HP Pavilion Power 15 Notebook PC Review (i7-7700HQ, GTX 1050)
Pavilion Power 15 can be considered the evolution of earlier families Pavilion 15t and Pavilion 15z. The Intel Core i7 processor (4 cores, Kaby Lake) and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card in its notebook version should attract everyone who appreciates the speed of work, but does not want to spend on more expensive devices: Lenovo Yoga 720, Dell XPS 15 9560 or Laptops Omen from HP.
Design and features
The dimensions of the notebook differ little from other popular 15-inch models, such as Lenovo Legion Y520 or Acer Aspire VX1
The maximum open angle is 150 degrees.
The display cover could be stronger. Strong or prolonged pressure on it can easily damage the matrix.
To access the inside you need to remove the bottom entirely, and tear it off even after the conscientious unscrewing of all the screws will not be easy.
Ports and communications
The set of physical interfaces is relatively standard. It’s a pity that there is no Thunderbolt 3 – this quite important thing the manufacturer builds in only the more expensive series Specter and Omen.
The speed of the card reader is good: an average of about 80 MB / s. Copying 1 GB of photos to our test card Toshiba standard UHS-II takes only 13 seconds. The inserted card sticks out of the case, but not much, about 1 mm.
All versions of the laptop use the wireless adapter Intel Wireless AC 7265, combining the functions of the transceiver Wi-Fi and BT. The test for the performance of 8011ac showed an average of 645 Mbit per reception (paired with our test router Linksys EA8500).
Display
Of the three available variations – matte screen 1080p IPS, glossy touch 1080p IPS, matte UHD IPS – we chose the first. Variants with a refresh rate of 120 Hz are not offered, as other features of the more expensive gaming models.
The AU Optronics AUO41ED matrix has already been seen in other HP notebooks, and the measurements were largely identical. Only the quality of the color rendition and the brightness of the lighting for some reason have grown.
Some graininess of the protective coating is obvious, but does not interfere with everyday use. Even on the sides of the screen you can see small uneven illumination. Typical for the vast majority of laptops the problem.
The coverage of the sRGB spectrum is limited to 57 percent (AdobeRGB: 38%). The plausibility of colors is sufficient for many tasks, but, of course, some competitors in a direct comparison look much better
Good viewing angles the laptop provides exactly, but here for use under bright light, especially under the sun, fits poorly.
Performance
Our laptop uses a mobile version of the GTX 1050 graphics card, as well as a 4-core Core i7 7700HQ processor. NVIDIA Optimus is and works correctly. The amount of video memory for a discrete GP may be different, 2 GB or 4 GB. In different configurations, there are also combinations of data storage devices and the amount of RAM.
In standard tests, the Core i7-7700HQ processor used in this notebook behaves exactly as you expect.
Portable variation of the GTX 1050 video adapter is much faster than the still popular NVIDIA offers from the recent past, the GTX 950M and GTX 960M, but it lags behind the GTX 970M, GTX 1050 Ti, GTX 1060 and other higher-end GPUs.
In practice, this means the following: at 1080p, all existing games will be launched at high or even maximum settings.
Audio system
The maximum achievable volume turned out to be quite good, but the quality does not strike the imagination, low and high frequencies are reproduced much weaker than the middle part of the sound range. Not so bad, but for a universal / multimedia notebook it’s unpleasant. You will often have to use external speakers or headphones.
Power consumption and autonomous work
In idle mode, when the screen is active and the Windows desktop is displayed on it, we fixed 9-17 W depending on the brightness of the screen and the active profile of power consumption. The launch of 3DMark06 raises this figure several times, to almost 80 watts, and the peak power consumption is 106 watts.
Built-in battery is characterized, in comparison with competitors, impressive capacity: 70 Wh-h. In the test for reading Internet pages on Wi-Fi, we got almost 8 hours of work!
Verdict
The Pavilion Power 15 definitely looks more attractive than regular Pavilion, especially if the reader hunts for a combination of a good graphics card and a Core i7 processor. Developers spent time upgrading the appearance of the laptop and equipped it with a more successful keyboard, but some of the cons and decided to stay in place and not go away. Such are not enough hard display cover, difficulty of self-service, does not cover the spectrum of sRGB screen, and does not justify the expectations of the audio system.