HP Pavilion 13 Review: A good thin and light laptop, that could have been better

Many people these days are purchasing beefy gaming laptops to fulfil both their work and gaming requirements. However, there is still a certain charm about a slim, lightweight, long-lasting laptop that doesn’t break your bank account. This is where the HP Pavilion 13 comes in with its lightweight, slim design and a not so expensive price tag. But is it actually worth the money or would you be better off purchasing an alternative? You will find out the answer to this question along with many others in our full review of the HP Pavilion 13 below.

HP Pavilion 13 Price in India: Rs 71,999

HP Pavilion 13 Specifications: 13.3-inch 1080p IPS LCD display | 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor | Intel Xris Xe GPU | 16GB DDR4 RAM | 512GB NVMe SSD

Design & Build

HP Pavilion 13 doesn’t really stand out in terms of design. The silver metal body along with black bezels bordering the display, make the laptop feel nothing out of the ordinary. However, that bland look does help you blend in when you are sitting at a cafe working on your laptop.

The chassis feels solid in hand, but there is a minor flex in the keyboard area and on the top lid. While the keyboard flex is manageable, the flexing led does concern me a bit. The edges of the laptop are blunt, which do help while typing for long hours. Also, the USB ports, which contract are pretty ingenious to saving space.

HP needs to work on the weight distribution for this laptop, as it is not that great. The laptop could not be opened by a single hand, which according to me is a missed opportunity.

The hinge feels solid while using the device. However, at the end of the hinge lean there feels to be a little pressure, which makes me feel like the hinge will break off.

The laptop comes with an integrated fingerprint sensor, which is a great feature for most. However, I was disappointed with its performance, due to it lagging and there being some inaccuracies.

Overall, the build quality for the price seems decent, and the laptop feels that it can easily last users for a few years. However, I would suggest that you do show the laptop some care and not treat it like a rugged one.

Keyboard & trackpad

For people like me, a laptop’s keyboard is one of the most important aspects to look for. Our workload requires a lot of typing and a comfortable keyboard makes the job much less tiring.

HP Pavilion 13’s keyboard was quite satisfying and the key travel was good. Typing on the keyboard for long hours was pretty comfortable and the key travel was just right. Due to the 13.3-inch display, the keyboard was a bit cramped, and there is no dedicated keypad. However, after getting used to the spacing, typing is pretty easy.

The keyboard does have a few dedicated buttons, which are pretty handy. I would have appreciated it if those buttons were customisable.

The trackpad glass seems quite sturdy and the clicks are satisfying. The trackpad during my testing was pretty fast, reliable and accurate. The DPI of the trackpad is not as high as I would have liked, but you can always increase the sensitivity.

Display

HP Pavilion 13 sports a 13.3-inch IPS LCD display, which is decent. The display works like any other IPS LCD in a sub-50,000 laptop would work. I expected the laptop to feature at least an LED display for a laptop costing over Rs 70,000.

The IPS LCD was bright enough and details were sharp. I do not have the right equipment to measure the colour accuracy of the display, however, I feel that the colours were pretty accurate.

While gaming, I did miss the high refresh rate of my gaming laptop. However, if you are only looking for the laptop to get you through your work, then the 60Hz display won’t cause an issue for you.

Legibility under direct sunlight is a bit dodgy, which made working on my home balcony a bit difficult on pleasant days.

Overall, the display panel is one that will get you past the workday. At this price, I would have expected an LED display.

Performance

HP Pavilion 13 is powered by one of the latest 11th Gen Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor paired with 16GB of RAM and an integrated Intel Xris Xe GPU. While that might be jargon for a lot of you, for a tech nerd it is music to the ears. The only addition I can ask for here would be a better graphics card and that’s it. Take note, that the RAM is soldered onto the board and cannot be removed or expanded.

The laptop managed to easily complete all of the basic tasks I threw at it. I found no stutters even while having triple digits of chrome tabs open inside of a single window. So if your workload consists only of basic tasks, this would be a perfect laptop for you.

Now onto the more demanding tasks, gaming on the laptop is a big if, due to it not having a dedicated graphics card. Basic games like CS:GO work perfectly fine, but many of the newer more demanding titles were not playable, many simply did not even open. Editing basic videos on Adobe Premiere Pro was pretty fun and easy, a5 minutes full HD video taking around 14 minutes to render. However, while editing heavy load renders the machine struggled a lot.

Android Studio also worked well, with the laptop able to easily handle app development and testing.

The laptop works quite well with workloads that are not GPU heavy. There is a bit of thermal throttling under extended workloads but that was expected, due to the thin and light profile.

Battery

Coming to the battery, the device features a 43Whr battery, which is decent enough. During daily usage with the workload including typing, browsing the internet and watching a few YouTube videos, the device managed to provide me with a battery life of around 7 to 8 hours. Heavy workloads made the laptop last for around six hours.

The laptop comes with a 65W charging brick, which fills up the whole battery in about 3 hours.

Verdict

HP Pavilion 13 is priced at Rs 71,990, and for that price, the laptop does manage to impress. It manages to punch above its weight and take a few wins. The only few elements that are holding me back are the bland design and the IPS LCD display. Other than these drawbacks, the laptop is pretty good for the price, with good performance, battery, speakers and more. It will manage to easily last you a few years without any major hiccups.

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