 scores well in ATTO, which is not surprising as Phison controllers tend to do well there. Sequential performance in CDM is not nearly as good. Although this is labeled as a PCIe 4.0 drive, there’s no real benefit from running it in a 4.0 slot. Random 4K results in CDM are also pretty poor on the whole. It’s clear that this is a drive designed for one purpose and that performance is a secondary priority.

It’s worth pointing out that the Prime, which is using Micron’s 176-layer TLC with a similar controller, is significantly faster with 4K random reads at queue depth 1. This result often correlates to “real world” feel and suggests an update to this flash with the E21T or comparable controller would likely provide a smoother experience.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 1TB TN436 writes at almost 2.5 GBps in pSLC mode for over 26 seconds for a cache of around 65GB. The drive then hits a deplorable folding state with write performance below 100 MBps. Performance is also inconsistent in that state, implying this drive would be particularly bad in edge cases, which includes fuller states. While the cache is small enough to recover with idle time, performance is generally bad enough to be concerning.

One limitation of 2230 drives is maximum capacity, and one nice thing about the TN436 is that it is 1TB. However, if performance is liable to tank with a fuller drive then that advantage is less attractive.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states via sensor and an infrared thermometer. The typical ambient temperature is at 24C. The load state involves sustained writes at maximum speed with measurement ensuing if and until throttling is demonstrated to discover the equilibrium temperature.

A drive used in a device like the Steam Deck needs to be power-efficient. When replacing the native drive, there are concerns about power draw and also thermal performance which can impact the performance and battery life of the host device.

The TN436 does okay, falling somewhere in the middle. The efficiency is generally good enough for its intended application. The numbers we’ve seen from the E21T and Micron’s 176-layer TLC suggest that future 2230 drives may be significantly superior, however, and with the relatively short battery life of the Steam Deck every bit matters. Of course, typical gaming scenarios will only have bursty moments of reads, so the overall impact would likely be higher with prosumer tasks on the Surface or on laptops.

We expect a drive like this to run hot, and it did. In a Steam Deck during typical use, however, it will mostly see bursty reads. Temperature is not the same as total heat dissipation, either. The drive may therefore not add a considerable amount of stress to your Deck hardware, but it’s still worth pointing out these results as we feel different hardware could make for a more efficient drive. The TN436 idled at 52C and hit 80C under load, although it did not seem to throttle. The write performance is just really slow once the pSLC cache is exhausted.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Inland TN436 is designed to fill a niche, being a 1TB retail 2230 drive with a decent warranty that can fit into a lot of portable devices. The price tag reflects this specialization, even if it will work in many regular PCs. It’s certainly a better option than taking a risk with an OEM drive if this is your first rodeo, although if you are willing to go to the trouble to unofficially update your devices you are probably already willing to accept some risk. The TN436 appears to be based on an OEM drive so it is at least a safe bet to work pretty well in terms of compatibility.

However, the drive leaves a lot to be desired. Performance is weak all around and sustained performance is surprisingly bad. Power efficiency and heat generation are sufficient, but could be better. Hopefully some better retail alternatives will appear in the market to displace it as there is room for a product like this even with the price premium. Given all these factors the TN436 is difficult for us to recommend except for specific use cases, although that’s probably good enough for your Steam Deck.

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The Corsair MP600 GS is another decent mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD, although it feels like it’s arriving too late and at too high a cost. It’s nice to have this level of performance in this price range and get it at up to 2TB, but there’s a lot of competition in this challenging market. 

The MP600 GS has no real issue stepping over older PCIe 3.0 SSDs, including those with DRAM, in both performance and efficiency. Between drives in its own class however, the main thing that sets it apart is its unique pSLC setup. There’s also the Corsair name to consider, which may carry some weight, but the actual hardware is nothing new.

This drive could use a price cut, or Corsair could have made it more attractive with a heatsink option. The uniquely-sized pSLC cache is such that the MP600 GS has very good sustained write performance and consistency, which would also be a good fit with a heatsink. It seems likely Corsair simply wanted to jump on the mid-range bandwagon – and there’s nothing wrong with that. But without a price cut at least, the MBP600 is too little, too late.

Specifications

The Corsair MP600 GS is available in the 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. It’s currently priced at $57.99, $92.99, and $177.99 at those capacities, respectively, which are all a bit on the high side compared to similar SSDs. That said, it’s nice to see a 2TB option, as budget drives are often limited to 1TB, which we saw on the Silicon Power UD90 in North America.

The MP600 GS is a mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD offering up to 4,800/4,500 MBps for sequential reads and writes and up to 530K/1000K read and write IOPS at 2TB. This drive has a full 5-year warranty, with up to 600TB of rated writes per TB of capacity. Corsair also lists encryption support which, although supported on the Phison E21T controller, is only optionally activated by the manufacturer. Similar drives, like the UD90, lack this feature.

Software and Accessories

Corsair does provide an SSD toolbox for download. This piece of software allows you to check the drive’s health data via S.M.A.R.T. and discover other pertinent information about the drive. Features include secure erase, disk clone, and TRIM functionality. It feels a bit rudimentary, but it gets the job done without having to go searching for a third-party option.

A Closer Look

Corsair has gone with a minimalist design on the MP600 GS. Under the top label, we spot a controller wedged between four NAND packages – two to each side. This is single-sided at 2TB, which means it's slim enough for any M.2 device.

The controller is a Phison E21T. We’ve seen this on the UD90 and Team Group's MP44L, which have the same basic hardware as the MP600 GS. The E21T has also shown up with QLC on the Crucial P3 Plus and Crucial P3. We have nothing bad to say about this controller. Its peers include the InnoGrit IG5220 and the SMI SM2269XT, the former particularly well-known and used in the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. However, a new manufacturer by the name of TenaFe looks to shake up the field, so drives with its TC2200 controller may soon invade the E21T’s space.

The flash is labeled IA8HG94AYA, which we know to be Micron’s 176-layer TLC. This flash is ubiquitous and has proven to offer great performance with decent power efficiency.

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Comparison Products

The 2TB Corsair MP600 GS faces the WD Black SN770, the Crucial P3 Plus, the Solidigm P41 Plus, and the Corsair MP600 Pro XT, all at 2TB. 1TB competitors include the Samsung 980, the HP FX900, and the Patriot P400. All but the MP600 Pro XT and 980 are within the same class of drive as the MP600 GS with the former being high-end and the latter PCIe 3.0. The P41 Plus and P3 Plus also stand out as the only QLC-based drives in the list.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The MP600 GS delivers mediocre marks in 3DMark. On the whole, there are only two in-class drives that beat it:  the Black SN770 and the P41 Plus. The Black SN770 remains an amazing drive. The P41 Plus only barely edges out the MP600 GS, but it’s a QLC option that’s cheaper than both the MP600 GS and the SN770. The 980 is merely average here, but this is a good showing for a PCIe 3.0 SS

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The MP600 GS does poorly in PCMark, although it’s not really far off from most of the drives tested. Once again the Black SN770 and P41 Plus stand out. At least some of this is from firmware optimization. Even if the results do not demonstrate a direct performance relationship, they do reflect an intention of designing a drive geared toward a better real world experience.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The MP600GS is above average in DiskBench, but it’s essentially on the same page as competing drives like the FX900 and P400. The Black SN770 has traditionally done well on this test, too. The MP600 Pro XT easily pulls away.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Read results from ATTO are stellar on the MP600 GS, as we would expect from Phison controllers. This also applies to the P3 Plus and the MP600 Pro XT. ATTO writes are more subdued, limited to some extent by the controller interface, with the MP600 XT Pro pulling easily ahead again. We have actually seen anomalies in ATTO testing with some Phison drives that have been confirmed by other review sites. Things are more clear with CDM.

CDM sequential performance for the MP600 GS is as expected - right with the rest of the pack, except the MP600 Pro XT. The exception is with QD1 read, where the SN770 pulls away and the MP600 GS falls a bit behind. As the MP600 GS is holding right with the P3 Plus and P41 Plus, here, it’s likely a facet of the Phison E21T controller. The InnoGrit IG5220 controller, used on the FX900 and P400, is faster.

The drive’s 4K performance is mediocre, particularly at a low queue depth. This is one area in which the IG5220 is simply superior, scoring well with reads, which remains an important benchmark. One standout here is the P41 Plus, which manages to have slightly better latency despite using QLC. Part of this is due to SLC caching and part possibly due to optimizations for reads with Solidigm’s 144-layer QLC, but it also suggests that Solidigm tunes its drives carefully for client use.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 2TB MP600 GS writes at about 4.8 GBps for over 14 seconds in pSLC mode, with a cache of nearly 70GB. After that it writes at 1.78 GBps in TLC mode, which is about half the maximum speed of drives with this flash that use the Phison E18 controller, like the MP600 Pro XT. This is logical because the MP600 GS’s E21T controller has half the channels and therefore half the interleaving. This cache layout is different from the one on the FX900 and P400. On those drives, the cache is larger with an eventual decline to a slower folding mode after writing to TLC.

Only some E18-driven drives, like the MP600 Pro XT, opt for a smaller cache in return for better sustained performance. This design choice makes the MP600 GS unique, as it’s capable of very fast sustained performance. This will be better for certain prosumer tasks, but also will maintain performance with a fuller drive or after a lot of writes, scenarios you might face when using it as a caching drive. The cache is still large enough to manage random writes and, because it is smaller in absolute terms, it will maintain its size more consistently across the drive as it is filled.

The drive is capable of recovering some cache relatively quickly, which can help absorb random writes, but otherwise it does not seem in a hurry to move data over. This is a reasonable design decision because random writes tend to incur higher write amplification and are ideally cached in pSLC. Meanwhile typical usage, that is if the drive is used in a normal gaming computer, will likely offer plenty of idle time to restore the full cache. This potentially makes the MP600 GS more attractive than the alternatives in this price bracket for specific cases.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

Temperatures are gauged at both idle and load states, via sensor and an infrared thermometer.

One great thing to come out of the age of new PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less controllers, as well as 176-layer flash, is the preponderance of efficient drives. The MP600 GS is no exception, beating everything here except the FX900. The SN770 and P3 Plus come pretty close, though.

Not shown are the Team MP44L and Silicon Power UD90, drives with similar hardware as the MP600 GS. These have displayed better efficiency in our prior testing, which is likely a consequence of differences in pSLC caching. It’s possible then, that a longer or more variable test would have the MP600 GS win out.

The 2TB MP600GS idled at around 40C. Under load it reached a maximum of 80C after approximately 600GB of writes. Write performance was not perfectly consistent past this point, demonstrating some dips. This drive could benefit from a heatsink if you are purchasing it for anything heavy duty, and in fact we would recommend that for some applications and hotter environments.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Corsair MP600 GS is your run-of-the-mill mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD. Its performance is not amazing but certainly good enough, as is its power efficiency. In some areas it does stand out, specifically with sustained writes. This can make it useful for some tasks and also more consistent in edge cases. It’s nice to see it available at up to 2TB, too, but it has stiff competition from excellent drives like the WD Black SN770. The Corsair name will only get it so far, as it doesn’t offer anything special like an option for a heatsink, although the 5-year warranty is decent.

Our recommendation would be to wait for a price drop, as this drive is at least competent within its class. There’s nothing wrong with similar offerings from Silicon Power or Team Group, but Corsair perhaps has a bit more cachet in some circles. This may or may not be deserved, although we would point out that the drive's cache design does suggest Corsair was aiming at a more reliable experience. This could make the MP600 GS more broadly appealing, but the differences in daily use would be negligible.

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When I think of gaming laptops (even the best gaming laptops) I still can't help but think of colorful lighting and red stripes. Despite years of refinement, it's hard to shake a reputation,

But the HP Omen 16 is perhaps the nail in the coffin for that look. Sure, it's powerful enough to play games with its Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti and Intel Core i7-12700H, but the Omen might as well be wearing a tux. It's classy looking, the adult's gaming laptop.

Some of those refinements are skin-deep. The massive touchpad is mushy, and the webcam — more important than ever these days — is still stuck at 720p. But if you want a gaming PC with plenty of ports and beauty to match its power, the Omen 16 is a worthy competitor.

Design of the HP Omen 16

You may not immediately know it by looking at it, but HP's design for the Omen 16 is rooted in airflow. From afar, in fact, it doesn't stand out much at all. The 16-inch Omen is a simplistic, black notebook with plastic construction and a small reflective diamond logo in the center. I appreciate the plain design; it fits my taste more than the red-and-black laptops of yesteryear.

With the lid up, there's a bit more flare. There's a small "16" on the palm rest, just in case you forgot how big your screen is. It's tone-on-tone, so it's not crying for attention. The RGB keyboard lets you add as much or as little personality as you want (the default is a four-zone keyboard, but our review unit came with per-key RGB, which requires an $80 upcharge).

The 16.1-inch display has a thick bezel on the bottom; a taller  16:10 screen may have helped eliminate that. On the keyboard, the arrow keys are separated from the standard QWERTY keys, as is the batch of keys that includes print screen, home, end and page up and  page down.

So why airflow? When you go to use the laptop, you'll see that HP has some ports on the sides, but has moved some to the back. This allows for intake on the sides and exhaust out the back. Previously, HP didn't have these extra intake fans, though we've seen them on other gaming laptops before.

On the left side, those fan inlets are surrounded by a USB Type-A port, Ethernet and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The right side has another pair of USB-A ports. The rear features two Thunderbolt 4 ports (these will be regular USB-C on AMD versions) as well as an HDMI output and a power jack.

In most cases, the ports HP chose to put on the back make sense. HDMI and power are likely to stay attached if you're leaving the laptop at a desk long-term. I do wish HP had put the Ethernet port back there, perhaps switching it with one of the two Thunderbolt 4 ports.

The Omen 16 weighs 5.29 pounds and is 14.54 x 9.76 x 0.89 inches. It's heavier than the Razer Blade 15, a 4.4-pound gaming notebook that's 0.67 inches thick. The Lenovo Legion 5i Pro, another 16-inch laptop, is heavier at 5.49 pounds and is 1.05 inches thick. Meanwhile, the Alienware x15 R2 is 5.18 pounds and 0.52 inches thick, coming in even slimmer than the Razer.

HP Omen 16 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the HP Omen 16

Our review unit of the HP Omen 16 came armed with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti GPU (8GB GDDR6, 150W max graphics power, 1,035 GHz boost clock) as well as Intel's Core i7-12700H. 

I tested the Omen 16 by playing Control at the laptop's native 1440p at high settings with medium ray tracing. It typically ran between 40 and 55 frames per second, including in combat with Hiss-controlled security guards in the Oldest House.

On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark's highest settings, the Omen hit 90 fps at 1080p and 60 fps at its native 2560 x 1440 resolution. That's effectively tied with the Razer Blade 15. The Legion 5i Pro led the pack at 110 fps at 1080p and 69 fps at native resolution, while the Alienware x15 R2 fell behind the Omen by a few frames in both resolutions. All of the Omen's competitors in our testing are also using the RTX 3070 Ti for laptops.

The Omen took the top spot in Grand Theft Auto V's benchmark (very high settings) hitting 104 fps at 1080p and 72 fps at 1440p. That’s way ahead of the Blade 16 and Legion 5i Pro, which came close in the middle of the pack at 1080p, but at native resolution where CPU performance matters less, the difference was minimal.

We saw similar performance in Far Cry 6 (ultra settings), with the Omen reaching 104 fps at 1080p and 72 fps at 1440p. The Legion 5i Pro came in second at 88 fps at 1080p and 70 fps in its native 2560 x 1600. Differences at 1080p were again bigger than at higher resolutions.

The order changed on Red Dead Redemption 2's benchmark at medium settings, where the Omen reached 66 fps at FHD and 45 fps at QHD. The Legion outperformed here at 81 fps at 1080p and 43 fps at 1600p, while the Alienware x14 R2 came within one frame of the Omen.

On Borderlands 3's benchmark at "badass" settings, the Omen reached 79 fps at 1080p and 58 fps at 1440p,  coming in very close to the Razer Blade 15. Here, both the Alienware and Legion 5i Pro won out in 1080p (with the Legion taking the clear lead at 99 fps at 1080p and 57 fps in 1600p),

We use Metro Exodus to stress test gaming laptops. Running the benchmark for 15 loops simulates about half an hour of gaming. On the RTX preset at 1080p, the Omen ran the game at an average of 64.45 fps, and was largely consistent throughout.

During that gauntlet, the Core i7-12700H's performance cores ran at an average of 2.8 GHz, while the efficiency cores reached 2.15 GHz. The CPU package measured 82.12 degrees Celsius. The RTX 3070 Ti GPU ran at 1,121.88 MHz and measured 75.68 degrees Celsius.

Productivity Performance on the HP Omen 16

Between the Omen's Intel Core i7-12700H, 16GB of DDR5 RAM and a roomy 1TB SSD, it should also work as a solid productivity machine.

On Geekbench 5, a CPU-focused system benchmark, the Omen 16 achieved a single-core score of 1,746 and a multi-core score of 12,712. The Alienware x15 R2, with the same CPU but twice as much RAM, outperformed in both single-core (1,751) and multi-core (13,749) tests. The Legion 5i Pro (again, the same CPU) fell behind the Omen in single-core, while doing better at multi-core (13,008). The Razer Blade 15 with its Core i7-12800H was better on single-core (1,765) but faltered on multi-core.

The Omen 15 was fast on our file transfer test, copying 25GB of files at a rate of 1,123.18 MBps. Only the Alienware x15 R2 was faster at 1,353.66 MBps.

We use Handbrake to make laptops convert 4K video to 1080p. The Omen 16 converted our test video in 5 minutes and 37 seconds, beating the Razer Blade 15 (7:25). The Legion 5i and Alienware x15 R2 tied in first at exactly 4:29.

Display on the HP Omen 16

The HP Omen 16's display offers some flexibility. The 16.1-inch,  2560 x 1440 panel has a  165 Hz refresh rate. You could choose to lower some settings (or drop down to 1080p) and play at high speeds, or use the RTX 3070 Ti to its fullest and game in a more cinematic fashion at 1440p.

When I watched the trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the colorful quantum realm was vivid and impressive. A pink wormhole popped next to purple clouds, a blue sky and red lava streams seemingly pouring from the sky.

In Control, the Omen made the color red look good (there's a lot of red in that game.) I was surprised by the reflections in a pool of blood that I had somehow overlooked before. Other colors did seem somewhat washed out.

The Omen isn't quite as vivid as its competitors, but it's close. HP's display covers 77.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 109% of the sRGB gamut. The Alienware was a bit behind, while the Blade 15 had the best colors: 80% DCI-P3 and 113% sRGB.

At 321 nits of brightness, the Omen was mid-pack, though I found it to be perfectly usable. The Legion 5i Pro topped this group at 474 nits, while the Blade 15 was the dimmest at 232 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Omen 16

HP's keyboard has a full QWERTY layout, but breaks out the arrow keys and a batch of others, including Home, End, an Omen key and page up and page down.

On the monkeytype typing test, I reached 112 words per minute with a 98% accuracy rate, which is decent for me. I do think some typos may have been due to the small keycaps.  There's deep travel, so the experience was comfortable, at the very least.

The 5.2 x 3.4-inch touchpad is massive by gaming laptop standards, which makes it good for using as a productivity machine on the go, when you aren't using a gaming mouse. It's smooth and responsive, though the clicking mechanism has a hollow feel to it that I don't love.

Audio on the HP Omen 16

HP's partnership with Bang & Olufsen has produced fruitful speakers for a few years now, and the Omen 16 continues the tradition.

I tapped my toes to Anna of the North's "Meteorite" as a steady drumbeat permeated through the keys and the airy vocals. The bass wasn't terribly noticeable, a fault in most laptops.

The speakers were mixed in gaming. In Control, Jesse's inner monologue was crystal clear, but the sounds of glass crashing and gunshots had a hollow feel to them in comparison. It did get nice and loud though, even overpowering the noise of the fans (and shocking some office colleagues when I forgot to turn the volume down).

HP's audio application, Omen Audio Control, has music, movie and voice presets, as well as an equalizer. I couldn't do much to make the system sound better, though boosting the bass did help slightly.

While I think the default music profile is fine for most people, I was surprised to see that there are movie and voice presets, but no gaming option!

Upgradeability on the HP Omen 16

To reach the HP Omen 16's internals, you need to remove eight Phillps-head screws. They're tiny, but all the same size.

You'll need patience to get inside. There are a lot of clips holding the base on. But with a guitar pick and an old credit card, they all came off.

Inside, there's plenty to upgrade if you need to, including the RAM and SSD. Our unit had a second, empty M.2 SSD slot, so you could add far more storage for games down the line. The battery is also replaceable, though the Wi-Fi card, which is partially tucked below the cooling, could be an issue.

There were a couple of items that could have used more care inside the laptop, tough. The thin thermal strip on the SSD was applied slightly off-angle. I doubt this affected performance, but at over $2,000, it should be done right. Additionally, a ribbon connector on the motherboard seemed to be soldered at an odd angle. This connector wasn't in use (neither was the one next to it), and frankly I don't know what it's for, so this didn't seem like a big deal either. But ideally, everything on the inside would look as nice as the Omen does on the outside.

Battery Life on the HP Omen 16

Not that gaming laptops are known for award-winning battery life, but the Omen fell in the middle of the pack when it came to longevity. On our test, which involves web browsing, light graphics work and video streaming with the display set to 150 nits, the Omen ran for 5 hours and 41 minutes.

The Legion lasted longest at 7:30, while the Razer Blade (4:54) and Alienware x15 R2 (3:27) needed to be plugged in sooner.

Heat on the HP Omen 16

All gaming laptops get warm, but you don't want them to be too hot to touch. That's why we take skin temperature measurements during our Metro Exodus gauntlet to get an idea of just how toasty gaming laptops get.

At the center of the keyboard between the G and H keys, the Omen measured 35.2 degrees Celsius (95.36 degrees Fahrenheit), which is pretty standard. It was even cooler at the touchpad, a 31 C (87.8 F).

On the bottom of the laptop, the toastiest point measured 65.9 C (a very warm 150.62 F), so keep this on your desk while gaming.

Webcam on the HP Omen 16

Sadly, HP has stuck with a 720p webcam on the Omen 16 as more and more flagship notebooks jump to 1080p lenses. Higher resolution doesn't always mean better image quality, but it usually helps.

The Omen 16's webcam is good with colors. It caught the various orange and navy tones in a flannel I wore on a rainy day. But the resulting image was grainer than I would like, and lacked detail on my face.

Software and Warranty on the HP Omen 16

The most important software pre-loaded on the Omen is HP's Omen Gaming Hub, which serves as a game launcher, a place to see component temperature and utilization and adjust power modes. It also can launch several other apps, including Light Studio to control the RGB lighting on the keyboard and Oasis, an HP-proprietary streaming app.

That's not to say HP doesn't join other OEMs in overloading. It also includes HP Quickdrop to transfer files between your PC and phone;  HP PC Hardware Diagnostics Windows (yes,that's the full name), for troubleshooting and system information; dedicated apps for privacy settings and setting up a printer; a free trial of ExpressVPN and a promotion for Dropbox, among a few other extras.

HP's reach also extends into the bookmarks in the Edge Browser, including links to Amazon (with an HP affiliate link, ExpressVPN, McAfee Security and LastPass. This is all a bit much, especially for a premium device.

That's all on top of the usual Windows bloat, including Whatsapp, TikTok, Disney Plus, Spotify, Kindle, Prime Video and more.

HP sells the Omen 16 with a 1-year warranty.

HP Omen 16 Configurations

We tested the HP Omen 16 with an Intel Core i7-12700H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, a 1440p, 165 Hz display, per-key RGB (an extra $80) and Windows 11 Pro (an extra $70). As of this writing, that totals $2,139.99.

HP's website offers a configurator as well as a bunch of ready-to-ship options. If buying directly from the company, you may want to check our curated list of current HP coupon codes to see if one reduces the price.

The cheapest Intel-based version is $1,299.99 with an Intel Core i5-12500H, 16GB of RAM, a 1080p, 144 Hz screen, 512GB of storage, Windows 11 Home and four-zone lighting, and goes up from there. Upgrades in the configurator include up to a 2TB SSD, 32GB of RAM and Intel Core i9-12900H.

There are also AMD configurations, starting at $999.99 with a Ryzen 5 6600H, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050, 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD, though there are also models with higher end Nvidia and AMD GPUs. (Note that the AMD versions come with 10 GBps USB-C ports instead of 40 GBps Thunderbolt 4 ports on the Intel models.)

Bottom Line

The HP Omen 16 has a lot of polish. It looks great — perhaps even conventional, but I appreciate that as an adult who plays games. There's a solid variety of ports around the notebook's sides, and you get strong performance and a decent screen.

But I also hope this Omen, if I may, is a harbinger of improvements to come. The touchpad is big, which is great for using it as a productivity device, but also mushy. The webcam fits in the screen's bezel, but it's still at a grainy 720p. There's always room for a bit more shine. The design is among the best of premium gaming laptops in my eyes, even if it's a bit chunky. If you're looking for something thinner, the Alienware x15 R2 or Razer Blade 15 might fit your needs, but you'll give up screen space. Perhaps its bigger competitor is the Lenovo Legion 5i Pro (Gen 7), which beat it in some games and has a brighter display, albeit slightly smaller at 15.6-inches.

If you want a gaming PC that's approaching desktop replacement size, but with a bit of portability, tons of ports, and a sophisticated design, the Omen is worth checking out.

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The Team Group MP44L SSD is a mid-range PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD that’s best if you are looking for a drive with 1TB capacity or less. It’s a basic budget SSD that you could slot into a laptop, desktop, or PlayStation 5 without much trouble or additional fanfare. It utilizes a newer controller and newer flash, so it is both fast and efficient. It’s not the fastest drive on the market but it will give any last-generation PCIe 3.0 drive a run for its money. There is quite a bit of competition in the market, so choosing this drive comes down to pricing and availability.

