HP Omen 15 (Intel) vs MSI GS66 Stealth: Which One is Better in Gaming?

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This is the comparison of the HP Omen 15 Intel version and MSI GS66 Stealth laptops. Both the laptops are specially made for gaming and both perform well in gaming but obviously, the performance of these laptops differs.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
HP Omen 15 (Intel)	MSI GS66 Stealth
PROS	PROS
Great display with accurate color. Excellent gaming performance and for multitasking.	Improved lightweight design. Powerful and cooling performance. Good battery life for a gaming laptop.
CONS	CONS
The hinges seem unstable. Little heavier than other gaming laptops.	Average sound quality. Bloatware.

SPECIFICATIONS

INTRODUCTION:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

This is the HP Omen 15 Intel version and there is also an AMD version in it. Both the version models perform well but there will be little ups and downs in terms of performance. With the Intel version, you will get some high-end GPU options, that’s a big advantage.

MSI GS66 Stealth

This model has been redesigned basically everywhere, very modern looking. It’s also got a 100-watt hour battery which I’m pretty sure no other 15-inch gaming laptop has. There’s a lot of other changes as well. Based on the appearance and the specs alone, it looked like a big update.

DESIGN:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

I really like the minimal look on this redesign and it doesn’t scream gamer laptop. It’s a matte finish with the new Omen logo, this doesn’t light up or anything. It’s a combo build, so the top lid portion is plastic and the bottom plate cover is plastic but the rest is made of metal so it helps keep it rigid. So, while there is flex on the screen, the keyboard and palm rest feel more robust. When it’s closed, you’ll see a gap and you can feel the screen flex, and also you can feel it push down on the back but for those of you that are concerned about this being an issue, I haven’t had any problems with it. Since the screen is not glass, I don’t see it getting damaged at all and for people that are using this as their only gaming computer and playing on a monitor in a clamshell fashion, this gap does allow for better airflow which makes cooling better.

The keyboard I have is a four-zone RGB but it is an option to get this and I highly recommend it. The precision trackpad is nice and responsive and while it’s not the biggest trackpad, I feel like it’s big enough. The keyboard has plenty of travel and I think a lot of people will be okay with it. It’s a little mushy for my liking but it definitely does the job.

MSI GS66 Stealth

They redesigned the entire laptop this year inside and out and I think they did a really good job, very minimal not just on a lid but on the inside as well. They remove the gold chamfer around the laptop and around the trackpad. The logo on the lid is now black instead of gold. The exhaust vents now have a simple rectangular design. The hinge looks and feels better and I think it stands out as being one of the very few gaming laptops on the market that look really good in 2020. In terms of strength and build quality, I think it’s about the same as the previous GS65. The area above the keyboard is reinforced with metal, so there’s very little flex and the screen is still made of plastic so it’s fairly soft. However, one thing that I did notice while using this thing is that the texture feels pretty nice. They did a great job with the design, strength, and feel of the laptop.

The keyboard and trackpad should be very similar to the previous model. It’s got a very shallow key travel similar to the Blade 15 or the Magic keyboard on the new MacBooks but in terms of tactility, it’s quite good. I actually enjoyed using this keyboard to a certain extent, it’s not good to the point where I would praise it but everything aside from the shallow key travel is done fairly well. I like the fact that the keycaps are nice and big, I’ve noticed that this does improve accuracy by a noticeable amount. I also think 75%, this is the best layout for laptops because you have full-size arrow keys, it doesn’t interfere with the right shift key and it only takes that one extra column.

The trackpad is basically the same as last year, it’s very wide but not particularly tall, it’s got a glass surface. The tracking accuracy is good in that, it’s responsive and it knows when I want to move my cursor but the directional accuracy is quite poor, it always sort of deviates away from where I want to go and I suppose it’s not an issue if you move your cursor relatively slowly but if you’re trying to move your cursor quickly, you never quite land exactly where you want to be.

DISPLAY:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

There are two options available in terms of the display of this laptop: the first one is 144 Hz and the other one is 300 Hz. The color accuracy and details are pretty good in these display options. There is only 1080p available, no 4K option. On average, the brightness of this display is around 311nits. In the DCI-P3 the Omen 15 got around 71% of the color gamut.  

MSI GS66 Stealth

This unit is configured with a 1080p 240hz panel which you can upgrade to a 1080p 300hz or a 4K60. The funny thing is I measured this screen at the brightness all the way down and I got some ridiculously dim result for the brightness. I measured it again at full brightness and it’s actually really good, it’s a bit brighter than the 280 nit average on most 144hz panels.

