CES 2026: HP says the HyperX Omen Max 16 is the most powerful 16-inch gaming laptop in the world
This year HP is making an important change by taking its name off its gaming hardware entirely and letting its HyperX branding take center stage. At CES 2026, the company is celebrating this transition in a big way with Omen Max 16, which is being heralded as the world's most powerful gaming laptop with fully internal cooling.
Now the last part of that claim is a bit of a cop out, but considering that most gamers probably don't want to lug around a notebook with hoses coming out the back, it's an understandable qualifier. Plus, with a total platform power of 300 watts that includes support for the latest chips from Intel and AMD and up to an NVIDIA RTX 5090 GPU, this thing certainly won't be lacking in speed. Under the hood, the Max 16 features a third cooling fan to prevent throttling under sustained workloads along with HP's Fan Cleaner tech that reverses the direction of the laptop's fans to prevent dust from building up inside.
As for its design, the Max 16 doesn't stray too far from HyperX's signature matte black color scheme, though I do appreciate that the company kept a handful of accents like the RGB lightbar mounted on the laptop's front lip. The notebook also features a per-key RGB backlit keyboard with a 1,000Hz polling rate, which should all but eliminate any issues with ghosting or rollover during hectic facerolling sessions.
However, one quirk about the system I noticed when checking it out first hand is that even with above average brightness of 500 nits for its 2.5K OLED display, the screen also comes with an unusually glossy coating. The benefit of this is that colors appear super saturated. The downside is that especially in well-lit rooms with a lot of sunlight, there's more glare and reflections than you might expect.
Another nice improvement about the Max 16 that might go unnoticed if you only look at its spec sheet is that despite having a TPP of 300 watts, its power brick is relatively compact. It wasn't all that long ago that a laptop with this kind of performance might have required dual power cables in order to supply the notebook with the amount of juice it needs. That said, weighing between 6.1 and 6.5 pounds depending on the exact configuration, the Max 16 still isn't the kind of laptop you're going to want to carry around on a frequent basis.
Regardless, if you're in the market for what is essentially an old-school desktop replacement laptop without moving up to even larger 18-inch machines, HyperX's latest flagship gaming laptop should be a strong contender that won't be lacking in speed.
One change for 2026 is that HP is taking its name off of its gaming systems and letting the HyperX brand take center stage. Sam Rutherford for EngadgetUnfortunately, HP doesn't have concrete info about how much the HyperX Omen Max 16 will cost or when it will go on sale. However, we should know more when it becomes available sometime later this spring. And finally, if you're looking for something slightly smaller or a more affordable system (we don't have official pricing, but the Max 16 won't come cheap), HP is also updating the Omen 15 and Omen 16 with fresh components and new HyperX branding for 2026 as well.