The Team Group, or just Team, has put out a crazy amount of drives in the last few years. We last reviewed Team’s T-Force Cardea A440 Pro/Special Series in April with some questions about its flash selection. It’s no mystery that many manufacturers are swapping hardware and some of Team’s low-end SATA drives have been spotted with multiple controllers and flash. The MP44L sample under review has hardware of decent quality and we have no issues in recommending it today with the hope that the use of newer hardware will encourage Team to maintain a certain level of performance.

Specifications

The Team MP44L is available at 250GB, 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The reason we suggested 1TB or less in the introduction is because that is where this drive hits its peak performance - that is, where it has the ideal amount of flash dies. Performance does dip a little at 2TB but, moreover, there are better options for your money at that capacity. Current Amazon pricing is at $38.99, $56.99, $96.99, and $181.99 for the listed capacities, respectively. This makes the 500GB and 1TB models the most compelling. It’s difficult to get good performance out of NVMe with fewer dies at 250GB especially as flash is getting denser, so that capacity is also not recommended.

Performance is up to 5,000/4,500 MBps for sequential read and write with up to 525K/550K IOPS read and write. This places it in the middle of the pack with PCIe 4.0 drives, along with those that are using the SM2269XT and IG5220 controllers. Many of those drives are using the same flash as the MP44L. We recommend ones with QLC, like the Crucial P3 Plus or Solidigm P41 Plus, if you’re looking for 2TB or more to get the best bang for your buck.

Team rates the MP44L for 200TB, 300TB, 600TB, or 1200TB of writes by capacity, respectively. All models have a 5-year warranty according to Team’s website.

Software and Accessories

Team provides S.M.A.R.T. monitoring software for its SSDs. This application shows disk and system information. It also has a performance tab for quick testing. This information can alternatively be read with free software like CrystalDiskInfo, HWiNFO, and CrystalDiskMark. We recommend Macrium Reflect Free for image and cloning needs.

A Closer Look

The 1TB MP44L is single-sided, which is a nice benefit. The top has a label that Team states is constructed of graphene-coated aluminum, which should be useful for heat dissipation. Under the label, we spy 4 NAND packages and a controller with no DRAM. The controller is in the center of the PCB which can have benefits for heat spreading.

The controller is the DRAM-less Phison E21T. We have reviewed this controller before with the excellent budget drive, the Silicon Power UD90. The MP44L is extremely similar to the UD90 on paper. The E21T is also present on the Crucial P3 and Crucial P3 Plus, both using Micron’s 176-layer QLC, the latter being PCIe 4.0 and former PCIe 3.0.

The Phison E21T has competition from the InnoGrit IG5220 and the SMI SM2269XT, as well as WD’s custom controller on the Black SN770. All of these controllers are DRAM-less and in the middle of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth, which effectively makes them a replacement for the old Phison E16 with DRAM. Newer flash allows them to rival even very fast drives from the previous generation, certainly PCIe 3.0 drives, while having generally high levels of efficiency.

Efficiency usually translates to less heat generation, all else being equal, so drives in this class are suitable for laptops. However, they only have four channels so are limited in capacity when paired with TLC. 2TB options, where available, may not be quite as performant and are also often not cost-competitive.

The flash is labeled IA7BG94AYA, which is very familiar. It’s Micron’s 176-layer TLC. This popular and now ubiquitous flash that has worked well with multiple controllers. Each of these packages is 256GB in size with four 64GB dies for a total of 1TB. It’s possible to fit this much memory into fewer packages, but this is a popular configuration and is balanced well on this drive for heat dissipation.

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Comparison Products

The Team MP44L is up against the budget-oriented Inland Prime, other mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSDs including the HP FX900, the Patriot P400, the WD SN770, and the Solidigm P41 Plus, plus an old stalwart - the Sabrent Rocket NVMe 4.0. The higher-end Crucial P5 Plus is also in the mix. The P41 Plus is the only QLC drive in the list. Most of these drives, including the MP44L, are utilizing Micron’s 176-layer TLC, so we can see what difference a controller can make.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The MP44L is average to above average in 3DMark. The InnoGrit controller in the FX900 and P400 does not seem well-optimized for this benchmark. Older 28nm technology in the Inland Prime and Rocket NVMe 4.0 - the E15T and E16 controllers, respectively - also fall behind, even though the latter has DRAM. The P41 Plus does surprisingly well.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

Results for PCMark 10 are similar to those for 3DMark. The MP44L is above average and the P41 Plus punches above its weight.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

In DiskBench, we are essentially looking at the copy transfer rate to get a feel for how well the drive would copy files to itself. This takes both read and write performance into consideration. The MP44L is again a bit above average, with the P5 Plus and SN770 remaining at the top.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The MP44L does exceptionally well on ATTO. Phison controllers tend to do well in this test, particularly with reads at larger I/O sizes. CDM sequentials show it falling behind the P5 Plus and SN770, however; it is decidedly average at best. 4K low queue depth results are better but not quite capable of matching the best. Specifically, the SN770 is better across-the-board and the FX900 and P400 - using the IG5220 controller - are better with all-important low queue depth read latency. The P41 Plus continues to surprise, considering it’s using QLC, while the DRAM-equipped Rocket NVMe 4.0 shows how old hardware can fall behind.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 1TB MP44L writes in pSLC at 4.6 GBps for up to 15 seconds, with a cache size around 69GB. This is a fairly small cache, so we would expect higher sequential write performance in TLC mode. This is indeed the case as the MP44L writes at around 1.75 GBps after the cache is exhausted. The E21T controller has a limited amount of channels and die interleaving so eventually the drive must fold to around 250 MBps.

Although the pSLC cache will vary with how full the drive is, having a smaller cache means being able to retain a similar absolute size with space utilization. A certain amount of cache for a 1TB drive is sufficient to cache small, random writes as well as writes in bursts, which is ample to maintain high performance and make the best use of the pSLC for endurance purposes. The relatively high and elongated TLC performance phase suggests additional consistency that should be present even if the drive is very full. Typically budget drives have leaned on larger pSLC caches to hide their poor native performance, but this controller and flash combination is fast enough to offer an excellent experience without compromise.

The most direct comparison would be to the FX900 and P400, which are using the IG5220 controller instead. The pSLC cache design for those drives emphasizes a much larger cache and much shorter intermediate performance period, although all of these drives seem to take a bit of time to recover their cache when idle. Recovery time varies because there are good reasons to defer clearing the pSLC, such as avoiding additional wear, while having it ready again means better performance. Therefore there is a balance to be struck, but DRAM-less drives with good TLC performance generally opt to be conservative, particularly as consumer usage on a budget drive tends to demonstrate lots of idle time.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

High power efficiency has been one of the most obvious benefits of newer controller and flash technology. Budget drives in particular have been impressive, for example with the FX900 and SN770. The MP44L falls in-between these two drives with very high efficiency. A DRAM-less, 4-channel controller is bound to be more efficient and makes for an excellent drive choice for a laptop, especially with a single-sided design. With very light usage something like the P41 Plus might be the better choice - given that it should be cheaper - but the MP44L would be superior if you intend to do a bit more.

We measured the MP44L at 41C during idle with a maximum temperature of 77C under load. This temperature was reached by writing for over one-half of the 1TB drive’s capacity. At that point it hit a folding state which precluded throttling - no heatsink is required under normal conditions.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Team MP44L is a solid all-around budget PCIe 4.0 SSD with generally above average performance, good power efficiency, and a simple but effective design. Team backs it with a reasonable warranty and basic software support. There’s not much more to ask for in a drive, especially as this would work well in a laptop or possibly a PlayStation 5. These results are not surprising as we found the Silicon Power UD90, which has the same hardware, to be perhaps the best budget SSD available at the time of its review.

The MP44L scores a bit worse, but there are good reasons for that. The UD90 tends to offer the same package at a bit lower cost. Other drives within this range also offer a similar experience for the same price or less. The SSD market continues to trend downwards with pricing and significant sales have made for a competitive environment. There are also new competitors for the MP44L that the UD90 didn’t face at its time of review, for example the Solidigm P41 Plus. QLC is best at 1TB or 2TB which still leaves the MP44L a compelling 500GB choice, but the MP44L’s performance is good enough to make it a better all-around choice at 1TB as well.

We scored the P41 Plus rather harshly in part due to its MSRP because a QLC SSD, especially a DRAM-less QLC one, really should be cheaper. That drive has since had excellent pricing at 2TB and we would recommend it there. A drive like the MP44L is superior at lower capacities, especially if pricing is close. This is partly because benchmarks often show performance in ideal conditions, an especially valid criticism as the P41 Plus is best when it is less than 50% full. Taking this into consideration, the performance consistency of the MP44L combined with its exceptional efficiency - significantly better in our testing than the P41 Plus - makes it an objectively better choice in the general case, and worthy of a higher score.

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After Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, large hardware and software companies began to leave the country in a bid not to support the bloody war in any way. Now that the world's leading PC makers do not officially sell systems in Russia, many end users have to buy components to repair or upgrade their existing machines, according to media reports.

Sales of PC components for desktops and laptops increased by two – four times in the first nine months of 2021 in Russia compared to the same period a year ago, reports Cnews. Apparently, Russians are buying virtually all PC parts they can install themselves, including graphics cards, processors, memory, solid-state drives, hard drives, motherboards, and PC chassis, according to data from large retailers like M.Video-Eldorado, Ozon, and Wildberries.

While formal companies like Asus and Nvidia ceased shipping products to Russia earlier this year, their partners continued to send their motherboards and graphics cards to the nation, albeit indirectly, as they continued to capitalize on demand. Also, companies like Lenovo (and local grey box makers) have benefited from Dell's and HP's decision to leave the Russian market.

While the most components got more expensive than they used to be, some of them (e.g., graphics cards, SSDs) are a bit cheaper this year despite strong demand and even shortages. Moreover, as it turns out, some suppliers increased shipments of their parts to Russia.

Another essential factor about the Russian PC market is that the wait for getting official repairs on broken tech products has gotten significantly longer, which is perhaps one of the reasons why people now prefer to buy illegally imported components and install them themselves.

All-in-all, while many high-tech companies left Russia and no longer sell their products in the country, there are still those that capitalize on this market. Of course, it is hard to tell whether these companies can satisfy 100% of the country's needs in PCs and computer components, but it looks like one can still buy new hardware in the country, albeit at high prices.

Microsoft is launching the Windows Dev Kit 2023, which was announced back in May as "Project Volterra" at Microsoft Build. The developer box, powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3 compute platform, costs $599 and will ship in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, China, France and Germany.

The idea of the Dev Kit is that developers will make Windows apps for Arm-based systems. It's an area where Windows has slowly been growing in terms of software support. Vendors such as HP, Asus and Lenovo have made Windows on Arm laptops to varying degrees of success, and Microsoft uses customized Qualcomm chips in its Surface devices (the latest, the Microsoft SQ3, will power the Microsoft Surface Pro 9 with 5G).

The desktop is tiny at just 8 x 6 x 1.1 inches, but still has plenty of ports for developers who need to power multiple monitors (as long as they're willing to use USB Type-C and Mini DisplayPort) and peripherals. There are three USB Type-A ports, two USB-C ports and an Ethernet jack.

Microsoft is also highlighting the Snapdragon's neural processing unit, or NPU, as a feature for developers to design AI and machine learning applications around, using models like PyTorch and SensorFlow. Microsoft claims that for some models, "the NPU is about 80-90 times faster than CPU and about 20 times faster than GPU."

Back in May, Microsoft announced its intentions to release an Arm-native toolchain for apps built for the architecture. It says that it has released previews of several of these and most will be available by the end of the year. Additionally, Visual Studio 2022 17.4 has Arm-native support in C++, C$, Windows SDK and App SDK components, and workloads for the web, UWP, Node.js and game development.

If Microsoft sees a future in which Windows on Arm is as prolific as Windows using x86 platforms (or more realistically, anywhere close), getting developers on board is crucial. That does make me wonder about the $599 price. Enterprise customers might be able to afford that, but that's a heck of a price for individual developers. Microsoft should be giving these away to even get individuals developing for Windows on Arm.

Microsoft has made a number of its own apps Arm-native, including Teams, Edge and Office. Other apps that made the switch include Firefox, Adobe Photoshop, VLC, Netflix, Handbrake, Zoom and 7-Zip. With Windows 11, Microsoft is supporting x64 emulation, but that's not the same as a native app. Some software still doesn't work, and games and many antivirus and applications still aren't up and running. Microsoft's Arm64EC is designed for developers to either build new Arm apps natively, or slowly integrate new features into existing apps.

Will the new hardware result in a slew of new Arm-native software, as well as more cloud, AI and machine-learning-based apps? It's unclear. But this $599 bet suggests Microsoft thinks there's interest. Only time will tell if the company is right. 

Sales of PCs have been going down globally in the past couple of quarters due to inflation and increasing prices, geopolitical instability, and the end of the coronavirus rally. But in Russia, there were other reasons behind dropping PC sales: big PC brands and component vendors left the country, major brands left off, and everyone began to save. Yet, some companies thrive even amid a 20% year-over-year unit sales drop in 1H 2022. Lenovo seems to be among them.

Lenovo topped the list of PC suppliers with 95,000, up 3% units sold in 1H 2022 (up 3%, presumably year-over-year), after formally leaving the Russian market earlier this year, according to analysts from Marvel, a major distributor of PCs and hardware. It was followed by HP with 80,000 units, down 93%. The No.3 was a major Russia-based whitebox maker Aquarius with 61,100 units. The latter got a 215% sales increase, the company says. Traditionally the market was dominated by Dell and HP.

Sales of PCs in Russia in the first half of 2022 reached 1.18 million units, according to analysts from Marvel, a major distributor reports Vedomosti. That's down around 20% from the same time in 2021, based on the data from Marvel, a major distributor. Unfortunately, we only have this kind of data since Gartner and IDC ceased to monitor this market after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24.

All the top PC makers — Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple — left Russia after the nation started the war. Yet the numbers speak for themselves: HP's sales were halved in 1H 2022, but Lenovo's shipments were up. It is hard to tell whether Lenovo omitted any rules here, given that it officially left the country in May. So we are dealing with numbers from the first half of the year (no, IDC and Gartner do not cover Russia's PC market, so we do not have data outside of what Marvel kindly provides).

We have comments from a grey box PC supplier from Russia, who says that demand has at least doubled.

"As for Aquarius, our revenue increased by 215% [over three quarters of 2022]," said Vladimir Stepanov, the head of Aquarius, in an interview with Vedomosti.

Meanwhile, Marvel has hard times with the third quarter data, given consumer and business behavior, particularly in Russia, and global dynamics.

"It is quite difficult to presume results of the third quarter, as we see a combination of multidirectional factors," analysts from Marvel wrote to Vedomosti. "On the one hand, there is decreasing business activity, but on the other hand, there is an increase of [graphics cards availability at lower prices] due to a serious decrease [of interest from miners]. [Meanwhile there is a question] whether large customers managed to adapt to new realities."

The Acer Predator GM7000 takes a winning formula of components and puts unique branding on it. This combination is powerful, efficient and particularly compelling at 2TB, but the GM7000 is in a crowded market. This high-end PCIe 4.0 drive would be happy in the PlayStation 5 or in your PC with help from Acronis True Image OEM software. Otherwise, this SSD does not stand out, particularly against the very fastest drives we’ve tested, like the SK hynix Platinum P41 and WD Black SN850X. 

The GM7000 is best compared to the HP FX900 Pro, since it has the same controller and flash. The pSLC caching scheme is also similar. While it appears some tweaks were made to the GM7000, possibly through updated firmware, it largely falls into the same position as the FX900 Pro and other drives like it. These drives are often a bit cheaper than other high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs, particularly at 2TB.

Acer announced a partnership with Biwin more than a year ago, and we see its flash on the GM7000. Biwin previously worked heavily with HP, which includes the FX900 Pro. Biwin provides services with flash binning and the manufacture of drives. It is not surprising that the GM7000 is so close to the FX900 Pro. It does mean that you have a bit better idea of what you’re getting. Otherwise, you are relying on Acer’s support for warranty and software.

Specifications

The Acer GM7000 is available at 512GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. This is a nice range, but we were not able to find the drive available at its highest capacity at the time of this review. The other capacities actually lowered in price during writing, reflecting that the NAND and SSD markets have been, and remain, in a steady price decline.

The closest competitor, the HP FX900 Pro which is slightly cheaper at 2TB. 2TB has become an increasingly popular capacity and there have been many sales on drives of this size this year, so it is a competitive space. One advantage the GM7000 has is its graphene foam heat pad, something the FX900 Pro also uses. Graphene has very high thermal conductivity and PCIe 4.0 SSDs can get quite hot, so this is a solution that saves a bit of physical space.

The GM7000 is otherwise unexceptional, coming with a 5-year warranty and 300, 600, 1,300, and 3,000 TBW ratings for its respective capacity options. Rated IOPS are quite high, as on the FX900 Pro. Sequential performance can top out at 7.4/6.7GBps for reads and writes, respectively, thanks to the use of newer flash with the IG5236 controller. This makes for a powerful drive that checks all the expected boxes.

Software and Accessories

The GM7000 comes with a free, customized copy of Acronis True Image OEM. This is a piece of software that allows you to clone, backup, or image your drives, which can make upgrading your storage easier. This is barebones software and there are good freeware options, but it’s still nice to have it bundled.

A Closer Look

This is a double-sided drive at 2TB, with a label on the rear covering two NAND packages and one DRAM package. Removing the top graphene pad reveals a single DRAM module, the controller and two NAND packages.

The controller is an InnoGrit IG5236, a popular and powerful PCIe 4.0 solution. It competes with the Phison E18, the upcoming SMI SM2264, and proprietary designs from Western Digital, Samsung, Crucial and SK hynix. InnoGrit as a company is a relative newcomer, but it has veterans at its helm. Its latest controller designs have proven quite effective, and are often paired with drives that are a bit cheaper than the competition.

The DRAM package is NANYA NT5AD512M16A4, DDR4 in a 512M x 16b configuration for a total of 8Gb or 1GB. As there are two packages, the total DRAM on this 2TB drive is 2GB. This is an ample amount of memory, even for heavy workloads.

The flash packages are labeled BW29F4T08ENLEE. This is the same flash that we saw on the 2TB FX900 Pro. Biwin has long managed HP’s SSDs and, over a year ago, it was announced that it would also work with Acer. Historically this has not been an issue as some of HP’s SSD products have been quite excellent, such as with the EX920 and EX950.

The “BW” represents Biwin, with 29 being the common code for Micron (or Intel) Technology. These are 4Tb or 512GB modules, four for a total of 2TB, in a typical 8-bit configuration. The flash is of the 176-layer generation and TLC. This flash is found on a ton of drives and has proven to be quite fast. It is in fact the flash that Phison chose for its preliminary I/O+ firmware, albeit at 1600 MT/s. The flash on the GM7000 is the standard 1200 MT’s, although this does not have a huge impact on performance.

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Comparison Products

The Acer GM7000 is very close in hardware and design to the HP FX900 Pro, so we will be comparing our test subject to the latter. The Patriot Viper VP4300 is also similar but arrived with older Micron TLC. Proprietary designs are represented by the newer WD Black SN850X and SK hynix Platinum P41, plus the older Crucial P5 Plus and Samsung 980 Pro. The Kingston KC3000 represents one of the fastest drives built on Phison’s E18 controller. All in all, this is stiff competition for the GM7000.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files and recording gameplay video streams.

In 3DMark the GM7000 falls into the middle of the pack. It matches the FX900 Pro, as expected, but falls behind the faster drives - the SN850X, Platinum P41 and KC3000.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The GM7000 performs similarly in PCMark 10 to how it did in 3DMark. It does fare a bit better, only falling behind the Platinum P41 and SN850X, two drives that we consider to be the overall best SSDs on the market.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

DiskBench is largely a bandwidth test and, as a result, most of the drives perform very similarly. So far, however, it’s clear that upgrading the flash on the IG5236 controller brings worthwhile gains. The VP4300 falls a bit behind with reads on this test but was very much behind in 3DMark and PCMark 10. The Predator GM7000 matches the FX900 Pro, as expected, and does well enough otherwise with copies.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO & CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. These tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

ATTO’s sequential results favor Phison, that is the KC3000, particularly with reads. That being said, the SN850X has definitely caught up. The drives based on the IG5236 controller - the GM7000, FX900 Pro and VP4300 - have a notable dip with sequential reads. The dip being in a different place for the VP4300 may indicate differences in flash architecture, but overall this controller may have some inconsistencies. Sequential write performance in ATTO looks good.

Sequential results in CDM are also good, except for reads at QD1. That is a place where the Platinum P41 excels in particular, with the SN850X a bit behind. The GM7000 improves on the VP4300, but is otherwise lackluster. Luckily, it makes up for it with excellent random read and good random write performance. Those results are probably more important than the sequential ones, at least for the time being.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The GM7000’s pSLC cache response is very similar to the FX900 Pro’s. A large cache, about one-third the TLC capacity of the drive, allows it to write at around 6.6GBps for up to 105 seconds. There is then a briefer middle state of direct-to-TLC at around 2.85GBps before the drive has to fold at 1.35GBps. The GM7000 seems a bit more consistent than the FX900 Pro but is otherwise functionally the same in this as it is in other tests. Overall, this is a fast drive and there are no complaints about what it can get out of this flash.

Recovery is not great on the GM7000, as was the case with the FX900 Pro, probably due to the relatively large nature of the pSLC cache. You can get more consistent results out of the Platinum P41 or even the SN850X. However, it’s clearly superior to the older VP4300. On the whole, the GM7000 is more than fast enough, and the overall write performance is pretty good thanks to the flash.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

PCIe 4.0 drives draw more power and run hotter, but can also finish workloads faster. Modern drives in particular may have controllers made in a smaller process node and newer flash always inches to be more efficient over time. This combination means that there’s a surprising trend towards better results on our Quarch power tests. This does not necessarily indicate what drive is best for your laptop or hot environment, but rather reflects how well the drive does on basic transfer tasks.

The Platinum P41 surprised us with its efficiency when we reviewed it, but the GM7000 comes surprisingly close. It’s the second best in terms of efficiency in this test and significantly better than the older VP4300.

For thermal testing, we checked the drive temperature at both idle and max under a sustained write workload. We also looked for throttling. The GM7000 idled at 47 degrees C and hit a maximum temperature of 85 C, where it throttled, during a transfer of 1TB of video files. The speed degraded at first to 1.35 GBps and then 800 MBps with heavy throttling. The graphene cooler is not sufficient for super heavy workloads, so you may want to consider additional cooling.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless otherwise noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Acer Predator GM7000 does not disappoint, nor does it excite. It's a well-rounded drive for most use cases, and those who  don’t need the fastest performance, you can save some money. The GM7000 really needs to be priced right in order for it to be compelling. There is a lot of competition, particularly at 2TB with recent pricing trends and the availability of higher-capacity drives.

This is an efficient drive with reasonable support and good all-around performance. Biwin is not an unknown brand anymore and has proven itself with HP SSDs. That fact may give you a bit of confidence when you look at the Acer Predator drives. Nevertheless, it finds itself in a crowded segment and if you are discerning then you will have to weigh it against the other options. At the same price, the Platinum P41 or SN850X would be superior, and even the KC3000 or similar would probably be a better bet. The GM7000 is best at the 2TB capacity, especially if you can find it on sale.

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Market research outfit IDC has published its latest data, giving us a measure of the performance of the PC market as we enter the last months of 2022. The significant findings for Q3 2022 are that pre-built PC shipment volumes have remained above pre-pandemic levels. Nevertheless, there is terrible news for the industry overall, as it suffered a 15% contraction year-on-year. As with all these shifts in sales numbers, some PC makers fare better than others. We note that only Apple sold more PCs in Q3 2022 than in Q3 2021, boosting its market share percentage into double figures. On the flip side, it looks like HP was the poorest performer.

In Q3 2022, IDC measured global PC shipments of 74.3 million units. A year ago, in the same quarter, shipments tallied 87.3 million units; thus, there has been a 15% YoY decline overall. It sounds like bad news, but PCs sold in far fewer numbers pre-pandemic, notes IDC. If we go back to Q3 2017 and Q3 2018, for example, PC shipments were flatlining at just above 67 million units. Thus it looks like what inspired consumers to invest in PCs still has some strength post-pandemic.

The raw shipment numbers don’t tell us everything, of course. There has been a notable increase in average selling prices (ASPs) of PC desktops and laptops since the pandemic started. PC makers took advantage of the increased demand and shortages to push a high of $922 per machine in Q1 this year. Recently ASPs have retreated with the onset of the war in Ukraine and recessionary/inflationary pressures reducing household disposable income.

Lenovo is still the PC industry champ, with a 22.7% market share in Q3 2022. It has slipped a little in market share, but more seriously in shipment quantities – with 16% fewer PCs shipped compared to a year ago. Second-placed HP is the worst off, though, losing both market share and sliding almost 30% in shipment volumes. As mentioned in the intro, Apple showed impressive strength in these latest figures. Its market share grew from 8.2% to 13.5% YoY, and its shipments were up by 40%. People are pretty interested / excited by Apple’s recent Apple Silicon transition, which is probably driving both platform upgrades and switchers.

IDC doesn’t single out brands like MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, and smaller firms in its press release stats but offers more profound market research to paying clients. Such brands make up the ‘Others’ category, which has seen a relatively stable transition from 2021 to 2022 in market share terms, but as part of the bigger picture, the group’s shipments are down 19.4%.

Here's a table of the past four years of IDC's worldwide PC shipment details, if you want a slightly longer view of things.

