Size and weight are just slightly thinner and lighter, respectively, than some of the system's closest competitors in the budget space. The Ideapad 110 and Aspire F17, for example, are each a couple hundred grams heavier and a few millimeters thicker. The small advantage here isn't significant enough to be a make-or-break deal for users wanting something noticeably lighter and more portable. In this case, the sleeker Pavilion refresh may be a more worthwhile investment.

Keyboard

The slightly roughened plastic keys are shallow in travel and very light in feedback. We find their biggest drawback to be the loud clatter when typing compared to the quieter keyboards on the XPS 15 or ThinkPad T series. The overall hollow feel of the base likely has some influence on the loud keys. Users who have no qualms about the noise will find a uniform typing experience across all the keys save for the half-sized Arrow keys.

A keyboard backlight is not available on this particular Pavilion 17z series. The backlight toggle button on the F5 key is overtly missing whereas the icon is present on this very same key for the Spectre series and above.

Touchpad

The trackpad (11.5 x 5.0 cm) is slightly wider than on most other notebooks including the XPS 15 (10.5 x 8.5 cm) but is actually smaller than the trackpad on the 15.6-inch Pavilion 15 Power (11.5 x 6.0 cm). The very narrow length makes vertical cursor movement feel restricted compared to any horizontal movement. Aside from the tight dimensions, the Elan software can recognize up to four-finger inputs with automatic palm detection and both glide and responsiveness are smooth. Applying strong pressure on the center of the trackpad will only warp the surface very slightly.

The dedicated mouse keys are shallow in travel with firm and very loud feedback. The right mouse key is actually slightly softer in both feedback and noise compared to the left mouse key, so there is some asymmetry when inputting a click. There is some tension or "give" to the keys before an input is registered and so the keys are not completely rigid.

Color coverage is approximately 58 percent and 88 percent of the AdobeRGB and sRGB standards, respectively. This is wider than average considering the low price of the notebook and is essentially as wide as the display on the more expensive Asus UX501. The HP system does not suffer from poor or shallow colors as may happen on many budget notebooks.

Further measurements with an X-Rite spectrophotometer show poor grayscale out of the box. A calibration improves the average grayscale DeltaE from 4.5 to 1.7 with slightly better colors, too. Orange and Blue colors in particular are represented less accurately than others.

Outdoor visibility is average at best when under shade. Any brighter, however, and colors quickly wash out to become very difficult to see even if the matte panel is keeping glare at a minimum. Larger panels require a stronger backlight compared to smaller tablets and the Pavilion 17z is simply not designed for use under direct sunlight.

The quad-core A12-9720P is disappointing to say the least. Not only is it significantly slower than the common i5-6200U and i5-7200U, but it offers no CPU performance advantages over AMD's own A12-9700P according to CineBench benchmarks despite the higher base clock rate (2.7 GHz vs. 2.5 GHz). Even the passively-cooled Core i5-7Y54 can outperform and match the A12-9720P in single-threaded and multi-threaded loads, respectively. Overall performance sits roughly between the generations old Core i3-4010U and i3-5010U commonly found on NUCs and mini PCs.

Running CineBench R15 Multi-Thread in a loop results in a performance drop of about 6 to 7 percent after the first two to three consecutive runs. Users are not likely to notice during day-to-day use, but we prefer to have as much performance out of the processor as possible given that it is already very slow to begin with.

See our dedicated page on the A12-9720P APU for more benchmarks.

PCMark benchmark scores are well below ULV Intel notebooks but above Intel Core Y notebooks like the Yoga 3 Pro 13. Subjectively, however, system performance is excruciatingly slow as simple actions that are expected to be instantaneous can often take seconds. Opening Windows Explorer, toggling WiFi, and even the Task Manager and Radeon Settings will all take a bit of time to launch. Browsers, installations, and larger applications are even worse. Despite the slow system response, we never experienced any actual crashes during our time with the unit.

The R7 M340 returns respectable scores when compared to the Intel HD Graphics family and even the Iris Plus Graphics 650 in the newest MacBook Pro 13. These Intel alternatives, however, are integrated GPUs and the discrete R7 M340 is somewhat disappointing when compared to other discrete offerings. 3DMark benchmarks rank the R7 M340 in between the last generation GeForce 940MX and GTX 950M in raw graphics power. This is still about twice as fast as the integrated Radeon R7 Bristol Ridge, but the performance jump is not nearly enough to run most modern games as our next section will show.

