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Low-priced HP Pavilion Gaming 16 laptop with a 16.1-inch display and GeForce graphics

Teaser
The HP Pavilion Gaming 16 retails for less than 1000 Euros (~$1186) and offers a very good level of performance. In our review, the Gaming 16 also scored some major points with its long battery life.

The HP Pavilion Gaming 16 comes with an unconventional 16.1-inch display. Despite a slightly larger screen, the dimensions of the Pavilion Gaming 16 are not much bigger than those of comparable 15.6-inch laptops. The notebook looks restrained and does not feature any RGB elements. The plastic housing is completely black and a few green accents adorn the device. The gaming notebook weighs only 2.2kg, which means that it is pretty light. Moreover, the chassis is very rigid.

Our review configuration comes with an Intel Core i5-10300H, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti, 16 GB of RAM and a 512 GB SSD. Users can add a second 2.5-inch storage device after purchase. The laptop is quite future-proof when it comes to RAM. The selection of ports does not look particularly good. However, there is an SD card reader, which is something that is becoming increasingly rare in this day and age. The notebook has two USB-A ports and one USB-C port. The Type-C port can output a DisplayPort signal in combination with an adapter. All in all, the selection of ports is good enough for an average user. Nevertheless, we would still like to see a third USB Type-A port, because one of the USB-A ports is likely to be occupied by a mouse most of the time.

When it comes to the display, we have to mention the slow response times, which actually cost the Pavilion Gaming 16 a lot of value points. All gaming laptops should have a screen with fast response times. Here, we are talking not only about the refresh rate, which in this case amounts to 60Hz. A 144Hz screen would have turned the laptop into a veritable gaming device. However, we are not saying that there is nothing good about the display, because there is. The Pavilion Gaming 16 features a factory-calibrated screen, which is better than the displays some more expensive devices have to offer.

Unfortunately, the built-in quad-core chip overwhelms its cooling solution. The cooling system can keep the processor cool enough to make sure that it does not fall below its base clock, but it is unable to keep the CPU cool enough to maintain its maximum turbo (4.2 GHz for all cores) over an extended period of time. The Intel chip cannot beat hexa- or octa-core Renoir APUs from AMD, which offer a much higher level of performance in multi-core benchmarks and which are used in competing devices.

HP Pavilion Gaming 16
HP Pavilion Gaming 16
HP Pavilion Gaming 16
HP Pavilion Gaming 16

Source(s)

Notebookcheck review of the HP Pavilion Gaming 16

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > Reviews > Low-priced HP Pavilion Gaming 16 laptop with a 16.1-inch display and GeForce graphics
Sebastian Bade, 2020-08-23 (Update: 2020-08-21)