The sky-high price of memory is impacting both end users and the companies that make PCs. AI data center buildout has sapped RAM supply and pushed PC makers to raise prices. What happens when fewer consumers can afford the computing necessary for their daily work or their gaming pastime? PC makers may start asking us to lease our PCs like we do our cars.
HP has silently started a program where consumers can rent a laptop with a monthly fee. Reddit users on the r/HPOmen subreddit first discovered the haul of rentable PCs on HP’s website last year, though the Linus Tech Tips YouTube channel and PCGamer have brought it into the light this week. Starting at $50 per month, users have the option to claim a Victus 15 gaming laptop packed with an AMD Ryzen 7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4050 laptop GPU (that laptop costs $1,150 at retail but is normally sold at $950). For the top-end $130 per month subscription, you can claim an Omen Max 16 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 and Nvidia RTX 5080 graphics.
Once you select the laptop of your choice, you can then purchase additional HyperX peripherals for a few bucks added on top of your subscription, including a mouse, keyboard, headset, mic, or even a monitor.
After a full year, that high-end laptop would cost you $1,440, ignoring any taxes or additional accessories. HP allows you to upgrade after one year to trade in your gear for the latest and greatest. Ostensibly, that could mean you could swap from the previous-gen Omen Max to the latest HyperX Omen Max laptop revealed earlier this year at CES. The current-gen laptop costs $3,300, so after two years of using the high-end mobile gaming platform, you may still have saved some extra cash.
Of course, there’s a cancellation fee
If you’ve had to deal with the ballooning fees of streaming services, you already know the problem with subscription models. The top-end $120-a-month subscription is still very, very expensive. Sure, you get 24/7 live tech support (a rarity in this age of AI-filled chatbots) and free replacements. What you lose is any real control over the things you buy. There’s a cancellation fee if you ever wish to quit early on your 12-month commitment that could equal hundreds or more than $1,000 if you try to end as early as the 4-month mark.
If you don’t return your device after your rental period is up, you’ll end up stacking more return fees worth thousands of dollars. Unlike a phone payment plan, you will never own the laptop, even if you pay the equivalent cost of the device. You will need to think about what sensitive information you upload to the laptop’s memory and remember to reset the PC before sending it back. You can never hand off or resell this device to somebody else if you ever decide you wish to upgrade.
And it’s not just gaming PCs. HP also has a similar service for its business-end PCs. With that offering, you can procure more reasonably priced mobile machines like an HP EliteBook 6 G1q 14-inch model for $85 per month or a 16-inch HP Pavilion for $35 a month. The same EliteBook would demand around $1,277 (currently on sale, though it hits MSRP for over $2,000).
HP’s business and gaming rental pages have been around since at least November of last year, according to the Wayback Machine. Gizmodo reached out to HP for more details on how long it’s been testing this service and its future plans, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
This could be bad tidings for laptops
You have a choice of accessories and, according to Linus, HP’s built-in Wolf Security features. We at Gizmodo are big fans of HP’s EliteBook laptops for professionally minded folks. The downside is the same as before. You lose any sense of ownership over the device and become attached to routine fees. By adhering to a subscription, users sap their ability to save for a computer that will grant real ownership.
HP hasn’t spent much time promoting this service, so we don’t know how many customers have bought in just yet. The question is if consumers will trade ownership for short-term access. The issue will be how expensive laptops may soon get. I’ve been watching PC component prices climb since October of last year. Now, in 2026, the base version of the latest edition of the Dell XPS 14 will cost $1,600. The 2024 model started at $1,400. With a mid-range Intel Core Ultra X7 358H chip, Dell’s latest laptop costs $2,200. And that’s just one company.
We may be heading toward a future where the only way to get access to even moderate computing specs is by paying through the nose or paying monthly for cloud-based compute. Neither option sounds very appealing.
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