Furthermore, the GPU is tied down by the very poor A12-9720P processor performance. The combined (CPU + GPU) 3DMark 11 score, for example, ranks our Pavilion 17z slightly below the TravelMate P249 (i5-6200U, HD Graphics 520) since the CPU in the Acer is faster even though it is not as graphically capable.

We stress the notebook to identify for any potential throttling or hardware issues. With only Prime95 active to stress the CPU, we can observe the processor running at or above the base 2.7 GHz clock rate before steadily falling to 2.3 GHz after the first half minute of stress testing. This is extremely disappointing as not only is the CPU unable to maintain any Turbo Core clock rate benefits, but it will actually throttle to speeds slower than the advertised base clock rate. The processor appears to automatically throttle once core temperatures reach 64 C in an attempt to maintain a cooler temperature of 54 C.

Running FurMark to stress the dedicated GPU will result in a constant clock rate and temperature of 1021 MHz and 62 C, respectively. Things start to get interesting again when running both Prime95 and FurMark as CPU clock rates and temperature cycle between 1.4 GHz and 2.7 GHz and 62 C to 73 C, respectively. There is clearly an imposed CPU temperature ceiling of about 73 C before heavy throttling kicks in when the system is fully stressed. Meanwhile, GPU clock rate is steady at 1021 MHz with core temperatures hovering in the low 70 C range.

Witcher 3 is more representative of gaming loads. Running the game will result in a cooler CPU temperature with a wider range of cycling core clock rates. The clock rate cycling is periodic and not based on the onscreen loads of the game. Frame rates remain steady without any notable dips throughout an entire hour of running Witcher 3.

Running on battery power will throttle the GPU while leaving CPU performance intact. A 3DMark 11 run on batteries returns Physics and Graphics scores of 2768 and 3196 points, respectively, compared to 2761 and 3597 points when on mains.

The system fan is always active no matter the onscreen load at a quiet and steady 30.5 dB(A). Light loads like browsing or video streaming will not cause the fan to pulsate and so the constant fan noise is never distracting. In fact, we find the loud key clatter to be more distracting than the actual fan if word processing or working in a classroom. A true "silent mode" option for very low loads would have been useful for this particular category of notebook.

Medium loads as represented by 3DMark06 will bump the fan from a lowly 30.5 dB(A) up to a steady 41.5 dB(A). This is even louder than the Asus F756UX and MSI GL72 when subjected to similar conditions and these systems are even equipped with dedicated Nvidia GeForce graphics. Maximum load with both Prime95 and FurMark running simultaneously will induce an even louder fan noise of 48.2 dB(A), but such levels are unrepresentative of real-world use. In short, fan noise is acceptably low during low loads but will quickly become loud when gaming.

Surface temperatures are generally cool during low loads with some notable warm spots. In particular, the right palm rest will always be warmer than the left since the HDD is located directly underneath and this can become somewhat uncomfortable when typing. Switching to a primary SSD would partly mitigate this issue for a less sweaty hand. The rear of the notebook nearest the ventilation grilles can be as warm as 37 C even when the system is idling compared to less than 30 C on ULV Intel equivalents.

Extreme loads will warm the left side of the notebook while the right will remain relatively cool because of the hollow optical drive underneath the NumPad. Since air is drawn through the top left corner of the keyboard, the WASD keys are actually quite cool for gaming whereas the main center QWERTY keys can be as warm as 40 C. This asymmetric temperature development is common on many multimedia machines with optical drives and removable batteries.

Sound quality from the stereo speakers is average for a multimedia machine. Maximum volume is sufficiently loud to fill a small room and will not introduce any static or major imbalances. The palm rests vibrate only slightly and bass is adequate enough for video and music playback should earphones be unavailable. The pink noise curve is strangely quite "bumpy" as shown by our microphone measurements below. A flatter curve, like the one for the Spectre x360 15, is closer to the ideal for a more even reproduction of bass and treble frequencies.