I finished reviewing an RTX 4050 version of the HP Victus 16 a few weeks ago, but it's the RTX 4070 configuration that's been occupying my thoughts ever since. I spotted its $1,399.99 MSRP shifting a little at the start of October, giving way to a $999 sales price that was among the lowest for its GPU but still $100 away from a record. Best Buy has returned in full force today, with the cheapest price I've ever seen on an RTX 4070 gaming laptop.
The HP Victus 16 is now available for just $899.99 - for a full $500 off the original launch price. That's an incredibly impressive rate for an upper mid-range GPU, especially considering you're not skimping on other areas to achieve it. Budget gaming laptops like this often sacrifice your RAM or processor generation to drop to prices like this, but the Victus still comes with 16GB of DDR5 and an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS. In fact, the only eyebrow raiser for me is that 512GB SSD (most of the best gaming laptops ship with 1TB as standard these days). However, if you're economical with your downloads and keep a smaller selection of titles on your system at one time this is an easy route to excellent value.
Should you buy the HP Victus 16?
The HP Victus 16 excels in the lower-end of the market. The Ryzen 5 7640HS / RTX 4050 version I reviewed last month made an excellent case for budget current-generation GPUs, offering framerates that I would have only expected to see for mid-range or even higher end RTX 30-Series cards a couple of years ago. It pushes these cards particularly hard, to the extent that my test unit was performing better than some RTX 4060 configurations in easier benchmarks like Shadow of the Tomb Raider. More demanding games definitely gave the RTX 4050 system something to think about, but we were still comfortably above 60fps in High settings across games like Returnal and The Talos Principle 2. Swapping that RTX 4050 out for an RTX 4070 is going to see those numbers climb significantly to boot.
The chassis lends itself well to portability, beating the Acer Nitro 16 in weight but coming just short of the lighter Asus TUF A15. However, it's also slightly thinner than both of these devices. We're talking 0.04 inches, but it does have a slimline feel to it, even if it doesn't pack the same hard corners and straight lines as something more premium like a Razer Blade. If you need to take your laptop out and about with you, this is still a solid choice within the price range.
I would, however, point you towards the Asus TUF A15 or Acer Nitro 16 if you're prioritizing display brightness. Panels on these cheaper laptops are always dimmer than their HDR enabled OLED or Mini LED counterparts, but Asus and Acer both offer slightly more vivid screens within the same price category. The HP Victus 16 display is still more than serviceable, though, and considering the RTX 4070 TUF A15 is stuck at $1,399.99 at Best Buy (and the cheapest RTX 4070 Acer Nitro 16 is still $1,799.99) I wouldn't say the upgrade is worth the extra $500 / $900 based on display alone.
Of course, with Black Friday gaming laptop deals on the way we're looking forward to plenty more savings on the best Alienware laptops and the best Asus gaming laptops as well.
