HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop Review: One Of The Best Entry-Level Laptops For Gaming

The HP Pavilion gaming laptop is an entry-level model that features a solid Intel Core i7 processor and an Nvidia GeForce GPU, as well as a speedy SSD and long battery life. At the same time, it’s housed in a fairly stylish and lightweight chassis. While the display quality could be better, this gaming rig’s excellent mix of hardware, power, and endurance made it one of the best entry-level gaming laptops under $1000 on the market. If you want to learn more, check out our entire review below.

See Where The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop Ranks In Our List Of The Best Cheap Gaming Laptops Of 2021 Here.

Overview Of The HP Pavilion

If you’ve been on the hunt for an entry-level gaming laptop, the HP Pavilion is an excellent choice that will certainly not disappoint. As previously stated, this model features a powerful and fast Intel Core i7 processor, as well as an Nvidia GeForce GPU, responsive SSD, and long battery life, all packaged in a very beautiful green and black chassis.

The design is something to be appreciated too. It’s not too gaudy or screams “look at me, I’m a gaming laptop!”. It’s sleek enough to be used in a more professional setting while still maintaining a unique look that doesn’t look tacky.

Despite its low price, the Pavilion isn’t something you should underestimate. This gaming machine comes with some impressive specs, allowing it to run games at high frame rates with ease. It also boasts plenty of endurance, with a battery life of around 6 hours, which should be more than adequate if you’re more into casual gaming.

Apart from gaming, this compact computer also works pretty well with both school and office activities as well as day-to-day tasks.

If thermal throttling is what you’re concerned about, the Pavilion manages to sustain a comfortable temperature when gaming. Overall, the HP Pavilion is a strong contender for one of our list’s best budget gaming laptops. So, if you’re looking for a strong entry-level gaming laptop, this one comes at a great price point and has a stylish design.

Features & Specifications

Check Out HP’s Preview Of The Pavilion Gaming Laptop Below.

Want To Check Out Other Affordable Gaming Laptops? Read Our Top Picks Here.

What We Love About The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop

Design

Without a doubt, one of my favorite things about the HP Pavilion is its design. I truly appreciate that this doesn’t have a bold aesthetic that will catch a lot of unwanted attention. Instead, it’s just edgy enough to provide a good balance between professional and gaming. Not to mention, I find this more lightweight compared to other gaming laptops at the same price point.

Additionally, design-wise, the Pavilion also isn’t your typical gaming laptop. The chassis is black with lovely emerald accents, rather than the usual black-and-red theme you must already be tired of seeing everywhere. If green’s not your color, HP also offers a variant with purple accents as well. Personally, I highly prefer the latter but that’s just my taste.

Upon opening the laptop, you’ll notice an illuminated keyboard and a set of uniquely-shaped speakers. The screen size is the usual 15.6 inches with slim bezels around it. Though I feel like the bezels could be trimmed a bit more, but it’s no deal-breaker.

You’ll also find a generous amount of ports with the HP Pavilion. A USB 3.1 Type-A port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, an HDMI port, an Ethernet RJ-45 port, and an SD media card reader are located on the laptop’s left side. On the right side, there are two more USB 3.1 Type-A connections as well as connectors for headphones and power.

Gaming Performance

The Pavilion 15 comes with a 4GB VRAM Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. You should be able to play mainstream games like Far Cry 5 without a hitch at the laptop’s highest graphics settings (1080p with Ultra settings). With games like Cyberpunk 2077, though, you may want to adjust your resolutions and expectations a bit. But, for a laptop at this price, this is to be expected, and it’s still quite impressive in my opinion.

In lower fidelity titles, the Ryzen 5 5600H processor helps push better frame rates in my opinion. It’s not the most powerful of AMD‘s new 5000 series mobile CPUs, but with six cores, 12 threads, and a boost frequency of up to 4.2GHz, it’s more than capable of performing a wide range of tasks outside of gaming.

With that in mind, it’s no surprise that the HP Pavilion gaming laptop excels so well at multiple tasks. It readily performs activities like transcoding 4K films and other media production tasks without a fuss, keeping many tabs open in Google Chrome doesn’t interrupt its smoothness. This laptop boasts excellent hardware that’s ideal for non-gaming tasks, thanks to its 16GB of RAM.

A refresh rate higher than 60Hz is practically required if you’re into esports or just a competitive gamer in general. Many higher-end gaming laptops in the market come with a 144Hz refresh rate, but obtaining the same rate on an entry-level model under a thousand bucks is even more difficult. This is where the HP Pavilion shines as it offers a 144Hz refresh rate for a fairly budget-friendly price.

Though, keep in mind that the base model is capped at 60Hz. So if you’re willing to shell out an extra hundred dollars, you can easily get the 144Hz variant. Given that this Pavilion can play first-person shooters and MOBAs where fine graphics aren’t a priority at speeds above 100 frames per second, 144Hz is a must-have. So I have to commend HP for adding it to one of their entry-level models.

Cooling Performance

One of the great things worth noting with the HP Pavilion is that it doesn’t overheat or get so hot to the point you need to constantly sit right next to your AC system. Overall, It’s safe to use the Pavilion on your lap for regular tasks. Casually browsing the internet shouldn’t pose a problem with heating and the laptop and keyboard will still be quite comfortable to use.

When gaming, you can expect it to get a bit warm but not hot enough to make you want to run your hands under cold water. Internally, the components, particularly the processor, are kept at a safe temperature for the most part. As a rule of thumb, the lower the average temperature, the longer the CPU will last and you will be able to use the laptop for the years to come.

Our Least Favorite Things

Display

Don’t get me wrong, the display on the HP Pavilion isn’t terrible. It definitely can do some good with a bit of improvement but it’s not that bad. The display could be brighter and for games that are really heavy on the graphics department, you might want to keep your expectations low on this one.

But at the same time, it’s quite understandable for a gaming laptop at this price point to not have the best display in the market. Manufacturers usually cut the costs on display quality as this is one of the most expensive aspects of creating a gaming laptop.

In A Nutshell

Now that we have finished discussing the things we liked and disliked about the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop, here’s our narrowed-down list of the good and the bad with this particular gaming rig. The 15.6-inch, 1080p screen on the HP Pavilion isn’t the brightest or most colorful, but it still manages to give acceptable visual quality.

You won’t have any trouble seeing minute details when watching movies or playing video games. They’re pretty sharp, crisp, and the color accuracy isn’t bad either. However, when compared to other budget gaming laptops, the Pavilion falls short in terms of brightness. To be more specific, it only averaged 241.2 nits.

But don’t let this set you back. For affordable gaming laptops, the display quality is usually the main feature manufacturers skimp on to keep it low-cost since this is one of the most expensive components when creating a gaming laptop.

Our Final Verdict

Despite being an entry-level model, the HP Pavilion gaming laptop delivers excellent 1080p gaming performance for a wide range of games. You may need to keep the graphics settings on medium or low for certain games, but for the price, you won’t be disappointed. This will surely be enough to satisfy a lot of casual gamers.

Have you already bought the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop? Or are you still contemplating it? Was our review helpful in your purchasing decision? Let me know in the comments section below if you have any suggestions, insights, or questions to ask. I would love to hear all your thoughts!

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