Review of the HP Pavilion Plus 14

Review of the HP Pavilion Plus 14

PROS

✅    Stunning 2.8K OLED display considering the cost

✅    Although not the lightest, it is thin and has a good selection of connectors

✅   And a 5-megapixel webcam.

Cons

• Battery life of less than 10 hours;

• Absence of a privacy shutter for the webcam

• No ports for Thunderbolt 4

HP PAVILION PLUS 14 SPECS

• Processor:                                                    Intel Core i7-12700H

• Laptop Class:                                               Ultraportable

• RAM as evaluated                                        16 GB

• SD Boot Drive Capacity    

• Disc Drive Ability (as measured)

• With OLED Variable Technology                 1 TB

• Touch Screen                                              14-inch

• Native Display Resolution                           2,880 by 1,800

• Screen Refresh Rate                                  90 Hz

• Refresh Support                                         None

• Graphics Processor                                     Intel Iris Xu Graphics

• Wireless Networking                                    802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)

• Measurements (HWD)                                0.72 by 12.3 by 8.8 by inches

• Size                                                             3.09 lbs

• Operating System                                       Windows 11 Pro

• Battery Life Tested for                                 (Hours: Minutes) 9:30     

The company's standard laptops, the Pavilions, have recently caught the attention of savvy customers who previously may have looked up to the more expensive Envy and Specter series. The Pavilion Aero from last summer was quick, well-equipped, and only 2.2 pounds in weight. The Pavilion Plus 14 is a svelte aluminum ultraportable laptop that comes with a stylish OLED display and starts at $729.99. As the Editors' Choice for a midrange ultraportable, the Plus succeeds the Lenovo Idea Pad Slim 7 Carbon, which also has OLED and is lighter but costs more and has fewer ports.

There are several configurations available

Pavilion plus 14

The Pavilion Plus 14 is a dream for anyone who wants to scrutinize setup minutiae, with the exception that American consumers are only given the option of Natural Silver rather than the many colors available to global customers. It can be ordered with 12th-generation processors from Intel's 15-watt U, 28-watt P, or 45-watt H series, as well as either Intel integrated or NVidia discrete graphics. The option you choose will rely on your preference for performance against battery life. That's remarkable flexibility. The least expensive variant available at the moment has a Core i5-1235U processor, 16GB of RAM, a 256GB NV ME solid-state drive, a 14-inch display with a 16:10 aspect ratio and 2,240 by 1,400 pixels of resolution, and a GeForce MX550 GPU. It costs $729.99 on HP.com. However, prices can go down, so it might be worthwhile to wait for a sale like the $549.99 offer we saw at Staples, which was valid up until the moment this review was published.

The Core i7-12700H (six Performance cores, eight Efficient cores, 20 threads), Intel Iris Xu integrated graphics, and 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED display are upgraded in the $999.99 iteration. It is identical to our $1,279.99 review model, except for a 1TB SSD and Windows 11 Pro rather than Home. A Core i7-1255U processor and the rarely-seen GeForce RTX 2050 graphics can be used by aspiring gamers. For wireless connectivity, many versions include Bluetooth as well as Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, or Wi-Fi 6E from our system. The Pavilion Plus 14 is slightly larger than the Slim 7 Carbon (0.59 by 12.3 by 8.5 inches), measuring 0.72 by 12.3 by 8.8 inches (HWD). The Acer Swift 3 is a 14-inch ultraportable that measures 0.63 by 12.7 by 8.4 inches and has a traditional 16:9 screen aspect ratio. The HP is the heaviest of the three at 3.09 pounds compared to the Lenovo's 2.42 pounds and the Acer's 2.71 pounds, though it's not very heavy in a briefcase.

In addition to recycled plastic keycaps, HP promises that the Plus has a recycled aluminum lid, keyboard deck, and bottom. The laptop seems generally quite solid, however, there is considerable flex if you grab the screen corners or bang the keyboard. There is a fingerprint reader in the palm rest for password-free logins, and the screen bezels are small (87%, according to the manufacturer). Since the Pavilion Plus starts at less than $1,000, we can't really protest too loudly that it lacks Thunderbolt 4 connections, which we want to see on laptops costing over $1,000. On the right side, there are two 10Gbps USB 3.2 Type-C ports, a 5Gbps USB Type-A connector, and an HDMI video output (any of which can accommodate the AC adaptor for recharging the laptop's battery). On the left, there is a second USB-A port, a microSD card slot, and an audio jack.

Several opulent attributes

We are upset that the webcam lacks a privacy shutter but don't mind that it lacks face recognition technology since you can sign into Windows Hello with a fingerprint. On the plus side, it outperforms standard 720p rubbish with a sharp 5-megapixel resolution (2,592 by 1,944 pixel 4:3 photos or 2,560 by 1,440 pixel 16:9 photographs or movies), and it produces well-lit, vibrant images free of noise or static. The true Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys on the backlit keyboard are preferable to using the Fn key and the cursor arrows to perform those tasks. The cursor keys are arranged in an awkward row, rather than the conventional inverted T, with half-sized, difficult-to-hit up and down arrows stacked between full-sized left and right, which is HP's signature configuration. It loses even more points, I'm inclined to argue, for having an emoji key next to the brightness and volume settings on the top row.

Although the Escape and Delete keys are small, the keyboard has an excellent typing experience. Although shallow and artificial-feeling, it is nonetheless quick and responsive. The wide, button-free touchpad moves and taps fluidly, but its click is hazy and loose-feeling. The Pavilion Plus 14 gains most of its praise for providing a vibrant OLED display at a competitive price. Although it is not a touch screen, the HP 2.8K display is incredibly sharp, and bright, and contrasts with stunning hues. While blacks appear to be India ink, white backdrops are spotless. The panel also offers a choice between the standard 60Hz refresh rate and a 90Hz one for films and scrolling that is a little bit smoother.

