HP Victus 16 (2024) Laptop Review

The HP Victus 16 2024 is available in a Mica Silver, Ceramic White, and Performance Blue colorway. See the bottom of the laptop.

The HP Victus 16 2024's build quality is great. Its mostly-aluminum chassis feels pretty sturdy, exhibiting only a small amount of flex on the lid and almost none on the keyboard deck. The display twists a bit when manipulating it, but not enough to be of concern. The only part that feels noticeably lower quality and flimsier is the plastic around the hinge. There are no issues with the feet—they feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom. The finish doesn't scratch easily; it picks up some fingerprints after prolonged use, as most dark-color finishes do. The Ceramic White and Performance Blue models are likely better in that regard.

The HP Victus 16 2024's hinge is sub-par. It feels smooth when opening and closing the lid, but because there's very little resistance, it doesn't take much to move the screen. There's also a noticeable amount of screen wobble when typing heavily.

The HP Victus 16 2024's serviceability is great. Accessing the internals is straightforward; you only need remove eight Philips screws and pull off the bottom panel. A prying tool isn't necessary. The two screws at the back corners of the laptop are larger than the rest, so it's best to keep them organized to make the reassembly easier. The storage slot supports M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

You can see the service guide videos on HP's website.

• 230W power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The HP Victus 16 2024 is available with the following displays:

• 16.1” IPS 1920 x 1080 144Hz (matte, 45% NTSC)
• 16.1” IPS 1920 x 1080 165Hz (matte, 100% sRGB)
• 16.1” IPS 2560 x 1440 240Hz (matte, 100% sRGB)

An FHD resolution looks reasonably sharp on this laptop's 16.1-inch display. Individual pixels are visible up close, but this isn't a major issue at typical viewing distances, especially when playing fast-paced games. At a pixel density of 182 PPI, the QHD display looks noticeably sharper, making it a better option if you play a lot of slower-paced games in which you have the time to appreciate the graphics, like RPGs and atmospheric games, or if you plan on using the laptop for productivity and media consumption. That said, remember that the QHD panel will drain the battery faster, and you'll have to pair it with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 or 4070 to make the most of it because the RTX 3050 and 4050 will struggle to push high frame rates at 1440p. The 16:9 aspect ratio is standard, though it feels somewhat outdated, as most manufacturers have moved to the slightly taller 16:10, even on gaming laptops.

The 144Hz FHD panel is the lowest-end display option. It has a slow response time, causing visible ghosting behind fast-moving objects. The 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels have an advertised response time of 7 ms and 3 ms, respectively—take these numbers with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, none of the displays support variable refresh rate to reduce screen tearing.

The 144Hz FHD display has a good contrast ratio that's within the typical range of most IPS panels. That said, it's still pretty low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. You can expect the contrast to be in the same ballpark on the 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels.

The HP Victus 16 2024's 144Hz FHD display gets reasonably bright. It’s fine for use in most indoor settings, but you may have trouble seeing some content in very well-lit rooms. It isn’t bright enough for outdoor use in broad daylight. The screen gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. The 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels are likely similar in brightness, as they both have an advertised brightness of 300 cd/m².

The display's reflection handling is decent. Its matte coating works well against direct, mirror-like reflections; however, it causes a halo effect around bright light sources, making dark-color content hard to see. Some reflections are visible when viewing light-color content, but they aren't overly distracting. The other displays have the same matte finish.

The 144Hz FHD panel's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so it's best to be directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work. You can expect the viewing angle to be similar on the 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels.

The 144Hz FHD panel's vertical viewing angle is okay. Again, the image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen more or less straight on to see an accurate image, which can be challenging in tight places where you have little room to tilt the screen, like on a bus or airplane. The 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels likely have the same vertical viewing angle.

The 144Hz FHD panel's accuracy is bad out of the box. Its white balance is noticeably off, especially at higher brightness levels. The color dE is high mainly because this panel has a narrow color gamut and is incapable of reproducing the highly saturated tones. The gamma follows the curve, albeit rather loosely; very dark and very bright scenes look a tad over-darkened, while the rest look over-brightened.

The 144Hz FHD panel has a poor color gamut, as it doesn't even have full coverage of the commonly used sRGB color space, resulting in washed-out colors when viewing most web content. The 165Hz FHD and 240Hz QHD panels have 100% sRGB coverage. None of the displays have enough coverage of the wider Adobe RGB and DCI P3 color spaces for color-critical work like print graphics and HDR video production.

The other panels are likely flicker-free.

The HP Victus 16 2024 has an excellent keyboard. Its layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. Keycap stability is great—it isn't perfect, but pretty stable for this class of laptops. The keys have a good amount of travel, require little force to actuate, and provide clear, satisfying tactile feedback without being overly loud. The keyboard is quite large, though, so it may cause some fatigue over time, especially if you have small hands because you need to move your hands around more to reach all the keys. This laptop is available with single-color (white) or 1-zone RGB keyboard backlighting; you can adjust between two brightness levels using the F4 shortcut or turn it off completely. The backlight shines well through the legends but could be a little brighter.

