HP Pavilion 17-e146us Laptop Review

17.3 inch HP Pavilion 17-e146us Notebook PC
via Amazon

HP Pavilion 17-e146us is a fast, reliable and efficient notebook with a Haswell i3 processor, a large 17.3 inch HD+ screen and a variety of useful functions to perform well at most tasks except for the advanced games and memory intensive heavy software. It looks pretty with its black color and glossy finish and its price is fair for what it is designed to achieve.

Haswell Intel Core i3-4000M (3MB L3 Cache) at 2.4GHz speed, 6GB DDR3L SDRAM (2 DIMM) that can be upgraded to 8GB, 750GB Serial ATA hard drive at 5400RPM rotating speed with HP Protect Smart Hard Drive Protection and the Windows 8.1 64-bit operating system.. The i3 processor is quite capable for most tasks and it will perform just fine at whatever you do and allows for less power consumption, being a 4th generation processor. 750 GB hard drive is a spacious storage space for most of your multimedia files and 6GB RAM shall enable you to do quite a bit of multitasking without encountering lags or freezes. Windows 8.1 has some added features to the Windows 8 that help it feel a little more like Windows 7 too.

17.3 inch diagonal BrightView LED-backlit HD+ display with 1600 x 900 maximum pixel resolution and Intel HD 4600 video graphics for sharp and clear high definition quality images, and great rich sound with detail and deep bass through the integrated stereo speakers and DTS Sound+.. It also has a front facing HP TrueVision HD Webcam with built-in microphone and a light that shows connectivity- useful for nice chats on Skype or video-conferencing.

HP Pavilion 17-e146us comes with a comfy but not backlit full-size keyboard with 10-key numeric keypad for faster number crunching and a responsive touchpad customized to Windows 8 and supporting multi-touch gestures. Being a 17 inch screen laptop, it weighs around 6.39 lbs so it is not really lightweight or very portable but is only 1.29 inch thick. It should be great as a desktop replacement to be able to move around the house but not so much to use when you are out and about. Its 6-cell 47WHr 2.2 Ah lithium-ion battery gives you a bit under 5 hours of battery life.

Its connectivity options are: SuperMulti DVD burner, 802.11bgn WLAN for easy wireless internet connection, 10/100BASE-T Ethernet LAN Network Card (RJ-45 connector) for wired connection, 2 memory slots, 2 USB 3.0 ports at super speed (10 times faster than normal), 1 USB 2.0 port, 1 HDMI port to hook up to even a larger screen- your HDTV, 1 VGA (15-pin) port to connect to external monitors, 1 Headphone-out/microphone-in combo jack, Multi-format digital media card reader for Secure Digital cards and a HD webcam with digital microphone. There is no built-in Bluetooth but you may get a Bluetooth 4.0 USB adapter cheaply on Amazon.com.

Conclusion: HP Pavilion 17-e146us is an all-round good laptop with only a couple of minor cons, such as the Bluetooth and the graphics card that is not suitable for playing the latest games- but you'd be hard pressed to find such a computer at this price range. This is more for home office, school or home entertainment use except for the heavy games. It has a nice HD+ quality 17.3 inch screen, DTS+ audio for immersive sound, large hard drive and RAM, a good variety of connectivity options, an ergonomic keyboard with 10-key numeric pad, solid build and nice looks.. All at a very reasonable price on Amazon.com (It has exactly the same specs as the HP Pavilion 17-e140us model but cheaper, so not to be missed!).

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