How is it that everything is a subscription these days? At work, I
spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on software. And then in my
personal life, I'm expected to subscribe to everything from cloud storage to
healthy junk food to toothbrushes to get the aforementioned junk food out of my
braces. Do you guys remember the one for coins for laundry? Just $14.99 a month
for $10 in quarters. And if you want my two bits, that right
there is the problem. I'm always paying way more than if I just bought the stuff
outright in the first place. This whole you'll own nothing and you'll like it
philosophy has infected everything. And now HP, not content with subscription
printer ink, wants me to subscribe to my gaming laptop, TOO. IS NOTHING SACRED? I
mean, I shouldn't be too surprised, though. We were already in the middle of
a video on HP's subscription program for non-gaming laptops when we got this ad
for the Omen gaming subscription program. So, of course, now we've got to
take a look at what they're offering. Even though we've only got hands-on with
one of the consumer subscription laptops. To be clear, not all
subscriptions are inherently bad or evil. I get a ton of value out of
YouTube Premium, for instance, and I fully recognize why services that have
ongoing costs need to have ongoing fees.
And in fact, on the surface, HP's
program here doesn't look like that bad of a deal. But I've been burned before,
and I can't help but feel like there must be something hiding under the
surface. like this segue to our sponsors. [music]
[music] So far, looks like a totally normal
laptop, sir. HP currently includes four different
options in their consumer subscription program, ranging from about $35 to $85 a
month for the unit we've got here. And you know what? It's a nice little
machine. The Elite Book 6 G1 Q14 AI has
an 8 core ARM Snapdragon X plus 32 gigs of RAM, a 512 gig SSD, and a 14inch 1920
x 1200 display. Let's just see how much crap they've preloaded on it. Oh, good
lord, the taskbar.
With HP's addition of their AI companion, three of the eight items down
here are AI tools. That's three too
many. And even worse, HP's AI companion
app will pop up periodically telling me how much it respects my privacy. HP, you
can right off with that. To their credit, though, the system tray is
refreshingly empty. HP Wolf Security is
in here. Uh, that's their endpoint security offering, which I don't know a
ton about, but they make all the right noises in their marketing materials, and
it seems to be pretty light on system resources. Then the script says to ask
if y'all have any experience with it to share, but I'm actually going to jump in here. Jordan, I tried to remove it from
my Daily Driver HP laptop. And what I discovered is that if you uninstall its
various pieces in the wrong order, it falls into a circular dependency death
spiral where every component of it claims that another component needs to
be uninstalled first. And poor Easy Rider 750 here was only able to resolve
a similar issue with a full system reformat. So, uh, Let's see what else we
got here. Office 365 trial. Um, that's
probably fine. The heck is mobile plans and operators. Oh, that's right. This
thing has 5G. And the data plan is actually included in our monthly
subscription fee. That totally makes sense then. So, overall, as far as major
brands go, not great, but not terrible.
Still, there's got to be a gotcha, right? Let's have a look at the terms
and conditions. Overall, the program seems pretty straightforward. You pick
your laptop, you add your optional peripherals for a modest additional
monthly fee, of course, and you consent to a soft credit check, which I believe
means that HP does not see your score or personal credit information and that it
shouldn't impact your credit score. But then again, [music] I'm Canadian and our
financial system is based on maple syrup, so your mileage may vary.
Assuming you pass the check, you pay your first monthly fee and then a few
days later, your machine shows up in the mail. Then you start your 30-day money
back trial, which was a pretty pleasant surprise for me. It's exactly what it
sounds like. Don't like the machine in the first month? You send it back on
HP's dime and get a refund. However, if
you keep it longer than a month, you are locked in for at least one year. So,
let's take a quick look at the math on that. MSRP on this model is $3,000.
And at $85 a month, we're going to pay about a third of that MSRP during our
one-year lockin period. That's not terrible, especially when we consider
that it includes the data plan for this model, but it's not amazing either. What
happens after a year? Well, that's where things get a little bit more
interesting. You can cancel without any penalty and return the laptop. You can
carry on paying monthly to use it, which is probably what they're hoping you'll
do, or you can upgrade to a new laptop.
That's where things get pretty interesting. Also, as part of the
subscription, HP provides 24/7 live support with next-day replacement if
something can't be fixed over the phone, and they give you assistance with data
transfers and secure data removal if you move to a different machine or you need
to send one back to them. All of this makes for what is honestly a pretty
appealing sales pitch. for the right
kind of customer. If for instance you are a frequent upgrader, this is kind of
like having an extended warranty, a service plan, a data plan, and a device
rental all rolled into one. As long as
you continue paying your fee and you take advantage of those periodic
upgrades, you'll have a modern working computer at a price that is about the
same as rolling a 2 to threeyear upgrade cycle on your own.
