This Laptop Has 2 SCREENS – HP OMEN X 2S Review

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Have you ever dreamed of having two screens on a laptop? I’m sure I did. Back in the day when I had conversations with my high school friends, we came up with some interesting designs that had two displays, jam-packed it with some high-end specs, fastest CPU, GPU, and memory available at the time. I don’t even know where those sketches are right now, we probably ended up throwing that out.

Anyways we’re slowly starting to see that dream turned into reality with a lot of these dual-screen notebooks entering into the market, and it has been generating some mixed reactions within the community. Some say that it is amazing and that they will be able to do so many things with that second screen, while others think that it’s a gimmick. Why add a second screen on notebook? It adds heat to the system. It’s probably gonna affect battery life and performance, and potentially it also results in notebook designs that don’t look like laptops anymore.

Specs & Prices

The focus on this article is HP’s OMEN X 2S. It is a really powerful gaming laptop that features Intel’s Core i7 9th Gen CPU, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of PCIe SSD, 144Hz G-Sync display, and an NVIDIA RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU. This thing is absolutely spec’ed out, but above all of that HP has implemented a second display that allows gamers, streamers, or anyone who can take advantage of that second screen the flexibility to run multiple apps at the same time.

The starting price of the OMEN X 2S is a little over $1,800 USD, and for that you get a smaller SSD and an RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. The spec that I have costs around $2,400 USD, but you can spend nearly $4,000 if you fully spec this thing out. Instead of making this a typical notebook review, I’m going to be focusing on that second screen. How does it actually benefit a gamer considering that this is a gaming laptop, how does it affect performance, battery life, thermals, etc. Basically, what is it like using a notebook with two screens? Well allow me to walk you through my experience with this very unique laptop.

The Second Display

So the secondary screen is a 6″ 1080P 60Hz display with touch support. When you boot up the notebook, HP’s Command Center takes over the screen automatically, where it allows the user to monitor system resources. You can also switch between different performance modes like Comfort, Default and Dynamic Power Performance, which was the mode that was used to run the benchmarks. This changes the behavior of the CPU and GPU. Then you can customize the RGB lighting of the system, but oddly enough it won’t let you customize the keyboard until you open Command Center on the primary display. The next tab lets you screen mirror a particular portion of your gameplay, I’ll get to that in just a moment. The last tab offers a few more settings for the screen including the ability to enable or disabled touch support for the screen while you’re in a game.

Now this is a standalone display which means you can bring in any program you like to the second screen and start working off of it. The downside is that it is a glossy display which means it’s extremely difficult to view content outdoors and the viewing angles are pretty terrible. I wouldn’t recommend watching videos on the screen since there is a weird magenta shift when you look at it from a normal position and contrast is just way off. However, if you stare out at directly overhead it’s fine except you would look ridiculous that way.

Dual Display Features

HP has built a few keys right above the trackpad that allows you to turn off the display, although do keep in mind that it doesn’t disconnect itself from the GPU and therefore Windows still sees it as a second screen. You also have the ability to adjust the brightness of the display. Another interesting feature that lets you switch apps instantly between the main display and the secondary display. So for instance, say you’re working off of the main display and you have a video playing in the background on the second screen, if you want to view that video on your main display as quick as possible there is a button that is supposed to do that. However, it barely worked on my sample. Often I ended up getting glitches on the video on the main display that just made it look weird. And in other cases it just didn’t work at all. It was a little bit frustrating to see this feature not work, especially since it is very application dependent. It might work with some apps like Discord, Spotify or other casual apps, but then won’t work with other more obscure application. And also do keep in mind that if you have a game running on the main display and if you want to switch, that’s just not gonna work.

Moving on to actual use case scenarios. Well, to be honest, I have mixed feelings about using the second display. Let’s start off with the basic stuff like bringing in your file explorer while working on something else on the main screen. It could be useful if you want to quickly access things, but I had some difficulty reading the text because the screen is just way too small. What’s really cool is that as soon as you drag the window from the main display to the second screen, it automatically snaps into full screen mode. Although keep in mind that it does not work with every application, so that’s something to keep note of. I think one of my favorite use cases is browsing through my Spotify playlist, the app does a pretty good job with scaling and it’s fairly intuitive to navigate around with. If you’re into Discord, the screen works pretty well with the app. You can coordinate with your fellow teammates by talking to them while playing and it doesn’t interrupt your gameplay, which is really cool. If you’re into streaming and if you use OBS, this is a great way to monitor your stream on the second screen while focusing on your main task. I think this would come in super handy for streamers on the go. I should also mention that you’re only allowed to run one application at a time on this display. You can’t split screens, although that would look worse than the first place.

