Image: HP
As someone who both works and games on the same hardware, it can be tricky (and expensive) to find displays that meet all of my needs. HP’s newest Omen gaming monitor, revealed at CES, might just hit both of those Venn diagram circles. The 32-inch OLED panel has so much tech crammed into it that it’s perfect for the kind of user who has multiple complex systems hooked up to the same screen.
The basics first. The Omen Transcend 32 is a 4K resolution, QD-OLED monitor boasting an impressive 240Hz refresh rate on its 31.5-inch screen, making it on the higher end of the recent OLED crop already. It covers 100 percent of the sRGB color range with 100 nits of peak brightness in HDR mode. That’s all well and good, but spin it around and you’ll see more ports than usual on a gaming display: THe latest DisplayPort 2.1, double HDMI 2.1, and USB-C with DisplayPort alt mode and 140 watts of power delivery, making it ideal for even the most juice-hungry gaming laptops.
But that’s far from all. On top of that you get two USB-A 3.2 ports and two USB-C 3.2 ports, both with 15 watts of power delivery. And herein lies the monitor’s flexibility as both a gaming and an office screen. In addition to the usual user-switchable inputs allowing you to move seamlessly between two machines, those ports include an integrated KVM switch, so you bring your mouse and keyboard with you. But on top of that, the monitor can display a picture-in-picture mode like an old-school big screen, showing you what’s happening on both screens at once. You can even reassign individual USB ports to specific machines.
HP
HP
HP
Even that’s not the end of the Omen Transcend’s powers. Thanks to some integrated software, the monitor can let you move your mouse and keyboard over to the PIP area of your screen, easily managing two machines at once without the need to manually switch between them or use some kind of bridge tool. A presenter told me that it’s perfect for playing a game while on camera in a Zoom meeting — a “boss’s worst nightmare,” as they described it.
Sadly, I wasn’t able to actually see the monitor in action, as it’s a mid-year release (at the earliest) and the hardware is still being finalized. That means that there’s no price to speak of, either, though you can expect all that functionality will mean an MSRP above and beyond the already-high price of a large OLED monitor. But to build the perfect setup for playing League while your manager goes over TPS reports that could have been an email, it might just be worth it.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer
Michael is a former graphic designer who’s been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.
