HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15
An entry level gaming laptop that can get down to business.
HP pitches its Pavilion Gaming Laptops as more of an all-round device that was designed to be a powerful professional PC that includes enough grunt to give you the capacity for some lighter gaming. It’s a really sensible concept and there’ll be plenty of people who it appeals to, but it’s also a tough sell in a way because the ‘gaming ultrabook’ space is flooded with vendor’s flagship devices. The Pavilion Gaming 15 is half a kilo heavier than the lightest gaming ultrabook here, it’s on average a centimetre wider and a centimetre deeper, and it’s even 47% thicker (81mm) than the Razer Blade 15. That said, in isolation the case design has some nice angles, the keyboard is well spaced and offers ample resistance, and the trackpad is a nice size and relatively smooth. There is however, one big thing that the Pavilion Gaming 15 has on its gaming ultrabook friends ... price. Starting at $1,749 for a 15.6-inch IPS display, Intel Core i5-8300H CPU, 8GB of RAM and a Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU configuration, the range extends up to models with a 4K display, Intel Core i7-8750H CPU, 16GB of RAM and a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050Ti GPU for $2,099. The model we tested had this FullHD screen i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM and a GTX 1050 GPU and was available exclusively from JB Hi-Fi for $1,868.30 at the time of writing. The CPU performs admirably, scoring within 5% of the three flagship ultrabooks here on PCMark 8’s Home benchmark, but this is the only device here with a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050, so expect a 28% performance drop from a GTX 1050 Ti for 1080p Ghost Recon: Wildlands.