At the 3-month mark of ownership, a line of stuck pixels developed on the upper half of the screen. I sent it in to HP for screen replacement and all was good again. Then at the 11-month milestone, the replacement screen also developed a line of stuck pixels, but worse than the first time. Sent it back for screen replacement and the new screen looked great.
But as soon as I fired up Train Simulator, I noticed screen tearing right away. I thought the repair center had somehow accidentally shut off my G-Sync. I went into the Nvidia control panel to turn it back on and the G-Sync option was no longer available. So I sent it back to HP.... and got the bad news.
Apparently in the late 2017 model year, HP decided for unknown reasons to drop G-Sync from their 17-inch 60HZ 4K IPS displays. So all the 4K replacement screens didn't have it anymore either. But HP neglected to tell this to the repair center staff, who just replaced the display as they always have in the past. But according to HP's website, the 15-inch 60Hz 4K IPS displays for some reason still have G-Sync..... unless the description is a typo and inaccurate. But I personally must have a 17-inch screen with it and nothing smaller.
So to compensate me for the loss of G-Sync on the 17-inch 4K display, HP offered to fully replace the entire laptop brand new with their all-new flagship tier within the Omen laptop line called the "Omen X". What kind of basic upgrades over my laptop does it offer? Well...instead of all plastic, it has an aluminum body (but plastic bottom) with upgraded ports such as Thunderbolt 3. Instead of chiclets-style keys, this comes with a Cherry MX Blue-like mechanical keyboard with dedicated programmable macro keys. It also has multi-color programmable effects RGB lighting for the keys, the back of the display lid and front of the laptop. It weighs in at 10 pounds.
As for the specs, they offered me the following OMEN X configuration....
i7-7700HQ (10% improvement over the 6700HQ)
GTX 1080 (30% improvement over the GTX 1070)
16GB of DDR4-2400 RAM
512GB SSD
1TB 7200rpm Hard Drive
17-inch 144Hz 1080P UWVA display w/G-Sync (It isn't listed as an IPS panel, so it's most likely a low latency TN panel. I personally prefer the better colors and viweing angles of an IPS panel over TN's lower latency, but I think I can live with it because it was the only display option on the Omen X that had G-Sync)
Since they allowed me to keep my original 512GB SSD, I basically got the 1TB hard drive for free. The GTX 1080 is a bit overkill for 1080p graphics (although it should keep that 144Hz display well fed with graphics maxed out on many games), it will definitely help bring up the framerate when playing in 4K res on my television. Shouldn't need a new GPU upgrade for awhile.
I should get the laptop in the next week or so. I'm happy that HP went the extra mile to take care of me. Good times ahead....I hope.
