HP - 15.6" Gaming Laptop - AMD Ryzen 5 - 8GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 - 256GB Solid State Drive

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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