56 PCWorld JANUARY 2022REVIEWS HP VICTUS 16
HP Victus 16PROS- Very good value.
- Surprisingly comfortable keyboard.
- Large 16-inch 1080p screen with a high 144Hz
refresh rate.
CONS - Budget RTX GPU.
- Audio doesn’t feel quite right.
- Display hinge is a bit flimsy.
BOTTOM LINE
A low sticker price helps usher this budget 16-inch
gaming laptop into a select circle of gaming
notebooks worth buying.
$1,200
traditional gaming benchmark, Rise of the
Tomb Raider. The Victus 16 doesn’t do too
badly, here. We used similar settings with its
more recent counterpart, Shadow of the Tomb
Raider, and received similar results (95 FPS)
with DirectX 12 enabled. Using DirectX 11, the
benchmark score was 75 FPS.
On a more modern game, Metro:
Exodus, the HP Victus 16 yielded a
benchmark score of 29.9 FPS while running
at 1080p Extreme settings. The Asus ROG
Strix Advantage Edition recorded a
benchmark score of 48 fps by comparison.
Yet another Acer Nitro 5 (the AN517-41-
R3NX [fave.co/328r1Ls] with a Ryzen 7
5800H and an RTX 3080 GPU) recorded 42
frames per second. In general, we’d
consider 30fps barely playable for slower-
paced third-person games, with most
people preferring 60fps or more for first-
person shooters.
Our results imply that the HP Victus 16
should be a solid contender for 1080p
gaming, though you’ll need to dial down the
graphics quality in places.BOTTOM LINE
HP’s Victus 16 clearly offers substantial value
as a budget gaming notebook. The $1,249
price tag is worth applauding, especially
with supply-chain woes gnawing at profit
margins and availability. However, HP clearly
sacrificed some of the bling of rival
notebooks to deliver a no-nonsense gamingPC for users who care about what’s on the
screen rather than under their fingers. Laptops
that can do dual duty for work and play are
worth highlighting, too.
To be fair, we’d probably award the Victus
16 an Editor’s Choice award if not for the
substantial contributions of the Asus ROG
Strix G15 Advantage Edition and Acer
Predator Triton 500 SE, both of which deliver
spectacular performance and a higher-
resolution screen with better refresh rates. Yet
both notebooks also cost a few hundreds of
dollars more. If that matters, the Victus 16 is a
more budget-friendly option.
Of these notebooks we’ve tested, we
think it’s fair to say we’d recommend the ROG
Strix G15, the Triton 500SE, and the Victus- While the Victus 16 may not be your first
choice for a gaming notebook, we still think
it’s a good choice nevertheless.