HP and Acer are both going after the gaming PC crowd with new and powerful Windows 8.1 laptops, and each company is taking a different approach towards their design and their hardware.
HP's entry is called the OMEN and is a bit of a reference to a line of gaming PCs built by a company called Voodoo that HP acquired several years ago. The new OMEN laptop packs a big 15.6-inch 1080p screen inside an aluiminum case that's just 4.68 pounds and is 19.9 mm thin. Inside there's an Intel Core i7-4710HQ processor running at 2.5GHz and a NVIDIA GTX 860M GPU.
HP is selling the new OMEN for a starting price of $1,499 with 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD. HP will offer users a way to upgrade the RAM and storage space on the laptop for higher prices.
Acer's new gaming laptop is called the V Nitro Black Edition, which also has a 15.6-inch display but is a bit heavier (5.26 pounds) and thicker (23.9mm) than the HP OMEN. However, Acer's laptop screen serves up a 3840x2160 4K display compared to the 1080p screen on the OMEN.
The Acer V Nitro Black Edition has the same CPU and GPU as the HP OMEN but comes with 16GB of RAM, 256 GB of SSD storage space and a 1 TB hard drive as standard. In addition, Acer is throwing in a digital code to download a free copy of the upcoming Ubisoft action game Assassin's Creed Unity. The laptop is now available for $1,499.99.
Does the HP or Acer solution offer the best choice for a gaming laptop?
Source: HP, Acer
