HP Victus 16 (d0206nf) review: the ideal gaming laptop for playing Full HD
Construction
The Victus 16 chassis plays it cool with a matte black finish, a glossy V logo on the hood, and Victus screen printing on the bottom. Just above the left vent, an inscription reminds that Victus is an integral part of HP. The coating, while matte, has an annoying tendency to attract fingerprints and marks easily.
Opening the screen displays a white backlit keyboard. So no RGB. We will note, situated between the screen and the keyboard, the presence of a bar with a Vs braid. It’s not the speakers hiding underneath, but air holes for ventilation.
The keyboard is nice to use. The key travel is quite long, and typing offers satisfying feedback. The diamond lock opens the Omen app directly, but there’s no shortcut to quickly change power profiles.
The touchpad, on the other hand, suffers from a bit of play on its surface. We thought, on first use, it would have haptic feedback, but that’s far from the case. A simple touch of the touchpad causes a click sound, so we no longer know when we are performing an action or not. Worse, the chassis suffers from a lack of rigidity in the top right, around the touchpad.
Connectors are mostly grouped on the left side of the PC with RJ45 ports, HDMI, USB-A, USB-C (DP and Power Delivery compatible), jacks, and an SD reader. Two USB ports (5 Gb/s) complete this rich connectivity on the right side of the chassis.
Wireless connectivity is entrusted to the Intel AX201 chip which offers wifi 6 at 2400 Mb/s and Bluetooth 5.2. The 720 p webcam provides acceptable images with optimal exposure, while in the dark, the images are downright noisy. It’s also not compatible with Windows Hello for session unlocking, and it’s not the absence of a fingerprint reader that’s going to fix things.
Cooling consists of two fans and three heat pipes. Three radiators dissipate calories behind the screen and on the right side of the chassis.
Thermal imaging shows that heat is escaping not only from behind the screen, but also from the front. So, we recorded 49.9 ° C on the screen, above the keyboard. The ZQSD keys are spared, as they are located above the fan, while the arrow keys reach 42°C on a piano keyboard.
The noise level of the Victus 16 is 48 dB in Performance mode, 46 dB in Normal mode, and 35.6 dB in Silent mode. This device is perfect in the average laptop PC games. Note that, by default, Victus 16 fans don’t stop using the office or viewing content. In the quiet environment, there was a slight hum. You must enter the PC BIOS for the fan to stop. We’ve looked at simpler; options in the computer management utility will be accepted.
To access the components, you must remove eight Phillips screws, then carefully remove the case: quite a difficult task, and those who are not careful risk damaging the case. Inside, the RAM, SSD and battery are easily accessible. Those who need space will be pleased to know that a second M.2 port is available and ready to accept their SSD. Small flat for the wifi card: although it’s removable, it’s stuck under the cooling system, a possible replacement would be an opportunity for a good cleaning and thermal paste update.
Show
We tested the Victus 16-d0206nf which features an Intel Core i5-11400H processor with 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3060. In practice, processors equipped with six hyperthreaded cores maintain their frequency at 3.37 GHz in video encoding and occasionally reach 4.1 GHz.
Its Victus 16 and Core i5-11400H earn an index of 108, respecting the hierarchy by naturally placing themselves below the Ryzen 7 and other Core i7s, but, as we’ll see, this is more than enough to play with. A word about the SSD on board the Victus 16: the latter reaches 6.5 GB/s read and 3.9 GB/s writes. We didn’t notice any slowdown when transferring our videos in a hurry.
game
HP has chosen to equip the Victus 16-d0206nf with a 95 W GeForce RTX 3060 accompanied by 6 GB of video memory. On paper, this version is ideal for playing the latest games in Full HD under decent conditions.
That’s a bit of a surprise therefore, as all RTX 3060 laptops games the one we tested obtained an index of around 130. With that said, the RTX 3060 from the Victus 16 garnered an index of 138, placing the device at the top of this GPU-equipped laptop basket.
This means the frame rate per second with all the maximum details in Full HD is above 60 fps on our game panel. Only exception, Cyberpunk 2077 honorably frame rate from 42 fps. Once raytracing is enabled, only control and call of duty remains playable — you must then enable DLSS to find a frame rate slightly more acceptable. For competitive games like Brave Where FortniteThe Victus 16 and RTX 3060 should have no trouble hitting the 144 fps that a 144 Hz panel can deliver.
The number of frames per second in games.
Screen
Big border is present below the screen.
Our Victus 16 has a 16.1-inch IPS panel displaying 1920 x 1080 pixels at 144 Hz. Please note that the manufacturer also offers a Full HD panel at 60 Hz, as well as a QHD (2560 x 1440 pixels) panel at 165 Hz Far 144 Hz panel of offering exemplary color fidelity. We measured a delta E of 6.4, far from the threshold of 3 where drift becomes apparent. This is accompanied by an acceptable contrast ratio with 1245:1 and a temperature of 6380K, slightly below 6500K.
The maximum brightness is 314 cd/m², a value sufficient for indoor gaming. In addition, the matte panel is very effective against reflections with 18.2% of reflected light. Good point on the reactivity side as we measured a 9 ms glow, which is close to the best portable PC screens (7 ms).
