The maker of expensive printer ink, HP, has decided the future of PC gaming is a monthly invoice and a laptop you never own.
Under its appropriately named Omen Gaming Subscription service, punters pay each month to borrow a rig, with no option to buy it outright once you have covered the sticker price.
The pitch is that you can swap to a newer machine every year, receive ongoing warranty coverage, faster replacements, and 24/7 support, plus rent accessories for an additional monthly fee.
PC Gamer writer James Bentley said the idea has apparently been floating about for months and was spotted by Reddit users.
At the lower end, HP will rent you a Victus 15-inch with an AMD Ryzen 7 8845HS, RTX 4050, 16GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD for $50 per month.
That same Victus is listed at $950 on sale, meaning 19 months of rent buys the full machine outright. At the end of it HP still wants it back.
At the premium end, HP offers an Omen Max 16 with an Intel Core Ultra 9, RTX 5080, 32GB of memory, and a 1TB SSD for $130 per month.
HP lists that model at $2,110, so about 16 months of payments would bring you to the purchase price while remaining in renter status.
Other tiers follow the same pattern, with $70 and $80 plans for Omen 16 models that hit full price in less than 20 months, or about 25 months at MSRP.
HP has added cancellation fees that appear designed to prevent anyone from treating this as a short-term rental.
Cancel a Victus plan in month two, and HP wants $550, while bailing on the Omen Max 16 in month two costs $1,430, and you still send it back.
HP only drops the fee if you cancel during or after month 13, which is a tidy way to herd customers into paying long enough to regret it properly.
Accessories come with the same rent-seeking energy: HyperX Cloud Alpha Wireless headphones are listed at $8 a month, and the HyperX QuadCast 2 S mic at $8 a month.
Bentley said, “I don’t much like the idea of paying monthly for hardware that I will never own and those cancellation fees make a quick try-out look pointless.”
HP is trying to sell this as freedom from upgrade lag, even while many retailers offer zero-interest finance that ends with you actually owning the equipment.
