HP OMEN 15: The Laptop I Would Pick for Path of Exile 2

The laptops set up behind the demo area at the Path of Exile 2 World Tour in Bangkok were HP OMEN 15 units, paired with HyperX peripherals. I played the 1.0 build on the event’s demo PCs rather than on those laptops, so read this as our quick assessment of the hardware and how it fits this game, not as a benchmark result.

That distinction matters. What follows is what the machine is, what it is built to handle, and what still needs testing before anyone calls it a buy.

What the HP OMEN 15 carries

The configuration on the floor is the HP OMEN 15-gb0085AX, a model HP lists on its own OMEN laptop line. It runs an AMD Ryzen 7 8745HX processor, which is the part that matters most for a game like this.

The display is a 15.3-inch WQXGA panel at 2560 by 1600, with a 180Hz refresh rate, variable refresh support and 500 nits of brightness. The aspect ratio is 16:10, so it is taller than the usual 16:9 gaming panel.

Cooling is HP’s own OMEN system, built to hold performance across long sessions rather than for a short burst. The peripherals paired with it are HyperX, rated at up to 8,000Hz polling rate.

Why an ARPG is mostly a CPU problem

Path of Exile 2 is not the kind of game that lives or dies on a graphics card. It is also a game that has been reworked more than once on the performance side. Once the screen is full of monsters, projectiles and ground effects, the bottleneck moves to the processor, because the game is calculating far more than it is drawing.

GGG’s own numbers point the same way. The studio says the 1.0 build is about 25 percent faster on the CPU than the previous version, and game director Jonathan Rogers described the optimization work as being almost entirely about making the processor cope. The engine team spent months on an Nvidia driver fault before it could get to that work at all.

That is the argument for a laptop with a current Ryzen HX chip and a cooling system that can sustain it. Frame drops in this game usually arrive in the busiest moments, which are exactly the moments the game is built around.

The 180Hz panel with variable refresh helps here as well. In a fight that swings between heavy and light load, variable refresh keeps the image smooth instead of juddering between two frame rates.

The screen is the quiet feature

A 16:10 panel is a practical choice for this genre. Inventory management is a large part of Path of Exile 2, and the extra vertical space shows more of the grid without shrinking the text.

The 500 nits rating is enough for indoor use, and it is not a claim about outdoor visibility, which is a different problem entirely.

On paper, this is one of the better fits for Path of Exile 2 among the laptops announced this cycle, and it is the machine I would pick if the goal is playing this game at high frame rates on a desk.

This laptoip is a sensible match for Path of Exile 2

On paper, the HP OMEN 15-gb0085AX is a sensible match for Path of Exile 2. A current Ryzen HX processor, a cooling system designed for sustained load, a tall 180Hz panel and a fast peripheral set are the right pieces for a game that leans on the processor and punishes frame pacing.

I would pick it over a thinner laptop for this game, and I would wait for a measured test before calling it the best.

Gadget Pilipinas attended the Path of Exile 2 World Tour in Bangkok as a guest of Grinding Gear Games, which covered travel and accommodation. HP collaborated with GGG on the event.