HP Pavilion 15-R013CA 15.6 inch Laptop

HP Pavilion 15-R013CA 15.6 inch Laptop

HP Pavilion 15-R013CA
via Amazon



Black HP Pavilion 15-R013CA (G9D72UA) is a low cost modern laptop with an Intel Pentium N3530 processor and 15.6 inch WLED backlit display as well as a good set of current connectivity options like DVDRW optical drive, 3 USB ports (one of which is the faster USB 3.0), an HDMI port and a HP TrueVision HD webcam. The HP computer that is reviewed on this page is manufacturer certified and refurbished meaning it is not likely to show any signs of use (or very little), comes with a 90 day warranty and you’ll find all the original accessories in the box. It is suitable for casual and not so demanding use and not for gaming or multimedia editing level stuff.

This budget HP Pavilion has the quad core Intel Pentium N3530 processor (2MB cache) at 2.16GHz base speed up to 2.58GHz with turbo boost but without hyper threading, 4GB DDR3L SDRAM (1 x 4GB) at 1600 MHz for simple multitasking, 500GB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400rpm rotating speed as adequate storage space with HP Protect Smart to help keep your data safe and Windows 8.1 operating system that you’ll be able to upgrade to Windows 10 very soon which may be good news for many customers that dislike Windows 8. Pentium N3530 is faster than Celeron or previous Atom processors and has a Thermal Design Power of only 7.5 watts which should help with less power usage and more durable battery.

15.6 inch diagonal BrightView WLED-backlit non-touch high definition display has a 1366x768 pixel resolution being a budget laptop and no sharper FHD display with IPS panel as these would add to the cost significantly but the screen seems to be fine- adequately clear images and vivid colours. It comes with the integrated low end Intel HD Graphics (Bay Trail) that should allow you to play older and less demanding games like Trackmania, Minecraft, Half Life 2 or World of Warcraft fluently at low to medium settings and resolutions and most of the modern titles are not playable even at the lowest settings and frame rates. It has the decent quality HP TrueVision HD webcam with built-in digital microphone to chat comfortably face-to-face on Skype and you’ll get clear video even in low light. Sound is provided by HD Audio and built-in dual stereo speakers and you have the HP Connected Music app with easy access to a great variety of songs as well as TuneIn Radio with radio stations from around the world.

HP Pavilion 15-R013CA 15.6 inch Laptop
HP 15-r013ca weighs 4.92 pounds and has dimensions of 10.20 x 14.88 x 1 inches- average weight and fairly slim for a computer of this size. Battery is a 3-cell (31 WHr) lithium ion polymer battery, we don’t have the info on the battery life but our guess would be around 4-5 hours on average use. It comes with a full-size island style keyboard with a 10-key numeric pad on the side for typing numbers easily and a touchpad that supports multiple gestures and with separate left and right click buttons, if you prefer it. Connectivity options include Optical drive SuperMulti DVD burner, 802.11b/g/n wireless, 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connectivity, a USB 3.0 port for much quicker transfer of data, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port to hook up to a large screen HDTV or external monitor for HD quality video via a single HDMI cable, Multi-format digital media card reader for SD cards and a Headphone/microphone combo. Bluetooth is not supported by default and you can just purchase a cheap USB Bluetooth dongle.

Conclusion: Slim and modern HP Pavilion 15-R013CA is a reliable good value computer that is offered at a great price, due to partly being certified and refurbished but there should not be any wear or sign of use (or very limited). It is an EPEAT Silver registered and ENERGY Star qualified unit and comes with a 90 day warranty. It comes pre-installed with the trial version of McAfee LiveSafe which you should replace with free AVG or Avast online. Pentium N3530 as a mid range CPU has a Passmark benchmark score of 1956 and is more than sufficient for day to day Office- Word, Excel, Powerpoint, web browsing or anything other than demanding game titles or multimedia. It is comfortable working on this PC even after hours of operation as it stays cool with the HP CoolSense technology. Both the hard drive size of 500GB and system memory of 4GB are good enough for multitasking and storage for what this computer is designed to do or be and we like the variety of connectivity ports so this laptop’s overall performance and features to price ratio is better than competitors and it will be perfect for just the usual daily tasks- unless you want to spend hundreds more.

Click here for a closer look on Amazon

Advertisement