HP Pavilion Slimline 400-434 Desktop PC Review

HP Pavilion Slimline 400-434 Desktop
via Amazon

Black and gray HP Pavilion Slimline 400-434 is one of the most recent sleek and compact budget desktop computers with the quad core Intel Bay Trail D Pentium J2900 processor (2MB cache) at 2.41GHz speed up to 2.67GHz with turbo boost but no hyper threading (4 cores handling up to 4 threads), 8GB DDR3L SDRAM memory at 1333 MHz (1 x 8GB) for being able to run several tasks smoothly and efficiently, 1 TB SATA hard drive at 7200rpm rotating speed as very large storage space and fast read and write times and 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system and you should upgrade to Windows 10 as it’s already been released and available free of charge and although it hasn’t been out for so long, users report it to be better than Win 8 with the familiar user friendly Start button, Cortana and the new Edge browser.

USB keyboard with 10 key numeric pad and volume control and USB Optical Mouse set is included in the package but naturally not the monitor but it lets you connect to two monitors through the DVI-D and VGA interfaces if you need the extra workspace. Integrated Intel HD Graphics (Bay Trail) with up to 1792MB as total video memory allocated by Windows 8, is OK for your usual daily multimedia stuff with lush visuals and vivid colours but not that suitable for advanced gaming as it will allow you to play only the oldest games. HP - Pavilion Slimline weighs just under 20 pounds and measures 15.5 x 4.40 x 12.7 inches, 2.4GHz single-band high-speed 802.11bgn wireless with 1x1 MIMO technology to connect to internet without wires, 10/100Base-T Ethernet LAN for quick and easy wired internet access, Super Multi DVD±RW/CD-RW Burner Drive, 7-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader, 7-in-1 Media Card Reader that supports SD, SDHC, SDXC, MS, MSS, Memory Stick MagicGate and Memory Stick PRO formats, 1 USB 3.0 port for quicker transfer of data and multimedia faster and 4 USB 2.0 ports, VGA and DVI-D ports. Although the audio quality will depend on the quality of the external or monitor speakers you use but the DTS SOUND+ and High Definition Audio 5.1 channel surround sound will help with it.

Conclusion: HP - Pavilion Slimline 400-434 desktop starts up fairly quickly in under one minute but as the new Windows 10 is already out you can download it for free and you will see the difference in booting up speed and the instant waking up from hibernation. The Intel Pentium J2900 has the Passmark benchmark score of 2046 on the day of this review as a lower mid range CPU but is power efficient with a Thermal Design Power of only 10 watts and this will help with energy efficiency and your electricity bills. It has four cores and no hyper threading so 4 cores will handle 4 threads in parallel and no problems with all your daily tasks including Word and Excel, web browsing, playing songs, streaming videos and great multitasking with 8GB memory but the demanding games and complex software will be hard to handle (J2900 processor is not super powerful but the generous RAM will certainly enhance the performance and also the 7200rpm speed processor is obviously faster than 5400rpm so you will open your files faster too). You will find the CyberLink media programs and 30 day trial version of Microsoft Office as well as a pre-installed antivirus software which we recommend you to replace with free AVG or Avast. This is not a super powerful computer for your complex tasks- multimedia editing or the latest games but more of a good value day-to-day computer and you can always add a Solid State Drive to improve the overall performance and speed.

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