T-Platforms, a Russian company that once planned to build an exascale supercomputer and homegrown CPUs, was declared bankrupt this week as the cost of the company's assets was lower than its obligations. T-Platforms was one of a few companies in Russia that could build world-class high-performance supercomputers. The main reasons for the bankruptcy are not sanctions by Western countries but rather Russia's attempt to replace Western technologies with its own.

T-Platforms was established in 2002 to build servers and supercomputers that would be competitive against offerings from the likes of IBM and HP. Over the years, T-Platforms developed some of Russia's highest-performing supercomputers based on AMD Opteron, Intel Xeon, and Nvidia Tesla processors. For example, the company's Lomonosov supercomputer, based on 33,072 CPUs, was ranked the No. 18 most potent machine in the world and the No. 3 supercomputer in Europe.

Eventually, the company expanded business outside Russia and established offices in Hannover, Germany; Hong Kong, China; and Taipei, Taiwan. However, the company ran into troubles with the U.S. Department of Commerce in early 2013 when the latter accused T-Platforms of selling supercomputers to military end users and nuclear research, contrary to U.S. national security. As a result, T-Platforms was delisted from DoC's Entity List in late 2013 – early 2014.

But after Russia invaded Crimea in 2014 and faced the first round of sanctions, the government kicked off programs to develop microprocessors and other chips in the country to replace x86 offerings from AMD and Intel. One of the companies meant to create Arm-based system-on-chips for PCs aimed at government agencies was Baikal Microelectronics, a subsidiary of T-Platforms established in 2012.

Baikal Microelectronics secured government subsidies to speed up the development of homebrew processors and servers. However, while Baikal Microelectronics has managed to design several Arm and MIPS-based processors, whereas T-Platforms started to sell some of its new servers in Russia, they failed to deliver their products on time. As a result, the Russian Ministry of Trade sued Baikal in 2019. Meanwhile, the chief executive officer of T-Platforms was arrested in March 2019 as his company failed to deliver about 9,000 Baikal-based PCs to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is when the company started to fire personnel and fold its operations.

Eventually, T-Platforms had to sell its 60% stake in Baikal to Varton in October 2020, reports CNews. The company filed for bankruptcy in October 2021. In December 2021, the Moscow Arbitration decided to introduce an external monitoring procedure for T-Platforms. Vsevolod Opanasenko, the former CEO of T-Platforms who faces ten years in prison, plans to file for bankruptcy himself. Some media reports indicate that he used to control 75% of T-Platforms, whereas the remaining stake belonged to the Russian government.

At present websites of T-Platforms and Baikal Microelectronics are no longer operational.

Nvidia has announced that it will close its remaining offices in Russia. The move comes six months after the firm decided to cease product shipments to the country. No precise reasoning about the timing of this decision was divulged, but the Wall Street Journal reports that Nvidia signaled this significant move was precipitated by recent events related to Ukraine.

Since March, Nvidia’s presence in Russia has been quite limited. According to the WSJ report, Russia-based employees will be given the opportunity to continue their work for the green team in another country.

The complete withdrawal of Nvidia from Russian business could potentially mean forgoing participation in a market that traditionally contributed about 2% to the firm’s revenues.

Tom’s Hardware has previously reported on other big PC tech companies withdrawing sales and other business activities from Russia since the conflict began. AMD, Intel, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Asus and others have all withdrawn from Russia by various degrees since March. Russia is also having a hard time finding willing chip foundries to supply desirable semiconductor components to power its war machines.

Recently, Russia has been escalating its tactics in its invasion of Ukraine, with the country mobilizing in an attempt to call about 300,000 men to its armed forces. The country has also annexed four regions in Ukraine, though it doesn't actually control any of them in full. 

Late in 2021, I reviewed the crowd-funded Eve Spectrum ES07D03 27-inch 4K gaming monitor. I found a lot to like, especially its well-crafted overdrive, which contributed to the best overall video processing I had yet to see. Since then, Eve has done two significant things. First, it changed its name to Dough, ostensibly to have something to legally trademark. Second, it introduced a glossy version of the ES07D03, as in a glossy screen coating to enhance perceived contrast. I was anxious to check it out to see if it still had the best motion resolution of any of the best 4K gaming monitors out there.

The idea of glossy screen coatings is not new. Many televisions come with them, most notably OLEDs. They are rarer on LCDs, but one thing is clear (ahem), they deliver greater clarity to the image. While they don’t actually have higher measured contrast, they do have higher perceived contrast. This is because they are optically superior. In other words, glossy screens provide a clearer view of the pixels beneath. However, there’s no free lunch since they pick up more reflections from windows and overhead lights. To achieve that better picture, you’ll need to give some consideration to the room you game in.

Dough Spectrum ES07D03 Glossy Specs

When gaming is a monitor’s primary focus, there’s never a refresh rate that’s too high. Unfortunately, the 4K category is stuck at 144 Hz for the moment. Yes, faster screens are coming, but how much video card will it take to drive 8.3 megapixels at 180 or 240fps? The answer is, of course, a lot, a lot of power and upfront, a lot of money. A GeForce RTX 3090 can manage 120fps at 4K in a demanding game like Doom Eternal.

If you want 4K, video processing must be a serious consideration. The quality of a monitor’s overdrive is key, and Dough is the king of this category. The Spectrum ES07D03 not only has an overdrive preset that’s almost spot-on, but it also has a user-adjustable option that lets you tweak it in fine increments. This allows the user to perfectly match the amount of overshoot to their entire signal path, PC and controllers. The visual result is higher motion resolution. You can eliminate nearly all motion blur while avoiding the black or white ghost trails present when the overdrive is either under or over the mark.

Nothing else has changed regarding the new Glossy variant of the ES07D03. You get the same 144 Hz, Adaptive-Sync with AMD and Nvidia certifications, wide color gamut and HDR 600. The glossy option adds $150 to the base price of $949, and you still have to pay an extra $99 for the stand. But price aside, there is no doubt that this is a premium gaming monitor. It’s reasonably color accurate out of the box with the potential for reference level results from calibration. It’s plenty bright with over 400 nits in SDR mode and around 675 nits peak for HDR. It has the same 16-zone edge backlight that selectively dims in HDR mode for increased contrast. It has the build quality to rival any Asus ROG or BenQ monitor. And it features the latest connectivity with two USB-C ports, HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4. And yes, its picture looks better with the glossy coating. Let’s take a closer look.

Assembly and Accessories

The Spectrum Glossy comes packed in separate boxes for the panel and stand. A 100mm VESA mount is provided, so you can save $99 if you plan to use your own mount or arm. The unboxing experience is elevated by clear instructions showing what to unpack first and where to find the external power supply. A large envelope labeled “Start” tells you where to... you know. And there is no crumbly foam, just a tiny amount of rubbery padding to protect the panel, while the rest of the carton is recyclable cardboard. There are no additional cables, so you’ll have to source your own video and USB wiring.

Product 360

I label many monitors’ styling as “minimalist,” but the Spectrum Glossy is perhaps the true definition of that term. It is simple to the core. The panel is thinner than most with a small component bulge in the middle for the inputs and stand/arm attachment. The stand is also very simple with a metal upright and base that are just large enough to fulfill their functions. The assembled monitor is very sturdy. There’s no swivel adjustment, but you get a smooth and firm height adjustment of 4.8 inches along with 7/23 degrees tilt and a 90-degree portrait mode. Physical interaction with the monitor is a premium experience all the way.

The screen coating is indeed glossy. It isn’t quite the mirror finish one you've probably seen on an OLED panel, but it definitely picks up light. The photo above is an extreme example because the light shining on my face is right next to the monitor. But it demonstrates that you can’t put the Spectrum Glossy next to a sunny window or under an overhead light.

The upside of a glossy coating is the optical clarity it provides. An anti-reflective layer does its thing with texture. If you were to view a typical 3H coating under a microscope, it would look like a mountain range. Those tiny undulations are what scatter incoming light. Take that away, and you have something closer to a mirror. But the light behind that layer has an easier time getting out undistorted. The end result is a clearer and more saturated picture. You can’t measure higher contrast or color saturation from a glossy screen, but your eye will perceive those things. And the Spectrum Glossy has a clearer and punchier image than its matte-coated cousin.

The inputs are on the component bulge with video underneath and USB/audio on the left side. You get two HDMI 2.1 ports, a single DisplayPort 1.4 and a video-capable USB-C. On the side is another USB-C that can deliver up to 100 watts for charging and two USB-A downstream ports. And there’s a USB-B upstream port too, so you can connect the other USB ports to your pC. There are plenty of options here for both signal handling and peripherals.

OSD Features

The Spectrum Glossy’s OSD is activated by a joystick which you’ll find under the back center of the panel. Underneath that is a power toggle key. Press the joystick to reveal a simple and efficient menu system.

Every screen has signal information at the top, active input, SDR/HDR status, input resolution and refresh rate. The Input/Output menu has many options for the USB hub, which can act as a KVM switch so one monitor, keyboard and mouse can service two systems. You can also activate a PBP function to view two sources at once.

The Gaming menu has a selection of aiming points in three designs and three colors. The Dough option puts the logo, an inverted triangle, at the center of the screen, while the frame rate counter can appear in any corner of the screen.

Presets refer to the three settings memories. The Spectrum Glossy does away with labeled picture modes and, instead, allows the user to create their own modes for later recall. This is another simple and elegant solution to the confusion often associated with picture modes.

The Picture menu has a complete set of image options including DCI-P3 or sRGB color, brightness/contrast, sharpness, three color temps and four gamma curves. You can also adjust RGB sliders with 256-click resolution. The only flaw I noted here was that you can’t calibrate the sRGB mode since the color temp and gamma controls are grayed out. But you can achieve excellent results by adjusting the DCI-P3 mode.

The Performance menu is where you’ll find the gaming magic. The Response Time (overdrive) has three presets plus a user-adjustable option. You can fine-tune the overdrive while viewing a test pattern which is something no other monitor can do, in my experience. If you choose the Backlight Strobe, instead of Adaptive-Sync, you can adjust the pulse width for more or less brightness. You can also adjust the phase, which is another unique feature. If you see phasing in moving objects, where there is an extra copy of that object moving just a few pixels behind, you can tweak that down to a minimum using this control.

In addition to control over the OSD’s appearance, you can play with the tiny power LED located in the bottom center of the panel. It can show up in any color of the rainbow and flash or pulse, or stay on steadily.

Dough Spectrum ES07D03 Glossy Calibration Settings

The Spectrum Glossy requires calibration for the best possible image. You can achieve this precisely with a fine set of RGB sliders. I got grayscale tracking well below the point of visible error. Gamma runs slightly light, but this did not detract from the picture quality. DCI-P3 is the default gamut. You can choose sRGB, but then you’re stuck with a slightly blue grayscale as the color temps are grayed out. There is a backlight dimming option in the OSD, but it only works for HDR content. Speaking of that mode, it has perfect grayscale and EOTF tracking with slightly over-saturated color. The zone-dimming option is active in HDR mode which ups contrast significantly. My recommended SDR settings are below. HDR has no picture options available.

Gaming and Hands-on

The Spectrum Glossy impressed me as soon as my familiar Windows desktop image appeared. It’s a beach scene with a brilliant blue sky that pops on colorful high-contrast monitors. The screen’s coating definitely heightened the perception of saturation and depth. The runner in the foreground is almost a total silhouette, but some small details can be seen. This is one gorgeous monitor.

Nvidia control panel recognized the Spectrum’s G-Sync capability right away and set everything correctly, including the 144 Hz refresh rate, without my intervention. I also tested it with a FreeSync PC and had the same experience. I also confirmed it would play 24p from Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray discs, as well as streamed content from an Apple TV. There should be no handshake issues with this monitor.

Color was superb in every instance, YouTube video, graphics in Photoshop and small app icons. The detail was razor sharp, a bit more so than a monitor with a matte screen. The optical advantage of the glossy coating is easy to see in a side-by-side comparison. And it’s well worth the extra cost if your room has no harsh light sources.

Before moving on to gaming, I explored the many video processing options using the trusty tests from BlurBusters. The moving UFO and moving photo patterns are perfect for setting overdrive and backlight strobe parameters. The Normal overdrive setting was nearly perfect, but I got slightly better motion resolution by tweaking the User Defined slider. Here are the values I used.

• Overdrive User Defined – 17
• Backlight Strobe Pulse Width – 16
• Backlight Strobe Pulse Phase - 40

If you prefer to use the backlight strobe instead of Adaptive-Sync, I recommend adjusting the Pulse Phase control. First, set the Pulse Width to hit the best brightness and blur reduction balance. Then, watch the pattern and lower the phase until the two moving objects are close to becoming one. They’ll never be perfect, but with this control, you can get them closer than on any other monitor I’ve tested. And this is one of a handful of screens where the backlight strobe is a compelling option to Adaptive-Sync. Once I spent some time with these features, I had turned the Spectrum Glossy into an amazing-looking 4K gaming monitor. It truly has the best motion processing I’ve ever experienced.

I jumped right into the horde mode of Doom Eternal. I typically see frame rates around 120 in this game which produces a bit of blur on nearly every 4K monitor I review. The Spectrum Glossy completely fools the eye into thinking the frame rate is higher. Its overdrive is so smooth and clean, that I could be convinced it’s running at 165 Hz. The backlight strobe is equally competent. You can use the two features interchangeably if you wish. That’s something I seldom experience.

HDR is very effective here, thanks to a bump in color saturation and the zone-dimming backlight. Though it is just 16 zones from an edge array, it uses that feature to full potential. Shadows are deep and dark, but still very detailed. Highlights pop without being harsh. Color is rich and vivid whether the environment is a cold, snowy arena or a lush green forest.

The SDR and HDR versions of Call of Duty WWII showed clear differences. Bright scenes are more three-dimensional in HDR, while dark material is clear and detailed. The SDR version of the SOE Train mission made sneaking through the shadows a little difficult. I could make out all the details, but I had to turn off all the room lights. HDR creates a more versatile image that works in a wide variety of room conditions.

The Spectrum Glossy checks all the essential boxes for what makes a good gaming display. Its image quality is as good as the best monitors I’ve reviewed, and its video processing is unmatched.

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To compare the Dough Spectrum Glossy’s performance, I’ve rounded up the Spectrum Matte, Corsair 32UHD144, Sony U27M90, HP Omen 27u and Dell G3223Q. All are 4K 144 Hz monitors with wide gamuts and HDR.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The Spectrum Glossy responds at the same speed as any other 144 Hz screen, 7ms, which gives it decent, if not life-changing, motion blur characteristics. The differences between monitors running at the same speed come down to the overdrive, and there, the Dough monitors have a distinct advantage.

Both Dough displays are a tad slower in overall lag than the competition. I don’t notice a two or three-millisecond difference during gameplay, but more skilled players might. However, if you’re that good, you might be better served running a lower resolution at a higher frame rate. The Spectrum monitors are as good as it gets for motion resolution in 4K.

Viewing Angles

The glossy coating doesn’t affect viewing angles. The Spectrum, like most IPS panels, goes green at 45 degrees horizontal. However, the drop in brightness is only around 10%, which is better than most. The top view is also better than I typically see. Though there is an obvious blue tint, detail isn’t as thoroughly washed out. Brightness is down around 40%.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

My Spectrum Glossy sample wasn’t quite as tight as the matte panel I reviewed last year. But at 11.06% deviation, the issues are minor. I could see a slight glow in the lower left corner, but the rest of the screen was visually perfect. There were no color aberrations or variations in brighter patterns. There was no visible problem in actual content.

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To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The Spectrum Glossy was slightly less bright than its Matte counterpart, but this difference should not be attributed to the screen coating. 30 nits is a normal variation between samples of the same monitor. And 410 nits is more than enough juice for any office or game room. That slightly lower number means a little lower black level as well. The contrast is nearly the same at 1075.5:1. Again, that 19-point difference from the Spectrum Matte is normal. The two panels are identical except for the screen coating. All the panels here are very close in their contrast performance. But the Spectrum Glossy will seem a little punchier to the naked eye.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration of the DCI-P3 gamut mode brings the two Dough monitors to almost identical numbers. They are generally about average among IPS panels and slightly ahead of the 4K monitors in the comparison group. My only comment here is that you can’t use the zone dimming feature for SDR material. It’s available in HDR mode only.

The ANSI results are nearly identical to the static ones for both Dough monitors, which speaks to their component quality and precision of assembly. Getting the all-important grid polarizer aligned properly can make or break a monitor’s intra-image contrast and Dough has clearly gotten that right.

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The Dough Spectrum Glossy does away with picture modes in favor of three user-configurable memories. You can choose DCI-P3 or sRGB color and in the former mode, calibrate grayscale and choose a gamma preset.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

Dough includes a calibration data sheet with the Spectrum Glossy, but I found my sample a bit off the mark by default. It requires calibration for the best possible picture. A gray step pattern shows a visible blue tint from 40 to 100% brightness. It isn’t a huge error but the Matte sample I tested last year fared better. Gamma tracks a little light, but this issue is hard to spot in actual content.

With calibration, the result becomes reference level. Grayscale is visually perfect and gamma is nearly the same. The 90% step has become a tad brighter, but this doesn’t negatively impact the image.

In sRGB mode, the color temp presets and RGB sliders are grayed out, so you have to accept the bluish-white point shown above. Gamma tracks a bit under the line with an elevated step at 10%. If calibration options were kept active in sRGB mode, this monitor would be about as close to perfect as a display can get.

Comparisons

My Spectrum Glossy sample disappointed a bit in the grayscale test with a 4.40dE average, meaning the error is visible to the naked eye. The Matte sample I tested had no visible issues. This problem is easily solved with calibration or by using the settings I listed previously.

With adjustments to the very precise RGB sliders, the error drops to a very low 0.76dE. Only the Corsair and the Spectrum Matte are better. In the realm of the visible, all these monitors look identical once calibrated.

In the gamma test, the Spectrum Glossy has a tighter range of values but a slightly lower average. Its 4.09% deviation translates to an actual value of 2.11, which is a respectable performance. In a visual comparison, given the right room environment (i.e., no reflections), the Glossy will have a little more punch and saturation thanks to its optically superior screen coating.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The Spectrum Glossy fares better in the color gamut test. You can see that it nearly fills the DCI-P3 space with slight under-saturation in green and red. The grayscale errors produce a hue issue for magenta and cyan where they are pulled off-target.

Calibration improves color visually and puts all points on their targets. Every measurement is inside or in contact with its box, which represents 1dE. It doesn’t get much better than this.

The sRGB gamut is fairly close to the mark but has the same errors as the default version of DCI-P3. If the grayscale could be calibrated, it would be more accurate. But if you need sRGB for a particular application, it is usable.

Comparisons

With calibration, the Spectrum Glossy scores higher than average in the color gamut test. Even without adjustment, it performs well with a 2.86dE result. 1.36dE is visibly better though so it’s worth making the tweaks to get the most out of it. Since the Spectrum Matte scores even better at 0.90dE, it’s safe to say that a different example of the Glossy monitor might deliver the same result. Either way, this is a very accurate display.

Though there are a few wide gamut monitors with larger color volumes, the Spectrum Glossy is above average at 93.66% coverage of DCI-P3. Only green comes up a tad short which is typical performance for the category. The sRGB gamut is close to full coverage as well. For color critical work, the DCI-P3 mode is fine on its own, but sRGB should be enhanced with a software lookup table.

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Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The Spectrum Glossy is in the middle tier of HDR monitors that have edge backlights with selective dimming. 16 zones mean better contrast for HDR content.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The Spectrum Glossy easily beats its benchmark of 600 nits for the DisplayHDR 600 certification. It isn’t quite at the level of its Matte counterpart, but again, you’ll have a hard time discerning a difference of 27 nits. There is more than enough headroom for the bright highlights that make HDR better than SDR.

The zone dimming edge backlight delivers excellent black levels for a final contrast result of 17,672.3:1. While the Sony wins this contest, both Dough displays are among the better HDR monitors I’ve tested. There is a lot of contrast and dimension available for all HDR content, games and movies alike. You’ll have to spend a lot more money for a FALD or Mini LED panel to do better than this.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The Spectrum Glossy’s HDR grayscale/EOTF tracking is at reference level. The grayscale lacks visual errors at every brightness step. The EOTF starts out a little dark, then gets to the transition point about 5% too early. In practice, this means deeper shadows and brighter highlights. I never saw any detail clipping in the content I viewed, so these luminance errors have no visible impact.

In the HDR color gamut tests, the Spectrum Glossy is generally over-saturated in red and blue and on-target for green, which is typical performance. Nearly all wide gamut monitors push the envelope to make a greater difference between SDR and HDR content. In practice, it works well without obscuring any detail.

I also measured the Spectrum Glossy against the Rec.2020 standard and found much the same performance. Here, I’d prefer to see the points on target until the display’s color runs out. You can see that the 80% and 100% points are very close. This makes some highlight detail harder to see. Ideally, the points should be linear from the center of the triangle to the perimeter. I’ll concede that this is a minor point. Nearly all wide gamut monitors respond the same way. The Dough Spectrum Glossy delivers colorful and accurate HDR images.

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In the television world, glossy screens are common, especially in premium models. The optical advantages are that you can see the pixels more clearly, so contrast seems greater, and color seems more saturated. And image detail is cleaner and sharper. It is true that the room must be considered when installing a glossy display. Lamps, overhead fixtures and sunny windows can have a deleterious effect on that stunning picture. But if you have the right conditions, a glossy screen provides a significant improvement.

Dough, formerly Eve Devices, impressed me with its original Spectrum 4K display last year. Not only does it have a stunning image, but its video processing is second to none. Though it hits the same 144 Hz as other 4K screens, the superb overdrive makes it seem to be running at a higher frame rate.

The Spectrum Glossy delivers the best gaming performance I’ve seen from any 4K monitor. Until we see higher refresh rates, and video cards capable of exploiting them (perhaps with the RTX 4090), 120fps is the practical limit for now. Ideally, a monitor’s overdrive must be precise and accurate. It can’t over or undershoot the mark. The Spectrum Glossy not only includes a preset that’s near-perfect, but it also lets you tweak a fine-resolution slider to make it even better.

It also has the best backlight strobe feature I’ve ever seen. Very few monitors present a blur-reduction option that I actually want to use. The Spectrum Glossy is one of those few. Since I can precisely control the pulse width and phase, I can eliminate the artifacts typically associated with this technology, namely phasing and a dim picture.

My only complaint about the Spectrum Glossy was its need for calibration. The Matte version I reviewed previously was visually perfect out of the box. But the Glossy needed some adjustment to its RGB sliders. For me, this is a minor issue that is easily offset by its mesmerizing image and performance.

If you want to play at 4K resolution, the Dough Spectrum Glossy is easily the best choice if you weigh video processing equally with image quality. There are a few more expensive screens that are brighter and have larger color gamuts, but nothing can touch the Spectrum’s video processing. As a gaming monitor, it has no true equal.

That said, it's worth pointing out that the company has had problems in the past (back when it was called Eve) shipping products to buyers in a reasonable time frame. But as of this writing, the product page for the Spectrum claims the an estimated time of October 2022 and comes with a 14-day "risk-free trial."

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Reports published in Taiwan’s business-facing journals don’t paint a rosy picture of the PC industry. Today the China Times reported that PC-making OEMs like Acer, Asus, and MSI are seeing their inventories “burst” with stock, which has been kept back due to retail channels not being able to clear products. Similar problems face the ODMs who make PCs and laptops for the likes of HP, Dell, Apple, et al.

Two of the worst affected companies with inventory overload are Asus and Quanta. Asus looks like it is in particularly bad shape among the OEMs, with the equivalent of $6.8bn worth of inventory going nowhere. This represents a near 60% increase over its inventory levels at the same time last year. Only Quanta has greater inventory, worth approx $8.4bn, which is nearly a 55% increase over last year.

Interestingly, the China Times report, highlighted by analyst Dan Nystedt, has some deeper insider info about the makeup of Asus inventory and the company’s perspective on the situation. Apparently, about half of Asus inventory is finished products, and the other half is components and ICs.

Some Asus products and components will reportedly have to be sold in the coming quarter(s), or they will be out of date and lose a lot of value. However, Asus estimates it can use about 80-90% of its inventory ICs and components to make next-gen products and PCs. Nevertheless, Asus has set a target to clear a quarter of its existing inventory by the end of the year.

Aggressive inventory clearance targets, like the one set by Asus, could be good for end-users looking to snap up a bargain. The China Times sources reckon most PC brands will “aggressively push finished products to the channel through discounts and promotions.” As a result, PC and components makers will simply have to sacrifice some profits to see retail stocks and warehouse inventories clear. How the companies achieve this could make quite some difference to their Q3 and Q4 2022 financials.

Of course, the above inventory issues are being experienced as recession fears heighten. At the height of the pandemic, consumers and companies couldn’t get enough PCs for entertainment and WFH, and we saw some components in extremely short supply – made much worse by the crypto boom in the case of GPUs. However, the demand curve seems to have snapped back very rapidly, with crypto crashing, the energy crunch, and the war in Ukraine (though these three effects might be closely connected).

When you use the same tool for work and your personal life, as more and more of us do these days (though that may not be the best idea!), you need it to do everything well. Few achieve that. But the HP Spectre x360 13.5 ($1,249.99 to start; $1,749.99 as tested) is the rare jack-of-all-trades that cuts few corners as a do-it-all device.

It isn't the most powerful laptop out there — in fact, HP is using a 15W Intel U-series processor here, which seems to help with battery life. But those who use spreadsheets and text documents, browse the web and do nothing more strenuous than some photo editing should be fine.

The slim design boasts its fair share of ports (not including the dongle that comes in the box), a crisp OLED display, a high-resolution webcam and decent battery life (considering that display, anyway). Frankly, there's very little for me to say negatively about it. In the premium space, this Spectre x360 is one of the best ultrabooks that I've tested in the past few months.