Then there’s the real-time screen mirroring feature that allows you to set up portion of your game play and magnify it onto the second screen. It sounds like it’s pretty straightforward but it isn’t. There are some things that you have to keep in mind before trying this out. First, every game that you run should be on borderless windowed mode, because it is a secondary display after all and you need to be able to move the cursor from top to bottom. Secondly, you have to define the specific area before the game play starts because once you’re in the snipping feature won’t work and you can’t change it in real-time. Therefore you have to hit escape, assign the area, and get back in.

Now does this screen mirroring feature make you a better gamer? Not really, at least I didn’t take advantage of it. A few use cases that you could take advantage of is probably bringing in your maps or your health status or potentially if you want to magnify your shooting target to target your enemy. But realistically speaking it is something that you’re running on a flat display that’s literally on a horizontal surface and you’re supposed to be focused on what’s happening on the main display. If you just lose your focus for just a second and look at the second screen someone might just snipe you within that second. So it’s a cool concept but I don’t think it would would help you become a better gamer.

Now I did try running some creative applications like Adobe Premiere, but I hate to say this again, the screen is just way too small to accommodate the timeline and the scaling is pretty terrible. It’s very difficult to read text when you’re viewing at a normal distance. I tried bringing in other panels like Lumetri Scopes and Lumetri Color but unfortunately it’s just difficult to read the text on top of the glossy screen, plus the not so great viewing angles make it an unviable solution. I also experienced some quirks with the second screen. For example, when I’m having a video playing in the background on this display and have something on my main display, the video actually starts stuttering, which really wasn’t pleasing to the eye. Also, the screen just stopped responding to me. Sometimes it just just wouldn’t work. If I’m trying to bring a window from a main display to the second display, it’s just completely disabled. It gets disconnected from the GPU, which means I had to get it fixed with a restart, which was a bit annoying. Like I said, the hardware still needs refinement, and most importantly software is something that HP certainly has to take a look into. So does the second display benefit me in any shape or form? I personally can’t bring it into my workflow, but I think that this could be a great solution for streamers on the go.

Design

With all of that out of the way, let’s quickly talk about the design of this laptop. Since it is a gaming laptop, HP has stuck with the OMEN mantra that they’ve been using for a while now and they haven’t really done anything different here. The front panel has an interesting choice of textures, I’m glad that it isn’t brushed aluminum. The OMEN logo is backlit and RGB and you can customize that through the Command Center software. The build quality of the 2S is really good, it’s actually a little bit on the heavier side coming in and over five pounds. Even though that it might look like a thin gaming laptop, it isn’t necessarily light, it’s certainly heavier than my Razer Blade 15.

Keyboard & Trackpad

When opening up the notebook you’re greeted with a keyboard and a trackpad that is shifted to the bottom. This is of course due to that second screen. The keys have a good amount of travel distance and they are tactile. It’s much better keyboard than my Razer Blade 15, I would say it’s on par to the AERO 15X from Gigabyte, so that’s a good thing. It’s also RGB backlit and customizable through Command Center. The trackpad is shifted to the right-hand side and to be honest it’s easy to get used to, but I feel like it’s a bit too small. This is obviously because I’m used to trackpads that are larger, like on the aforementioned Blade 15. On the positive side, the surface is really smooth for navigation. It is one of the best trackpads that I’ve used on a notebook thanks to Microsoft Precision drivers. You also get dedicated left and right buttons, and with the help of a button you can also bring up a virtual numpad on the second screen.

Connectivity & Internals

Port selection is decent on the left-hand side there’s power-in, HDMI 2.0, two USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports instead of Gen2. That’s a big red flag, I mean this laptop costs over $2,400 USD and you’re getting I/O that’s not up-to-date. Basically you won’t have access to the 10Gbps transfer rates available with Gen2 and instead you’re stuck with Gen1’s 5Gbps. As for the rest of the ports, there’s gigabit LAN, a combo headphone/mic Jack. On the right-hand side there’s an extra USB 3.1 Gen1 port and a Thunderbolt 3 port that has DisplayPort 1.4 functionality.

The display on the 2S is great. It’s a 1080P 144Hz IPS screen with G-Sync capability and I had an absolute blast gaming on it. Color reproduction is really good and I didn’t notice any backward bleed with my naked eyes. In terms of upgradability, when you open up this laptop, you have instant access to the memory modules and you also have an additional M.2 slot a for expandability, so that’s nice.

