If you’re after a large, no-frills laptop then the Pavilion 15-au072sa definitely fits the bill. At the time of writing it’s available for just £399.99, yet packs in the latest Intel processor technology and has plenty of features.
Specifically, you get a 15.6-inch display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, plus a DVD drive, a 1TB hard drive and a claimed 9 hours of battery life. It could be the ideal back-to-school laptop for anyone heading off to university, or for those who simply want a cheap laptop that’ll last a good few hours away from a plug socket.
It’s not perfect, though; the compromises made for a budget machine are clear from the outset.
Specifically, you get a 15.6-inch display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels, plus a DVD drive, a 1TB hard drive and a claimed 9 hours of battery life. It could be the ideal back-to-school laptop for anyone heading off to university, or for those who simply want a cheap laptop that’ll last a good few hours away from a plug socket.
It’s not perfect, though; the compromises made for a budget machine are clear from the outset.
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HP Pavilion 15 review: Price and Availability
When you think of the quintessential college computer, HP's Pavilion line has to be one of the first that comes to mind. The firm's PCs and laptops have powered students' careers for over 20 years right alongside those pink iMacs that found their way into a scene in every '90s teen show.Naturally, HP has gone and upgraded its leading learning laptops with stronger components while making them thinner and lighter than before. And, one to always exercise a flair for style, HP has tried something new with its laptops' looks.
HP Pavilion 15 review: Design and Display
Now, don't mistake here: you won't find aluminum finish and obscenely small measurements here. These laptops are designed to perform well for a low price and maybe even show off a little.The $579 (about £394, AU$753) Pavilion 15 (also available in 14 and 17-inch varieties) comes encased in a smooth plastic shell that's available in several colors. Naturally, HP has cute names for these colors: Natural Silver, Modern Gold, Dragonfly Blue, Cardinal Red, Sport Purple, Blizzard White and Onyx Black.
You'll also notice that each of HP's new Pavilions have adopted a new design language in bands of color that line the machine's keyboard deck. It's a flashy touch said to be inspired by tennis shoes. (A product manager on-site at a preview event even had one such inspirational swatch to show off.)
The one touch of (almost) metal on this laptop is a pair of chrome-covered hinges that support the screen well. Beyond that, it's plastic for days.
In a way, that works in the laptop's favor, considering all of the components it can house inside make for just up to 4.62 pounds (starting at 4.26 pounds) of weight and up to 24.5mm (starting at 22.5mm) of thickness. You'll definitely feel this machine in your backpack, but I've definitely put up with worse, especially for what you're getting.
Let's start with what you're looking at: a bright (if a little too blue) HD display. Color accuracy doesn't appear to be this display's strongest suit, but it'll be just fine for coursework and the odd Netflix binge. In this case, "HD" means 1,366 x 768 resolution, with FHD (1,920 x 1,080) and 4K (3,840 x 2,160) IPS options available.
HP Pavilion 15 review: Performance
The Intel Core i3-6100U processor at the heart of this laptop means it copes admirably with any day-to-day computing tasks. You can happily have loads of tabs open in your browser, have Outlook open, Spotify running in the background and much more, and it will hardly pause for thought. Anything a bit tougher, like gaming or editing video, will benefit from more horsepower, but otherwise you’re good to go.
This is reflected in a PCMark 8 Home score of 2,464 – plenty of laptops twice the price score little higher – and Geekbench 3 scores of 2,468 (single-thread) and 5,249 (multi-thread).
However, that mechanical hard drive does make booting and loading of apps and games much slower than SSD-equipped laptops. Once you’re used to the speed of SSDs it’s hard to go back, but if you’re still used to hard drives it won’t be an issue. Plus, if you have loads of large files that you don’t want to store in the cloud, its 1TB capacity will be very welcome.
HP Pavilion 15 review: Battery life
What’s more, you get that pretty decent performance while also getting good battery life. You won’t get close to HP’s claims of 9 hours unless you drop the screen brightness to stupidly low levels, but at a sensible level of around 100-150nits (60-80% brightness) this laptop lasted 6 hours and 47 minutes on one charge. Certainly not record breaking, but just about enough that you could get away with not taking the charger in for lectures for a day.HP Pavilion 15 review: Final verdict
A decent enough option for budget buyers, but cheaper options offer the same basic experience and you only need spend a little more to get a much better screen.
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