Customer Ratings & Reviews

I'm a front end software developer. I purchased this for hobby projects, including some graphic design and photo work. My work machine is a newer MacBook Pro with touchbar, which cost my employer 5x what I spent on this HP. Good: Keyboard, ability to upgrade, good CPU and GPU, ports & card reader Bad: Screen, sound Sound: For a cheap laptop, the sound is usable, but HP is using B&O as a selling point. The sound is hollow, though there is plenty of volume. Screen: The screen is the biggest downside. The screen resolution is as good as you get at this price. The matte finish prevents glare. It is plenty bright; I've been running it at about 50% brightness. But, its not great. The colors seem off and it just looks like a cheap screen, maybe I'll be able to improve it by messing with the calibration settings. MacBooks have beautiful screens and this one is only better in that there is less glare. The build quality is fine for the price. There is plenty of flex in the lid/monitor. The main body of the machine feels good with very little flex or soft spots. All the weight is in the body and there are nice rubber feet so the machine does not slip while using it. Keyboard & Trackpad: The trackpad is usable. I don't like it, but it is not a big deal. The keyboard is probably my favorite part. Way better than the MacBook. The keys have nice travel for a laptop. The green back-lighting has 3 settings, high, low, and off. I think the high setting is a bit obnoxious, but I really like the low setting. It is easy to see without being obnoxious like some RGB gamer lighting. My only keyboard negative is that the number pad, which I never use, pushes the main section off-center. Speed: Its fast. Running a build in Node is a single threaded process and it is fast. The MBP is faster, but that is too be expected. I feel it should boot faster than it does with the m.2 drive, but I'm going to blame that on Windows. I think a cheap RAM upgrade would really make this a multitasking champ. Expandability: All the ports: usb-a (the old one), usb-c, hdmi, ethernet, and a card reader. Can't charge over usb-c. Open RAM slot. I could add another 8gb for around $30 or a 16gb stick for around $60. I will probably do the later for a total of 24gb of ram. Mostly for Chrome :P Open 2.5 drive bay (There is a black plastic HP-imprinted space holder you can see in the pic). The drive in this is an M.2 stick and there is room to add another drive. I had an older HDD sitting around so I tried it. The spec on that drive says it is 0.37in thick. It was a bit too thick. I probably could have made it work, but most new SSDs and lower capacity HDDs are thinner. To open it up for RAM and drive additions, turn it off and flip it over. There are 3 short screws on the front edge and 4 long screws near the back rubber foot. Start at a corner and pry it apart with a credit card. I had to start it with a very thin screw driver. Pry all around and the whole bottom will pop off. Battery: Its fine. Its telling me I have 10 hours left. With heavy use, especially if the better graphics card is engaged, the life will be more like 3 hours. By default, the machine does not report estimated remaining battery time to Windows, just percentage. On boot, press [F10] to get into the bios settings and you can change there.

I got this as an upgrade to a laptop I previously purchased from BestBuy (HP Envy x360 nearly 4 years ago) and it's a major improvement. The speed of start up is like 5-10 second, battery life is amazing when not running games, and it just looks and feels great. There only disappointment (my fault for not researching better) is the screen. Compared to my last HD, bright looking screen, this one is dull looking, although easier on the eyes for long gaming sessions. I've been playing WoW and Paladins on it, running incredible smoothly, and while they aren't the best graphics, I play on getting a desktop for more powerful tasks. Not disappointed!

My sons first big purchase with his own money since he started working last year. He did his own research and purchased this one . He says he loves it and the performance is amazing. If he’s happy then I’m happy.

It plays Fortnite what else do you what? Easy set up. Pretty fast too.

I'm not really a gamer. I purchased to dual boot with linux and use. I was able to install LInux Mint alongside Win10. Only thing that didn't work right away was the wireless. I was able to get the wireless to work, graphics improved too with Linux after upgrading the kernel to 5.2. Runs windows well. I don't use it much. Only to check for updates. The laptop itself is a quality build. I am very happy with my purchase so far.

I purchased this laptop for college purposes but its capacity for games is quite awesome! Ive been enjoying some games such as Terraria and Raft and it works smoothly. The only downside I see is its limit of 256 GB but besides that its totally worth buying! P.s looks great along side razor products!

