HP launches 'world's first' dual-screen gaming laptop

HP has announced what it claims to be the world's first gaming laptop to feature two built-in screens, the second sitting above the keyboard on the bottom half.

HP's new Omen X 2S - the latter standing for 'two screens', it has to be assumed - isn't the first attempt to bring multiple displays to a laptop. From designs which replace the keyboard with a full-size display, like Microsoft's cancelled Courier or the actually-launched Lenovo Yoga Book, to concepts that keep it intact including Razer's Project Linda, which replaces the laptop's touchpad with a dockable Android smartphone, and 2008's Lenovo W700ds - or even Razer's never-produced triple-display Project Valerie.

These all, however, have one thing in common: They're either concept designs which never made it to market or devices which focus on portability and general-purpose use. HP's Omen X 2S, by contrast, is designed as a powerhouse gaming laptop - allowing the company to claim a world-first design, based on its own definition of a 'gaming laptop' being 'laptops with models targeting specifically to [sic] gamers [...] with Nvidia GTX 1060 or Nvidia RTX or AMD R9 or AMD RX470 and above graphics, excluding detachable PCs,' despite having been beaten to the dual-screen punch by non-gaming designs.

'Pushing the boundaries of what's possible with game-changing evolutionary and revolutionary products reflects the philosophy of reinvention at HP,' crows Kevin Frost, vice president and general manager for consumer personal systems at HP Inc, the consumer half of what was formerly known as Hewlett Packard. 'The Omen brand continues to think big and Omen X 2S is a prime example of how we are setting new standards and changing how a gaming laptop is used.'

The 20mm-thick laptop boast an all-metal chassis and a primary 15.6" display in 144Hz 1080p or 60Hz 4K UHD variants alongside a secondary 5.98" 1080p display with multi-touch input located above the RGB backlit keyboard. Unlike Razer's Linda design, this display doesn't replace the trackpad, which is shifted to the side of the keyboard to make room.

Specifications of the laptop depend on on how much the buyer is willing to spend: All models ship with Windows 10 Home on an Intel HM370 chipset motherboard, and come with options up to an Intel Core i9-9880H eight-core 16-thread (8C16T) processor, 64GB dual-channel DDR4-3200 RAM, Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q or RTX 2080 Max-Q both with 8GB of GDDR6 VRAM, and storage options maxing out at two 1TB NVMe M.2 SSDs configured in RAID0 - the zero referring to how likely you are to be able to recover any data in the event that one drive malfunctions.

Full details are available on HP's website, with UK pricing and availability yet to be confirmed.