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 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.

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.

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.

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.

got this for my wife we got one at the same time, i got this as a black friday sale, and it over powers my rx560x -youtube was wrong on this gtx 1050 it doesn't run side by side with the rx560x it over powers it by 20-40 fps when we seen it in action she was very excited and i was very jealous my jaw dropped and then i wished i had just gotten 2 of these instead of 2 different laptops.

So I bought this a few days ago I got a printer with it and a payment plan. So far it’s good but why am I only rating it good. Well I downloaded some graphics card drivers. After 2 days. And it stole performance out of my graphics card. Why? And it started stuttering on Minecraft. So I rolled the drivers back and reinstalled. It stopped stuttering. Why I just want to know why graphics card drivers steal performance.

This laptop is great for the price. This is a medium quality laptop which is more than enough for 97% of people and gamers. If you enjoy FPS or fighter games online competitively then this isn't for you, otherwise this laptop is plenty and should be considered to purchase. Some newer components recently came out that make this laptop look like a child, but games haven't really caught up to need that power just yet and those newer parts are pretty expensive.