I’m tired of my hardware depreciating faster than a used luxury car.
Well, I love PC gaming. But if I’m being honest, looking at the receipt for the “top-tier” gaming laptop I bought in late 2023 makes me physically ill. I dropped nearly $3,200 on that machine. It had an RTX 4080, a beautiful Mini-LED screen, and enough RGB to signal airplanes.
Today? It struggles to hit 60 FPS in Path of Exile 2 with the settings cranked, and the resale value is maybe—maybe—$900 on eBay if I get lucky and the buyer doesn’t scam me. That’s a loss of over $2,000 in roughly two and a half years.
So when I saw HP rolling out this new OMEN subscription service earlier this week—offering rentals starting at $50 and going up to $130 for the big guns—my knee-jerk reaction wasn’t “Oh great, another subscription.” It was, surprisingly, “Thank God.”
The Hardware Reality in 2026
Let’s talk about what’s actually under the hood here. The top tier of this new service gets you an RTX 5080. And if you haven’t had a chance to mess with the mobile 50-series (Blackwell architecture) since they started trickling out, you are missing out.
I got my hands on a unit running the mobile 5080 last Tuesday to run some benchmarks. The jump from the 40-series isn’t just a bump; it’s a leap.
Specifics matter here: Running Cyberpunk 2077 with the new “Overdrive 2.0” path tracing preset (patch 2.41), my old 4080 laptop was gasping for air at 1440p, barely holding 40 FPS with DLSS set to Balanced. But the RTX 5080 mobile? It sat comfortably at 85 FPS. That’s not a typo. The AI frame generation on these new chips has gotten frighteningly good at handling rapid camera movement without the weird artifacting we saw back in 2024.
Temperature-wise, it’s still a gaming laptop. Physics is physics. During a 3-hour session of GTA VI, the CPU (Core Ultra 9 285H) spiked to 92°C, but the GPU hovered around 81°C. Loud? Yes. But fast.
The Math: Buying vs. Renting
Here is where my brain starts fighting itself. I hate monthly payments. I subscribe to too many things already—Netflix, Spotify, Adobe (don’t get me started), Game Pass. Adding hardware to that list feels like admitting defeat.
But let’s run the numbers.
To buy a spec-equivalent OMEN or Razer Blade with an RTX 5080 right now, you’re looking at roughly $3,500 after tax.
The Rental Option: At $130/month for the top tier, over two years (24 months), you pay $3,120.
At first glance, you think: “Ha! I pay $3,120 and own nothing at the end! If I buy it for $3,500, I still have the laptop!”
True. But remember my 2023 laptop? It lost $2,300 in value. If I buy the $3,500 laptop today, and in 2028 it’s worth $1,000, my “cost of ownership” was $2,500. Plus, I’m stuck with the same hardware for two years.
With the subscription, I’m paying a premium (about $600 more over two years compared to the depreciation loss), BUT—and this is the kicker—I can upgrade. HP says upgrades are available “anytime” (though I’m sure there’s fine print about contract renewal terms I need to dig into). If the RTX 5090 Ti Super whatever comes out next year, I just swap. I don’t have to deal with Facebook Marketplace weirdos asking if I’ll trade my laptop for a dirt bike.
The “Right to Repair” vs. “Right to Rent”
This shift worries me on a philosophical level, though.
I’ve been fighting with a swollen battery on my work Dell XPS since November. And because I own it, I just bought a battery from iFixit and swapped it. Took 20 minutes.
But if you rent this OMEN, you don’t touch the insides. You don’t repaste the thermal compound when it inevitably dries out after 14 months. You don’t upgrade the RAM. You are a user, not an owner.
Also, what happens if you miss a payment? Does the laptop brick itself? I dug through the terms of service (version 1.4, updated Feb 10, 2026), and while they don’t explicitly say “remote bricking,” there is language about “software-enabled access restrictions.” That sounds a lot like they can turn your $3,000 gaming rig into a paperweight remotely if your credit card expires.
Who is this actually for?
I think this is for two types of people:
- The Nomad: Students or contractors who need high-power rendering or gaming for 6 months but don’t want to drop $3k upfront.
- The Fed-Up Enthusiast (Me): People who want the best performance but are tired of the hassle of selling used hardware.
And I tested the mid-tier option too ($90/month for an RTX 5070 equivalent). Honestly? Skip it. The performance gap between the 5070 and 5080 mobile chips this generation is massive—nearly 35% in raw rasterization based on my Time Spy Extreme runs. If you’re going to rent, rent the monster. If you want mid-range, just buy a used 40-series laptop; they’re dirt cheap right now.
My Verdict
Well, I haven’t signed up yet. I’m still clinging to my ownership bias. But the logic is getting harder to ignore. We accepted it with software (Adobe), we accepted it with media (Spotify), and we accepted it with games (Game Pass). Hardware was the last holdout.
And if you’re the type who gets itchiness every time Jensen Huang walks on stage in a leather jacket to announce a new GPU? This might actually save you money. Just don’t forget to cancel before the 36th month, or you’re definitely getting ripped off.
