When it comes to laptops under a thousand dollars, it really seems you can’t beat the HP Pavilion Plus. It features a Core i7-12700H, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD, and a 2.8K 90 Hz OLED display. That’s not all, because it also comes with a 5MP HP webcam, which means the camera quality is better than that of many competing flagship laptops. There are two main disadvantages.
First, it is not equipped with Thunderbolt, which is not the worst thing in the world. Second, due to the built-in 45 W processor, battery life is rather poor. The good news is that HP offers this laptop with all three major levels of Intel mobile processors. You can also buy it with a 15W or 28W processor, which should improve battery life. In fact, it can also lead to sustainable performance improvements.
Overall, this laptop is fantastic. If you want to spend less than a thousand dollars, there are many other options that we could similarly recommend. After all, it has a 90 Hz OLED display. Not so long ago, OLED was reserved for high-end SKUs of already expensive laptops. Seeing them in popular devices like this is nice.
Design
The new HP Pavilion Plus 14 is made with an aluminum chassis, and the appearance of the laptop has not changed significantly from its predecessor. The design is simple and very neat, with a large HP logo on the back. The body is made of metal, and surprisingly the metal frame does not add any additional weight-the laptop is very light and easy to carry. The frame around the display has a plastic coating to protect the display from contact with the keyboard.
The webcam is located in the center of the front panel. The ventilation bar is located just below the hinge. The hinge opens to a maximum of 120-125 degrees. At the bottom of the back side are two speaker outputs located in two corners. The new laptop has 2x USB-C with DisplayPort 1.4 + Power Delivery, HDMI 2.1, USB-A 5Gb/s on the right side and 3.5mm audio jack, USB-A 5Gb/s and microSD on the left side. reader.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The keyboard has the same design and is similar to that of its predecessor. The keyboard is very comfortable to use. The keyboard does not make an excessive sound when typing, and the key layout is in tune with your fingers, allowing you to type quickly. The power button is located on the far right of the keyboard. Even working late into the night with the lights off is no problem, because you can turn on the keyboard’s RGB backlighting to make typing easier.
The new HP Pavilion Plus 14 has a large 12.5 x 8 cm touchpad. The cursor control is very spacious and very smooth when using it, especially because of the 90 Hz refresh rate of the display. It is one of the most comfortable buttons of all the other Pavilion laptops we have used. The pressure is very smooth, which we really liked when working on a laptop. The touchpad experience is very satisfying and scrolling is smooth, which is a plus when working on a document and needing to quickly scroll down or up.
Display
The Pavilion Plus uses the same or similar Samsung 1800p OLED panel as the Vivobook Pro 14. Therefore, the visual experience between the two laptops is almost identical. What we can say, however, is that the Asus laptop includes more OLED care features that HP does not, such as blue light settings, a flicker reduction slider, burn-in suppression, and simpler color space changes that enthusiasts can appreciate. Also, it is difficult to go back to 60 Hz IPS after using 90 Hz OLED. It is worth noting that the OLED panel flickers at a frequency of 357 Hz at all brightness settings, including maximum brightness.
This seems to be a common feature of newer OLED panels with native refresh rates above 60 Hz. If your eyes are sensitive to flicker, it is best not to use these OLED screen laptops for a long time. We are able to capture 100% of the P3 color gamut, which confirms HP’s claim of a full DCI-P3 color gamut. Most IPS screens in this price range promise only full sRGB coverage, compared to that of the Yoga Slim 7i Pro 14. The Pavilion’s OLED panel is not factory calibrated, but this is probably to save cost.
Audio
The Pavilion Plus has Bang & Olufsen speakers placed on the underside of the chassis and angled outward on the left and right sides of the unit. They produced surprisingly loud and clear audio. Listening to Lizzo’s “Good As Hell,” the artist’s voice was crystal clear, with no distortion at maximum volume. When the bass line hits, it comes through well with minimal depth.
Listening to the opening horn of John Coltrane’s “1964 A Love Supreme,” the audio was rich and full. The warmth of Coltrane’s tenor saxophone was airy and balanced. Batman’s voice has excellent timbre during Arkham Origins, and his fists sounded even better, with bone-rattling pops.
Graphics
We tested the graphics of Windows PCs with two DirectX 12 game simulators from UL 3DMark, Night Raid and Time Spy. We also ran two GFXBench 5 cross-platform GPU benchmarks that test both low-level routines such as texturing and high-level rendering of game images. The Aztec Ruins 1440p and Car Chase 1080p benchmarks, rendered off-screen to accommodate different screen resolutions, run graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation, respectively.
The more frames per second (fps) the better. For the ten-thousandth time, we see that Intel’s integrated Iris Xe graphics lag far behind the discrete GPUs in gaming laptops. HP and its peers are suited for casual gaming and streaming entertainment, not the latest simulators and shooters.
Performance
This is really a strange year for laptops. Intel has four different levels of what can be in an Ultrabook, and the HP Pavilion Plus has three. You can have a 15W U-series processor, a 28W P-series processor, or a 45W H-series processor. Interestingly, the U-series variant can also be equipped with RTX 2050 graphics. In any other year, it would probably be a 15W processor, but as we said, this is a strange year for laptops.
In my career we have never seen so many laptops with 45W processors and no dedicated graphics. The problem is that even though the device sent to me by HP has an H-series processor, it appears to have been designed for a U-series processor. This is the same problem that occurs with other laptops with P- or H-series processors.
Actually, the performance of the U-series chip turns out to be better, because it can handle the load, and therefore the battery life also increases. As for the performance of this Core i7-12700H, it is okay. It is everything you would expect from a high-performance laptop. It just doesn’t offer any real advantage over a P- or U-series chip, and battery life suffers.
Battery Life
The new HP Pavilion Plus 14 is equipped with a three-cell, 51 WH lithium polymer battery. To charge the laptop, the company has provided a 90 W USB Type-C power adapter that can charge the laptop up to almost 50 percent in 30 to 40 minutes. You can also charge the laptop using the Type-C cell phone power adapter, but the charging speed will be slow. Using the device we received, we found that the battery lasts almost 5-6 hours without being recharged.
Heat
The Pavilion Plus has a basic two-fan cooling system and does a good job of keeping things below our comfort threshold of 95 degrees Fahrenheit most of the time. We ran a full-screen HD video for 15 minutes and measured specific points on the laptop once the time had elapsed. The touchpad measured 82 degrees, while the center of the keyboard reached 89 degrees. The bottom exceeded 98 degrees.
Configuration Options
Announced earlier this year, the HP Pavilion Plus is available at major retailers such as Walmart and Staples and, of course, on HP.com. With pricing provided by HP, low-end models often drop to around $700 at Staples and Walmart. These models include a 2.2K display, Core i5 P-series, 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB or 512 GB of storage. On HP.com you will find the model I was sent, which normally costs $999 but has been discounted to $849.
It includes a Core i7-12700H, 16 GB of RAM, 256 GB of storage and a 2.8K 90 Hz OLED display. A U-series model with an OLED display and RTX 2050 graphics is also available for $1,229.99. The HP Pavilion Plus is available in Natural Silver, Warm Gold, Mineral Silver, Space Blue and Tranquil Pink. All are available at HP.com, while others vary by retailer.
Final Words
If you are looking for a stable product with a good enough display, plenty of RAM and outstanding battery life, the HP Pavilion Plus is a decent option. Sure, it doesn’t have the features that other laptops offer, but they come at an additional cost. The HP Pavilion Plus is not cheap, but it offers guaranteed performance for the price and a sleek design. However, if you feel you need a better processor.
