When I think of gaming PCs, I typically think of custom built desktops, lovingly modified by gamers with too much time on their hands. But ready-built, off the shelf gaming PCs are a fast growing segment of the market, catering to well heeled but time poor geeks, as well as esports athletes, who need a powerful yet portable gaming rig.

HP’s Omen line is relatively late to this market; a market synonymous with rival Dell’s Alienware gaming PCs. Paul Burman, product evangelist at HP, is refreshingly honest about the challenges the company faces.

“The biggest question we asked was: how do we treat Omen compared to the rest of our products? Because we’re that big corporate giant HP, the largest computer company worldwide. But the gaming community wants very tailored features, they don’t want a mass market product," he says.

“And to be fair, most gamers have been using great products from great brands for a long time, and telling someone to switch from a good Alienware laptop or an Asus ROG or any of the other great brands, well to me, it's like asking someone to change footy teams, it's kind of hard to do.

“So we need to do a couple of things; we need to make sure at minimum we're giving the specs that they want and that the industry demands. And then we need something better.”