Budget king?

The Victus range promises a balance between price and performance. Is it worth it?

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TESTED HP VICTUS 16

■ The Victus exudes a sense of cleanliness and sophistication - it’s probably a bit too bland for someone who is a hardcore gamer, but could be appealing to someone who is looking for a do-it-all kind of vibe. It blends well with the other work laptops around in the office and isn’t afraid to have some fun either.

■ You get a FullHD IPS panel here with 60Hz as standard and an option to upgrade to 144Hz for a little more money (₨3000). It doesn’t make much sense in 2023 to be frank and I feel HP should have just standardized the 144Hz option.

■ That isn’t our only gripe here. The display isn’t bright enough to enjoy certain games that rely on specific nighttime gameplay for eg. our Arma III missions were almost unplayable and even the night time in DayZ felt a bit odd. The colours are just okay here and nothing to write home about.

■ With the AMD Ryzen 7 5800H at its core, the Victus is a productivity monster. It dismisses regular tasks quite easily and won’t stutter at all throughout your work day. The Cinebench R23 multi-core score of over 13,000 gives us a good hint of the prowess and even the 1423 single-core score is just great for this level. Paired with the 16GBs of RAM, it makes for a great work companion while also being efficient when it comes to power consumption.

Tech specs

Display 15.6in FHD, 144 Hz

Processor AMD Ryzen 7 5800H

Memory 16GB, DDR4-3200 MHz RAM, 512 GB PCIe Gen4 NVMe

GPU NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050