Battery Life & Benchmarks

This notebook comes with a 72 watt-hour battery and unfortunately battery life is not great. I expected this because it’s got high-end specs, a 144Hz G-Sync display, and on top of that you also have a second screen running off of that graphics card. In my light load test I got roughly over 2.5 hours, and on a heavy load test, maybe close to 2 hours. Interestingly enough, I decided to run these tests with the second display turned on, and that significantly reduced the battery life, so that’s certainly something to take note of.

The Core i7-9750H 6 core/12 thread CPU performs like a champ. The clock speeds were hitting 4.4GHz on all six cores, and it is the fastest notebook CPU that I’ve seen. As you can see with the Cinebench R15, R20, and Blender tests, it takes the lead compared to the Legion Y545 featuring that same CPU. Moving on to my Adobe Premiere benchmark, unfortunately it did not do well. The system took over 20 minutes to render our 13 minute 4K project, and I expected this because it’s running a G-Sync display and UHD graphics is disabled, and the user does not have the option to disable G-Sync to enable UHD graphics like you’re able to do with the Y740 from Lenovo. While Adobe Premiere performance is not that great, if you plan on editing with DaVinci Resolve this thing is going to fly because you’ve got that RTX 2080 Max-Q to take advantage of.

Gaming on the other hand was as expected, which is to say fantastic. You can easily push over 100 FPS in pretty much every AAA title like Battlefield One, Overwatch, and Apex Legends. Far Cry 5 and Shadow of The Tomb Raider also did really well. However, I thought to myself since this laptop comes with a second display, does it actually impact gaming performance? Well, it certainly does, but nothing significant to a point where it’s unplayable. I ran a 4K video on that screen, re-ran the benchmarks, and as you can see the FPS loss is not really all that significant.

Thermals

Taking a look at temperatures and things are not looking good. When I was briefed on this notebook, HP mentioned that they used liquid metal from Thermal Grizzly on the CPU and GPU. I was really excited about that until I put it to the test. As you can see, the CPU gets to a whopping 97°C, and this is just when rendering a video using Adobe Premiere. That’s disappointing and really odd considering liquid metal is supposed to bring down those temps significantly. Interestingly enough, I didn’t notice the clock speeds throttle while running these tests, so it looks like the CPU was being pushed to its limits. Thankfully, that liquid metal application seemed to work really well with the GPU. The max temp I saw on the RTX 2080 Max-Q was 68°C and that’s damn good for a GPU that caliber. The clock speeds on the GPU were hitting about 1600MHz, so that’s up to spec.

I should also mention that the secondary display adds heat to the system. As you can see by the thermal shots, there is a significant difference between when the display is turned off and turned on with a game running in the background. Fan noise is respectable. Under gaming scenarios, it doesn’t sound like a jet fan which is nice, but during idle you can still hear the fans occasionally ramp up. There is unfortunately no way to control the fan RPMs through Command Center. I still feel like the software is a little bit limiting in that area, so hopefully HP could update that in the future.

For those of you wondering about any performance differences between the Comfort, Default, and Dynamic Power Performance profiles, here are some Cinebench R15 numbers. Yes, there is a performance difference, so it really depends on what you want to do at any given time and whether you prefer performance or battery life.

Conclusion

I guess this brings us to the conclusion, and I know this has been a long review, but I hope I was able to answer a lot of the questions that you might have had with this laptop. Let’s kick things off with that second display. It’s a cool implementation. I gotta give HP credit for thinking out of the box in terms of implementing such a display in a gaming notebook, but there is still a lot of work to be done. First and foremost, it’s glossy and it’s small, so the text is very difficult to read, especially from a normal viewing distance. The battery life is also pretty terrible on this notebook, but that is to be expected considering the specs. Also this isn’t your typical gaming laptop that you can lug around, it’s more of a temporary plug-and-play solution. Because the trackpad and the keyboard are shifted towards the bottom you also lose the lapability, which is certainly something to consider depending on how you use your laptop.

Frankly my biggest issue with this laptop are those CPU temperatures. They are just run way too high, especially on a regular workload like rendering a video in Adobe Premiere. It just doesn’t make any sense. They say that they have applied liquid metal thermal compound on the CPU, but I just don’t see that working that well on this notebook. On the other hand, it does cool that RTX 2080 Max-Q GPU really well, 68°C under full load is just amazing. So with all of that being said, I want to know your thoughts about the OMEN X 2S gaming laptop. What do you guys think about it? What are your thoughts about this second display? Is it something that you would ever see yourself taking advantage of?

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