HP Omen 15 (2018) Review

I’ve reviewed over 50 laptops for Digital Trends over the last couple of years. Take it from me: reviewing a great laptop is so much more fun than reviewing a mediocre one. A case in point was the late 2017 HP Spectre x360 13, which I considered the best 360-degree convertible 2-in-1 around. Ironically, that meant I approached my review of the 2019 Spectre x360 13 with some trepidation. How could it be better?

HP sent me a review unit with a Whiskey Lake 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8565U CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB solid-state drive (SSD). The configuration retails for $1,350 at Best Buy (on sale right now for $1,150) but you can spend as much as $2,240 at HP.com if you max out the components with 16GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and an LTE modem.

This new model makes major changes to my favorite 2-in-1, and HP is asking a premium for it. Did they manage to make something great even better, or did they kill the magic?