Disappointing display - The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 in Review

The Pavilion Gaming 15 series contains 15.6-inch gaming laptops with a focus on good value for a low price. Within HP's lineup, the highest-performance laptops can be found in the Omen series. Our configuration of the test model can be purchased for ~$699. It is powered by a Ryzen 5 3550H APU and a GeForce GTX 1050 GPU.

Both cores are able to run at consistently high speeds. The GPU in particular reaches a performance level that is far beyond the specified core clocks. The laptop does what it was designed for: It is able to smoothly run all of the games in our database. In most cases, the Full HD resolution and medium to high graphics quality settings can be chosen. A few demanding games will require users to lower the resolution and/or quality setttings to keep the frame rates sufficiently high.

Hewlett Packard has wrapped the components up in a well-built plastic chassis. Its rigidity leaves something to be desired, however. Furthermore, the dim Full HD display with poor viewing angles and a low contrast ratio represents a big weakness of the laptop. In this aspect of the Pavilion, the low price of the device shows. Meanwhile, the battery life is surprisingly very good and even better than that of most office laptops.

Much more information and benchmark results can be found in our review of the HP Pavilion Gaming 15-ec0002ng.