There’s a lot to like about the HP Victus laptop, currently at a really low price for its power. Yes, the CPU is two generations old, but the Core i5 12500H still offers four P-cores, eight E-cores, and 16 threads in total.

It would be nicer to have a CPU that has fewer E-cores and more P-cores, but with a boost clock of 4.5GHz and a power limit of 95W, it’ll cope with most games just fine. You’ll even be able to throw in a bit of content creation.

To handle the graphics duties, there’s a GeForce RTX 4060, which is a decent 1080p budget-level GPU. There’s no indication as to what its power limit is, but hopefully it’s not one of the low-end versions. In other HP laptops, such as its RTX 4050 models, they’re typically towards the higher end of the power range.

But regardless of what its actual performance is like, it’s a perfect match for the 1080p IPS panel. The refresh rate is suitably high for gaming at 144Hz, and if the GPU struggles to hit that level in games, then you might be able to enable DLSS upscaling or DLSS Frame Generation to boost things along.

You’re getting a decent amount of RAM for the money and 16GB is more than enough for the vast majority of games. I can’t tell what speed it is, but it’s unlikely to be very slow stuff, simply because DDR4-3200 is super cheap these days.

Apart from some of the unknown specifications, the only major downside to this deal is the amount of storage you’re getting: 512GB is pretty mean by today’s standards and it will fill up very quickly. HP tends to only offer one SSD slot inside its budget laptops but at least it’s not expensive to replace it with a large, fast 1TB drive.

If you’re still not convinced, the HP Victus has almost identical hardware to a Gigabyte G5 laptop that we reviewed back in April; its gaming performance was spot on. At $699, though, you might be tempted to spend the money on an Asus ROG Ally handheld PC (currently $599.99 at Best Buy). The CPU inside is better than the Core i5 12500H, though not massively so, and its GPU isn’t as good at 1080p gaming on the RTX 4060.

The ROG Ally is certainly a lot more portable but the battery life is pretty short. Its integrated dual-stick controls make it a comfortable machine for controller-focused games, but if the gamer in your life prefers a mouse and keyboard, a laptop is a far simpler setup. With a separate stand and a USB splitter, it’s possible to plug in peripherals to a PC handheld, but then you’re forcing a purpose-built machine to function outside its main purpose.

If you’re looking for the perfect Christmas gift for a student who wants something to work and play on, this laptop is by far the best choice.

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