Design of the HP Spectre x360 13.5

HP has made one handsome laptop. The Spectre x360 13.5 is simple and clean, with a few flourishes to make it feel like a fashion item, not just hardware.The Spectre's recycled aluminum chassis feels premium in the hands.

We tested it in "nightfall black" with brass accents, though you can also get it in silver or a dark blue. HP's logo reflects off the lid in the light gold color, which also highlights the edges of the device. It's especially noticeable on the back edges of the laptop, which are cut flat to fit ports.

When you open the laptop, you'll see that the 13.5-inch, 3:2 display has thin bezels on the side, though HP left more room on the top and bottom, presumably to fit the 5 megapixel camera. Considering how much screen real estate you get with the taller aspect ratio, I can take a bit of bezel. The right side of the screen is magnetized so you can attach an included stylus for storage.

The backlit keyboard has a large, striking font on it, with the exception of an empty space for the fingerprint reader. That fingerprint reader worked quickly and accurately when I couldn't use facial recognition because I was wearing a mask. The spacious touchpad also has the same brass trimming as the rest of the notebook.

With a pair of 360-degree hinges, the Spectre can be folded all the way back into a tablet. You can also put it in tent mode or balance it on the keyboard with the stand up to use as a display. The 3:2 aspect ratio helps here. I find it far more natural to use that shape screen as a tablet compared to a typical 16:9 display.

Despite how thin the Spectre is, HP has crammed a few ports into it. On the right side, there are a pair of Thunderbolt 4 ports — one on the side and one on the cut off corner. The left side has a USB Type-A port, which HP fit in with a drop-jaw hinge, as well as a 3.5 mm headphone jack on the corner. I admire HP for cramming USB Type-A in there, as many thin laptops have gone exclusively to USB Type-C. That being said, it can be finicky to get peripherals in there.

HP also includes a surprisingly premium USB-C hub, with two more USB-A ports and an HDMI port as well as a USB-C for pass-through charging. It has a short, braided cable (The power supply also has a braided cable, which feels premium. It should be at this price point!)

The Spectre weighs 3.01 pounds and measures 11.74 x 8.68 x 0.67 inches. It felt perfectly reasonable in my backpack (in HP's included sleeve, a nice touch). The Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7, a rival convertible, is 3.09 pounds and 12.5 x 9.06 x 0.6 inches. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 (7420), a mid-range convertible with the same processor as the Spectre,  is 12.36 x 8.95 x 0.7 inches and 3.46 pounds. Apple's MacBook Air, a clamshell laptop with a fanless design, is 2.7 pounds and 11.97 x 8.45 x 0.44 inches. 

HP Spectre x360 13.5 Specifications

Productivity Performance on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

We tested the HP Spectre x360 with an Intel Core i7-1255U, 16GB of RAM and a 1TB PCIe NVMe SSD. HP's choice of a U-series processor here suggests that the company is focused on keeping the Spectre cool and quiet. This is the same CPU we saw in the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, while the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7, which is also a slim 2-in-1, went with a higher-wattage Intel Core i7-1260P. We're also tossing in Apple's MacBook Air with M2 into the test pool, which is also quiet, because that system doesn't have a fan at all.

On Geekbench 5, an overall performance test with an emphasis on the CPU, the Spectre notched a single-core score of 1,668 and a multi-core score of 7,243. The Lenovo Yoga 9 Gen 7  with a Core i7-1260P traded blows with the Spectre, scoring slightly higher on single-core (1,722) and slightly lower on multi-core (7,150). The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1, with the same processor as the Spectre, was very similar on single-core (1,693) but behind on multi-core performance (6,527). Apple's M2 showed off, winning on both single-core (1,932) and multi-core (8,919) performance. 

HP's convertible copied 25GB of files at a rate of 1,363.29 MBps. The Yoga was faster here (1,506.89 MBps). The MacBook Air was a bit slower (958.85 MBps), while the Inspiron, at 404.86 MBps, dragged in comparison.

We use Handbrake to have laptops transcode a 4K video to 1080p. It took the Spectre 10 minutes and 33 seconds to complete the task, coming out ahead of the Yoga and its higher-wattage CPU (12:18), but in a rare victory, the cheaper Inspiron was faster (9:59) than its Windows counterparts. The MacBook Air, with its M2 chip, won out at 7:52.

To stress test the Spectre, we ran the demanding Cinebench R23 benchmark 20 times on a loop. The laptop started by putting up a score of 6,619.97, before dropping to the low 6,000s, where it would spend most of the test. There were a few drops to the mid-to-low 5,000's, which likely coincided with when I heard the fans ramp up.

The Core i7-1255U's two performance cores ran at an average of 2.36 GHz, while the eight efficiency cores averaged 1.84 GHz. The CPU package measured an average of 67.08 degrees Celsius.

Display on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

The Spectre x360 has a 13.5-inch display with a 3:2 aspect ratio to show as much of your work as possible. It's great if, like me, you write a lot and want to see more of your work. It also means less scrolling as you read. We tested HP's 3000 x 2000 OLED display which is bright and vivid, though the company also has 1080p touch screens.

The screen isn't quite 4K, but I used it to watch one of our test films, the 4K short Tears of Steel. A very early scene features two characters, one dressed in dark clothes, the other in neon blues and pinks. Those colors stood out against the deep blacks, as well as out-of-focus greens from leaves in the background.

HP's panel covers 124% of the sRGB color gamut, and 87.7% of the DCI-P3 gamut besting the non-OLED competitors, though falling short of the exceptionally vivid Yoga 9i (198% and 140.1%, respectively).

But the Spectre, at 355 nits of brightness, beat the Yoga's 352 nits. The MacBook Air, however, was the most luminous at 489 nits. When we put a white square on a black background, which occasionally boosts brightness in select areas on OLED screens, the Spectre's selection climbed to 362 nits.

Keyboard, Touchpad and Stylus on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

The Spectre has clicky, responsive keys, but I wish the travel were a bit deeper. Still, on the Monkeytype typing test, I reached 114 words per minute with 98% accuracy. That's about as good as I tend to do.

The power button is on the keyboard, to the left of the delete key. A simple tap won't turn the machine off, thankfully. Perhaps the only other big issue is that HP has opted for half-height up and down arrow keys. I much prefer an inverted-T shape, which I've seen HP use on other laptops, like its Victus gaming lineup.

HP's 4.9 x 3.1-inch touchpad, surrounded by brass accents, is big and smooth. There's plenty of room to comfortably perform Window's four-finger gestures, like swipes between virtual desktops. It's comfortable, and accurate. The stylus has a new home on the right side of the display. (On this laptop's predecessor, the Spectre x360 14 that we reviewed in 2021, it attached magnetically to the left side of the keyboard). This reminds me a bit of Microsoft's Surface Pro 8.

The pen, the HP Rechargeable MPP 2.0 Tilt Pen, is decent. It's round with a flat edge (that's the one that attaches to the screen) with two barrel buttons. The top slides up to reveal a USB-C port for charging, which is far more convenient than replacing batteries. As someone who takes notes more than drawing, I'd prefer something a bit thinner. But you need very little pressure to get a response (HP claims nine grams on its website), and in sketching apps, tilting the pen allows for shading.

Audio on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

The speakers on the Spectre x360 continue HP's long partnership with Bang & Olufsen. It's been fruitful, and I feel the Spectre continues on trend.

Arlo Parks' "Softly" was crisp and clear on the Spectre. It got loud enough to fill my apartment (others get louder, but this is plenty for when I'm sitting in front of it and using it), and the vocals, keys and synths were all clear. The drums could use a bit more kick, though the low-end is often an issue on laptops.

There are some equalizer changes you can make in the included Bang & Olufsen audio control app, and some patience with the bass section did boost the percussion a little bit.

I preferred the sound of the bottom firing-speaker hitting my desk as opposed to being in tablet mode, when the speakers fire against the lid, but the difference isn't terribly stark.

Upgradeability of the HP Spectre x360 13.5

Consider me pleasantly surprised. I've reviewed a number of HP laptops that were effectively unrepairable without professional help because screws were placed beneath adhesive strips. When I checked the Spectre x360 13.5's service manual, I was surprised to find those strips (which are still there on the Spectre x360 14) don't need to come off to open the laptop.

Four Torx screws secure the bottom cover to the computer. (The service guide says that they're Phillips head screws. They are not). The screws closer to the hinges are longer than those near the front of the laptop, so be sure to keep them separate and remember what goes where.

With those removed, you can use a pry tool to gently separate the base from the rest of the laptop.

When you're in, you'll see that the m.2 2280 SSD can be removed and replaced, as can the network card and the battery. The SSD is underneath a copper heatsink held down by a pair of Phillips head screws, while the networking card is under an adhesive, papery heat shield. HP has gone with soldered memory on this laptop.

There is a small bit of empty space to the right of the battery. It makes me wonder whether this could have been designed with either a larger battery, or perhaps a motherboard with room for another storage drive. But hey, at least you can get into this Spectre at all.

Battery Life

The Spectre x360 ran for 10 hours and 12 minutes on our battery test, in which we have laptops browse the web, stream video over Wi-Fi and run OpenGL tests, all with the screen set to 150 nits of brightness.

This was more than two hours longer than the Lenovo Yoga 9i, which I suspect may be partially because of the Spectre's lower-wattage processor. This is also a pretty strong number for an OLED laptop, as those screens really suck up juice. Dell's budget Inspiron 14 2-in-1 lasted only 7:52. The MacBook Air did the best on our test at 14:06.

Heat on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

In any position, the Spectre shouldn't be too hot to handle. We took our skin temperature measurements while running our Cinebench stress test to see how hot the Spectre x360 gets under an intensive workload.

At the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, the laptop measured 37.4 degrees Celsius (99.5 degrees Fahrenheit). I could feel the heat on my hands, but I wouldn't say the laptop was unusable. The touchpad was chillier at 31.8 degrees Celsius (89.24 degrees Fahrenheit).

On the bottom of the laptop, the hottest point measured 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit), towards the back, though most of the laptop was cooler.

Webcam on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

HP seems serious about the webcam on the Spectre x360. It's a 5MP lens with dedicated software for making adjustments. HP calls this "GlamCam," and it's nestled in the HP Command Center app.

The camera works quite well. At my office desk, which is well-lit from nearby windows and fluorescent lights, I could make out a ton of detail in the camera, from individual hairs on my head to bags under my eyes from not sleeping great the night before.

GlamCam has an auto-frame feature that's designed to keep you in the camera frame while you move around, similar to Apple's Center Stage on the iPad. I don't tend to move from my desk much during calls, but in testing it out, I did find that while it typically worked, the motion could be a bit jarring. It was also less likely to follow me around while I was wearing a facemask and using the laptop in public — I suspect it's looking for an entire face.

There's also lighting correction, which made extremely subtle changes at my well-lit office desk. At home, I have some bright windows behind my desk. While HP's software couldn't stop that light from appearing harsh, it did adjust the tone a bit so that the contrast wasn't so intense.

The one that made the most difference was the appearance filter, which "retouches" your face. I found that on steps two and three (step one appeared to be my regular face), it noticeably removed small wrinkles and bags under my eyes. In fact, the third step seemed a bit fake. The step was also extreme, and smoothed out other details, like hairs. I even looked like I had fewer eyelashes.

I'm of two minds about this. If it makes someone feel more comfortable, great, but I also am not sure that it should be up to laptop companies to perpetuate these standards of appearance. That being said, no one is making you use any of these features, and they're off by default.

There's a built-in camera shutter, which you can activate by pressing a dedicated button on the keyboard. The infrared sensors let you log in with Windows Hello facial recognition, which worked flawlessly for me except for the times I forgot to disengage the privacy shutter.

Software and Warranty on the HP Spectre x360 13.5

There are over 13 pieces of software with the name "HP" in it preinstalled on the laptop, and that's on top of promotional trials for Dropbox, ExpressVPN, McAfee LiveSafe, McAfee WebAdvisor and others. Some of these even have bookmarks in the Edge browser, which is something you typically see on much cheaper notebooks, not premium ones.

Some of it, like the HP Command Center can be useful. It lets you pick from different power plans and has some camera customizations under the HP GlamCam tab. I think other apps, like an app to adjust pen settings to and to pick between different display modes should be built in here.

Other apps include HP Quickdrop to move files between your laptop and phone, Concepts for drawing and sketching, Duet to put your PC screen on another device and Palette, which helps sort and match photos. Some of these, like Concepts, have in-app purchases for more tools (in that app, it's a wider variety of brushes). It's effectively an entire creative suite between your phone and the Spectre, but it's a lot to be preinstalled.

HP sells the Spectre x360 with a one-year warranty. Extended services can be purchased if you buy the laptop from HP's website.

HP Spectre x360 13.5 Configurations

We tested the HP Spectre x360 13.5 in black with an Intel Core i7-1225U, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 3000 x 2000 OLED touchscreen. That runs for $1,749.99 at Best Buy and is also available as a custom configuration from HP's website.

The laptop starts at $1,249.99 (though is on sale for $1,199.99 as of this writing) in silver with an Intel Core i5-1235U, 8GB of RAM, 512GB of storage and a 1920 x 1080 touchscreen.

Other options include a "nocturne blue" chassis (changing colors from the default silver on HP's website costs an extra $10), up to 32GB of RAM, a 1080p screen with privacy features and up to 2TB of storage. It costs $2,029.99 maxxed out.

Bottom Line

The HP Spectre x360 13.5 is a classy, capable 2-in-1 with a decent number of ports, a colorful OLED screen and a sharp, high-resolution webcam. While HP opted for Intel's 15W U-series processors rather than the more powerful 28W P-series option in some competitors, most users won't want for performance

Among premium Windows ultraportables, the Spectre's biggest competition is the Lenovo Yoga 9i Gen 7, a 14-inch convertible 2-in-1, which uses the 28W parts and in some use cases outpaces the Spectre in performance. The Yoga also has a brighter, more vivid OLED display. But the Spectre comes with a stylus, which the Yoga doesn't, has longer battery life and is surprisingly easy to upgrade storage with down the line. The Spectre, at the moment, seems a bit easier to buy. Several configurations, including the Yoga 9i we reviewed, have been out of stock at Lenovo and other retailers as of late.

Apple's MacBook Air reigns on battery life and in some performance use cases, and if your priority is thinness, it may make sense for you. But the Spectre x360, with its convertible design and touch screen, has a number of features that laptop lacks. If the Spectre x360's $1,299.99 starting price is too much for your wallet, the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 is cheaper, and we liked it.

But pound-for-pound, the HP Spectre x360 13.5 is among the best ultrabooks we've tested of late. If you want to balance performance, battery life and ports with a sharp webcam and a gorgeous display, the Spectre has it all unequivocally.

A traditional laptop for professionals should ideally be affordable, slim, and able to churn through powerful productivity tasks. The HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr) ticks those boxes in all the ways that matter. Its traditional design may be a bit boring, but the Pavilion is packed with a 12th Generation Intel Core i7-12700H CPU, a beautiful 90 Hz OLED display with a 16:10 aspect ratio, and all the ports you could ask for in a slim package. 

With specs like these at an enticing price of $999.99, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 could make our best ultrabooks and premium laptops list. However, sub-par battery life could be a deal-breaker for some.

Design of the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 has a generic silver color scheme with polished, circular branding in the center lid of the chassis. The streamlined design has a thin hinge attached to a bar in the back that says Pavillion on it. Beneath the laptop are two horizontal feet and two cutout speakers on either side. When you open up the lid to reveal the deck, there’s more branding on the left palm rest and a fingerprint scanner on the right. The keycaps are a matching silver, with gray letters that are white when the backlight shines through. The trackpad follows suit with silver borders and a gray center.

The left side of the Pavilion Plus 14 houses a 3.5mm headphone jack, a USB Type-A port, and a MicroSD reader. Meanwhile, the right side holds another USB Type-A port, two USB Type-C ports (with DisplayPort and Power Delivery capabilities), and an HDMI 2.1 port.

Although the Pavillion Plus 14 is the slimmest Pavillion from HP yet, its dimensions and weight of 12.34 x 8.83 x 0.72 inches and 3.09 pounds are still similar to competing laptops. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon has a 12.32 x 8.44 x 0.59-inch footprint at 2.43 pounds. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 comes in at 12.36 x 8.95 x 0.70-inches and 3.46 pounds, while the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED measures 11.68 x 8.29 x 0.59 inches and 2.43 pounds. In short, the Lenovo and the Asus are about a half-pound heavier and slimmer.

The design of the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is a bit bland and generic, but clean; it’ll fit right in at the office. And despite its slim build, it fits in all the ports you’d expect to remain productive.

HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr) Specifications

Productivity Performance on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 has a 12th Gen Intel Core i7-12700H processor with 14 cores (six performance and eight efficiency cores) and 20 threads. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 also sports 16GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB SSD.

On Geekbench 5, an overall performance benchmark with heavy CPU focus, the Pavilion Plus 14 notched a single-core score of 1,698 and a multi-core score of 9,349. Despite being the cheapest among its competitors, the HP scored the best here. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon (Ryzen 7 5800U) had a 1,446 single-core score and a 6,241 multi-core score. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 and its Intel Core i7-1255U (1,693/6,527) scored around the same ballpark. The Asus ZenBook S 13 OLED’s Ryzen 7 6800U had similar performance, albeit with a slightly better multi-core score.

On the other hand, the Pavilion’s SSD was the slowest to duplicate 25GB of test files, at a rate of 373.84MBps. The Inspiron was a bit further ahead at 404.86MBps, while the IdeaPad Slim 7 was much faster at 799.9Mbps. The Zenbook S 13 blew all three out of the water, though, with a rate of 1,543.86Mbps.

On our Handbrake test, we have laptops transcode a test video from 4K to 1080p. The Pavilion performed this task in 7 minutes and 19 seconds, the fastest of the bunch. The IdeaPad and ZenBook practically tied at around 8 minutes, with the Inspiron taking the longest at 9:59.

To see how productivity notebooks handle long computing tasks, we run the Cinebench R23 benchmark 20 times in a row. The Pavilion started with a score of 12,139.09 and, after a few runs, fluctuated mostly between the 9,800-10,000 range.

As Cinebench R23 ran, the Intel Core i7-12700H’s performance cores ran at an average of 2.07GHz, and the efficiency cores averaged 1.99GHz. The CPU measured an average temperature of 86 degrees Celsius, sometimes jolting towards 92 degrees Celsius.

Display on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The display on our configuration of the HP Pavilion 14, a 14-inch, 2880 x 1800 90 Hz OLED panel, is excellent for the most part. Movies and tv shows look great. When I was watching the latest Resident Evil series, I was impressed by how well the display captured color. As Jade ran around a burning compound during the second episode, I appreciated how great the vermillion red of the fire illuminated the darkness of the scene. True blacks are captured well during moments in the clinical Umbrella Company headquarters, especially when the dark dwellings contrast with the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

Unfortunately, the screen has no anti-glare treatment (or if it’s there, it doesn’t work), so a lot of light and background images reflect off the screen. It’s very distracting and takes away from the otherwise great display.

The HP Pavilion 14’s panel covers 137.5% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 194% of the sRGB gamut. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon was the only one of the competitors to rival the Pavilion’s numbers with 139.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 197% of the sRGB gamut. The Pavilion 14 also was the brightest at 381.8 nits, with the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED being the only rival bright enough to compete, at 321 nits.

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The full-size keyboard on the HP Pavilion Plus feels clicky and responsive, which made my typing experience easy and enjoyable. I also appreciate the backlighting and the placement of the home, pg up, pg down, and end keys along the right side of the keyboard. When I tested my typing skills on 10fastfingers, I scored 58 words per minute with a 97.32% accuracy. That’s in the ballpark of the 65 WPM and 95.86% accuracy I got on the Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1.

I love how spacious the touchpad is, as well as the shiny silver lining that borders it. With it, I executed gestures comfortably, and the clicking mechanism gave me no issues. There’s also a fingerprint scanner to the right of the touchpad that worked effectively for me to sign into Windows 11.

Audio on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The audio on the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is suitable for watching movies and TV and less desirable for listening to music. When I fired up Spotify and heard “911” by Wyclef Jean (feat Mary J Blige), although the kicks and bass were audible, the maximum volume was less than satisfactory.

The Bang & Olufsen-branded dual speakers come with preinstalled software with audio presets tuned for Music, Movies, and Voice, alongside an EQ with presets based chiefly on music genres like Jazz and Pop. When I opened the app while listening to music, the Music preset was selected, and the HP Optimized EQ preset was the best of the bunch. All the other EQ presets either muddied the sound or robbed it of its audible bass.

However, I found the volume in conjunction with the software and Movie preset to work much better when watching content. While I had Netflix’s latest Resident Evil show on, things sounded cinematic. As the show’s main character ran through a herd of zombies at the top of episode 2, I could hear every detail. I could hear the sound of fire blazing from the burning compound, the moans of countless zombie extras, and the shifting sounds of a car moving from the left to the right of the set.

Upgradeability on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

There are four Torx screws on each corner of the HP Pavilion Plus 14, and after unscrewing them, I needed a pry tool to pop the lid off entirely. Once open, I noticed its 51 Wh battery was accessible. The RAM is soldered on (visible as the SK hynix-branded modules on the left), but the 2280 M.2 SSD is upgradable under the copper shield on the right.

Battery Life on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 has terrible battery life. During our battery benchmark, which continually browses the web, streams video, and runs OpenGL tests over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness, the Pavilion only lasted 5 hours and 10 minutes. The Dell Inspiron 14 2-in-1 did better at nearly 8 hours, while the IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon endured for 9:56. And the AMD-powered Asus held on for just over 11 hours.

Despite not having a battery that can last throughout the day, the Pavilion’s 90-watt charging brick is at least pretty slim.

Heat on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is a productivity laptop that at some point will likely end up sitting on your skin, so good heat management is crucial. During our Cinebench stress test, the touchpad was the coolest area at 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

At the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, the laptop reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit. The underside of the Pavilion hit temperatures of 108.14 degrees Fahrenheit and was the hottest area of the computer. Although the Pavilion Plus 14 can get a little toasty, it shouldn’t get warm enough that you won’t want to use it.

Webcam on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

The webcam on the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is impressive, providing a clear and color-accurate image of myself. My skin complexion was accurately brown, my beard had some texture, and even though there was grain in the background, all the lettering from my poster was visible. And the colors in my gaming rig were vivid. With that said, like most laptops, the webcam doesn't match the abilities of cameras on our best webcam list. I also wish the laptop had a privacy shutter for the webcam.

Software and Warranty on the HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr)

There is way too much preloaded software on the HP Pavilion Plus 14. First, there are a bunch of bookmarks for Booking.com, McAfee, and LastPass, which aren’t pre-installed software but appear in the start menu nonetheless. There’s a promotional app for Dropbox, and HP’s Omen Gaming Tool software is, for some reason, pre-installed on a non-gaming productivity machine. There’s also the Xbox and Xbox Game Bar software pre-installed from Windows. And, of course, the aforementioned B&O Audio Control software allows you to tweak the sound from your speakers.

Other than that, the system has a bunch of HP apps like Duet Display to extend your screen to another monitor, QuickDrop to transfer files across devices and mobile phones, and HP Documentation to look up guides and licenses. There’s also HP Support Assistant and HP Privacy Settings, all with varying levels of utility overlap.

HP Command Center also presents system information, lets you manually adjust cooling and performance, and prioritizes the network traffic for specific programs. Other software includes HP audio switch, HP Enhanced Lighting, HP Palette, HP PC Hardware Diagnostics, HP System Event Utility, and HP Smart.

It’s a lot to keep track of, and a few of these apps overlap. There shouldn’t be so much preloaded software here. At the very least, much of it should be packaged together as Lenovo does with Vantage.

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 has a 1-year standard warranty. But you could pay extra for extended coverage.

HP Pavilion Plus (14-eh0097nr) Configurations

Our configuration of the HP Pavilion Plus 14 came with an Intel Core i7-12700H, Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage for $999. It has a 14-inch OLED display with a 90 Hz refresh rate, a 16:10 aspect ratio, and a 2880 x 1800 resolution.

There are three other configurations on HP’s website. A configuration with the same components as ours, but with an Intel Core i5-1240P, a 14-inch IPS display, and 8GB of memory sells for $709.99. There’s another model with the same i5 processor, display, and memory as before, but with a 512GB SSD at $849.99. Lastly, there's a high-end version with an Intel Core i7-1255U and Nvidia RTX 2050, our 14-inch OLED display, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB SSD for $1229.99.

Bottom Line

The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is a fantastic professional machine for office and creative endeavors–as long as you don’t need long battery life. Our unit conked out after a little more than five hours. It also didn’t handle file transfers speedily, but the Pavilion had the best Geekbench and Handbrake test results out of the competition. It has a slim build but doesn’t sacrifice any ports you’d need to stay productive. The keyboard is responsive, the touchpad satisfyingly big, and the OLED display is bold and bright.

Lastly, the HP Pavilion Plus is widely available in this configuration for $999, the cheapest of all the rivals. For comparison, the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED is the most expensive competitor at $1,299-$1,499 and is rarely in stock. Sure, the Pavilion’s design is a bit bland and generic, with far too much preloaded software, but it’s a steal for folks that need a powerful productivity machine with a great screen for around $1,000. Just keep the compact power brick close–and maybe buy an extra one to keep at the office.

Now that most well-known high-tech companies have ceased to ship their products to Russia, there is a shortage of everything in the country — from smartphones to high-end storage systems and laptops to servers. But apparently, there is a product category you never expect to be in short supply — keyboards with a Russian layout.

Since big PC makers like Apple, Dell, HP, and Lenovo, as well as major suppliers of PC peripherals like Logitech, have officially ceased to do business in Russia, the country adopted its so-called 'parallel imports' scheme that allows imports of products from foreign markets without approval from trademark owners, reports The Moscow Times (via ExtremeTech). To get a new PC or a keyboard into Russia, a distributor can now buy it in China, Serbia, Turkey, or the United Arab Emirates and have it shipped to the country.