On the other hand, [clears throat] you will never own this machine
regardless of how long you pay for it. This was another surprise and this time
not a pleasant one. I kind of figured that like a lease, there might be an
option to buy it out at the end of the term, but no, it must go back to HP when
you're done. That means no gifting your old laptop to granny, no repurposing it
as a media server, no selling it for a few extra bucks on marketplace, and on
top of that, while HP does seem to expect [music]
normal wear and tear on these units, there's no coverage for accidental
damage. So, it's you break it, you buy it rules, and HP reserves the right to
lock down the unit remotely in the event of non-payment. That makes the math we
did before a little bit more complicated and a little less favorable. What if you
just spent the $3,000 upfront? Sure, in
the first couple of years, you will have overpaid compared to your friend who
subscribed, but then you are the master of your destiny. You decide when to
upgrade, and when you do, you get to sell the unit you own and recoup some of
your costs. The question is, how much?
Well, we found this model on Facebook Marketplace for about a,000 Canadian or
$750, which oh well, that's a bit of a double
whammy, isn't it? First, it means that the catchup point to your friend who
subscribed is actually even sooner than the initial math would suggest. And
second, it means that at $3,000 MSRP,
this laptop is probably a pretty bad deal. maybe even intentionally so to
make renting it look like a more appealing option. To really drive this
point home, if I wanted this laptop for three years, it would actually cost me
less to subscribe for one year, then cancel my subscription, send the unit
back, and then buy the one that I saw on marketplace. Now, in theory, the
counterpoint to this is that I could just trade in and upgrade, and then I
wouldn't have this laptop. I'd have a better one. But that assumes that HP is
going to be on top of updating the models that they include in the program.
And it assumes that they have a new one that I actually like. They have made no
promises about that. But to their credit, we have seen at least one update
cycle in the consumer program in the eight or so months that we've had our
eye on it. Man, this is ending up pretty complicated, isn't it? But wait, there's
more. This subscription program is limited to the US and limited to one
laptop or household. So, no, you can't
kit out your medium-sized business on the cheap or even your duggarized
family. Okay, Whale Land, our old school all
weekend gaming event is back and it's just around the corner. If you want to
play games with your friends, not to mention some members of the LMG team,
grab your tickets now at the link down below. We'll be hanging out on February
21st and 22nd. Just head over to whaland.com to get your tickets or click
the link down below. How about the gaming program then? Well, we haven't
got our hands on a demo for this one, but it appears that it's been quietly
running for several months now. Obviously, you get more powerful
hardware. I'm talking Ryzen 7 and Core Ultra CPUs as standard along with
discrete NVIDIA graphics up to a 16 gig RTX 5080 and up to 32 gigs of RAM, a
terabyte of storage, and large screens with faster refresh rates. But equally
obviously, you pay more for it. Somewhere between $50 up to $130 a
month. The terms of the program all look pretty similar, but it looks like HP has
masked their math a little bit differently on these ones because the
gaming models have you paying just shy of half of the MSRP in the first year,
no matter which model you pick. I'm not
completely sure what that means. Did they find the three-year payback wasn't
profitable enough? Do they expect gamers to be harder on these machines, making
the betock returns worth less? Do they expect the usable life cycles to be
shorter for performance reasons? It's hard for us to know for sure, but what's
clear is that they're after a faster return on their hardware investment.
With all that said, they're still not a terrible deal if you would be a frequent
upgrader anyway and you're on the ball about getting a new machine on your
subscription the moment that you're able to. Doing some quick math, the second
best gaming laptop is $80 a month. You go ahead and throw in a Game Pass
subscription for what is it? 20 bucks a month. That's $1,200 a year for solid
performance in hundreds of games. You'll own nothing, but you might at least have
the perception of being happy about it. And if we're being honest, it's not like
buying these games means you own them anymore. Anyway, with that said, with
that 2-year payoff period, the gaming models will turn into a bad deal a lot
faster than the consumer models if you aren't the kind of person who would be
upgrading every single time that new hardware comes up. and especially if you
get lazy and you don't upgrade your subscription. Also, I just straight up
cannot recommend this one to anyone who typically resells or reuses their old
hardware. A 2-year-old gaming laptop is still a very capable little piece of
kit, and it would be nice to still have around when you start paying for your
new one. Bottom line, subscriptions like this, they don't seem quite so crazy
anymore. Have we all just been Stockholm syndrome into acceptance? I'm not sure.
But as long as we don't end up with abusive cancellation policies and we
maintain the ability to buy the same hardware outright if we want to, I don't
mind having the choice to have a subscription. By the way, HP, those last
two things, those were dystopian. Those were not suggestions. Now, if you'll
excuse me, I need to go renew the subscription to the heated seats in my
car. Uh, while I'm gone, by the way, feel free to check out this message from
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If you guys like this video, check out our recent look at GeForce Now. It's
renting a gaming PC without the blackjack
or the gaming PC.