The HP Victus 16 2024 has a great touchpad. It's large enough for most actions; it could be a tad larger, but it's very usable. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and there are no issues with palm rejection. The surface isn't super smooth, so you might sometimes experience glide stutters, especially when performing actions like dragging and dropping over a long distance. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad; the buttons work well but are a tad mushy.

The HP Victus 16 2024's speakers sound natural and relatively well-balanced despite having only a small amount of bass. However, they don't get very loud and distort a bit at higher volume levels.

The HP Victus 16 2024 has a great webcam. The image looks fairly sharp and detailed, with true-to-life colors; however, the exposure is a tad too low, and there's a small amount of noise in darker areas. Voices sound clear over the microphone with no noticeable background noise. The volume is quite high, so you may have to turn down the microphone's gain a bit. The privacy cover is a physical barrier but also disables the camera at the software level.

The HP Victus 16 2024 has an excellent port selection. All three USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. The one of the left support Sleep and Charge, meaning you can use it to charge a mobile device even when the laptop is in sleep mode. The USB-C supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed, DisplayPort 1.4a, Power Delivery, and Sleep and Charge. You can charge the laptop via USB-C, but since it can only take up to 100W, the battery will discharge if you perform intensive tasks at the same time.

HP’s specifications only mention the MediaTek MT7921 (Wi-Fi 6) and MediaTek MT7922 (Wi-Fi 6E) wireless adapters as the available options. However, our unit has a RealTek RTL8852BE Wi-Fi 6 adapter. Wi-Fi 6E gives you access to the 6GHz band, providing faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference than Wi-Fi 6 and other previous standards; however, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features. See our best router recommendations if you want to upgrade your wireless performance.

The HP Victus 16 2024 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 5 8645HS (6 cores/12 threads, up to 5.0GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

Both are high-performance processors typically found in gaming, content creation, and workstation laptops. They're essentially a refresh of the older AMD Ryzen 7040 series processors, but with better Neural Processing Unit (NPU) performance (up to 40% faster than the previous generation) to speed up AI-based tasks, like image generation in photo editing apps and background blurring during video calls. The Ryzen 7 has two additional cores, making it a better option for intensive, multi-threaded workloads than the Ryzen 5. As indicated in the GPU section below, the CPU and GPU options are linked, so if your primary goal is to play games, it's best to choose the configuration based on the GPU rather than the CPU.

See more information about the Ryzen 8040-series CPUs in AMD's product brief.

The HP Victus 16 2024 is available with the following GPUs:

• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (95W TGP /w Dynamic Boost, Ryzen 5 only)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Laptop GPU 6GB GDDR6 (120W TGP /w Dynamic Boost, Ryzen 5 only)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (120W TGP /w Dynamic Boost, Ryzen 7 only)
• NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU 8GB GDDR6 (120W TGP /w Dynamic Boost, Ryzen 7 only)

The available GPUs include entry-level (RTX 3050 and RTX 4050) to upper mid-range (RTX 4070) models in NVIDIA's lineup. The RTX 3050 is from an older generation of GPUs based on the Ampere architecture, while the rest are from the current Ada Lovelace generation. They support mostly the same features, like DLSS, ray tracing, and Reflex, with the only exception being Frame Generation, a 40-series exclusive feature that boosts performance in supported games by inserting AI-generated frames. All models can push playable frame rates in demanding games at 1080p, but you'll have to use the lowest settings and rely on features like DLSS on models with an RTX 3050 in more recent games. The RTX 4050 is also a 1080p gaming GPU; it'll just push higher frame rates than the 3050. The RTX 4060 excels at 1080p gaming and can push decent frames at 1440p with low to medium graphical settings. That said, if you want to play all your games at 1440p, it's best to get a model with an RTX 4070.

The biggest issue with these GPUs is their relatively low VRAM. 6GB is no longer sufficient for many recent games, even when using low or medium settings at 1080p. For 1440p gaming, 8GB can be insufficient beyond medium settings, depending on the title. This means that you might encounter stutters and graphical pop-ins if you set some settings too high, like textures.

See NVIDIA's spec sheet for more information about these GPUs.

You can get the HP Victus 16 2024 with 16GB or 32GB of RAM. The memory is user-replaceable.

You can get the HP Victus 16 2024 with 512GB or 1TB of storage. The storage is user-replaceable; the SSD slot supports M.2 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The HP Victus 16 2024's AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU performs well overall and is certainly adequate for general productivity tasks and heavy multitasking; however, this performance level is underwhelming for a 45W CPU, scoring lower in single-thread performance as the significantly more power-efficient base M3 SoC in the Apple MacBook Air 13 (2024), while barely beating it in multi-thread performance. If you have a heavier workload, and performance is important to you, know that there are much faster options on the market, like the Razer Blade 18 (2024)'s Intel Core i9-14900HX and the Apple MacBook Pro 16 (M3, 2023)'s M3 Max SoC.