Speakers 

Speakers that are located on the bottom create reasonably powerful, clear sound. There isn't much bass, but even at maximum volume, the audio isn't tinny or hollow, and you can distinguish between overlapping recordings. The software B&O Audio Control offers an equalizer with presets for music, movies, and voices in addition to noise reduction for meetings. HP QuickDrop, which lets you send files to or from your smartphone, McAfee, LastPass, and ExpressVPN trials are some other programs. HP Enhanced Lighting, which simulates a ring light on the screen, is also available.

An ultra-lightweight competition to test the Pavilion plus 14

For our benchmark tests, we pitted the HP Pavilion Plus 14 against four other 14-inch consumer slimlines, including the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon, which has an OLED screen and an AMD processor, and the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 7i Pro, which has an Intel processor. The Acer Swift 3 and XPGXenia 14, which cost just under and slightly more than $1,000 each, are the other two.

PAVILION PLUS 14

         PROCESSOR:                                HPCore i7-12700H

         GRAPHICS:                                     IntelIris Xe graphics from Intel

         RAM:                                               16 GB

         STORAGE:                                      1TB SSD

Swift 3 Acer (2021)         

          PROCESSOR:                                 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7-1165G7

         GRAPHICS:                                      Intel Iris Xe Graphics    

         RAM:                                                16GB RAM          

         STORAGE:                                        512GB SSD

IdeaPad Slim 7 Carbon from Lenovo

        PROCESSOR:                             AMD Radeon   Ryzen 7 5800U (1.9GHz)                   

        GRAPHICS:                                  Graphics by AMD

        RAM                                              16GB RAM   

       STORAGE                                     1TB SSD

Idea Pad Slim 7i Pro from Lenovo

      PROCESSOR:                               Intel Core i7-11370H (3.3GHz)

     GRAPHICS:                                    Intel Iris Xe Graphics

     RAM                                               16GB

     STORAGE                                      1TB SSD                        

XPG Xenia 14         

     PROCESSOR:                               Intel Core i7-1165G7 (2.8GHz)   

     GRAPHICS:                                   Intel Iris Xe Graphics

     RAM                                               16GB RAM      

     STORAGE                                       512GB SSD

Efficiency test

To gauge overall performance for office-focused operations including word processing, spreadsheeting, web surfing, and videoconferencing, UL's PCMark 10's core benchmark mimics a range of real-world productivity and content-creation processes. To evaluate the throughput and load time of a laptop's storage, we also ran PCMark 10's Full System Drive test. To assess a PC's aptitude for processor-intensive workloads, three benchmarks concentrate on the CPU while utilizing all cores and threads that are available. While Primate Labs' Geek Bench 5.4 Pro replicates popular programs like PDF rendering, speech recognition, and machine learning, Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to produce a complicated scenario. The 12-minute video clip is then transcoded from 4K to 1080p using the free and open-source HandBrake 1.4 program (shorter conversion durations are preferable).

The PugetBench for Photoshop productivity test from Puget Systems measures a PC's capability for multimedia and content creation using Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe's well-known image editor. This is our final productivity test. It is an automatic extension that performs numerous standard and GPU-accelerated Photoshop functions, such as opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture, as well as adding masks, gradient fills, and filters. The Pavilion Plus positioned itself firmly in the middle of the field, taking the lead in our CPU tests and surpassing the 4,000 mark in PCMark, which denotes exceptional productivity for commonplace software like Microsoft Office or Google Workspace.

A test of graphics

We use two DirectX 12 game simulations from UL's 3DMark to test the graphics capabilities of Windows PCs: Time Spy, which is more demanding and best suited for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs, and Night Raid, which is more modest and ideal for laptops with integrated graphics. Additionally, we run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which puts a heavy emphasis on both high-level, game-like image rendering and low-level tasks like texturing. The 1080p Car Chase test and the 1440p Aztec Ruins test both put graphics and compute shaders to the test utilizing hardware tessellation and different display resolutions. The tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate this. A higher frame rate (fps) is preferable. The Iris Xu integrated graphics from Intel continue to lag significantly below discrete GPUs seen in gaming laptops. Not the most recent simulations and shoot-em-ups, but casual games and streaming entertainment are OK on the HP and its competitors.

Tests of the battery and display

The open-source Blender film Tears of Steel is played locally while the display brightness is set to 50% and the audio volume is set to 100% to evaluate the battery life of laptops. Before the test, we turn off Wi-Fi and the keyboard backlighting and confirm that the battery is completely charged.  We also use a Data color Spyder Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to gauge a laptop screen's 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter), as well as the color saturation—or the proportion of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes—it can display.

While nine and a half hours of battery life is more than adequate—and would have been considered remarkable three years ago—it falls short of the 12 or more hours we now routinely see from ultraportable. The Plus should, however, be able to get you through an entire day of work or school with enough time left over for some YouTube or, at the very least, an entire Netflix film. The OLED Slim 7 Carbon is the only device that can match HP's stunning display in terms of brightness and color coverage, which is even more impressive.

The $1000 Model is even more attractive.

Although some of our best laptops use IPS screens, it's difficult to settle for less after viewing an OLED panel. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is a competent ultraportable in its IPS form, but even with the additional cost of our review unit's 1TB SSD, the OLED variant is a significant value. It would be fantastic if it were lighter and had a longer battery life, but it still merits Editors' Choice recognition and a place on your purchasing list.