Traditionally, grey imports work for average individuals who want to save money or get something before it is officially out in a particular country, but such products usually lack localization. In the case of desktops, notebooks, and keyboards, this means the lack of engraved Russian letters. For obvious reasons, people in China or Turkey do not use Russian letters, so products from those countries lack a Russian layout.

The Industry and Trade Ministry reported that vendors could engrave Russian letters on keyboards in the country, which would not substantially affect the product's price. According to a Kommersant source at a notebook maker, however, engraving may cost as much as $32.

While it is possible to engrave letters on desktop keyboards on an industrial scale since there are loads of identical keyboards and keys usually have the same size, it is nearly impossible to engrave letters on notebook keyboards industrially since there are hundreds of different laptop models with different keyboards. Furthermore, the only way to add Russian letters for a small or medium retailer is to put stickers with Russian letters on keyboards with a different layout. Whether engraving or pasting a sticker requires unpacking the product (this way, end-users might think that they are buying a used device) and sometimes removing the keyboard (which voids the warranty and adds to the cost).

While there are some volume PC assembly operations in Russia, it turns out that nobody makes keyboards in the country, so there are not enough keyboards with Russian letters, even for government organizations.

"There are problems with supplying automated workstations [with Russian keyboard layouts] to departments as part of contracts that had already been signed," an anonymous government source told Kommersant. "The terms of the tenders prohibit contractors from delivering workstations without a keyboard or with an English keyboard layout."

One of the ironic things about keyboards and laptops with a Russian layout is that they are available in most ex-USSR countries (including Ukraine). Still, while certain resellers in countries like Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan may be willing to trade with Russia, they naturally will not be able to ship volumes the country requires. There were 1.4 million laptops and 2 million keyboards sold in Russian retail alone in 1H 2021, according to M. Video – Eldorado, a prominent Russian retailer.

PC gaming can be expensive, and the barrier for even entry-level hardware can still be high. Enter the HP Victus 15 a low-cost ($799 as configured) gaming laptop, which comes with serviceable but meager specs such as an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU and Intel Core i5-12450H CPU. It also sports a 15.6-inch display with a 144 Hz refresh rate and 1920 x 1080 resolution, alongside a clean design that can blend into any environment.

Our tests show that the Victus 15 can handle most contemporary tiles in 1080p at high or medium settings. Other, more expensive configurations from HP than the one we tested have better GPUs but at higher prices. 

If you’re looking for an inexpensive way to start PC gaming and aren’t concerned with playing with full power, the Victus 15 may be the laptop for you. However, if you spend a little more, you may get a bit more bang for your gaming buck.

Design of the HP Victus 15

We reviewed the HP Victus 15 in dark silver, but the HP Victus 15 is also available in white and blue. The laptop has a smooth chassis with a large, prominent, reflective V in the middle. Underneath it, in between the hinges, it says Victus, just in case the V didn’t clue you in. The back of the Victus has a large cutout where the vents are. Under the laptop, near one of its feet, there are grated vents. On either side near the feet are two speaker cutouts. 

The design is lowkey enough to fit in an office or gaming setting. It's a bit more adult than the edgy, red and black design that was incredibly common just a few years ago. Although, it may be a bit hefty to lug around everywhere.

On the left side of the Victus, there’s a port for the power adapter, a USB Type-A port, an SD card slot, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. The right side houses an HDMI 2.1 port, another USB Type-A port, Ethernet and a USB Type-C port.

When you open up the laptop, there’s a thick bezel underneath the 15.6-inch display, which also has a giant V. Below are the main speakers featuring a stylized V pattern to keep the theme going.

The HP Victus 15 measures 14.09 x 10.04 x 0.93 inches and weighs 5.06 pounds. Meanwhile, the Acer Nitro 5 comes in at 14.19 x 10.67 x 1.06 inches and 5.51 pounds. The similarly priced Asus TUF Gaming F17  with last year's Intel CPUs measures 15.71 x 10.59 x 0.99 inches and weighs 5.73 pounds. Lastly, the HP Omen 15, which we reviewed a few years ago with a comparable GTX 1660 Ti GPU, measures 14.1 x 9.4 x 0.9 inches at 5.4 pounds. 

HP Victus 15 Specifications

Gaming and Graphics on the HP Victus 15

Our configuration of the HP Victus 15 came with an Intel Core i5-12450H and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 with 4GB of GDDR6 RAM. Although the Victus sports a GTX graphics card, it can still play less-demanding contemporary titles at the highest settings. However, you’ll probably have to turn the settings down to medium for most games.

While playing Control (medium settings) at 1080p, I was impressed with its relative smoothness. The game ran at around 42 frames per second, only dropping to the 30-fps range during intense action. I couldn't use DLSS, which would lessen the burden on the GPU, with a GTX 1650 — that's reserved for higher end GPUs.

When we ran Grand Theft Auto V’s benchmark at very high settings, the HP Victus delivered 39 fps at 1080p resolution. The Acer Nitro 5, with its RTX 3050 Ti, ran the game at 61 fps, while the RTX 3050 Ti-powered Asus TUF Gaming F17 achieved 55 fps. The HP Omen 15, (which we reviewed in 2020 and are using for historical context) and its GTX 1660 Ti with a Ryzen 7 4800H, achieved the same 61 fps as the Nitro.

During the Far Cry New Dawn (ultra settings) benchmark in 1080p, the HP Victus reached 54 fps, which came out with better performance than the Asus TUF Gaming 17’s 50 fps. and the Acer Nitro had the best performance at 79 fps.

On the Red Dead Redemption 2 benchmark (medium settings), we saw the HP Victus with the weakest performance of the bunch at 24 fps, suggesting you'd need to turn the game to lower settings to make it playable. Meanwhile, the Acer Nitro hit 39 frames and the Asus TUF Gaming 17 outperformed them all with 46 fps. The 2020 Omen reached 36 fps.

Finally, on the Borderlands 3 benchmark (badass settings), the HP Victus reached 26 fps, the weakest of the bunch yet again. Others like the Asus TUF Gaming 17 reached 36 fps, while the HP Omen and Acer Nitro output 43 and 45 frames per second. This game would also have to be turned down.

We could not benchmark Shadow of the Tomb Raider under very high settings (as we usually run it) because the HP Victus’ GPU could not handle it. But we could benchmark the title at medium, and it looked fantastic running at 54 fps.

On gaming laptops, we usually stress-test by running the Metro Exodus benchmark on RTX settings 15 times, simulating about half an hour of gameplay. However, we could not use the RTX feature this time and had to run the title on medium settings. The game ran at an average of 45 frames per second, staying consistent throughout. 

During the stress test, CPU speeds came in at an average of 3.8 GHz on the performance cores and 3.0 GHz on the efficiency cores. The temperature of the CPU averaged 83.9 degrees Celsius (183.02 degrees Fahrenheit), and HWInfo reported some CPU thermal throttling in the middle of the test. The GPU ran at an average speed of 1,487 MHz and a temperature of 80.5 degrees Celsius (176.9 degrees Fahrenheit).

Productivity Performance on the HP Victus 15

We tested the HP Victus 15 with an Intel Core i5-12450H, 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. Although the Victus 15 expectedly underperformed during most gaming benchmarks on high settings, it kept up better with the pack in some of our productivity tests.

On Geekbench 5.4, an overall performance test focused on the CPU, the HP Victus 15 earned a single-core score of 1,588 and a multi-core score of 6,902. Meanwhile, the Acer Nitro 5 (Intel Core i5-12500H) reached a single-core performance score of 1,652 and a 9,148 multi-core performance score. The Asus TUF Gaming 17 (Intel Core i5-12600H) hit 1,354 single-core and a 9,148 multi-core score. Finally, the HP Omen 15 (Ryzen 4800H, reviewed in 2020) achieved a 1,206 single-core and 7,976 multi-core scores.

The Victus took 8 minutes and 9 seconds to transcode a 4K video to 1080p in Handbrake. Meanwhile, the Acer Nitro was fastest at 5:59, barely beating the HP Omen’s time of 6:01. The Asus TUF Gaming 17 took the longest at 10:36.

The HP Victus 15 copied 25GB of test files at an average speed of 741.24 MBps. The Acer Nitro 5 was the fastest at 1,240.65 MBps, followed by the HP Omen 15’s 968 MBps and the Asus TUF Gaming 17’s 596.39 MBps.

Display on the HP Victus 15

Our configuration of the HP Victus 15 featured a 15.6-inch display with a 144 Hz refresh rate and 1920 x 1080 resolution. One of the first things I did was fire up Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness to see how the bright, colorful film held up on the Victus. The picture quality wasn’t bad for a 1080p screen, but I’ve seen better. Although the brightness was satisfactory, it occasionally overexposed some of the film's whites and shimmering colors.

The scene where America divulges her origin story to Strange looked overexposed. Light rays from the environment overtook the scenery and brightened faces too much. The display captured blacks well enough, but the colors lacked saturation. Unfortunately, the anti-glare effect didn’t work too well, as I could see the light from my window and the keyboard illuminating the screen while watching the movie.

On the other hand, the display is great for 1080p gaming. Although I didn’t have access to ray tracing when I played Control on medium settings, the game still looked gorgeous. I could appreciate the brightness of each light fixture hanging above as Jesse proceeded out of a dark elevator. The anti-glare effect from the display also worked much better when gaming than watching content, as there were no reflections distracting me from my experience.

The HP Victus 15’s panel covers 45% of the DCI-P3 color gamut and 64% of the sRGB gamut. Competitors like the Acer Nitro 5 and The Asus TUF Gaming 17’s had comparable percentages overall. The Victus 15 reached 235 nits of brightness, the dimmest of the bunch. Meanwhile, the Acer Nitro 5 was the brightest at 314 nits, followed by the Asus TUF Gaming F17 with 284 nits. 

Keyboard and Touchpad on the HP Victus 15

The keyboard on the HP Victus 15 felt good enough. It has some slight feedback, making my typing experience easier. When I tested my typing skills on 10fastfingers, I scored 65 words per minute with a 95.86% accuracy. I scored right around my usual ballpark despite including a number pad and slightly skewing the letter keys.

The touchpad was also pretty spacious at 4.9 x 3.1 inches, but I wish it felt a bit better. I'd like more of a difference between the palm rest and the touchpad, and although the touchpad doesn’t feel harsh and has a responsive clicking mechanism.

Audio on the HP Victus 15

Despite the audible kicks from the Bang & Olufsen speakers, the volume on the HP Victus 15 won't rock your world. When I played “Use Your Mnd” by Mndsgn, I could hear every synth, thump, and lyric in the song. There’s a speaker above the keyboard and two speaker cutouts on the bottom, which may be why I could hear the instrumentation so well. But I like my music loud, and I wish the Victus' speakers could support that. Those who want volume may want one of the best gaming headsets.

The volume translated to other media, and I wanted both louder dialogue and music in Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

Upgradeability on the HP Victus 15

The HP Victus 15 has six Torx screws along the bottom of the laptop. After using a tool to pry the lid off, I noticed two RAM and SSD slots, with one of each already filled on our configuration. These may change based on your configuration, but in ours it also meant that HP is using single-channel RAM at the entry level, which can lower performance. Here's how to upgrade RAM on a laptop.

The empty SSD slot can be filled with a standard 2280 M.2 SSD to expand storage. The laptop’s network card was accessible, and the battery could be removed. It looks like an 2.5-inch SSD or HDD can fit beside the battery, but the laptop doesn’t have mounting hardware or cables.

Battery Life on the HP Victus 15

On our battery test, which involves streaming video, browsing the web, and running OpenGL tests over Wi-Fi with the display at 150 nits of brightness, the HP Victus 15  lasted for 4 hours and 47 minutes, so, like most gaming laptops, you'll want to keep the power brick nearby even when you aren't gaming.

The Acer Nitro 5 endured for 5:33 while the 2020 HP Omen stayed on for 6:13. The Asus TUF Gaming 17 conked out after 1:47.

Heat on the HP Victus 15

During our Metro Exodus stress test, we take skin temperature measurements to see how hot the system gets to the touch. At the center of the keyboard, between the G and H keys, the HP Victus 15 hit 41.8 degrees Celsius (107.24 degrees Fahrenheit), while the touchpad was a cooler 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). At the bottom, the hottest point reached a toasty 57.8 degrees Celsius (136.04 degrees Fahrenheit.)

Webcam on the HP Victus 15

The 720p webcam on the HP Victus 15 cannot capture details at all. I took a picture of myself in my room, and the terrible quality reminded me of the days of MySpace when pics like these were the standard. The braids in my hair look like dreads, and the Neil Adams Batman poster in the background is so pixelated that you can’t see anyone’s faces. If you plan to do any kind of streaming or video conferencing, consider getting one of the best external webcams.

Software and Warranty on the HP Victus 15

The HP Victus 15 has way too much bloat, including ten preinstalled apps from the manufacturer on top of whatever comes as part of Windows. Surely HP doesn't need to include all of these, and some of them seem to double up features that are already in the OS.

HP Documentation opens a tab that directs you to a bevy of guides, license agreements, notices, and warranties. But the warranty tab just tells you to check your box once you click it.

The Hardware Diagnostics app is a utility that allows you to run diagnostic tests to determine if your hardware is functioning properly. HP Privacy Settings lets you opt out of HP collecting certain data from your screen

HP QuickDrop lets you transfer photos, video, music, files, and more between your HP PC and Android or iOS device while HP Smart lets you print, scan, and share to your HP printer from mobile devices. HP Support Assistant is a hub app that does quick repairs, offers diagnostics, manages HP devices, has a dashboard showcasing the PC’s health, and more. HP System Event Utility shows system information and myHP feeds users software and other HP products.

Perhaps the most useful is the Omen Gaming Hub, which allows you to optimize gaming performance and customize your device’s RGB.

Of course, the Windows apps like Amazon, Disney Plus, Skype and Dropbox are also there.

HP sells the Victus 15 with a one-year warranty, but you can pay extra for more coverage.

HP Victus 15 Configurations

Our configuration of the HP Victus 15 came with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 and an Intel Core i5-12450H with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. It also sported a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 display with a 144 Hz refresh rate for a grand total of $799.99. 

This model is available only on Best Buy and Newegg. Several customizable configurations on HP’s website offer upgrades to the RAM, storage, display, CPU and GPU, as well as wireless networking. The Victus comes in silver but is also available in blue and white for an added $10.

There’s an AMD Victus 15z-fb000 available with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 256GB of storage. It also comes with a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution display with a 144 Hz refresh rate for $799.99. The GPU can be upgraded to an AMD Radeon RX 6500M, raising the price to $829.99. An RTX 3050 raises the base price to $879.99, and an RTX 3050 Ti makes it $929.99. If you decide to add the maximum amount of storage, RAM, and 1080p display with 300 nits, the total goes up to $1,179.99.

The cheapest configuration of the Victus on HP’s website is the 15t-fa000, which comes with an Intel Core i5-12500H and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 1650 GPU with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB SSD. It also comes with a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution display with a 144 Hz refresh rate for $749.99.

The highest-end HP Victus 15 config goes for $1,299  and comes with an Intel Core i7-12700H, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU,16GB of DDR4 RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. It also has a 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 resolution display with a 144 Hz refresh rate. However, this config can be customized to include a 3050 Ti for an extra $60. You can also get a display with low blue light and 300 nits for an additional $30. There are also options to add an external optical drive for $60 and upgrade the MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 MT7921 networking card  to an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211 for an added cost.

Bottom Line

The HP Victus 15 has a lot going for it, considering its $799 price point. One of the best gaming laptops under $1,500 (if you want to go way below $1,500), it has an i5-12450H CPU that keeps it on track with its competitor's productivity performance. And despite having an older GTX 1650 GPU, it can handle most contemporary titles in 1080p at high or medium settings, though you may need to turn down to low occasionally. 

However, to get a gaming laptop this cheap, you have to make trade-offs. The display is also a bit lackluster, and components like the webcam and speakers could be better. 

If you’re shopping for a budget laptop and don’t mind one with a larger screen and footprint, the Asus TUF Gaming F17 offers a lot more performance, thanks to its RTX 3050 Ti card. That being said, it's a bit more expensive. At publishing time, Best Buy has an F17 for $999 with a Core i7-11400H (though that's a last-gen CPU), a 512GB SSD, 8GB of RAM and a 144 Hz screen.  However, if you want a 15-inch gaming laptop for cheap, the Victus is worth consideration. 

According to a report by DigiTimes, Intel is having an oversupply problem with its best CPUs and wants to reduce supply as quickly as possible. As a result, Intel announced plans to raise CPU prices in the near future. This appears to be an attempt to push PC vendors into purchasing more CPUs now, in advance of the price increases, which would reduce the oversupply.

This strategy isn’t new and has been used quite often to accelerate sales when needed. However, the side-effect of this strategy is a noticeable reduction in sales later in the year, since PC vendors will have already bought up more supply than they need. Nonetheless, this strategy should theoretically allow Intel to reduce its oversupply issues, which seems to be the top priority for Intel right now.

DigiTimes sources note that Intel’s success with this strategy is unclear, but prices are believed to be rising for both consumer and server processors, as well as Wi-Fi chips later this fall. Success will depend on each vendor's requirements, and how many additional CPUs each vendor will need or can use.

It's unclear if Intel’s CPU price hikes will affect both the OEM market and the DIY market, but DigiTimes has not made a distinction between the two, so there is a chance it will affect both. That’s not all, as Intel also indicated it will be raising prices on its mobile processors to combat inflation and it has already notified its customers about the price changes. As a result, we could see notebook prices increase slightly in the near future.

Despite this, DigiTimes estimations say notebook volume in the 3rd quarter will increase by 14.3% quarterly thanks to reduced demand in the second quarter due to COVID restrictions in China, not to mention the impending back to school shopping season. This will especially impact Apple and HP, with expected 43% and 25% shipment increases thanks to a rebound from material shortages in Q2.

Intel’s price hikes have taken a bit of time to arrive. AMD reportedly considered increasing prices for its customers in late 2021, similar to what Intel is doing right now, but it backfired and vendors refused to comply with the higher prices. That also perhaps influenced Intel and led to it keeping CPU prices at low levels.

Now it looks like Intel will execute a price increase on all its processors near the end of 2022, despite material shortages evaporating. However, there’s also a chance it won't happen, according to DigiTimes sources. These plans are projections and potential options, in other words. If anything, we will probably see a temporary price hike with Intel CPUs in the early fall, but then prices would drop into discount territory — just in time for Black Friday and the Christmas season.

Also note that upcoming Intel Raptor Lake processors are slated to launch in the near future. It's not clear whether these reported price increases also apply to Raptor Lake, but logic would suggest that Intel will mostly want to clear out existing Alder Lake inventory in advance of Raptor Lake's launch.

The Silicon Power UD90 is the first drive we’ve had on our testbed with Phison’s new E21T SSD controller. If you only need 1TB of capacity, this is a relatively inexpensive PCIe 4.0 drive that would work great in a Playstation 5 or desktop PC. Thanks to the DRAM-less controller and 176-layer TLC flash, it’s also power efficient enough to work great with laptops. It comes with a fairly decent warranty and some software support, too, earning a spot on our list of Best SSDs. However, we do recommend additional cooling, if possible.

The UD90 finds itself up against tough competition from drives we’ve recently reviewed, including the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. If you’re looking for a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive, there are better options, but this segment is the better value for your dollar. Many top-tier PCIe 3.0 drives with DRAM have come down significantly in price, so the real question is if it’s worth compromising with a drive like the UD90. For the PS5, absolutely; for PCs, it depends. These newer drives can be very efficient for laptops and make good primary or secondary drives for desktops, assuming you don’t need more than about 1TB of space.

The UD90 uses the same flash as many other great drives we’ve reviewed, but it has a new controller. We’re seeing more competition in this space as Silicon Motion has its SM2269XT controller on the way, too. This is a good thing as you have more choices, but it can make it challenging to pick the perfect drive. Perhaps the most significant factor here is cost, and the UD90 should launch at a very attractive price point on Amazon. Let’s see how it measures up to the excellent but more expensive FX900.

Specifications

The UD90 comes in three capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. Silicon Power has informed us that it intends to launch with just the 1TB SKU in the U.S. The smaller SKUs are for other regions and markets for now. This drive reaches peak performance at 1TB, and that capacity tends to be the “sweet spot” for mid-range drives like this, so this is not too terrible. Some users prefer smaller drives for the OS in multi-drive builds, but it’s hard to get the most out of a fast PCIe 4.0 drive without a higher capacity for more flash and interleaving.

The 1TB drive reaches 4.8/4.2 GBps for sequential read and write and 570K/600K IOPS for random read and write, both respectively. These numbers are firmly in the mid-range against drives like the FX900 and P400, which use a different controller but the same flash. It’s faster than entry-level PCIe 4.0 drives like the S50 Lite and SN750 SE. The UD90 is warrantied for five years and 600 TB of data writes (TBW) at 1TB, which is pretty solid.

Silicon Power says this will arrive at $94.99, making it very competitive in its intended market segment. This is a bit cheaper than the HP FX900 and the Patriot P400, making it a good budget choice or alternative for the Playstation 5 as well as for cheaper PCIe 4.0 builds.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power has a download of its “SP ToolBox” available on its site. This piece of software offers information about the drive, including SMART and other diagnostics. It’s basic but better than nothing. You can clone and image the drive with free software options.

A Closer Look

The UD90 has a label on top showing basic information about the drive, such as the capacity and serial number. Under the label, we see the controller in the middle along with a PMIC, flanked by two NAND packages to either side. There is no DRAM. This type of layout can have some advantages, for example as WD touted with its WD Black and SN750, but the average user can just look at it and imagine a balancing of heat dissipation.

The Phison E21T is Phison’s new PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less controller, positioned to compete with InnoGrit’s IG5220 and SMI’s SM2269XT. It also competes with WD’s proprietary controller used on the SN770. This controller has four channels with a bus speed of 1600 MT/s, capable of using current and upcoming TLC and QLC flash. It has Phison’s 4th-Gen LDPC error correction, end-to-end data path protection, and RAID error correction through Smart ECC 2.0. Encryption support for TCG OPAL 2.0 and Pyrite is optionally available but not activated on this drive.

Performance-wise, this controller can hit up to 5/4.5 GBps for sequential read and write, respectively, and up to 780K/800K random read and write IOPS, also respectively. This matches up nicely with the IG5220, which we’ve seen in past reviews of drives like the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. This is our first review of a drive using the E21T, but we expect to see more drives using this controller. We also expect it to be competitive.

The flash packages are labeled IA7BG94AYA which means they contain dies of Micron’s 176-layer TLC. Each package should host four dies, that is 4DP or QDP, at 64GB per die. The total of sixteen dies is ideal for this four-channel controller, allowing peak interleaving at 1TB.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparison Products

We compared the 1TB Silicon Power UD90 to direct rivals like the Patriot P400, HP FX900, and SN770. The rest of the field includes high-end PCIe 4.0 drives including proprietary designs with the Crucial P5 Plus, Samsung 980 Pro, and SK hynix Platinum P41. Lastly, the Kingston Fury Renegade represents drives built on Phison’s E18 controller with 176-layer flash. This excellent flash is found in five of the eight 1TB drives on this list.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The UD90 performs favorably here, beating the P400 and FX900. The SN770 manages to pull away from its peers. This test isn’t the be-all and end-all for gaming performance, which in fact tends to be the same for any SSD. Load times can vary, but in general, the advantages are pretty small.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The UD90 again beats the FX900 and P400 in this test but falls behind the high-end PCIe 4.0 drives. This is still a strong showing for what is basically a budget drive. Once again, the SN770 punches above its weight.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The UD90’s first misstep is here, but it’s not a big one and not unexpected. DiskBench results are limited by a drive’s bandwidth potential, and as such, the lower-end drives like the SN770, FX900, P400, and UD90, fall behind on reads and copies. The UD90 still remains pretty close to its direct rivals. If you absolutely need the fastest file transfers, you should be looking at a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Phison controllers tend to do well with sequential reads in ATTO, and the UD90’s new controller is no different. It’s actually up there with the Fury Renegade and Platinum P41. Its sequential write performance is a bit more modest, but it still matches or beats most drives. This is a very strong showing for a drive of this caliber. Phison’s E21T controller is a bit late to the game, but it was worth the wait: This is more than a suitable replacement for the E16, popular in budget PS5 drives.

Sequential results in CrystalDiskMark are limited by the interface or controller bandwidth, as determined by its channel count and bus speed, leaving the UD90 in the lower tiers. However, it’s still faster than any PCIe 3.0 drive. Random low queue depth 4K performance is good, as we’d expect from this flash with an optimized controller, but it falls behind with reads versus the FX900 and P400. In practice, this might not mean much as all of these drives are very quick here, but InnoGrit’s IG5220 controller is better optimized for that all-important metric.

Higher queue depth 4K results are a mixed bag, but this drive isn’t intended for those sorts of workloads. However, we do still see lagging with reads in particular. Nevertheless, these numbers are good and beat anything from the last generation of DRAM-less NVMe drives.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The UD90 writes in its fastest, pseudo-SLC state at over 4.6 GBps for almost 15 seconds. This implies a dynamic cache of around 69GB which, although presumably shrinking with drive usage, is sufficient to absorb random and smaller sequential writes. The UD90 then drops down to around 1.8 GBps for another eight minutes of writes. Then, finally, it hits its slowest state at about 275 MBps.

We can reasonably compare this to its peers and see that it has a significantly smaller SLC cache, a faster middle state, and a very slow worst-case scenario when SLC must be emptied. It nevertheless manages to outwrite the FX900 given enough time, but this is not a typical workload. Therefore, this design seems closer to something like a Phison E12-powered drive, as in our Corsair MP510 review, than launch Phison E16 drives like the Sabrent Rocket 4.0.

