HP Victus Gaming 15 Laptop: 15.6" 144Hz Review

The HP Victus 15 is a big, heavy laptop that's built for one thing: playing games on a budget. It packs an RTX 4050 and a decent AMD Ryzen 5 CPU into a chassis that's all about raw power, not portability. Forget about taking this to a coffee shop. At 3.63kg, it's a desktop replacement that you'll mostly keep plugged in.

For the money, the performance is solid. The RTX 4050 lands in the 73rd percentile, so you can play most modern games at 1080p with high settings and hit that 144Hz refresh rate. The 6-core AMD 7445HS is fine for gaming, sitting in the middle of the pack. The 2TB SSD is a huge win, scoring in the 89th percentile. But the battery life is a mystery and likely not great, and the low reliability percentile (27th) is a bit of a red flag.

At $3150, this is a tough sell. You're paying a premium for what is, at its core, a budget-oriented gaming machine. The specs are good, but that price puts it in a completely different league where you expect better build quality, a sharper screen, and more portability. For this much cash, you can do a lot better.

This price puts it up against monsters like the Lenovo Legion Pro 7i or the MSI Vector 16, which will crush it in performance and build. Even Apple's 14-inch MacBook Pro is in this ballpark, and it's in a different universe for creators and battery life. Compared to those, the Victus feels overpriced. It makes more sense to compare it to cheaper RTX 4050 laptops that cost half as much.

Only consider this if you absolutely need that 2TB of storage immediately and can't upgrade it yourself on a cheaper model. For everyone else, that $3150 price tag is a dealbreaker. Look at other RTX 4050 laptops or stretch your budget slightly for a much more capable machine from Lenovo or MSI.