RTX 3050 laptop & RTX 3050 Ti laptop buyer’s guide

This HP Victus 16 comes with the same powerful AMD Ryzen 7 5800H CPU as is found in our top choices on this page, as well as a RTX 3050 Ti graphics card. It’s almost as good a gaming performer as the top choices on this page in terms of generating raw FPS in games. The Ryzen 7 5800H also makes it a solid choice workstation users on a budget, as the multi-core performance is one of the best you will find in a gaming laptop in this price range.

The workstation utility of this machine is also bolstered by the colorful display, which has 99% sRGB coverage, making it suitable for color work in this space. The peak brightness and contrast ratio are also both respectable. Unfortunately, when it comes to gaming, the 1080p 144Hz screen is the only option that can be paired with the RTX 3050 Ti, which is sufficiently high refresh rate and resolution to be gaming on with core components of this power, but it only has a real response time of above 8ms, which is not ideal.

The main drawback of the HP Victus 16 though is probably the general build quality, with the lid of the Victus 16 in particular being very wobbly and bendable, although not enough to be a nuisance when gaming so in our opinion. The overall build is plastic and does not feel robust, with a degree of bend in the chassis when depressed. Still, we’ve seen much worse and if treated well you shouldn’t have too many problems with the Victus.

Despite overall build quality issues, the keyboard is actually surprisingly good, the best on this list, feeling quite tactile and clicky for a membrane keyboard. The touchpad is nothing to write home about but is fairly responsive – a decent performer overall. Whilst the speakers on the higher-spec versions of the HP Victus 16 are actually fairly decent, the RTX 3050 Ti variant comes with poorer quality options, below average for a gaming laptop, which is saying something. Battery life is above average though, coming in at a solid 7 hours of general usage on battery saver mode at half brightness..

In summary, though the HP Victus 16 isn’t the best performer on this list in terms of response time or build quality, it’s still a solid performer in game, and you do get the larger sized 16-inch display for a relatively good price.