DRAM-less drives often have large SLC caches to hide their weak native performance states, but a more conservative design (as with newer DRAM-equipped E16 drives, like the MSI Spatium M470) can offer better consistency. Most users will not see the worst a drive has to offer, but dynamic cache inevitably shrinks with drive usage, and sustained writes will eventually slow down the drive. The UD90 offers a nice, balanced approach, with higher speeds in the middle state than we see on E12 and E16 SSDs, although in practice what we see with the FX900 and P400 might offer a slightly better user experience.

The UD90 did not recover its SLC cache quickly, instead bouncing back to its middle state, which is still plenty quick. This drive can better handle bursty writes, especially random ones, as befits normal consumer usage. You'll need to jump to a high-end model if you want faster performance in sustained write workloads.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The UD90 is extremely efficient in our power consumption test, right up there with the FX900 and Platinum P41. Although this result is limited by testing only a file copy, it does demonstrate that this drive is quick enough to finish tasks without much delay. A DRAM-less, four-channel controller design like this, coupled with an efficient 176-layer flash, is bound to be an excellent choice for laptops.

Its top power state is rated for 5W versus 3.5W for competitors, but it is more efficient in its other states with the trade-off of higher overall enter and exit latencies for idle. It can also move between active states freely with little delay. These numbers are only a guideline, anyway, but do offer a general idea of drive responsiveness and power draw. In practice, this is a flexible and efficient design.

We measured the drive temperature at idle and under sustained writes, both via SMART and with a temperature gun. The UD90 idled in the mid-40s degrees Celsius but reached 81C as measured by SMART and 73C as measured by gun after 380GB of sustained writes. Although not a realistic workload, this suggests that additional cooling could benefit this drive.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Silicon Power UD90 is yet another winner in a stream of affordable, DRAM-less SSDs that manage to exceed expectations. Improvements to controller design and flash have allowed manufacturers to offer efficient, powerful drives at a reasonable price point. Of course, these aren’t the fastest drives — they don’t saturate your PCIe 4.0 connection, and in everyday use, they might not be a huge upgrade over older PCIe 3.0 drives that had DRAM. However, they work with the PS5 and offer a great experience on PC — if only at limited capacities.

The UD90 compares favorably with drives like the FX900 and P400, plus other popular drives like the ADATA Atom 50. It scores a bit better with peak sequential read performance over bigger block sizes but tends to fall behind a bit during random read workloads. This probably doesn’t mean much to most users, and it more than passes the threshold for an excellent user experience. The SLC cache is more conservative than what’s found on its peers, including the SN770, which does suggest it should be more consistent across a range of workloads and fill rates, but it will not absorb as many writes at maximum speed.

Silicon Power backs this drive with an SSD toolbox and decent support; no three-year, low-endurance warranty here. We think it may benefit from a heatsink, but it is probably not required — most other drives in this segment also lack full heatsinks. This drive should be cheaper at launch than its competition. That makes it a fantastic budget choice and hard to beat, but be aware it may not be possible to get it at capacities other than 1TB in the U.S.

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The Patriot Viper VPR400 is a mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD designed with a bright aesthetic in mind. The stylish heatsink features bright RGB lighting, and the SSD has software support for RGB sync. The VPR400's hardware is similar to two other drives we have reviewed, the HP FX900 and Patriot's own P400, so it’s effectively a gaming-oriented version of the latter. The P400 proved to be a stalwart drive with good performance for its price. Like that drive, the VPR400 is DRAM-less, but it comes equipped with a fast controller and newer flash that deliver solid performance in tandem with the bright lighting, earning a spot on our list of Best SSDs.

RGB is still all the rage, especially in the “gamer” space, although some drives do not support color control like the VPR400. The downside to this feature is that, historically, drives with RGB tended to run hotter with a higher risk of throttling. We'll test the drive in both the on and off states. The VPR400's heatsink, while aesthetically pleasing, doesn't seem well-designed for heat dissipation. That said, we didn't have much trouble with the P400 overheating.

The SSD market is becoming a bit oversaturated, especially in the mid-range, and more drives are on the way. New SSD controllers and flash are also on the horizon. It’s important for individual drives to stand out; therefore, Patriot has chosen to focus on RGB with the VPR400. If you only want the performance, you can opt for the cheaper P400 or one of its competitors, but if you're interested in adding some RGB to your M.2 port, this might just be the right fit for your build’s theme.

Specifications

The Patriot VPR400 comes in three capacities of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. At the time of review, only the 512GB and 1TB SKUs were available and documented. Compared to drives like the P400, the VPR400 comes with a significant premium in the interest of aesthetics: you’re paying more for the heatsink and RGB. The drive is otherwise standard fare for its hardware in terms of performance. The warranty, at least, is quite good, with a full five years of coverage with endurance of up to 800 TB of data writes (TBW) at 1TB.

Software and Accessories

Patriot offers an RGB sync app for download on its website, and it's compatible with the RGB sync systems from ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI. Patriot also cites support for their Viper toolbox, a typical SSD application for information and utility use. Patriot additionally says that the VPR400 has an advanced temperature control function.

A Closer Look

The VPR400 has a black heatsink on top with sixteen windows for LEDs to shine and an informative label on the back. The thermal padding appears to make relatively good contact. Under the heatsink, we see the controller and two NAND packages, with no DRAM present. We can also spot the LEDs.

The VPR400 uses the InnoGrit IG5220 SSD controller, which has proven quite popular. It’s present in the HP FX900 and Patriot P400, two drives we have previously reviewed. The VPR400 is, in fact, quite similar in layout to the latter. However, the P400 and FX900 had the BAA revision of this controller. This SSD has the BCA revision, with the difference appearing to be in the material of the integrated heatsink (IHS). It’s possible this will demonstrate better heat dissipation with the VPR400. The IG5220 does not run particularly hot, but it is still a fast controller, and this drive does have RGB lighting that typically adds a bit of heat. 

The VPR400 uses Micron’s 176-layer TLC flash, known as B47R. This flash is also on the P400 and FX900, as well as numerous other drives like the P5 Plus. Presumably, this SSD uses the standard 512Gb or 64GB dies, or eight per 8DP/OCP for a total of sixteen dies at 1TB. This is an excellent amount to saturate the IG5220 controller with four dies for each of its four channels.

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Comparison Products

We compare the 1TB Patriot Viper VPR400 to the Patriot P400 and HP FX900, two drives that have the same type of hardware. We also include the Silicon Power UD90, which uses a rival Phison E21T controller. The WD Black SN770 is also included because it is a strong competitor in this segment. Lastly, we have three high-end drives: the SK hynix Platinum P41, the Samsung 980 Pro, and the Crucial P5 Plus. As usual, we test all drives at the same capacity.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The VPR400 actually seems to do better than its two direct peers in this test. It falls behind the rest, but its performance is still adequate.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

In contrast to the 3DMark results above, the VPR400 comes in dead last in PCMark. The differences in these tests may be down to optimization or firmware, particularly as the VPR400 is specifically designed for gaming.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The VPR400 lands exactly where we’d expect it to in this bandwidth-limited test: right in the middle. It performs well against its direct competitors, including the UD90 and SN770.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

There are no surprises with the ATTO tests — the VPR400 matches the P400. It’s also a fair match for the SN770. What we do see is the UD90 pulling away in sequential read performance, a Phison staple that indicates the E21T SSD controller has a shared lineage with the popular E18.

The VPR400's sequential performance is also solid in CrystalDiskMark. Performance in random workloads lags a little bit, particularly with writes, but reads tend to be more important, and these results are good on the whole. This hardware combination - controller and flash - has proven itself to be consistently above par. Nevertheless, the SN770 and UD90 remain competitive.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The VPR400 has three distinct performance states with SLC, TLC, and folding modes. The primary mode of pseudo-SLC writes at 4.65 GBps for up to 73 seconds, indicating an SLC cache of around 340GB. This is a bit larger than what is found on the FX900 and P400. Its TLC state at 2 GBps is correspondingly much shorter before hitting the 500 MBps bottleneck.

The VPR400 is clearly optimized a bit differently than those two peers, although the difference would not usually be noticeable in practice. This flash is quite fast in its native state, which makes for relatively quick writes for a four-channel controller. In addition, the large SLC cache should catch most things even if the drive is fuller. That being said, the SN770 matches it quite well, while the UD90 would be more consistent.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

We’ve charted the VPR400’s power consumption both with and without the LEDs illuminated. Unsurprisingly, the drive is more efficient without the LEDs enabled. As expected, it comes close to the P400 in that state, rivaling the SN770. However, the drive consumes significantly more power with the RGB enabled, although this is probably not a concern with use in a desktop PC.

We also tested thermals under both conditions. With RGB disabled, the drive idled around 50C with a maximum of around 69C after an extreme amount of writes; no throttling was seen even after 600GB. With RGB enabled, the idle temperature rose to the mid-50s Celsius, hitting over 73C with sustained writes. This was sufficient to engage throttling after about 420GB of writing. So we can say that the heatsink does work and helps compensate for the extra LED heat sufficiently for its intended use.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Patriot VPR400 is essentially more of a good thing, serving as a Patriot P400 with a better warranty, a heatsink, and RGB. The RGB lighting syncs with most major platforms with Patriot’s software, as well. The InnoGrit IG5220 is a proven SSD controller and Micron’s 176-layer TLC remains the best flash on the market. What’s not to love?

Part of the problem is that this market segment is becoming crowded and competitive. There are other drives with the same hardware, sure, but also WD’s stellar SN770. Moreover, we have newcomers like Silicon Power’s UD90, which uses Phison’s new E21T controller, nipping at the heels. The VPR400 certainly stands out with its looks and the performance is nothing to ignore. However, it doesn’t really do anything new.

Patriot says a 2TB SKU is forthcoming, which would be nice as we don’t see that with the P400 or HP’s FX900 (yet), but it's still missing at the time of writing. That’s okay as 1TB is the sweet spot with this type of drive, but then we have to start looking at the price. The VPR400, as priced today on Amazon, is simply far too expensive unless you absolutely need matching RGB for your build. We do appreciate the heatsink and metal heat spreader, but ultimately it’s not a lot more effective than plain drives with the same hardware.

If you’re looking for a budget drive or even an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD, this is simply not the drive for you. It’s more along the lines of the Lexar SL660 Blaze, a portable drive with RGB, in the sense that it’s aimed at the gamer aesthetic. Patriot does separate the VPR400 a bit from its own P400 with a better warranty, but similar drives like the FX900 plus ADATA’s Legend 840 and Atom 50 already do that at a competitive price. That’s not to mention the SN770, which for the average gamer, assuming they don’t care about RGB, is a safer bet.

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When demand for PCs began to skyrocket in early 2020 due to work/learn/entertain from home trends, PC brands and Taiwanese motherboard makers made a lot of money. When the crypto mining boom kicked off in H2 2020, they thrived. But by now, demand for client PCs has gotten softer, whereas the crypto mining craze to a large degree ended, which is why many Taiwanese companies are reviewing their prospects for 2022.

Sales of best motherboards from companies like Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI will drop by 20% – 30% year-over-year, reports DigiTimes. So far, Asus and Gigabyte have reduced their projected motherboard shipments from 18 million and 9 million units (respectively) to 14 million and 9 million units (respectively). Other makers are also reducing their projections and have to deal with high inventory levels.

Most DIY gaming PCs (and a considerable portion of boutique PCs) use motherboards and graphics cards supplied by Taiwanese manufacturers, such as Asustek, ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI, Leadtek, and PowerColor (Tul Corp.). These companies are among the biggest beneficiaries of gaming PC market growth and the crypto mining craze, so they pinned many hopes for 2022. But slowing demand for consumer PCs will reduce unit shipments to 321.1 million units in 2022, or by 8.2% compared to the previous year (according to IDC), making them revise their forecasts.

Motherboards Shipments Forecasts, According to DigiTimes

Big PC brands like Dell, HP, or Lenovo expect to suffer from dropping demand for client computers and hardware. But Taiwanese companies that supply premium motherboards and graphics cards will suffer considerably more. These firms benefited from extremely high prices of graphics cards and significantly raised prices of premium mainboards used by gamers. Now that demand is going to drop because of high inflation rates, geopolitical uncertainties, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, their relative sales drop will be highly significant.

Last week we noted that Apple, AMD, and Nvidia were reducing orders to TSMC ahead of looming product launches. We also pointed out that some financial analysts cut their targets for AMD's client unit shipments. So the information from DigiTimes does not come as a surprise.

On the data center/server side of matters, companies like AMD, Intel, and Nvidia will continue to benefit from solid demand for their products as spending on infrastructure due to ongoing 5G, AI, and HPC megatrends will continue to be strong for quarters or even years ahead. Likewise, ASRock and Gigabyte, which supply various data center products, will continue to thrive.

But when it comes to client PC hardware, brace for impact as the decline will likely get severe.

The HP FX900 Pro is the big brother of the HP FX900 we recently reviewed but comes sporting a more powerful controller with DRAM. This drive is aimed at competing with the big boys — it’s a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive with top-tier performance. This places it directly against some of the best SSDs on the market, like the WD Black SN850, Samsung 980 PRO, Crucial P5 Plus, manifold Phison E18 drives like the Rocket 4 Plus, and even the stellar SK hynix Platinum P41. 

However, the FX900 Pro's warranty and cooling are nothing to write home about, and while pricing is competitive, it isn't outstanding. It fills the same slot as the Adata S70 Blade - or the similar Premium - making it a somewhat cheaper, high-end, 2TB option for the PlayStation 5 or PC. It might be less attractive at lower capacities, though. 

It can be challenging to pick a drive in the increasingly crowded SSD marketplace, especially at the high-end. Many people would be fine with supposedly lower-end SSDs, too, the HP FX900 being a prime example. The FX900 Pro has to be compelling against its direct competition but also has to offer something over its more affordable sibling. While we specifically want to see how it lines up against similar drives, it’s worth it to consider whether you need that extra bandwidth. As with the FX900, the drive is actually binned and made by BiWin. Let’s see if HP can make another worthwhile drive — we think it can.

Specifications

The FX900 Pro comes in four capacities of 512GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB, although the final capacity is, as of yet, difficult to find. The 1TB and 2TB capacities have the best dollar-per-GB pricing, with the 2TB SKU coming in a bit cheaper than the SK hynix Platinum P41. As of the time of the review, the FX900 Pro matches the Amazon price of the 2TB S70 Blade, which has essentially the same hardware. Nevertheless, the FX900 Pro is a reasonable alternative.

As with the FX900, HP’s IOPS ratings seem a bit on the high side. The FX900 Pro's InnoGrit IG5236 controller is officially rated for up to 1M/800,000 read/write IOPS, which this drive exceeds even at 1TB. Peak performance is at 2TB, which makes sense as you will have the optimal amount of dies for interleaving. This model is pegged at 7.4/6.7 GBps of sequential read/write throughput, so there’s no question this is a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive.

The warranty is a standard five-year affair with an endurance rating of 600 TB of write endurance per 1TB of SSD capacity. This is within the typical range for higher-end drives. Some might lament the endurance decline from the heights seen with Phison E12 and E16 drives, but it’s really not a big deal. It’s challenging to do that many writes within the warranty period.

A Closer Look

The front of the drive has a graphene heat spreader under the label. It’s thicker than you would otherwise expect. Later, we’ll see if that helps. The controller resides in the middle of the stick, surrounded by two NAND packages and a DRAM module. The back label covers two more NAND packages and more DRAM and contains basic information about the drive.

InnoGrit has been around for a few years but is a relative newcomer to the consumer SSD controller game. While its early controllers left something to be desired, the PCIe 4.0 designs have been quite competitive. This particular controller is poised to compete with the best on the market.

The NANYA DRAM is labeled NT5AD512M16A4. This is DDR4 in a 512M x 16b configuration for a total of 1GB. As there are two modules, the total DRAM capacity measures 2GB. This is what you would traditionally expect for a 2TB SSD, but many newer models skimp here to save a bit of money. While this amount of DRAM is more than enough for caching metadata for even prosumer workloads, it’s always nice to see.

The flash is labeled BW29F4T08ENLEE. This tells us that it’s binned by BiWin but is based on Micron (MT29) flash, in this case, 176-layer B47R. It’s often possible to determine the generation with the final letters in the code. In the middle the 4T tells us it’s 4Tb or 512GB, and with four packages total that gives us 2TB of “08” or 8-bit flash. We may be able to discern the production date with the bottom number, “2125” being week 25 of 2021, but this is of secondary importance.

As mentioned above in the specifications section, the 2TB version of this drive has the highest performance on paper. Micron’s 176-layer TLC uses 512Gb, or 64GB dies, which means you have 32 dies here — that’s four dies for each of the controller’s eight channels. That is indeed the ideal amount for peak interleaving. If we read from the controller, we see a speed of 1200 MT/s from this flash, which is more than adequate with an eight-channel drive with 1600 MT/s channels. This is below some 1600 MT/s B47R we have seen, though.

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Comparison Products

We compared the 2TB HP FX900 Pro to other high-end 2TB drives, including the main proprietary drives like the WD Black SN850, the Samsung 980 Pro, and the Crucial P5 Plus. We also include multiple drives using Phison’s E18 controller with 176-layer flash - the same flash on the FX900 Pro - with the Kingston KC3000, the Seagate FireCuda 530, the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, and the Corsair MP600 Pro XT. We're also using new results for the Rocket 4 Plus because Sabrent upgraded from the original 96-layer flash without making a new model.

We haven't tested any other drives using the InnoGrit IG5236 SSD controller and 176-layer flash, although we have reviewed the original ADATA Gammix S70, which had an older 96-layer flash. At this juncture, it’s wise to look at models with the newer flash because, in general, manufacturers have all made that jump. We specifically want to see how the FX900 Pro performs against the best. Unfortunately, we tested this drive before we received the Platinum P41.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The FX900 Pro lands near the bottom of the pack in the 3DMark Storage Benchmark. Its closest rivals here are the P5 Plus and the 980 Pro.

This is a test where the Phison E18 SSD controller excels. The WD Black SN850, for its part, manages to exceed expectations despite being handicapped with older flash; WD is quite good with optimization, as we’ve seen also with the excellent WD SN770.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The FX900 Pro does much better in the PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark, competing with the Crucial P5 Plus and the WD SN850. These three drives seem optimized for a “real world” application benchmark. It’s one reason the WD SN850 has been a popular drive: it punches above its weight where it matters. The upcoming WD SN850X should be optimized even further.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

DiskBench is bandwidth-heavy, and we always expect good things from the type of flash present on the FX900 Pro. While the read test is somewhat limited, the copy test shows the FX900 Pro doing pretty well. It’s within the margin of error against most of the Phison E18-powered drives and beats the 980 Pro and SN850 that have older flash. 

The Crucial P5 Plus has historically felt limited with sequential performance due to its controller design. Whether or not this is relevant depends on the intended usage.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The ATTO test shows anomalous results for the FX900 Pro's performance in sequential reads, with a dip around the 256KB block size without any firm recovery. We actually saw something similar with the ADATA S70 that uses the same controller. Of course, this is not the end of the world, but it shows a weakness. The drive dips at 512KB during the ATTO write workload but is otherwise very strong. Perhaps InnoGrit needs a bit of firmware refinement in this direction.

We see no such issues with the Queue Depth 8 (QD8) sequential read and write tests in CrystalDiskMark; the FX900 Pro pushes the boundaries of the x4 PCIe 4.0 interface. However, it falls behind with QD1 sequential reads, again indicating that some optimization needs to be done.

The 4K random results look good across the board, no doubt thanks to the excellent flash. The drive hits 1.3M/1.24M read/write IOPS at a heavier queue depth. Of course, this is an unrealistic workload, but the FX900 Pro is certainly a powerhouse by most standards — perhaps not the fastest, but fast enough.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The FX900 Pro has three distinct performance states for sustained writes. The first, within the SLC cache, finds it writing at about 6.6 GBps for 104 seconds; this suggests an SLC cache size of around 686GB. This is a very large cache, coming closest to the KC3000, but it will shrink as the drive fills. The second state, a form of writing to TLC, writes at up to 2.6 Gbps for almost 70 seconds. Lastly, the drive is forced to free up SLC space to convert to TLC to regain full capacity. This stage writes at about 1.75 Gbps.

These results are pretty solid. The SLC cache is more than ample, and the post-SLC performance is not bad at all. In terms of sustained writes, it is in the middle of the pack — between the Crucial P5 Plus and Kingston KC3000, given enough time — but it most closely resembles the KC3000. The KC3000s configuration of the E18 controller with 176-layer flash is characterized by a large SLC cache. However, that drive does not fall to an intermediate state. This difference is subtle, but it does suggest the FX900 Pro with the IG5236 controller might be a bit more consistent in a steady state. Cache recovery is a mixed bag, with things quickly falling back to the slower speeds.

Power Consumption & Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The FX900 Pro shows exceptional efficiency in this test, which is certainly a bright spot. However, this is under narrow conditions as we test with a file copy. It nevertheless shows that InnoGrit knows how to get the most out of its controllers, and it bodes well for the future.

The drive idled hot with the SMART data reporting 55C, but the drive did not throttle after 1TB of writes. However, the drive reported 85C as the peak temperature, which tends to be within the critical range for most SSDs. As for the graphene cooling, checking it with a heat gun, the surface temperature read 74C. This drive should be fine out of the package in a typical environment but may require a full-sized heatsink for certain applications.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The HP FX900 Pro is in a tough spot as there’s a lot of competition in the high-end PCIe 4.0 SSD market. It’s plenty fast, at least in part thanks to newer flash, but it offers little to set it apart from the competition. This type of drive tends to be popular at 2TB, particularly when it’s a little bit cheaper than the more well-known alternatives, but the recent release of SK hynix’s Platinum P41 has shaken things up further. There's still good reason to consider the FX900 Pro, but it will probably not be first on anybody’s list unless it’s the only option available.

We previously reviewed the Adata S70 that uses the same controller but older flash to surprisingly beat the FX900 Pro. Why? The S70 has a full-fledged heatsink, for one, but more importantly, that review was more than a year ago. At the time, drives based on the IG5236 SSD controller were popular for being cheaper, but we hadn’t seen the full array of E18 drives with 176-layer flash yet. We also hadn’t caught wind of the Platinum P41 or really knew how well the WD Black SN850 would stand up in the longer term. To put it simply, the market has grown significantly since then.

Pricing is perhaps the biggest issue with the FX900 Pro. You can get similar drives like the ADATA Premium for as little as $205 for 2TB at the time of writing. That’s compelling. The FX900 Pro’s MSRP simply is not, especially as it offers nothing in the way of software. Its cooling solution is sufficient but it doesn’t stand out like many drives, including those marketed for the PlayStation 5. The Adata S70 Blade has been out for a long time and has established its name; in contrast, the FX900 Pro has to fight an uphill battle.

That’s not to say there’s not a lot to like. This drive has excellent performance, even during sustained write workloads. It’s no slouch and can stand with other top-tier drives, even topping them in power efficiency. This is a drive I’d be happy to have in my system dedicated to games or as a workspace, but I’m not sure why I’d choose it over alternatives — unless it’s priced like ADATA’s Premium, or like InnoGrit-powered SSDs were priced relative to the big boys in the past. The HP FX900 Pro gets the job done without any fanfare, which is a good sign that the PCIe 4.0 market has hit maturity — but it’s arrived perhaps a bit too late.

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Patriot’s P400 is an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD that's designed to be affordable for the PlayStation 5 (PS5) or budget PC builds. The P400 is cheap enough to be a strong choice for new buyers who want an NVMe drive that gets the job done without any fanfare. 

The P400 lacks DRAM and has a shorter warranty than its peers, which include the Adata Legend 840 and ATOM 50, as well as the HP FX900 we recently reviewed. It compensates with higher endurance, but the P400's cooling solution leaves something to be desired. Nevertheless, we expect that its performance is more than adequate for most users, and pricing is competitive.

The budget NVMe SSD space has many contenders, including the WD SN570 and Samsung 980 in the PCIe 3.0 category. Meanwhile, the WD SN770 remains a powerful contender in the PCIe 4.0 camp. However, if you absolutely need the bandwidth or want a cheap drive for the PlayStation 5, you will lean more toward the latter or a drive like the P400. These drives are priced about the same, with the exception of the SN570 being a bit cheaper, helping make it a good compromise against the Samsung 980.

With so much selection, it’s a good time to be an SSD fan. But that can be a bittersweet proposition: Too many options can create indecision. Should you get the FX900 or the P400? We will compare these two drives in our performance benchmarks to hopefully demonstrate that you can’t go wrong — it’s all a matter of where your priorities lie.

Specifications

The Patriot P400 only comes in 512GB and 1TB capacities, which is similar to the HP FX900, Adata Legend 840, and Atom 50. This is fine, as these are budget drives meant to be quick and affordable. This is especially true at 1TB, where the P400 comes in at just $0.10 a GB. That's currently a bit cheaper than the FX900 and SN770. It’s certainly possible to get SSDs cheaper than this, particularly SATA SSDs and cheaper PCIe 3.0 options, including the 670p with QLC. That's why you'll have to take performance into consideration.

The P400 is PS5-compliant and is rated for up to 5/4.8 GBps of sequential read/write throughput and 620K/550K read/write IOPS. This also makes it a good choice for a PC that can handle PCIe 4.0 drives. The P400 is still fast on a 3.0 system, but it’s possible to get a cheaper drive like the SN570 in that case. If you’re looking at future-proofing, there are also faster 4.0 drives available. While this seems to make a drive like this a bit niche, in fact, the P400 is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades that we generally find more compelling than drives based on Phison’s E16 SSD controller.

