I’ve really enjoyed getting into PC gaming with the HP Victus Gaming Laptop

I’m pretty new to the world of PC gaming. My only real modern experience in this space is with the Steam Deck, although I admittedly haven’t used it much with so many games on console and mobile capturing my attention lately.

With that in mind, I’ve been interested in trying out a gaming PC. Admittedly, the elitism and silly rhetoric of PC gamers have somewhat put me off from doing that so far. Even some friends I have parrot the ridiculous “building a PC is just like building Lego,” which is such a flawed analogy in so many ways. That said, I think it’s fair to acknowledge some people probably make it out to be a bit more difficult than it really is, myself included.

Of course, one of the best solutions is a pre-built gaming PC, which certainly appeals more to someone like me. That’s why I was tantalized by the offer to review HP’s Victus Gaming Laptop 16-r0010ca.

Pretty much everything I need is already there in the unit — no building know-how required. And after a couple of months of using the Victus intermittently, I have to say: I’ve really enjoyed the experience.

First, it’s a beefy boi. Here are the specs:

13th gen Intel Core i7-13700H processor
16 GB memory
1 TB SSD storage
16.1″ diagonal 144Hz FHD display
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 laptop graphics card

As someone who has almost exclusively stuck to console gaming, a lot of that doesn’t mean all that much to me, but I certainly can understand the significance. What I appreciate most about having all of that already in the PC, though, is that it frees me up to instead play around with the various in-game settings. On console, I’ve only recently had a couple options, and even then, it’s usually just modes to prioritize either resolution or frame rate. But here, there was much more to work with.

For instance, this let me appreciate the incredible fidelity of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II, a game I played earlier this year on Xbox Series X. While I sadly don’t like Ninja Theory’s latest all that much, its technical prowess can’t be argued, and I loved having all of the settings to play around with that, from the upscalers and automatic sharpness to Nvidia DLSS and super-resolution. As someone who’s not computer savvy at all, there was an almost puzzle-like element to experimenting with the settings and finding out what I preferred and even fixing the game’s initial graininess.

Hellblade II probably had among the most extensive options of the games I tried out, but there were still a lot of welcome configurations in the other titles, including Final Fantasy VII Remake, Forza Motorsport (2023) and Halo Infinite. In fact, I was particularly impressed by how crisp and smooth that third game played in online multiplayer matches.

Switching between all of the games, I was also pleased to see how, for the most part, games default to the optimal settings based on your PC anyway. The official Xbox app on PC is also really helpful in that regard, comparing your rig’s performance to similar ones and letting you know that a given game “should play great on this PC.” As someone who assumed PC gaming would require a lot of guesswork, at least for me, I’m grateful to have had these tools to streamline the process.

And of course, getting to use the vaunted mouse and keyboard has been quite interesting, too. Of course, going from some 25 years of near-exclusive controller gaming on a console to that PC setup has — and will continue to have — some growing pains, but that’s a me problem, not a fault of the Victus. For shooters like Halo Infinite or Modern Warfare III (2023), there’s an objective fluidity and precision to using the mouse, and I admired it all even as it took some getting used to.

But I most appreciated the mouse and keyboard with Baldur’s Gate 3. I had already been planning to replay Larian’s masterpiece, given that it’s one of my all-time favourite games, and the Victus gave me the perfect opportunity to do so. To Larian’s credit, it did translate the cursor-focused turn-based combat to console quite well, but it’s undeniably far smoother with a mouse. And because it’s a single-player affair, there’s no pressure to fight off humans in real-time as you would in the aforementioned shooters, affording me a much more stress-free environment in which I could become more accustomed to the mouse. All the while, the RPG’s massive world, from the chaotic and demonic mind flayer ship to the lush forestry, all look stunning on the Victus. I had admittedly gotten used to some of the performance issues on PS5 (selecting commands would sometimes freeze the game for a few seconds), so the much more consistently smooth experience on the Victus has let me appreciate BG3 even more.

I was also impressed by how well the Victus holds up running highly cinematic games. In God of War: Ragnarök, intense action sequences like Freya’s opening assault on Kratos and Atreus’ sled or Kratos’ titanic battle with Thor all maintained 60fps and crisp visuals. Likewise, Uncharted: The Legacy of Thieves Collection‘s opening stormy ship race, interspersed with collisions, gunfire and explosions, played beautifully without a hiccup. I was inspired to try Uncharted on PC after Steven Spielberg’s son said he unsuccessfully tried to get his mouse and keyboard-loving dad to do the same. (The Legacy of Thieves Collection does support mouse and keyboard on PC, although it still recommends connecting a PS5 controller.)

Of course, the 16.1″ big screen is also wonderful for non-gaming use, whether it’s streaming or even just doing my daily writing on MobileSyrup. I normally work with a 13.3″ MacBook, so the nearly three full inches of extra display real estate has been pretty incredible for me. (I’ve admittedly been slower writing on it, but again, that’s just because I’m not used to that keyboard setup or the Windows ecosystem.) On the flip side, I got the laptop around the same time I got Flexispot’s handy E7 Plus Standing Desk and Ikea’s solid Brännboll Collection of gaming products (including a large charming pixellated laptop mat), which made the transition smoother.

The Victus on Ikea’s Brännboll mat and Flexispot’s E7 Plus standing desk.

My only real criticism of the Victus, if anything, is its hefty price tag. HP sells it for $2,079 in Canada, which is undeniably expensive. Of course, you’re getting what you pay for with the impressive specs, but that also means it will only be for a more select market of people looking for gaming laptops.

That said, I highly recommend the Victus if you have the extra money to spend because it really is a nifty all-in-one gaming device. I experienced pretty much none of the friction I expected to have coming from the console space, freeing me up to properly enjoy the impressive technical capabilities and build quality of the laptop. It’s also made me more interested in diving into the PC space and I would even consider buying one of my own down the line to help with that. That’s a lot coming from me!

You can buy the HP Victus Gaming Laptop 16-r0010ca from HP’s website.