Color accuracy and color gamut are basically spot on, very good for a high refresh panel. The contrast ratio could be higher but it’s not something I consider particularly bad, it’s right above average. The only panel that’s a big step up would be the ones on the legion 7i which have a 240hz HDR panel rated at 500 nits that’s the same as the MacBook Pros. Since this is a premium laptop, I hope MSI will use them for their next refresh, fast and great image quality.

FEATURES:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

The unit we have for our review has the specs of the 10th generation Intel i7 model, 16 gigabytes of RAM, NVIDIA 2060 GPU, and the display is a 1080p 300-hertz panel. Also, there are AMD options but for graphics, it looks like the 1660Ti is the highest option available with AMD models but with the Intel models, you can go up to a 2080 Super. So, keep that in mind if you want the best graphics performance, you’re gonna have to go Intel.

There is a webcam on the front which is nice but I wish there was support for Windows Hello. The display is a really nice one. This is a 300hz matte IPS panel. This one is fantastic with nice color accuracy and good viewing angles. 300hz is probably overkill, especially with the graphics options that are available but it makes the gaming experience really smooth. So, I highly recommend you upgrading the panel if you have the extra budget. The Bang & Olufsen speaker system is decent but the two speakers are actually at the bottom. I would love to see them put a little bit more emphasis on the external audio.

There are plenty of ports on the left. You have a power port, ethernet, USB, full-size HDMI 2.0, a headphone jack, and a full-size SD card slot which is awesome for creators, so great if you want to edit video on this. Thunderbolt 3 port on the other side but you can’t charge with this port, mini display port, and two more USB ports to round things out.

MSI GS66 Stealth

This MSI GS66 Stealth has a 10th gen Intel Core i9 processor with NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 with Max-Q. The memory and storage options are plenty enough up to 64GB of RAM. 

One thing I hadn’t really considered with why most gaming laptops don’t have upward-firing speakers beside the keyboard but it turns out it’s actually isn’t. A lot of gaming laptops will have exhaust vents on the sides of a laptop in addition to the rear exhaust and that prevents you from placing speakers beside the keyboard. When my hand is on the WASD keys, I notice that my palm blocks the left speaker grille in an ideal situation, I would project the mid-range and treble up from above the keyboard using a pair of drivers and have two separate subwoofers project downwards near the front of the laptop. If they do that, these would probably be the best speakers on a gaming laptop by far.

For ports, you have power in Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, USB-A port, ethernet on the right followed by two more USB-A, a USB-C port which is not Thunderbolt 3, and a headphone jack. The cool feature with this is you can charge the laptop through the USB Type-C port, it’s only 65 watts so you can either use it to power it for light use or extend your battery life while gaming. It obviously won’t fully power this thing if you’re pushing the CPU or GPU but it’s nice to have that flexibility.

PERFORMANCE:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

If you’re into benchmarks, the Geekbench 5 CPU score of the Omen 15 Intel is 1220 in single-core and 6290 in multi-core performance. The Geekbench compute score is around 74950. So, 2060 does very well. This is a capable laptop, I have a 512 gigabyte SSD and the read speed is 2070 MB/s, and the write speed is 1090 MB/s, that might not be enough storage for some of you. So, you can just configure one with a bigger drive or you can upgrade it yourself down the line. There’s also an option for a two NVMe raid 0 setup.

The gaming performance is very solid. Playing the Shadow of the Tomb Raider game on the Omen 15 is a solid experience. I ran the benchmark on the highest settings and am still getting 80 frames per second average which is really great. With Doom Eternal, I’m getting over 120 frames per second and at its lowest around 100 fps. This is a really solid experience on ultra, 2060 can’t go beyond this setting but this is very enjoyable on the Omen 15. If you play a Call of Duty: Warzone, then you will get a decent gaming experience on this as well.

When it comes to power, you do have options through the Omen command center. When I’m gaming, I use the performance setting. This setting will push the laptops to their limits, so the fans will get louder and the laptop will run hotter but I’m really impressed with the cooling system. The fans are large and move a lot of air and the system is robust, so it does cool the system properly. If you want your experience to be a little quieter, you can use the balance mode. I think a lot of people like this mode. The fan is constantly running, there’s no way to turn it off completely, you can feel airflow coming out if you put your hands near the laptop.