I bought this laptop as my birthday gift to my son on his 16th birthday. I let him choose and he chose this gaming laptop. He liked it so much cos it’s fast enough to play all of his games and school work.

Despite all the bloatware (which one can remove by using "10AppsManager" by Major Geeks), the performance is great when you optimize the settings. As for gaming performance, it was okay if you know how to optimize for better FPS. I'm glad the price was $484, a cheap product for average specs.

Black Friday was on the way, and I could use a new one. For the price it does what it says, won’t keep it long ad it’s a windows pc and I only paid 490 for it. I only wanted to play dungeon defenders beta on it and it did that well

My husband did research for me and found this laptop. I didn't buy it for gaming purposes but love that I can if I choose to down the road. It also has expandable memory. As a girl in also love that the keyboard lights up green.

I've had this laptop for 3 weeks, it's working great. Was on sale, a great deal so I jumped on it, even though I am not using it at all for gaming. Seems fast and solid, have done lots of Zoom videoconferencing and the camera, microphone, & speakers are fine. I've had a decent history with HPs at home and by the hundreds in the schools I've taught at over the years, so am hoping & expecting it to be reliable for many years. The keys are quite good, but the keyboard took some getting used to - black on a black base, with neon green lighting (see pic)... not my preference but have grown accustomed to it, so not a big deal.

Was looking for a vlogging computer but the one I wanted was sold out. I called customer service and spoke with a friendly young man who helped me locate a comparable computer. So far so good, everything I have needed this computer to do it does! The only con, it is a bit heavy,

I am very excited just got this for gaming and surfing the web I will use this for casual gaming and my Xbox for hardcore gaming.

Almost been a week and still happy with my purchase.

Lets get straight to the point here, I'm a gamer and have been for about 40 years. I'm also a gamer on a budget and that's why I went for this HP laptop. The Gfx chip in this little wonder is not the best, It's not going to run VR, It's not going play the latest and greatest at fully maxed out settings. What it will do is play the latest and greatest on a budget. Pros.. Really nice keyboard. The button presses are smooth and very responsive and honestly can not feel any bending of the laptop when pressing the keys. The back light has 3 modes, off/on, medium and full. Its a nice green glow and makes the keys super easy to see when the room is dark. Construction of the laptop is again super nice. It is plastic but it does feel quite sturdy. The laptop screen doesn't wobble when typing and the hinges feel very sturdy. I Upgrading is easy! I placed a 8 gig ram upgrade in this before I even turned it on for the first time. ($30). I also added a 1 terabyte HDD, which again was easy to do. You can find the spare bay inside the laptop under a HP plastic insert. Gaming is really nice on this laptop. I am a member of Microsoft's game pass as well as a Steam user and I've had everything from Witcher 3 to GTA running on this laptop at a nice steady 60 fos with most of the settings maxed out. Cons.. Finger print magnet! The front cover collects finger prints and in a matter of mins your nice shiny laptop will be covered in finger prints. No real biggie as a cloth takes them off. I've notice the laptop can get a little warm. I have mine running on a laptop cooler, even when I'm sitting with this on my lap I have the cooler running. The internal HDD upgrade was easy enough but I honestly do not know why HP felt the need to place a plastic HP branded cover over the bay. It usually takes second to install a HDD but the process took me about 20 mins as I had to undo the fiddly screws holding the cover in place. Why HP? To sum this all up, if like me you are a gamer on a budget and can only dream of winning the lottery then this machine is for you. It will play the latest and greatest but it wont play them maxed out. So you have to expect a little give and take while using this machine. Its slick, looks good, runs well and is really quiet even when the fans are going full blast. In my opinion its worth every penny! especially if you pick it up at the price I did .. $450! Thanksgiving sale. At this price its simply to good to say no. 5 well deserved stars.

