HP Omen 15: the first 240Hz gaming laptop

The days of ever-increasing screen resolutions seem to be over for gaming laptops. Now, framerate is the new top dog, and that's something HP is well aware of. At CES 2019, the company unveiled the new Omen 15, which could be the first gaming notebook to feature a 240Hz screen. Many gamers probably

won't notice the difference between 144Hz and 240Hz content (at least, not right away), but it will undoubtedly be useful to existing or prospective eSports pros.

Even if you aren't an eSports player, it's hard to complain about the possibility of smoother gameplay. Given the Omen 15's under-the-hood hardware (more on that in a moment), the device should be able to comfortably soar far above and beyond 60 FPS in most well-optimized titles; and if the settings are cranked down a bit, said games could very well hit that 240 FPS limit - or come close.

Of course, some trade-offs had to be made to let the Omen 15 handle 240Hz gameplay. For example, the display uses TN technology, not IPS, meaning the quality probably won't be quite as good as some hardcore PC gamers would hope. Furthermore, the 15's resolution caps out at 1920x1080p.

That will probably be seen as a plus for framerate enthusiasts (such as myself), but for those who prefer the crisper look of a 1440p monitor, this device's screen may disappoint. Still, given the Omen's 15-inch screen, the display will likely have roughly the same pixel density as a bigger laptop would with a 1440p screen.

Moving on to hardware, the 240Hz Omen 15 model will ship with some pretty beefy specs. The full list includes an Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU, an Intel i7-8750H processor, 1TB of 7200RPM HDD storage, and 16 gigs of DDR4 RAM clocked at 2666MHz.

If all of that sounds like your cup of tea, we have some mixed news for you. While the Omen 15 is shipping as soon as February, only a cheaper 60Hz model (with an IPS panel) will be available at first. If you have your heart set on the 240Hz version, you won't be able to get your hands on it until July.

We don't know how much the latter version will cost, but the basic 60Hz Omen 15 will be priced at $1369.99. Pre-orders for either device are not available yet.