MSI GS66 Stealth

In terms of performance, it’s a bit complicated because of the way MSI manages their thermals not just on this laptop or even on their gaming laptops as a whole, I’ve noticed that every single MSI laptop sets a CPU temperature limit of 90 degrees celsius instead of Intel’s 100-degree limit and I know that was done in hardware because that limit persisted in Mac OS as well, so it’s not like a Windows-only thing.

With the default fan curve and prime95 to stress the CPU, you’re looking at about 50 watts at 91 degrees. However, if you run the fans at full speed, you will get around 65 watts at 90 degrees. If you were to extrapolate how much power it might be able to dissipate if it were allowed to run up to 100 degrees like most other gaming laptops, you could reasonably expect it to dissipate 75 watts which are right above average for a thin & light 15-inch gaming laptop. This is specifically for Intel’s H-series CPUs. So, cooling performance is good but because they limit the temperature to around 90 degrees on the CPU, the performance you get with just the CPU is less than ideal. If they gave us the option to set a temperature limit ourselves maybe in the BIOS, this wouldn’t be an issue but unfortunately, we don’t get a choice here.

However, for gaming, it’s a little bit different. Most Intel gaming laptops will need to throttle down the CPU when you’re also hitting the graphics card which ends up placing this right above average in terms of performance. It’s in between the Blade 15 Base model and the Omen 15 which I consider to be the lower and upper end in terms of performance. Specifically for gaming performance where it’s a mix of both the CPU and GPU, the performance is very good but it’s not quite class-leading because it’s configured with lower temperature limits which are done by lowering the power consumption and therefore slower clock speeds.

BATTERY:

HP Omen 15 (Intel)

This has a 70.9 watt-hour battery. I wish the battery was a little bit bigger in this model. I was getting about three hours before it was dying. I would like to see it pushed to four that would be a little bit better but a lot of people are just gonna have this plugged in any way when the game gets the maximum performance.

MSI GS66 Stealth

One of the big new features that made me very interested in this laptop was the 100-watt hour battery. Very few laptops have batteries this big and I’m pretty sure this is the only gaming laptop with a 100-watt hour battery. I was expecting eight hours with this but it’s actually closer to like six to seven hours.

WHICH TO BUY?

Overall, I think HP Omen 15 Intel version is a really solid refresh and I think Omen is going in the right direction with their laptops. The redesign is clean and minimal which I appreciate. There are plenty of power choices and even though that the fans are a little louder, it does cool the laptop properly which is a big deal for maximum performance. If you’re looking for a solid gaming laptop at a competitive price, I think the Omen 15 Intel is a great choice.

I think where the MSI GS66 Stealth excels is in portability and being an overall great laptop, it’s thin and relatively light. It’s a little bit heavier than you might expect because of the massive battery but compares to other gaming laptops on the market, it’s relatively thin and light. It also has very minimal compromises and the only thing I dislike about it is the CPU temperature limit and the speakers. If you’re looking for a high-end thin and light 15-inch gaming laptop, this is easily one of my top three personal favorites.

Both the laptop performs well in gaming but I think HP Omen 15 is better than the MSI GS66 Stealth in performance. MSI GS66 Stealth has some more negatives in terms of performance.

Expert reviews of HP Omen 15 (Intel):

By Digit
The HP Omen 15 2020 is a rock-solid contender for the next gaming laptop you buy. It packs the perfect hardware configuration, only thrown off by the choice of the Nvidia…

By Trustedreviews
The HP Omen 15 (2020) is one of the best value gaming laptops you can buy, flaunting a fantastic Full HD performance…

By BGR
HP Omen 15 2020 is a surprisingly impressive device with highlights in the cooling department and the overall performance. The device lineup offers options between AMD and Intel which is commendable. In addition, the low-key design and functional approach result…

Expert reviews of MSI GS66 Stealth:

By Notebookcheck
The MSI GS66 features a classy, compact metal case that has proven…

By Pcmag
The MSI GS66 Stealth is a well-built and potent high-end gaming laptop, but it has a few shortcomings (especially considering the price of our review configuration) and loses…

By Laptopmag
The $2,699 MSI GS66 Stealth is a bubbling font of awesome. From its stellar graphics and overall performance, lightning-fast transfer speeds and surprising…

Arya

Hello! I'm Surendar Arya, a passionate tech writer from Uttar Pradesh, India. I'm a freelance contributor to the tech blog - The World's Best And Worst. My enthusiasm for technology drives me to explore the latest trends and innovations in the field. I take immense pleasure in guiding individuals on how to leverage technology for their benefit, making their lives easier and more efficient.