I've had it for 3 weeks now and think it's a very good computer overall. It's not going to match a $1500-2500 computer, but the price is a whole lot less, and I suspect you would have to be a top echelon gamer to notice the difference. With 8G RAM, multi-core Ryzen 5 3550H processor and solid state drive, it is fast, taking only 12" to go from sleep to desktop including a stop to enter a 10 character password, and the battery consumption is only 1% per hour during sleep. The system allows me to refresh my external hard drives about 50% faster than I can with a 2 core processor which is nominally 20% faster. The speakers (B&O) are great. It took me a while to fine tune the display, but it's very good now for a standard definition 1024X1920 screen. There is a USB3 port on the left side that can charge a cell phone even when the computer is off. On the right side, there is another USB3 port, USB-C port, HDMI, LAN, full size SD card slot, and audio jack. Keys are backlit, and can be adjusted to OFF/Half Brightness/Full Brightness, and can be set to go off after "x" seconds if there is no keyboard activity. Sorry, the key edges are green plastic so there is no color choice. The only nits I can pick are 1) some external DVD players and a few external drive housings need 2 USB ports to get enough power, and the two wires with connectors are usually close together, so if you have one of these, you will need to buy a female USB to male USB-C adapter to connect to the two ports on the right side or buy a powered USB hub. 2) there is no slot for a cable lock 3) for some reason, 1 photo program that I have used since early Windows 7 would repeatedly hang even after I did a clean reinstall. Somehow, the third install was a charm, possibly due to cleaning the system with BleachBit (I have never had to do a second install on the other 5 computers, including 2 other Windows 10 computers, that I've used this on over the years.) All the 66 programs that came with the computer (not much "bloatware"), and that I've added from Windows Store, plus 11 programs I added from elsewhere have worked fine on the first try.

Have been using this laptop for about 3 weeks. I am very happy with the performance of this machine. As soon as you type your website destination and hit the enter key, the webpage is instantly displayed. Granted its not a top-of-the-line gaming laptop, but it is more than adequate in speed, memory and RAM, processing and graphics. Plus, the neon green backlit keyboard is a nice caveat. The laptop stays very cool, even during extended gaming sessions. With all the boxes that this laptop checks, I couldn't justify spending 3 or 4 times the money for another laptop that might be a tiny bit better.

So I got a pair of these for the kids for xmas when they were on sale for black friday 2019. I am always an intel person, but the price was right on these so i figured i would gamble with the AMD processor. It's now April, and I can say I have been nothing but impressed with these computers. I did end up upgrading the memory in them, and putting a 500g WD SSD in both and it was easy. Sims, Wow, overwatch, and any of the other games the kids play have been put on this and it runs great. Seriously, it plays game great. Now, keep in mind, that you WILL need another HD in it to install any games on it. You need to leave the 256 for only essential programs. And the original 8GB was ok, but adding another 8GB to put it at 16 really opens this notebook up. I admit I have played xcom2 on it, and it never skips a beat. So if your looking for a semi-low cost pc this HP should get your attention. Or, if your looking for something for your kid, look at this. It feels pretty solid also. I have even considered getting myself one.

This laptop was a solid buy for me. I'm very pleased with how smoothly it runs. I also love the fact it has an additional RAM slot to add more system memory (RAM). I bought a 8GB DDR4 memory stick and added it to the extra slot now it has 16GB of RAM. I only paid like 30 bucks for the other memory stick. I bought this on sale for $450 but I also had 35 bucks in BB rewards so I got it for $415. Even at full price of 650 I think it's worth it for sure. Also it has the best feeling keyboard I ever felt on a laptop. Pleased customer here for sure.

A simple break-down: Pros -as a black friday special, was highly affordable -great dual use for gaming and business functional -not as heavy as full-scale gaming laptops -full size keyboard is nice to have with the 10-key -speed and performane is impressive and less cocnerns about the laptop thanks to the solid state drive -illuminated keys are a great touch for when working in less than ideal lighting situations and can easily be turned on/off Cons -obviously it has its upper limits as a Ryzen 5 but still performs extremely well without max settings on even some of the more taxing of games -power input cord is set at an awkward angle and I've had to double check if I've actually plugged it in properly -the matte black paint on the cover looks nice but makes it that much easier to notice dirt and dust -touchpad a tad to the left more than I'd wish but it isn't a hinderance at all Verdict: Definitely worth buying and extremely pleased with the purchase! Again its not a full scale laptop you'd want for full gaming or for full functionality on something like CSS but at half the rate and with as much power, its a great purchase regardless! Ideally, for business formal, you'd want something more appropriate . But for functionality, price and features, anyone from High School to even 40+ would enjoy this laptop for the productivity, power and performance! For the record it was purchased for around $500 but I'd still say as high as $600-700 would make this a good purchase.