In contrast to the five-year warranty you'll find with the HP FX900 and other rivals, the P400 only has a three-year warranty. This is a downside because the warranty period tends to be more important than the endurance rating for the average user. However, the P400 does offer 800 TB of write endurance per TB of capacity, which far exceeds the FX900 and also exceeds what you often find in high-end drives. As this is within a smaller period of time, the drive writes per day rating is rather high. However, the P400 would not be our first choice for a drive for heavier write workloads.

A Closer Look

The P400 is topped with a graphene label that acts as a heat spreader, although this is less substantial than the FX900’s graphene padding. ADATA’s similar drives use a metal heat spreader instead, which at least appears to be a bit more functional. Under the P400’s label, we see the DRAM-less controller and two NAND packages. The rear of the drive contains a second label that shows basic information about the drive.

The InnoGrit IG5220 is a DRAM-less, entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD controller designed for cheaper drives. Nevertheless, it's a cut above what is available at PCIe 3.0, with higher peak bandwidth and impressive IOPS. This controller has proven popular as it fills the gap that the Phison E16 once did, albeit without DRAM. In fact, this controller helped usher in a new era of fast DRAM-less controllers, even though WD’s earlier Blue drives were quite good. 

This controller actually gained some competition when WD brought out its SN770 with a proprietary controller. While certainly better than the SN750 SE’s E19T, the IG5220 potentially has more competition on the horizon. This includes Phison’s E21T, which may be a pseudo-replacement for the E16 and should see both TLC and QLC, and SMI’s SM2269XT, which recently popped up on ADATA’s Legend 850. This is all good news for users as it heralds greater options and, hopefully, more competition. 

The flash appears to be Micron’s 176-layer TLC, or B47R, a popular pairing with this controller. This flash is also on the Crucial P5 Plus, some InnoGrit IG5236-powered drives like the FX900 Pro, and the faster models using Phison’s E18 controller, like the updated Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus. This flash has been more or less unparalleled  — that is until SK hynix brought out the Platinum P41 with its own 176-layer NAND. There are many technical differences between these two types of flash; however, for the general user, it just means better performance with less power draw.

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Comparison Products

We compare the Patriot P400 to all of its primary rivals, like the similarly-equipped HP FX900, the WD Blue SN570, the Samsung 980, and the WD Black SN770. We also threw in other high-end PCIe 4.0 drives, like the proprietary Crucial P5 Plus and Samsung 980 Pro. We also included a drive that uses the same flash as the P400 but coupled with DRAM and the Phison E18 controller, the Kingston Fury Renegade. All of these drives are 1TB.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

As expected, the P400 scores right alongside the FX900, with the closest rival otherwise being the WD SN570. This test shows how well-optimized the WD SN770 is as it pulls away from the pack, challenging even high-end drives.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

PCMark shows a similar distribution, although some drives, like the P5 Plus, do better here than on 3DMark.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

DiskBench has three distinct performance bands due to bandwidth differences: the PCIe 3.0 drives at the bottom, the lower-end PCIe 4.0 drives in the middle, and the high-end 4.0 drives at the top. The exception would be the Crucial P5 Plus with file copies. Therefore, this test does not accurately reflect something like PS5 load times, and any compliant drive, including the P400, should be more than fast enough for that type of usage.

We see that the lower-end 4.0 drives offer a compromise when it comes to bandwidth which might help separate these options from even high-end 3.0 drives. The P400 lacks DRAM but has flash of a speed that can be difficult to find on PCIe 3.0 drives, possibly positively impacting workloads not bound by bandwidth.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The P400 performs similarly to the FX900 in ATTO, with good write results but only mediocre results during the read workload. As with the FX900, there’s a bit of a drop in the read graph. This seems to be a “feature” of InnoGrit controllers, which may require a bit more optimization.

With the CDM sequential results, we see a similar pattern as we did with DiskBench: three zones that vary more or less by available bandwidth. This again makes the P400 and its direct competition a bit of a compromise for those with PCIe 4.0-compatible systems. However, we can see by the low queue depth random results that flash quality plays a role. The P400 and FX900 do well there, especially with random reads. Traditionally that has been a valuable metric for “real world” performance and demonstrates that this drive is more than enough.

The IG5220 also demonstrates that it’s a powerful SSD controller with its results at higher queue depths. It helps the P400 exceed the Crucial SN770 and even the Crucial P5 Plus during read workloads while matching the P5 Plus with writes and handily beating the WD SN570 and Samsung 980 in either scenario. Those two last drives are, again, PCIe 3.0 drives. We hinted above that 4.0 drives are more likely to have newer flash and more powerful controllers, which seems borne out by the results here, even if these are unrealistic workloads that may also be bound by the interface.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The P400’s SLC cache capacity is similar to the FX900’s, coming in at around 300GB. This is very large but leaves some room for TLC so that it has a graceful post-SLC decline. The P400 generally writes a tiny bit slower than the FX900, but conversely, it can write a bit longer in both SLC and TLC modes. The outcome is almost precisely the same: 4.7 GBps or so for SLC, almost 2 GBps for TLC, then folding around 500 MBps. InnoGrit drives tend not to have great SLC recovery but can usually manage to jump back up to TLC speeds if tested.

As with the FX900, this is a very good result for a budget, DRAM-less drive. This is largely thanks to the excellent flash and how these drives are designed with the IG5220 controller. It’s flexible and fast, obviously faster than the WD SN570 and Samsung 980. The WD SN770 is much closer but lacks that middle-performance state. It’s possible you could make use of the P400’s heavy endurance with this realization, although we wouldn't consider that a realistic selling point.

Power Consumption & Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Since our power testing is currently based on a large file copy, it tends to favor drives that can finish that task faster. That’s usually faster drives in terms of interface and flash. That’s one reason the SK hynix Platinum P41 (not shown) did so well in our recent review, beating even the legendary Gold P31. The HP FX900 also beat the Gold P31 as it uses the fastest flash coupled with an efficient 4-channel controller.

The P400, however, has given us different and unexpected results than the FX900. It’s less power-efficient, although it still beats the PCIe 3.0 drives. It’s also within contention of many high-end drives. Our idle power result — which is worst-case and should not be used to gauge a potential laptop experience — is also peculiarly high. This seems to be a firmware quirk with the P400 not using its power states as effectively as possible. It’s possible Patriot tuned this drive for maximum performance, although we suspect this makes little subjective difference in practice.

The P400 also ran hotter than the FX900, as perhaps anticipated above when looking at the heat spreader. It idled in the mid-to-high-50Cs, with a 24C ambient. The heat spreader surface was a bit cooler, but also quite warm. However, the heat spreader proved sufficient to keep the drive from throttling. We measured a peak of 75C. This is still significantly hotter than the FX900 and likely hotter than the ADATA offerings; however, it's adequate for its intended market.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

Patriot is a known brand but has rarely stood out of the pack, and that’s no different with the P400. It’s very similar to the HP FX900 we previously reviewed. The PCIe 4.0 market has been getting more complex over time with more hardware and different drives available. Our review of WD’s SN770 has shown what a DRAM-less drive is capable of — which is to say, they're enough for everyone but don't carry a premium price. The P400 has stiff competition that grows by the day, as we have not yet seen what the E21T and SM2269XT controllers can do, not to mention newer flash from manufacturers not named Micron.

Moving away from those technical aspects, what does the P400 offer uniquely? It does have a graphene heat spreader, which is better than a plain label. The FX900 has graphene padding and other drives have metal heat spreaders or even heatsinks, though. That’s particularly true for PS5 drives, although we suspect good cooling is not at all a requirement there. The Platinum P41, which is a high-end drive, manages without any special cooling. The P400 also has a shorter warranty than its peers, at three years instead of five, although it makes up for it with a very high endurance rating. We suspect this is mostly for marketing purposes, but it’s there for those that care.

In any case, we had no problems with overheating, and the P400's overall performance was quite good. For general use, this will get you there and then some, all while offering a taste of the benefits PCIe 4.0 bandwidth can provide. Budget PCIe 3.0 drives can be had a bit more cheaply in many cases, so this type of drive fits a nice milieu; after all, having more options is not a bad thing. The competition will likely be tougher in the future. It was tempting to drop this drive down half a point since it doesn’t seem quite as polished as the FX900; however, it’s cheaper than that drive and the SN770, making it a fair trade. We have not tested Adata’s analogous drives yet, but those might be the most compelling alternative.

The P400 is an easy choice for a cheap PS5 drive if you don’t need the capacity. Technically, the FX900 has a larger 2TB SKU, but we have not seen it available. In any case, 1TB is the sweet spot for this type of hardware, and that’s where most of the competition lies. For a PC, this is an excellent choice for a first-time PCIe 4.0 build that’s on a budget; you get more bandwidth without any real downsides in general performance. It’s a safe purchase, and we’re glad users have lots of options with more to come.

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Apple's transition to its own custom Arm-based system-on-chips enabled the company to increase its systems' sales and made it a dominant supplier of PC-grade Arm SoCs. As for Arm, its instruction set architecture now commands nearly 9% of the global PC market. 

"Apple established itself as a distant market leader in Arm-based notebook PC processors with almost 90% revenue share [in 2021]*," wrote Sravan Kundojjala, Director of Handset Component Technologies service at Strategy Analytics.  

Companies like Acer, Dell, and HP have been shipping Chromebooks and Windows-on-Snapdragon always-connected PCs (ACPC) based on various Arm-powered SoCs for years. However, these PCs have never been truly popular due to mediocre performance and/or uncompetitive pricing. With its M1-based iMacs, MacBooks, and Mac Minis introduced in 2020 and throughout 2021, Apple not only managed to offer competitive performance and appealing design, but it also priced those systems very competitively (e.g., below previous-generation systems featuring Intel's CPUs). So, it attracted sales both from its loyal customers and from new clients. 

Apple outmaneuvered Arm-based Chromebooks and ACPCs in terms of sales and in revenue since its systems are still premium machines priced well above average Chromebooks.  

Since Qualcomm's Nuvia-based SoCs will not launch until late 2023, Apple will continue to offer the fastest Arm-powered SoCs for PCs and will likely lead the market in Arm desktops and laptops for quite a while. 

"Apple's M-series family of processors set the benchmark and gave Apple a 2–3-year lead over the rest of the Arm-based PC processor vendors. Qualcomm captured just 3% revenue share in the Arm-based notebook PC processor market in 2021 and lags Apple in CPU performance," wrote Kundojjala. "Despite its low share, Qualcomm continues to invest in notebook PC processors with its Nuvia CPU cores. We believe that Arm-based notebook PC processor offers an attractive opportunity to Qualcomm, given the company's growing collection of high-performance processor assets including CPU, GPU, AI, audio, imaging, connectivity, gaming and security." 

The industry shipped around 348.8 million PCs in 2021 and 80.5 million systems in Q1 2022, according to IDC. Sales of Chromebooks totaled 37 million units in 2021 as well as 5.1 million systems in Q1 2022. In the first quarter, Apple shipped 7.2 million Macs and had a market share of 8.9%.  

Since the vast majority of Apple's PCs solid in Q1 this year were powered by its own Arm-enabled SoC, it is clear that Arm commands a sizeable share of the PC market due to Apple's M-series SoCs alone. Meanwhile, there are also several popular Chromebooks based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon as well as MediaTek SoCs. While those systems are not as popular as Apple's MacBook Air or MacBook Pro laptops, it is safe to say that Arm's share in PCs is at least 10%, a significant achievement for the British CPU designer. 

It should be noted that for now, Arm-based SoCs power mainstream and even entry-level workstation machines, but they still cannot compete against high-end x86-powered desktop PCs, especially in the field of gaming. Therefore, Arm, Apple, and Qualcomm still have a lot of work to do in a bid to successfully compete against AMD and Intel across all fields.  

*Note: Since Strategy Analytics does not disclose how it estimates revenue that Apple gets for its notebook processors, our story is focused on volume sales of Apple Macintosh systems in 2021 (27.775 million) and in Q1 2022 (7.2 million) compared to shipments of Chromebooks in 2021 (37 million) and in Q1 2022 (5.1 million). We also note that the vast majority of Chrome OS-powered machines use x86 processors from AMD or Intel.

The HP FX900 has snappy performance and a competitive price point that will certainly find its way to our list of best SSDs with an astonishing 828,000/663,000 peak read/write IOPS. 

It may surprise people to learn that HP has made some decent SSDs. (Well, the HP SSDs are actually made by BiWin for HP, but you get the idea.) The first HP SSD, the HP EX920, released in 2018, was an early example of a competitive consumer drive that didn’t start with the name Samsung. Intel had tried previously with its 600p, which, while ambitious, was limited by Micron’s early 3D TLC flash and SMI’s immature SM2260 controller. The HP EX920 combined 64-layer Micron TLC with the SM2262 to offer excellent everyday performance. HP later brought out its bring out its EX950 to make use of a new SM2262EN controller revision. It still remains competitive with drives that were built on the Phison E12, now E12S, controller. 

HP also made some less-successful SSDs like its EX900, an entry-level DRAM-less option that was not as reliable in practice. DRAM-less drives from that era — those based on SMI’s SM2263XT and Phison’s E13T — tended to be problematic. However, more recent DRAM-less drives have proven to be robust and even downright fast, like with WD’s SN770. Expectations are that the HP FX900, based on the DRAM-less InnoGrit IG5220 controller, will also shine, particularly as it uses very fast flash.

The FX900 also has a faster sibling in the FX900 Pro, a drive we will review at a future date. For now, we want to see how this drive measures up not only against the older designs it’s replacing but even newer, high-end drives. Is it really fair to call this “entry-level” or even “mid-grade” in any meaningful use of those terms?

Specifications

The HP FX900, manufactured with the assistance of BiWin, comes in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities. Unfortunately, we could only find the middle two SKUs available for purchase at the time of review. These are priced competitively but, as always, consider sales before making a purchase.

Performance tops out at 5/4.8 GBps for sequential read and writes, with IOPS hitting an astonishing 828,000/663,000 peak for read and write, both respectively. Astonishing because this drive is based on a quad-channel, DRAM-less controller pushing numbers that would put even the best PCIe 3.0 NVMe drives to shame. We suspect there’s a bit of fudging here as these numbers exceed what InnoGrit lists for the IG5220, especially as we similar high-balling with the FX900 Pro and IG5236 - although IOPS this extreme are not realistically achievable, anyway.

The specifications indicate this is an entry-level to mid-range NVMe SSD, DRAM-less but able to benefit from PCIe 4.0 bandwidth to a limited degree. There are some similarities to drives based on the Phison E16 controller, which has DRAM, but this is clearly newer technology. As such, it’s positioned more to compete with WD’s excellent SN770.

HP offers a 5-year warranty with 400 TBW per TB of capacity. This is less than typical for a standard NVMe drive but more than adequate for most users.

Software and Accessories

The HP SSDs have always been no-frills, although they do come with an M.2 screw. While it is not difficult to get M.2 screws and they should come with most motherboards and adapters, users nevertheless seem to always ask if a drive comes with the screw. It’s a bit like asking if a SATA SSD comes with a SATA cable — the answer is that most don’t. However, this one does come with the screw.

A Closer Look

We see the controller, two NAND packages on the top side, and no DRAM — a minimalist experience, to be sure. The back label contains basic information about the drive. The top label serves a purpose, though, as hinted at in the pictures, it’s actually a graphene thermal pad that assists with the dissipation of excess heat.

The InnoGrit IG5220, also known as the RainierQX, is a 4-channel, DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 controller. It does have a DRAM-equipped sibling in the IG5221 RainierQ, but this has not commonly been seen in the wild. The IG5220 is very powerful and capable for what it is and should not be underestimated. Could it help herald a new era of super-capable DRAM-less drives? Some people even wonder if this much bandwidth is even necessary, but it is impressive for a 4-channel controller.

The flash is difficult to read but seems to be labeled BW29F4T08ENLEE. This would indicate BiWin-binned flash from Micron (MT29-equivalent) in 4Tb or 512GB packages,  with 8-bit TLC flash of the 176-layer generation. This flash has been used to good effect on many drives utilizing the Phison E18 controller. Some commenters are eager to say that NAND flash has not improved much where it matters - Q1T1 random performance - but that overlooks just how far you can reach with this flash on the IG5220. Additionally, DirectStorage should help users take better advantage of this potential.

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Comparison Products

We compare the HP FX900 to the aforementioned WD SN770 and its PCIe 3.0 sibling, the SN570. We’re also pitting it against the DRAM-less Samsung 980, the Phison E16-driven MSI Spatium M470, the very popular SK hynix Gold P31, and some high-end PCIe 4.0 drives in the Crucial P5 Plus and Kingston Fury Renegade. We compare all of these drives at the 1TB capacity.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The HP FX900 does rather poorly here, ending up at the bottom with the SN570. This perhaps speaks to a limitation of InnoGrit’s SSD controller firmware optimization. Even though the company was founded by industry veterans, InnoGrit is still a new manufacturer. The company proved itself with the IG5236, plus we also often see firmware pains with early Phison products. WD, for their part, have shown an incredible capacity for getting the most out of their hardware with optimization, as with the SN850 and SN770.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The FX900 does better here, ending up in the middle of the pack alongside Samsung’s 980. It’s not surprising that the drive struggles both with this test and 3DMark as there are some similarities in the testing mechanics.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

DiskBench is a bandwidth-constrained test, and as such, it likes sequential performance. This explains why the FX900 scores close to the E16-driven M470 and the SN770. It’s certainly more of a “real” PCIe 4.0 drive than something like the S50 Lite, but neither is it pushing the limits of the interface. Quad-channel controllers, in this case, are effectively limited by their bus speeds.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

We expect the queue depth 1 (QD1) sequential results in ATTO to be similar to DiskBench, and that is the case. It’s useful to look at these results to see how different designs are optimized. For example, the FX900 falls behind in reads at bigger block sizes, but dominates with writes. The Phison E18 controller, as always and especially with 176-layer TLC in the Fury Renegade, continues to show superiority at peak performance. What we really see is that the E16 is showing its age in the M470, particularly as it is using an older flash.

CDM’s sequential QD1 tests demonstrate nothing new, although it is again surprising how well the SN770 performs. However, the FX900 finally shines in the random QD1 tests, effectively topping the charts alongside the SN770 and Fury Renegade. For the SN770, this is due to optimization; with the Fury Renegade, it’s the powerful controller and especially the 176-layer flash. The FX900 also uses this flash, as does the P5 Plus, but we can tell Crucial’s optimization is different.

For everyday users, it’s clear the FX900 and SN770 will both offer an optimal experience despite being “budget” alternatives.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The FX900 writes at around 4.8 GBps for approximately 63 seconds, suggesting a cache size of around 300GB. This isn’t all of the flash in pSLC mode, and the drive then falls to a direct-to-TLC mode at around 2 GBps. It can sustain this for quite some time before hitting a folding state at around 500 MBps.

This excellent result pushes the limits of what you could expect from a 4-channel, DRAM-less drive with flash of this quality. The SN770 sustains its SLC cache for longer but then falls to its bottom state. The Gold P31, with its hybrid cache, can maintain its middle performance state for as long as it needs. The FX900 is between these two, proving it is flexible but also demonstrating that Micron’s 176-layer flash is faster than SK hynix’s 128-layer TLC.

We feel it’s safe to say that this drive offers a good middle-ground approach to sustained writes, which may be a factor when the drive is fuller - a state that tends to be dangerous for older DRAM-less drives. However, for most users, the SN770 is effectively equivalent as you usually go for bursty writes that stay within SLC.

The big-picture view is that proper DRAM-less drives can offer a really good experience even in steady state.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is important, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade, as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. 

We also monitor the drive's temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an I.R. thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Again, remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The FX900 is extremely efficient, which isn't surprising — a DRAM-less 4-channel design with this 176-layer flash will be efficient. Idle power draw is perhaps not as good as we'd like - the Gold P31 remains the go-to laptop drive - but overall efficiency is impressive.

The FX900 idled in the mid-40s and peaked in the mid-60s (Celsius). These measured ranges were both by SMART and an IR gun. No throttling was apparent in the test system during sustained write workloads.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

HP has offered some good SSDs over the years in the EX920 and EX950, and it’s nice to see the company isn’t afraid to stay in the game because, frankly, the FX900 is good for the industry. It shows that pairing a good controller and good flash can offer excellent everyday performance. In addition, the 4-channel, DRAM-less design is not a limiting factor as it was in the past, and we’re excited to see what the company can do with the FX900 Pro, too.

SSD controller maker InnoGrit entered a competitive market, facing the established Silicon Motion and Phison SSD controller juggernauts. However, we should consider that SMI’s SM2260 isn't too old and needed refinement in the SM2262 and SM2262EN. Furthermore, some of Phison’s earlier controllers, including the DRAM-less E8T, were disappointing compared to Samsung’s and WD’s proprietary solutions. This is all to say that the IG5220 and IG5236 have been welcome additions, and we hope to see even better things in the future with further optimization.

Micron’s 176-layer flash has proven to be capable outside of the Phison E18 controller, but there is competition in the works. SK hynix’s Platinum P41 uses the company's own 176-layer TLC, and Samsung is ramping up 176-layer production with its next-generation flash. Meanwhile, Kioxia promises record-setting speeds from its BiCS6 and BiCS7. Everybody is also bringing out new 176-layer QLC.

To put it succinctly: the FX900 demonstrates what good flash and controller design can do, offering improvements that are often dismissed due to too much focus on NAND’s inherent shortcomings. That’s without discussing DirectStorage — a proper storage API will enable Windows to better take advantage of SSDs.

For everyday use, this drive is not earth-shatteringly faster than your four-year-old EX920, but it enables someone with the appropriate platform to slot in an affordable, super-fast drive without studying fifty reviews. The human element is that this drive feels good to use, especially because it’s so efficient.

The FX900 will not change the world, and WD’s SN770 already surprised us in this segment. But maybe that’s the point: having more viable options is a good thing. You will be well-served by either the SN770 or the FX900. PCIe 5.0 drives are coming quickly, and DirectStorage may finally help harness insanely-fast SSDs, but the FX900 lets you enjoy everything today without challenging your wallet. It’s not the fastest drive out there, but it’s fast enough.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Finding the right balance between speed and resolution is a matter of budget when it comes to selecting a monitor. But with many 4K 144 Hz gaming monitors appearing in the marketplace, prices have come down to where it will cost about the same to buy one versus a 240 Hz QHD display. The latest generation consoles play a role too, in that they’ve introduced more users to Ultra HD gaming with HDR.

The best 4K gaming monitors haven’t gone beyond 144 Hz yet, but they have refined their performance with better overdrives, blur reduction and Adaptive-Sync. Image quality has also improved with more effective HDR and larger color gamuts.

Sitting at the comfortable price point of $700, HP’s Omen 27u offers just about everything one could want in an Ultra HD screen, including HDMI 2.1 port for console compatibility. Let’s take a look.

HP Omen 27u Specs

 The Omen 27u has an IPS panel rated for 1 ms response using both MPRT and GTG standards. In my tests, I found it drew the screen as fast as any other Ultra HD monitor but had slightly lower-than-average input lag.

The backlight is an LED edge array with a dynamic contrast option available for SDR and HDR content. That gives the 27u decent HDR contrast of around 6,400:1. It also has a large color gamut that covers 91% of DCI-P3, putting it above average in that regard. HDR10 signals are supported with a VESA DisplayHDR 400 certification. My tests confirmed this brightness level for both SDR and HDR content.

Gaming performance is assured with Adaptive-Sync, which covers both FreeSync and G-Sync platforms with HDR and overdrive up to 144 Hz. The Omen 27u has not yet been certified by Nvidia, but MPRT (blur reduction) is available to improve motion resolution further. A five-level overdrive can also be employed to keep the action clear.

The Omen 27u’s connectivity includes the latest interfaces with DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 2.1. There’s also a USB-C port, but it is for data only and does not support video.

An LED lighting feature is included that rings a soft glow around the back of the panel and illuminates the base with different colors and effects. It’s controlled from the OSD or HP’s Omen Light Studio desktop app. Styling is unique, with nary a curve or taper to be seen. Everything is made from square corners and diamonds to form a shape you won’t see anywhere else.

Assembly and Accessories

A clamshell box opens wide to reveal the Omen 27u’s contents secured in carefully shaped cardboard. The packaging is completely recyclable and doesn’t use foam of any kind. The stand and base are already joined together. To attach the panel, find the tiny Allen key in the carton, insert the stand’s tab into the panel, and lock down two captive fasteners. It’s a tad fiddly, but the chassis is very solid once complete. A stylish external power supply provides the juice while USB and DisplayPort cables deliver data and video.

Product 360

In most cases, the adjective “blocky” is a negative. But the 27u uses block styling to form a lithe and elegant package consisting of only 90-degree corners with smooth edges. The panel is perfectly flat in back with a component bulge that’s also flat and turned to form a diamond shape. Inputs are arrayed on the downward edges with video on one side and USB on the other. You get one each of DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.1 and HDMI 2.0. USB is version 3.2 and includes a Type-C upstream port and two type-B downstream ones. A 3.5mm audio jack completes the package.

The lighting is well done with a soft glow that doesn’t intrude. There is a diffuse ring around the bulge in back and another source on the bottom edge illuminating the base. A polished diamond sits in just the right spot to create a catchlight. The only other light is a tiny power LED on the bottom right.

The stand includes a 130 mm height adjustment and 3/25 degrees tilt. There is no swivel or portrait mode. At full extension, the panel is the right height to put one’s eyepoint at the center screen. On top of the stand is a spot to hang headphones. A hole in the upright helps keep cables tidy.

The panel has a flush bezel on all four sides, which is unique in my experience. The frame around the image is very thin: 6 mm on the top and sides and 10 mm on the bottom. There is no branding visible from the front, and when the picture is on, you can barely perceive the border.

