Everything about the Omen X screams power. Its sharp, angular design makes it seem like some sort of military weapon. I would liken it to a Stealth Bomber, though nothing about it is particularly stealthy. It's a big machine -- one that makes its presence known long before you ever touch it. As you can imagine, given that it's so hefty, it's difficult to hold even with two hands. It likely won't even fit into laptop bags meant for 17-inch machines; you'd have to devote the main compartment of a large backpack to the Omen X. Under the hood, it can fit in an NVIDIA GTX 1080 as well as an Intel Core i7-7820HK CPU.

Clearly, the Omen X is meant for the sort of gamer who cares about getting the most complete laptop experience possible. And, ideally, they wouldn't want to move their machine around much. It also features a mechanical keyboard, which feels wonderfully responsive, even though it doesn't have as much room for keys to click as a desktop offering. It's well-suited for gaming, thanks to programmable macros, but it's also the sort of keyboard that simply feels pleasant to type on.

The Omen X's expandability is particularly intriguing. You only need to remove ten tiny Philips screws to pop open the bottom of its case, which allows you to upgrade the RAM, storage and other components. You can even set up RAID 0 to boost your disk performance. It took an HP representative a few minutes to remove the screws, but unfortunately, they weren't able to open the case of the prototype they were demoing. I didn't get a chance to test out its overclocking capabilities, either, but HP claims you'll have full control of the CPU and GPU for tweaking.