HP Pavilion 15-r030wm 15.6 inch Laptop Review

HP Pavilion 15-r030wm & 15-r263dx
via Amazon

Flyer red HP Pavilion 15-r030wm is a certified and refurbished 15.6 inch laptop PC with Intel Bay Trail M processor and is offering quite a good deal for the price- being certified and refurbished with no wear or tear) the price to performance ratio is better than brand new computers, but it is ideal for daily computing tasks or for students, home entertainment or small home office use (for those on a tight budget) rather than playing the most recent games or video editing, then you need to get a computer with an Intel i5 or i7 processor with more memory and faster hard drive. Black HP Pavilion 15-r263dx is the same model with the Pentium N3540 processor at 2.17GHz and a 750GB hard drive and you may order it through the links on this page.

HP Pavilion 15-r030wm comes with the power efficient quad core Intel Pentium N3520 processor at 2.17GHz base speed that moves up to 2.42GHz with turbo boost and no hyper threading (so 4 cores and 4 threads not 8 threads in parallel), 4GB DDR3 SDRAM (on 1 DIMM) memory to run a few apps simultaneously while several browsers are open and can be expanded up to 8GB but there is a single memory slot so you need to take out the 4GB first, 500GB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400rpm spindle speed (standard size and speed but can save thousands of files with no problems) plus 25GB Cloud based storage from Box and 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system with Bing and Backup and Restore options to let you save copies of your important files. Pentium N3520 could be compared to some of the Ivy Bridge Intel i3 processors and has a Passmark benchmark score of 1853 on the day of this review so it is good for daily home or office use.

15.6 inch diagonal HD BrightView WLED-backlit non-touch display with 1366x768 pixel resolution and Intel HD Graphics is all right for a basic daily use computer- it is not Full HD and panel is not IPS with large viewing angles but you can stream videos and do simple photo editing comfortably and play the older or lower-end not so demanding titles fluently- so you won’t have any problems with games like League of Legends or Minecraft with the integrated Intel HD graphics (Bay Trail), and to play any of the games of this and last year- like Battlefield 4 you would need to go below frame rates of 20. It is a non-touch screen and touch feature would have been nice to use all of Windows 8.1 functions comfortably and efficiently. It has an HDMI port which allows you to hook up to your HDTV with a good quality HDMI cable to do your thing on large screen and in Full HD with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution. A couple of reviewers talk negatively of the sound of this PC but a few other customers say this is not the case at all and the sound is well loud and clear through its stereo speakers. HP TrueVision HD Webcam with integrated microphone offers vibrant clarity, even in low light when you’re chatting on Skype or video conferencing with work colleagues.

HP 15-r030wm looks quite nice in flyer red (better than what its price tag suggests), it weighs 4.9 pounds with measurements of 10.20 x 14.88 x 1 inches- fairly lightweight and slim despite having an optical DVD Drive. Its 3-cell 31WHr 2.8Ah lithium ion battery lasts for up to 5 hours in normal usage on a single charge, which also gives you a bit of flexibility when you’re out and about. The keys on keyboard are responsive and are well spaced out, function keys on top of the keyboard allow you to change volume and brightness and you will find a 10-key numeric pad on the side for convenient number crunching and the trackpad works fine with Windows 8 and has separate left and right click buttons. Connectivity options include SuperMulti DVD Burner, 10/100Base-T Fast Ethernet with RJ-45 connectivity, 802.11b/g/n wireless LAN, Multi-format SD card reader, 1 x HDMI port, 1 x USB 3.0 port, 2 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 x headphone/microphone jack and no Bluetooth but this is not a biggie at all as you can get a USB Bluetooth very cheaply.

Conclusion: Judging by expert and customer reviews online, HP Pavilion 15-r030wm seems to offer overall great value for money and if what you’re after is a nice looking laptop that can handle your daily tasks for school, home office or home entertainment, with a decent set of features and connectivity, it sure is a good one to consider. Many computers don’t come with DVD drives these days, this one does and happens to be slim and lightweight as compared to an average 15.6 inch laptop despite having an optical drive. It comes with McAfee anti-virus program pre-installed so you may want to take that off and go with something like AVG free version- which you can get easily online. It works fast, allows good amount of multitasking, looks nice and sleek, has a very functional keyboard and trackpad (but you may still want to get a wireless mouse), has a USB 3.0 port for faster data transfer and sound quality is quite good. On the other hand screen quality is just OK- it is not Full HD and is not touch display to get the best out of Windows 8 functions and if you want to upgrade memory or replace the HDD with a Solid State Drive, what you’ll find is solid plastic covering all of the bottom of this PC so it is a bit harder to get to the internal components. It comes with a 90 day limited hardware warranty (being a certified refurbished unit) and you have the toll-free or online technical support available 24 hours 7 days a week.

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