Around the back right is a joystick that controls all of the monitor functions except power which gets its own button. The stand attaches seamlessly and, once bolted down, appears to grow out of the panel. The monitor is monolithic in both look and feel. If you prefer to use your own hardware, a 100mm VESA mount hides behind a removable panel.

OSD Features

The Omen 27u’s OSD is packed with options for gaming, image adjustment and the LED lighting. To bring it up, press the joystick twice.

Gaming is front and center with many options, including video processing and play aids. MPRT is the backlight strobe used for blur reduction. It has five levels that get progressively darker as smoothness increases. Level 2 or 3 is a good balance. When it’s on, Adaptive-Sync cannot be used. Edge Precision is an edge enhancement option that sharpens images noticeably. It’s OK for static images, but moving pictures show ringing artifacts. Shadow Vision increases black levels to bring out shadow detail. There are five overdrive levels available, but I recommend staying at three or less since the faster options create visible ghosting.

Play aids include a slick aiming point editor where you pick from four different shapes to create your own crosshair. You can also choose the color and its location on the screen. Game timers include countdown and stopwatch functions, and you can display the frame rate. Finally, there are marks to align multiple monitors with precision.

The External Lighting menu controls the rear and bottom arrays separately. There are various effects and colors available. Or you can create custom light shows using HP’s Omen Light Studio app. All the lights can be turned off if you wish.

Image controls include an effective dynamic contrast option and Black Stretch is another way to increase shadow area visibility. The Color menu offers nine picture modes with RGB sliders available for each one. I found the default Gaming mode to be the most accurate, with no requirement for calibration. Game Remaster mode bumps up color saturation and sharpness to help older games look better. HP Enhance+ does much the same thing and offers three levels of enhancement.

The Input menu includes many options for DisplayPort activity, HDMI CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) and PbP for multiple video sources. It also includes the audio controls (volume and mute) in a sub-menu.

HP Omen 27u Calibration Settings

The Omen 27u’s Gaming mode is one of the best default picture modes I’ve seen in any monitor. It delivers almost perfect color, grayscale and gamma and does not require adjustment. In fact, I could not improve upon its test results when I adjusted the RGB sliders. There are no gamma presets but luminance tracks very close to the 2.2 standard. The native color gamut is large at 91% coverage of DCI-P3 and cannot be adjusted. There is no sRGB mode.

HDR content receives a similar treatment with very accurate and saturated color that requires no user intervention. Below are the brightness settings for commonly used peak white levels.

Gaming and Hands-on

The Omen 27u has a bright and sharp picture that’s great for just about any application, whether it's for work or play. Color is very saturated, but balanced enough so that it never looks overblown. It’s colorful without being cartoonish. Static images are super clean when browsing the web or working in apps like Photoshop. In these cases, the Edge Precision option adds a bit of clarity. Where it is not recommended is when watching video or when gaming. Then, the added edge enhancement causes fine lines to break up and detail to be lost.

For productivity, I found SDR to be the best choice. HDR looks fine on the Windows desktop, but warm colors were muted unless I viewed HDR-mastered content. To watch HDR video, you need to switch on HDR in Control Panel. Contrast was good enough to make small text stand out well against white backgrounds, while reading documents or web content was easy on the eyes. I had to applaud the near-perfect color, grayscale and gamma accuracy, which combined to deliver a fatigue-free image.

Exploring the various enhancement and video processing options while gaming proved interesting. Edge Precision should definitely be avoided in first-person shooters. Quick movements produced distracting ringing artifacts. MPRT turned out to be a usable alternative to Adaptive-Sync. Motion resolution was a tiny bit higher, and I only saw the occasional frame tear when the action stayed north of 100 frames per second. I enjoyed creating my own aiming points using the editor in the OSD. It’s better than the other examples of this feature I’ve seen. Having more timer and stopwatch options than the norm was useful too.

HDR gaming was first-rate with deep contrast and bold vibrant color. Doom Eternal had a particularly intense red during one sequence where I moved through what looked like the remains of a major artery. The word “juicy” came to mind. If you’re into gaming gore, the Omen 27u delivers it generously. Fast motion remained smooth when shapes were more organic, like rocks and trees. Man-made objects had a bit of blur. That I nitpick about this is partially because I’ve spent many hours playing on 240 and 360 Hz monitors.

SDR games like Tomb Raider played with a rich color palette as well. Though the correct gamut for these titles is sRGB, I had no complaints about the 27u’s extended color space. I would prefer to see a choice to use sRGB with SDR content, but most users will be more than satisfied with using the large gamut for all content.

Though not mentioned in HP’s specs, the 27u has a decent pair of internal speakers. Though they won’t shake your desktop with bass output, they deliver clean dialog at reasonable volumes. Gunfire and explosions are a bit tinny, but they play without distortion. Music comes across with a narrow sound stage that ends at the sides of the panel but sounds good enough to add dimension to games and video.

The Omen 27u is a highly capable Ultra HD monitor that delivers all the gaming performance of the most expensive screens and a good percentage of the picture quality. Its HDR image is better than average, outpaced only by high-end monitors with zone dimming backlights or OLED panels.

To compare the Omen 27u’s performance, I’ve gathered Ultra HD displays ranging from 27 to 32 inches in size. All are edge backlight IPS panels running at 144 Hz. We have Philips’ 329M1RV, the Eve Spectrum D03, Asus’ VG28U, Acer's XV282K and LG’s 27GN950.

Pixel Response and Input Lag

Click here to read up on our pixel response and input lag testing procedures.

The Acer draws a full white field 1ms quicker than the rest. That gives it a slight edge in smoothness with a tad less motion blur. In practice, the difference is very small. The rest, including the Omen 27u, hit 7ms which is typical for a 144 Hz monitor.

Total input lag is right in the middle at 32ms. The LG is a standout here; one of the few 144 Hz monitors that is significantly quicker than 30ms. Gamers of average ability will have no problem enjoying play on the Omen 27u. It has similar levels of motion blur and responsiveness to its competition.

Viewing Angles

The Omen 27u has reasonable viewing angles with very little loss of brightness at 45 degrees to the side and a slight green tint. You can still see all the pattern steps clearly with no change in shadow detail. The top view is blue with a washed-out look, which is typical of the IPS category.

Screen Uniformity

To learn how we measure screen uniformity, click here.

My Omen 27u sample scored very well in the uniformity test with no visible hotspots, bleed or glow. The edge backlight kept things nice and smooth at all brightness levels and all colors when I viewed full-field patterns. There is no reason to expect issues with any example of this monitor.

To read about our monitor tests in-depth, please check out Display Testing Explained: How We Test PC Monitors. We cover brightness and contrast testing on page two.

Uncalibrated – Maximum Backlight Level

The Omen 27u is a very bright monitor with more than enough output for any situation and environment. You'll never pine for light output with an SDR peak of over 409 nits. The minimum level is 69 nits which is a tad higher than my preference for dark room gaming. I’d rather use 50 nits for that. With such a broad range available, each click of the 100 brightness steps is around 3 nits.

The 27u finishes third in the black level comparison and has the fourth-best contrast of the group. At 1,088.8:1, it’s about average for IPS panels. Some of the latest displays can top 1,200:1, and that’s a visible difference. But the HP still delivers good image depth and texture.

After Calibration to 200 nits

Calibration moves the Omen 27u up to second place in the contrast contest. My only adjustment was to brightness; RGB sliders were left alone. The Philips retains its top spot, but the HP isn’t too far behind. It also scores well in the ANSI test with an excellent 1,047.9:1 ratio. There is no doubt that the 27u is made from quality components.

Grayscale and Gamma Tracking

The Omen 27u has some of the very best out-of-box color accuracy I’ve encountered. In fact, I could not improve its numbers with calibration. So, not only is adjustment unnecessary, but it also provides no benefit.

Our grayscale and gamma tests use Calman calibration software from Portrait Displays. We describe our grayscale and gamma tests in detail here.

There is only one grayscale chart that matters here, the default one. The Omen 27u is spot-on out of the box and cannot be improved in the tracking test. With all errors under 2dE, that’s a very good thing. Gamma tracks a tiny bit below the 2.2 line, but visually, it is perfect with a very small range of values.

Comparisons

The Omen 27u wins the default grayscale contest and finishes fifth when the other monitors are calibrated. 1.13dE is a visually perfect score, so there will be no perceivable difference between the top five screens. It also fares well in the gamma comparison with the tightest value range and only a 3.18% deviation from 2.2. This is excellent performance, especially considering it comes from the factory this way.

Color Gamut Accuracy

Our color gamut and volume testing use Portrait Displays’ Calman software. For details on our color gamut testing and volume calculations, click here.

The Omen 27u’s color gamut accuracy is equally impressive. Again, this is an out-of-the-box test. No adjustments I made could improve the result. Not only is there near-total DCI-P3 gamut coverage, but all points are on target. The boxes represent 1dE, so if the dot is inside or in contact, it’s visually perfect. The average score is among the highest in my database of almost 300 monitors tested since 2013.

Comparisons

This is a very impressive group of gaming monitors. None of them have visible color gamut errors and the Omen 27u is one of the very best. Getting close to 1dE is an achievement for any display, even a professional one. And the HP is the only one here that hasn’t been adjusted from its default settings.

While a handful of the latest extended color screens have larger color gamuts than the Omen 27u, its score of 90.99% is still above average. If you refer to the Calman chart, you’ll notice how perfectly balanced the saturation is, making it look even better. The 27u is well-qualified for color-critical applications. Its only flaw is the lack of an sRGB mode. You’ll need a compensation profile for that task.

Our HDR benchmarking uses Portrait Displays’ Calman software. To learn about our HDR testing, see our breakdown of how we test PC monitors.

The Omen 27u seamlessly supports HDR10 content with an automatic switch; no user intervention is required. All image options are grayed out, so you can’t adjust brightness or color, but I found excellent accuracy and nothing to complain about.

HDR Brightness and Contrast

The 27u easily earns DisplayHDR 400 status with a 451.5767-nit peak HDR white level. That means highlights pop and sparkle without undue harshness. With moderately aggressive dynamic contrast in operation, the black level is a respectable 0.0702 nit with contrast at 6,435.3:1. That’s a good level but the other monitors, save the Asus, score better. HDR still looks superior to SDR, though with plenty of depth and pop. While the Eve and Asus have very broad dynamic range for HDR content, the Omen 27u is much better than most of the HDR monitors I’ve reviewed. Its picture quality is appropriate for the price. To see more impact, you’ll have to spend a lot more money for a full-array LED or Mini LED display.

Grayscale, EOTF and Color

The Omen 27u is nearly faultless in its HDR color, EOTF and grayscale tests. The chart shows a slight blue tint at high brightness levels, but this is an invisible error. The EOTF is a tad dark from 10 to 40%, which adds a little extra depth at the expense of shadow detail visibility. It’s all there, just harder to see clearly. Most HDR games have their own adjustments to help with these issues.

I’ve included gamut charts for both DCI-P3 and Rec.2020 color. The Omen 27u is a DCI-P3 monitor, and it renders that gamut with a little over-saturation. That’s not a bad thing as the targets progress linearly, which keeps detail from being crushed. Hue targets are spot on except for magenta, which is a touch blue. The Rec.2020 test shows similar behavior until the monitor runs out of color at around 90%. Both red and green alter the hue at that point to simulate greater saturation, which works well in practice. The Omen 27u is an excellent HDR monitor in every respect.

Now that some 240 Hz QHD and 144 Hz UHD monitors are selling for similar prices, the choice comes down to frame rate versus resolution. If you have a console, resolution will probably be the higher priority since it maxes out at 120 Hz. The only box to check then is HDMI 2.1. Some UHD screens have it, and some do not.

The HP Omen 27u has HDMI 2.1 and a host of other attractive features along with a superb image and solid gaming performance. And it delivers all of that in a well-built and stylish package for $700. That’s a premium price but not quite at the level of the bleeding edge screens with full-array backlights and Mini LED.

My favorite aspect of the Omen 27u is its color accuracy. With no adjustments, in its default picture mode, it aced my grayscale, gamma and gamut tests with errors well under 2dE. And it did this for SDR and HDR content. It truly earns the moniker “factory calibrated.” Add in a large color gamut with nearly 91% coverage of DCI-P3, and you have a great-looking and colorful monitor. And its contrast is quite good, with around 1,100:1 for SDR and over 6,400:1 for HDR.

Gaming was a pleasurable experience with decent overdrive and flawless Adaptive-Sync. MPRT blur reduction is also well implemented. Though it can’t be used with AS, it effectively increases motion resolution with only the occasional frame tear. The only enhancement I didn’t care for was Edge Precision which caused ringing in moving images. What would I add here? Just an sRGB mode to give users a choice. As awesome as the Omen 27u’s color is, one should be able to choose sRGB for SDR content if they want it.

If you’re looking to go Ultra HD for well under $1,000, the HP Omen 27u has excellent image quality with solid gaming performance, build quality and styling. With HDMI 2.1 included, it covers PC and console gaming with equal competence.

Due to skyrocketing COVID demand for desktops and notebooks from businesses and individuals, PC makers ran into trouble building enough computers and procuring ample components. However, as store shelves are now mostly stocked, PC demand has slowed due to inflation and uncertainties caused by the war in Ukraine. As a result, Acer chairman Jason Chen warned this week that an oversupply of notebooks is coming.

Consumer PC Demand Weakening

Rising prices of energy, food, and other critical items have resulted in record inflation rates around the globe. As a result, many people are reconsidering their spending habits and cutting back on technology purchases. In general, the recent months were not particularly good for client PC sales in the consumer sector, reports DigiTimes. Acer, Asus, and HP indicated in the recent weeks that the consumer market was showing signs of weakness and demand was decreasing.  

"From a demand perspective, we expect to continue to see strong commercial demand with some softening of the consumer businesses," said Enrique Lores, President and CEO of HP, at the company's earnings call on May 31. "From a supply perspective, we see two quarters of constraints. First is the industry-wide component shortages that we expect will continue through fiscal 2022; second, are the COVID-related disruptions in China, which we expect will primarily impact fiscal Q3." 

HP's commercial PC sales were up 18% year-over-year in Q2 2022, whereas sales of the company's consumer systems declined by 6% YoY. In terms of product categories, increased prices and higher sales of premium systems drove notebooks revenue by 3%, increased desktop revenue by 28%, and boosted workstation sales by 21% year-over-year. 

According to IDC, softness in consumer PC demand will reduce 2022 PC shipments by 8.2% compared to the previous year. Desktop and laptop PC shipments reached 348.8 million units in 2021, so they are forecast to decline to 321.2 million units this year.

Inventories Becoming Liabilities

Ever since PC demand started to outpace supply in Q2 2020, PC makers have worked overtime to procure components and build up inventory to meet demand. Leading PC makers like Acer, Dell and HP bought chips directly from their developers/manufacturers and stockpiled them to avoid disruptions to their supply chains.  

Now that demand for consumer PCs is dropping (albeit not to pre-pandemic levels), their inventories are becoming liabilities as oversupply leads to price drops, which is good for the end-user but not good for business. In fact, Acer's chairman reportedly said that the supply of laptops had already outpaced demand. 

Companies like Acer, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI typically sell to consumers, so they will suffer from softening demand, particularly for entry-level and midrange systems. DigiTimes recalls that based on first-quarter balance sheets, the inventory value of Acer, Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte increased year-over-year by 26.59%, 79.51%, 77.62% and 64.59%, respectively. The inventory buildup could be good if demand were there, but now that it is weakening, they could become losses since some components and finished goods lose value quickly.   

However, not all PC makers suffer from softening demand or worry about oversupplying the market. For example, if you buy a MacBook Pro 14/16 from Apple today (either in the U.S. or Europe), the company won't be able to deliver it until August. The systems are available for pickup from select Apple stores, though.

Intel's Arc A370M-powered laptops are becoming available outside the South Korean market. Lenovo and HP (via momomo_us) have updated their online stores with preorders for the new devices.

HP's Envy Laptop 16t-h000 is available in the U.S. with a starting price of $1,399.99 and an estimated shipping date of July 1. The laptop wields the latest Core i5-12500H (Alder Lake-H) processor with four P-cores and eight E-cores and the Arc A370M graphics card with 4GB of GDDR6 memory. HP also offers consumers an alternate processor option in the shape of the Core i7-12700H, which has six P-cores and eight E-cores. While the Core i5-12500H maxes out at 4.5 GHz on the P-cores, the Core i7-12700H checks in with a 200 MHz higher boost clock speed.

The 16t-h000 base configuration comes with 16GB (2x8GB) of DDR5-4800 memory and a 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe TLC-based SSD for primary storage. Consumers can top out the device to 32GB (2x16GB) and 2TB of storage. The laptop has a 16-inch IPS panel with a WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution, a 120 Hz refresh rate, and a maximum brightness of 400 nits. Connectivity includes two Thunderbolt 4 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, and Wi-Fi 6E.

In Lenovo's case, the company has put up the Yoga 7i Gen 7 for $1,966.90 in New Zealand and $1,952.80 in Australia. However, unlike HP, Lenovo doesn't commit to a specific time frame for shipping. Instead, the brand lists 10+ weeks for the unit to ship to its customers.

The Yoga 7i Gen 7 packs the same Core i5-12500H and Arc A370M combination as HP's Envy laptop. Consumers can opt for the Core i7-12700H for a small premium. However, Lenovo's device has 16GB of soldered LPDDR5-4800 memory, whereas its competitor sticks to standard SO-DIMM slots. The Yoga 7i Gen 7 includes a 512GB M.2 2242 PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD and a 16-inch IPS display with a WQXGA (2560 x 1600) resolution and 400 nits of maximum brightness. The manufacturer didn't mention the refresh rate.

The connectivity on the Yoga 7i Gen 7 is similar to the HP Envy Laptop 16t-h000 in the sense that both devices deliver two Thunderbolt 4 ports, one HDMI 2.1 port, and Wi-Fi 6E. However, the Yoga 7i Gen 7's USB Type-A ports conform to the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface, whereas the HP Envy Laptop 16t-h000 are USB 3.2 Gen 2.

Intel Arc Alchemists's launch isn't going according to plan - but then again, most of the world isn't. According to an Intel blog post penned by Lisa Pearce, Vice President and General Manager for the Visual Compute Group, Intel's Arc Alchemist launch has been hit by software development snags that have pushed availability forwards in all designs, from mobile GPUs through desktop-class Arc cards - whose initial release seems to be locked for OEMs and system integrators. The blog post also states the impact of recent COVID-19 outbreaks in China (which we've covered before) impacting component availability.

According to Pearce, Intel is pushing through the issues - particularly the production ones - with a number of OEMs, such as Samsung, Lenovo, Acer, HP, and Asus, in order to increase the number of delivered designs with Intel's Arc A3560 and A370 graphics. If you're hoping for more graphics grunt, however, and were looking at Intel's Arc A750 and A770, you'll have to wait until early Summer.

Intel's work in delivering full-performance desktop graphics solutions is even more convoluted. According to the company, desktop Intel Arc graphics will only be initially available through OEMs and system integrator. According to Pearce, this is being done in order to control the number of hardware configurations that can be paired with the company's first high-performance desktop GPUs. Compatibility is one of the pitfalls of PC components; there are a myriad of possible hardware configurations that can be paired with a latest-gen graphics card, and GPU manufacturers such as Nvidia and AMD know full well how this adds to driver complexity and potential performance pitfalls that come along with it. It might take a while before you can actually acquire an Intel ARC graphics card from the shelves of your local PC hardware store.

Adding to the staggered Arc launch, Intel's blog clarifies that initial roll-out of entry-level Arc desktop cards (A3 series) will first occur in China starting in Q2, with a later in the year launch for A5 and A7 series cards. This makes sense for a launch troubled by materials and component shortages as well as supply chain bottlenecks that are still being felt: China stands as the world's nevralgic center for materials and chip processing. Once again, worldwide roll-out of desktop-class Arc cards will come later.

None of these elements are particularly surprising; we've already covered the staggered launch of Intel's Arc Alchemist lineup. Originally slated for worldwide availability, we were as surprised as you were when Intel announced limited, localized availability of Arc GPUs through a partnership with Samsung for the South Korean market, before increasing availability on both Samsung and other partners' designs around the globe. Adding to this is one particularly egregious moment for Intel's software development efforts, after the company failed to produce a promised day-0 driver release for Elden Ring that never materialized.

Delays and execution problems on Intel's Arc launch are happening even as Intel recently promoted Raja Koduri to the position of Executive Vice President for his contributions to Intel over the years. Of course, the consistent software and hardware delays don't paint a picture of perfect execution. But we're living strange times in the PC space - and in the world. Perhaps Intel knows more about its Arc GPUs than it's letting on.

Here's a great deal on a budget gaming laptop — the HP Pavilion 15 (Model15-dk2029na) for only £499 from Costco. With regard to the spiraling cost-of-living expenses these days, spending thousands on a gaming laptop can seem very unnecessary. So whether you still fancy being able to take a gaming laptop out and about, don't have enough room for a full desktop, or just want a nice student laptop then this could be the deal for you.  

This gaming laptop comes with a 15-inch Full HD screen that has a 144Hz refresh rate and is powered by an Intel Core i5-11300H CPU, 8GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. 

It's not the most powerful gaming laptop by a long stretch with the GTX 1650 GPU being last gen, as is the 11th Gen Intel Core i5-11300H, but what you have here is a decently specced gaming laptop that is on offer at a very competitive price.

This laptop should be able to play almost any game on medium to high settings and would be great for some productivity work and general browsing. But if you're looking for something that can play Cyberpunk 2077 on Ultra settings, you will want to look into something more powerful and unfortunately more expensive. 

A report published business and financial publication Commercial Times in Taiwan today warns of a new spate of epidemic prevention measures in China having a big impact on laptop production. According to the site, laptop, TV and iPhone makers in Kunshan are going to have to alter their operations, which "may seriously damage the global electronics industry."

Measures that the government introduced in Kunshan, which is located just outside of Shanghai, include controls on the movement of labor, implementing work from home where possible and other regulations and restrictions.

The recent Covid outbreak in Shanghai has been a global story; last week it affected TSMC, ASE and Wafer Works employees. The latest spate of infections is seemingly more difficult for the government to keep under control, resulting in Kunshan joining the areas implementing epidemic prevention measures.

Trio of Major Contract Laptop Makers in Affected Town

Kunshan is a major manufacturing hub for several Taiwanese computer companies, particularly the well known contract laptop manufacturers Compal, Pegatron and Wistron, as well as AUO (monitors) and Nanya (semiconductors including DRAM). There are also several PCB production factories in the area.

Compal, Pegatron and Wistron might not exactly be household names, but those companies make and design products for many of the biggest laptop brands. For example Compal has made laptops for brands such as Apple, Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Toshiba, HP, and Fujitsu. Pegatron, founded by Asus, makes / has made laptops for companies like Asus, Apple, Lenovo and Microsoft. Wistron, spun off from Acer, is another contract device and has made laptops for Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer and Xiaomi.

Other major laptop makers not mentioned in today's report include Quanta, Inventec and Foxconn.

The affected companies have factories in multiple locations, so the warning of "serious damage," may be somewhat extreme. The extent of it will also depends on how long this wave of Covid infections lasts.

The Commercial Times notes that the current round of measures will be revised on April 6 (they started on April 1).

Earlier today 10,000 extra health workers and 2,000 from the military were sent into Shanghai to help with mass testing and other measures. The situation is developing, and we shall see if China can get back to 'zero-Covid'.

Intel has released a security bulletin with 16 newly-discovered BIOS-related vulnerabilities that allow attackers to use Denial of Service and Escalation of Privilege attacks on a local machine, at the same time bypassing the operating system and its associated security measures. According to Intel, these issues impact its 6th to 11th-Gen Core processors along with its Xeon lineup, including the W, E and D models. 

Ten of the vulnerabilities have a 'high' severity rating, meaning they allow unfettered access to the machine, while three are ranked as 'medium' and one is ranked as 'low.'

These new vulnerabilities aren't included in the recent list of Intel/AMD vulnerabilities, nor are they related to the recently-announced BIOS vulnerabilites that impact HP, Dell, Lenovo, and other vendors. Nonetheless, these 16 new vulnerabilities are similar to some because they are BIOS-related. All 16 allow attackers to hijack the BIOS of a computer in order to gain access to the local machine, thereby accessing sensitive data.

Thankfully, Intel notes that all these issues can only be exploited if the attacker has physical access to the machine, so they can't be exploited remotely. For businesses that have secure locations, these vulnerabilities shouldn't be as big of a concern as for personal laptops where malicious actors can easily gain access to the machine.

The issues specifically rely on an assortment of bugs found in Intel's BIOS firmware, including insufficient control flow management, buffer overflow, pointer issues, improper validation, and more. All of these allow attackers to escalate privileges when needed. Others include improper access control and incorrect default permissions that can allow attackers to use denial of service attacks against the local machine.

Most of these BIOS-related vulnerabilities are very impactful as they can effectively bypass nearly all security measures on a local PC. Most security measures run as part of the operating system, or on top of the OS, which only loads after the BIOS runs its initial POST (Power-On Self-Test). This means all regular security countermeasures are unable to protect the system BIOS.

Intel says it is releasing firmware updates to mitigate the vulnerabilities, but it has yet to release a formal roadmap. However, the company says the recommended course of action is to "update to the latest versions provided by the system manufacturer that addresses these issues." It isn't clear that those updates are available yet, though. Below you'll find the list of impacted platforms. 

Affected Products:

• 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processor Family
• Intel Xeon Scalable Processor Family
• Intel Xeon Processor W Family
• Intel Xeon Processor E Family
• Intel Xeon Processor D Family
• 11th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
• 10th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
• 9th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
• 8th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
• 7th Generation Intel Core Processor Family
• 6th Generation Intel Core processor Family
• Intel Core X-series Processor Family
• Intel Atom Processor C3XXX Family.