If you thought holding your cyan ink cartridge hostage was the absolute peak of HP’s audacity, think again—they have finally found a way to bring that same “subscribe or suffer” energy to your actual PC.
This month, the tech giant launched its new gaming laptop subscription, a “hardware-as-a-service” pilot program that invites US gamers to lease gaming laptops for a monthly fee rather than buying the devices outright.
But before you get seduced by the low upfront cost, you need to see the numbers HP left off the slide deck: a pricing structure where you pay nearly the full retail price, carry the liability, and ultimately return the laptop with absolutely zero equity to show for it.
“Gaming as a Service”: The program at a glance
Let’s take a look at what subscribers get when they subscribe.
- HP offers several gaming laptop tiers to choose from, starting with entry level laptops like the Victus 15 for about $50 per month and going up to the top tier Omen brand for about $130 per month.
- To justify the cost, HP is offering the following services: 24/7 support, next-day replacements, full guarantee throughout the subscription period.
- Upgrades are allowed after 12 consecutive months of payments for a laptop. In other words, subscribers can upgrade to other models each year.
HP pitches this as a cure for “upgrade anxiety”, claiming that gamers will never again have to worry about their computers becoming obsolete.
The financial reality: the math behind the offer
HP’s marking slides look great, because they compare small monthly numbers against the full retail price for the laptops. For just $130, gamers can start playing the latest and greatest games on a laptop with an Nvidia RTX 5080 video card.
However, if you run the math over the mandatory subscription period, which is 12 months, or beyond, you will notice that HP is the only beneficiary here.
The “Subscriber” vs. The “Owner” comparison
| Time | Subscription ($130/mo) | Purchase ($2500) | Remark |
| Day 1 | $130 | $2500 | |
| Year 1 | $1560 | $2500 | |
| Year 2 | $3120 | $2500 | Break-even in the second year. |
| Year 3 | $4680 | $2500 | Overpaying. |
The trap: The subscription premium kicks in around month 19 and it gets worse from then on. It is also worth noting that owning a device also means resell rights. While you won’t get the paid $2500 for the gaming laptop, you might get $1000 or even more for it after two years.
Total costs are even more in favor of buying over subscribing because of that. If that would not all be bad-deal-worthy enough, there are cancellation fees.
The “Gotcha” Clause: Cancellation Fees
It might actually make sense to subscribe for a month or two, maybe to continue gaming while your main PC or laptop is being repaired or to bridge a short period of months.
However, the subscription does not allow short term rentals. You can only cancel for free in the first 30 days. Afterwards, you pay hefty fines if you want to get out early. Starting with day 31, you pay a termination fee.
How much? As much as you would have paid anyway for the entire year. That is a more than $1400 for the premium gaming laptop, if you decide to cancel in the second month. Cancelling is only free after the initial year. If a subscriber would have that much money lying around, it would even make less sense to rent and not buy a laptop outright.
Conclusion
HP’s OMEN Gaming Subscription is a fascinating experiment in the “Netflix-ification” of hardware, but for the vast majority of gamers, the math simply refuses to behave. It solves a problem—upfront cost—that traditional 0 percent financing already solved years ago, but it does so by stripping you of the only thing that makes a $3,000 purchase palatable: ownership.
When you subscribe to Spotify, you accept that you own no music because the library is infinite. When you subscribe to an HP laptop, the library is one single machine that sits on your desk, depreciating while you pay full price for it every two years.
The allure of an annual upgrade is undeniable. Who doesn’t want the newest RTX card the moment it launches? But HP is banking on you valuing that convenience at a 100 percent markup. They are betting that you will look at the monthly payment, ignore the long-term total, and sign away your right to resell, modify, or keep your hardware.
My advice: Don’t do it, unless you need the services that HP is offering, especially the next-day replacement deal. If you need a gaming rig but can’t afford one outright, consider buying used or looking for a system in a more suitable price range.
Don’t let your gaming rig become another monthly bill that you pay forever but never own.
Based on my experience with HP’s “next-day service” with their extended warranties they are anything but “next-day” in one instance I had to wait around five weeks!!!
I would also imagine that the exorbitant cancellation fees would be illegal in many countries (they are in Australia)!
Who else but Hewlett Packard one of the original scumbags.
A Hewlett Packard product loses it value the moment you open your wallet. A thief wouldn’t even steal one.
I don’t think I have heard of anyone of sound mind recommend an HP product of any sort in decades. Those that do are simply stupid and/or operating on kickbacks in some sort of affiliate scheme and corrupt.
They’ll probably find a loophole for Australia. As the Australian’s say Australian laws are “as weak as piss!”
I heard they are also getting profiled by Plantir at your grocery store “Cole’s” now and also at your hardware store “Bunnings”. Bunnings won (probably paid for) a legal case very recently to continue using facial recognition which opened the floodgates for all sorts of stuff there so there will more to come.
It goes well with their data retention policies/laws and such that they passed many years ago and then played dumb about when one of the largest telco and many online stores were hacked and customer data was stolen.
Australia also has some of the worst consumer laws without “right to repair” laws.
The US (and the rest of the world) uses Australia as its testing ground for laws they cannot get past their just to make sure they can refine it and Australia happily accepts it.
Concerns about cost of living, energy and water?? Yep
Australian Government: One handjob from AI techbros and they are agreeing to build one of the largest AI (goes hand in hand with the rest of the privacy invasive stuff going on there) data centers in Eastern Creek.
Australia is also pushing to go all digital ID now too. This should work very well for privacy breaches and identity theft. Once again it goes hand in hand with the rest of the privacy invasive features that are there and coming soon.
Truly the stuff of corrupt smooth-brainers!
Australia the lucky country?? More like the sucky country!
Pick up your game Australia.
Just because you are located at the ass end of the world doesn’t mean you have to be the worlds ass.