At a big event in Beijing, China today, HP unveiled a host of new gaming desktop and laptop systems, but the party didn’t stop there. HP also rolled out several new Omen-branded gaming peripherals including displays, a high-end graphics card enclosure, and a new mouse and keyboards.
The real exciting part, though, is where you’ll end up seeing these new peripherals put to work: the Overwatch World Cup. Yep, as Blizzard Entertainment’s official PC partner, HP will be providing Omen-branded hardware and peripherals to the esports athletes competing in this summer’s biggest esports event.
When HP designed these monitors, it had to consider which types of gamers it would be serving. Even though they share a similar design language, they’re each uniquely tailored to fulfill the needs of different types of gamers.
The Omen 25-inch 1080p monitor, for instance, is designed for fast-twitch gamers who need lightning-fast response times. Overclockable to enable response times as low as 1ms, the 25-inch monitor features a 144Hz refresh rate and support for AMD FreeSync. It’s not the biggest monitor out there, but it’s certainly among the quickest and most affordable gaming monitors.
Starting at $280, the Omen 25-inch will hit store shelves on June 26, 2017.
The Omen 27-inch monitor however, distinguishes itself from its smaller sibling by providing a QHD resolution, with 70 percent more pixels than a 1080p panel. It also features an overclockable TN panel, with a remarkable 165Hz refresh rate, and support for Nvidia’s G-Sync technology.
It’s bigger, badder, and quite a bit more expensive. The Omen 27-inch is designed with the high-end enthusiast in mind, someone who needs a big monitor packed with pixels that also happens to be lightning-quick.
Speed and size however, will run you $800 when the Omen 27 comes out on June 8, 2017.
Designed for anyone with a powerful laptop which might not have a super-powerful GPU under the hood, the Omen Graphics Accelerator is a bold, stylish take on the increasingly popular external GPU enclosure. The big black-and-red cube can house a powerful desktop-grade GPU, either an AMD or Nvidia card, and lend those graphics processing capabilities to an otherwise underpowered laptop.
The Omen Accelerator can come configured with a GPU, and features a 500W power supply, but also features a bay for an external SSD or hard disk. So you can keep your games and most of your gaming horsepower in one convenient little box.
The Omen Accelerator starts at $300 and comes out in August 2017 — keep in mind though, that’s just the base price, without a GPU included.
Even with the best gaming hardware, even the best gaming experience can be spoiled by a flimsy keyboard or sub-par mouse. HP aims to ensure its Omen lineup is accompanied by high-end accessories which will be every bit as responsive and performance-driven as the hardware they’re used with.
Starting with the new Omen keyboard, this design philosophy informed every aspect of the design. From the backlighting to the choice of mechanical switches and N-key Rollover for anti-ghosting, the Omen keyboard is built with performance in mind, according to HP.
The Omen Mouse 600 was just as carefully optimized for high-performance gaming, offering customizable weight, with mechanical switches rated for up to 50 million clicks.
Last but not least, the new Omen Headset 800 builds on the success of the previous model by taking user feedback into account with the new design. It features thicker earcups, boosted acoustic performance for clear high, low, and mid-tones, and a custom-tuned audio profile for clear speech — so you can hear your teammates on Overwatch urging you to get on the point and stop fawning over your new headset.
The Omen Keyboard will retail for $130, the Omen Mouse 600 for $60, and the Omen Headset 800 for a competitive $80. All three accessories will be available on the HP website on June 6, 2017.
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.