GPU computing is where this laptop shines. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU performs as it should and can handle highly demanding workloads. The choice of the GPU depends on the complexity of your work and your budget, though it's best to avoid the aging RTX 3050, as its performance will soon fall behind newer integrated graphics.

Note: We've performed all benchmarks using the laptop's best-performing mode (Performance in this case) instead of the default Balanced mode, which usually throttles the performance to prolong battery life. This is more representative of the laptop's maximum potential (you can always turn it down if you prioritize battery life and/or lower fan noise and thermals), whereas the Balanced mode would only show the manufacturer's tuning of that mode. That said, switching to the Balanced mode on this laptop has little to no effect on performance.

The HP Victus 16 2024 scores well in the Cinebench R23 benchmarks. Its AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS CPU can easily handle intensive, multi-threaded workloads and general heavy multitasking. Again, there are significantly faster CPUs on the market if you need even more performance. Switching to the Balanced mode has almost no effect on performance.

The HP Victus 16 2024 is outstanding for Blender work. Every GPU configuration can handle 3D rendering, so choose based on your budget and needs.

The HP Victus 16 2024 with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Laptop GPU scores well in the Basemark GPU benchmark. As mentioned in the GPU section, the RTX 4060 and 4070 can handle demanding games at the QHD+ resolution; you just have to tweak the settings slightly more on the 4060 to get smooth gameplay. The RTX 3050 and 4050 are mainly for 1080p gaming; you'll have to play with lower settings and rely more on DLSS to get playable frame rates on the RTX 3050.

Battery life varies depending on the configuration. Models with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 Laptop GPU will likely have a slightly longer battery life since the RTX 3050 draws less power, while models with a 240Hz QHD display will likely have a shorter batter life due to the screen's higher resolution and faster refresh rate.

Borderlands 3 runs well on the HP Victus 16 2024. Although there are noticeable stutters, the gameplay is pretty smooth overall. Every configuration can handle this and other similarly demanding titles; you'll just have to play with the settings a bit more on models with an RTX 3050.

Here are additional benchmarks in Red Dead Redemption 2 so you can get a better idea of the performance on this RTX 4070 model:

Avg. FPS (1080p, high settings, no DLSS): 83 fps

Avg. FPS on Very Low (1080p, no DLSS): 123 fps

Every configuration can run Civilization VI and other similar titles smoothly, since most strategy games aren't very demanding on the GPU. The average turn time is very good and among the fastest we've tested so far.

Every configuration of the HP Victus 16 2024 can deliver smooth gameplay in Counter-Strike 2 and other similarly demanding games. 

Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs well on the HP Victus 16 2024. Every configuration can push well over 60 fps with high settings, even on models with an RTX 3050. The large frametime spikes are scene changes and aren't representative of the performance.

The keyboard is only mildly warm under load, but the bottom of the laptop gets quite hot, reaching 51.7 °C (125.06 °F). Unfortunately, the fans are very loud.

The posted results are measurements taken in the Performance mode with Thermal Control set to max. The max Thermal Control setting makes the fans spin all the time, regardless of the load. Setting it to default lowers the fan noise to 49 dBA. 

Below are the measurements in the Balanced mode:

• Keyboard Temp Under Load: 44 °C (111.2 °F)
• Bottom temperature: 57.4 °C (135.32 °F)
• Fan Noise Under Load: 46.5 dBA

We've conducted this test using the laptop's best performance (Performance) mode with the fan speed at max instead of the default Balanced mode we've used in previous laptop reviews.

The HP Victus 16 2024 has many pre-installed applications, including:

• AMD Ryzen Master: Lets you overclock the CPU for better performance.
• AMD Software: Lets you change the laptop's power settings, check for updates, create hotkeys, monitor the system's status, and view system information.
• Dropbox Promotion: Ad for the cloud storage service.
• HP Connection Optimizer: Helps improve network performance.
• HP Documentation: Contains warranty information, regulatory, safety, and environmental notices, and the user guide.
• PC Hardware Diagnostic Windows: Diagnostic tools to find and fix PC issues.
• HP Privacy Settings: Lets you choose the type of information you share with HP.
• HP Smart: Companion app for HP printers.
• HP Support Assistant: Helps with system updates and troubleshooting of common issues. Connects you to an HP Virtual Agent for further troubleshooting.
• HP System Event Utility: Lets you program special function keys or shortcuts, like turning the wireless on or off and adjusting the screen brightness.
• McAfee: Antivirus software. Requires subscription.
• myHP: Online store for HP products.
• OMEN Gaming Hub: Lets you access your installed games, HP rewards, and picture gallery. It also lets you see system information like CPU/GPU usage and temperatures, optimize the PC's performance, change webcam/microphone settings, and boost network performance.
• WebAdvisor by McAfee: Protects you from malware when browsing the internet. Requires subscription.