Reviews for Hp Pavilion 15-cc563st 156 Laptop Computer

Verdict

With the first Ice Lake laptops just effectually the corner and the graphics processor here showing its historic period, information technology's hard to justify dropping £850 on the HP Pavilion xv. That said, in that location's nothing actually incorrect with this laptop. If the price falls in the coming weeks and months, deal hunters could brand a killing.

Pros

• Prissy keyboard
• Skilful speakers
• Well suited for office work

Cons

• Sub-average display
• Not fantastic value for money

Key Specifications

• Review Price: £850
• xv.6-inch Total HD brandish with IPS
• Intel Core i7-8565U processor
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti
• 8GB DDR4-2400MHz RAM
• 256GB PCIe NVMe M.ii SSD
• Blazon-C USB three.one Gen ane, two x Blazon-A USB 3.ane Gen ane, HDMI 1.4; Ethernet, 3.5mm audio jack

What is the HP Pavilion fifteen?

The HP Pavilion 15 is an affordable laptop that undercuts the majority of the competition, making information technology an platonic option for students and office workers to consider.

In the review unit I've been sent – the HP Pavilion 15-cs1506sa – in that location'due south an Intel Cadre i7-8565U processor sitting under the hood, next to a Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti GPU. This means on newspaper you lot should have enough processing power to blast through basic PC tasks and enough GPU grunt to get in a bit of Fortnite, Overwatch and the similar on the side – merely don't expect to to run these at a high clip with texture packs and settings cranked all the way up. There might exist a dedicated graphics card hither, but a high-end gaming laptop the HP Pavilion fifteen is not.

That said, the price here is quite bonny – £850 at the time of writing – and means information technology competes straight with the likes of the Acer Nitro 5, which occupies the aforementioned toll bracket just features more modern 16 Series cards, the Razer Blade Stealth (2019) and not to mention HP's own Envy thirteen.

Related: All-time Laptop 2019

The HP Pavilion 15 is all right angles and silver surfaces

HP Pavilion 15 design and features – Diamond geezer

The new HP Pavilion 15 is a adequately standard-looking Windows 10 laptop that features the micro-drilled, right-angled-triangles motif seen on other HP laptops such as the HP Green-eyed xiii and the HP EliteBook 1050 G1. On this item laptop, the interlocking triangles create a slightly retro diamond/elongated Zelda rupee shape.

2 speakers sit behind this triangular weave and, as with many HP laptops, the speakers have been tuned with help from high-end Danish audio brand Bang & Olufsen.

The HP Pavilion 15 is a adequately big laptop – measuring 361.6 ten 241.6 10 17.9mm – with a total-sized keyboard, number pad, and the xv.6-inch display'south 5mm side bezels. In terms of ports, the correct-manus side has two Blazon-A USB three.1 Gen ane ports, a lock slot, and a full-sized SD carte reader, while the left-paw side has HDMI one.4, Ethernet, and Blazon-C USB three.1 ports, along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Equally with the HP Envy 13, Thunderbolt 3 technology isn't present here, so the Blazon-C USB port will only transfer data at rates of up to 5Gbps (versus up to 40Gbps with Thunderbolt 3), but, then again, this is an £800 laptop and Thunderbolt three remains expensive to implement.

Another feature the HP Pavilion 15 has in mutual with the HP Envy 13 is that the shape of the case ensures the rear portion of the deck's underside – where the air vent is located – is lifted up off the desk slightly when you open the laptop. This is a pattern feature we've seen on other laptops as well – namely the Asus ZenBook range – and looks likely to become a standard characteristic of all Ultrabooks going forrad.

Weighing but shy of 2kg (i.89kg), the HP Pavilion xv is a little heavier than most laptops in its category. Virtually lightweight Ultrabooks and notebooks these days are closer to the 1kg mark. While the HP Pavilion xv is heavy by comparison, it'southward still slight and slim enough to carry around all day in your satchel.

Related: Best Student Laptops 2019

Practiced travel and central action make typing on the HP Pavilion fifteen effortless

HP Pavilion xv keyboard – How easy is the HP Pavilion 15 to blazon on?

The HP Pavilion 15 is very like shooting fish in a barrel to blazon on. The keys have a good amount of travel – non Lenovo ThinkPad T490 practiced simply even so deeper and nicer-feeling than most laptops – and gentle underlighting means you can work abroad late at night with ease.

The keycaps experience similar to those of the HP Envy 13, only because the HP Pavilion fifteen' is bigger, there's room for a number pad here. This (sort of) makes upwardly for the arrow keys being small and hemmed in, and you could just use number lock and have the 2, iv, 8, and 6 keys double equally pointer keys – trouble solved.

Despite these layout gripes, the Pavilion fifteen's keyboard is solid. Primal action is nice and snappy, with footling in the way of wobble from the letter of the alphabet keys. Shift, Caps Lock, Enter and Space Bar – the usual suspects – are all a little more than on the wobbly side, but nothing here gives me immediate crusade for concern. Everything feels sturdy and durable.

The trackpad was less piece of cake to apply out of the box, requiring me to whack the sensitivity level all the way up in lodge to be able to utilise this with whatsoever ease. After reviewing the Asus ZenBook 14, which features the slickest trackpad I've used in contempo months, I think that all other laptop trackpads are ruined for me.

The keyboard layout here is mostly good, though having the nav keys squashed in in a higher place the number pad is not ideal

HP Pavilion xv speakers – Are the Blindside & Olufsen speakers whatever practiced?

The speakers of the HP Pavilion 15 are very proficient, with just minimal distortion noticeable at maximum volume.

Dialogue on streamed Netflix and iPlayer content sounded crisp, as did most of the music I played while working on this review. It passed my Primary of Puppets test – where I stream the classic Metallica track at l% volume and note if there's any obvious distortion – with all instruments sounding clear and defined.

Some music, such as solo pianoforte and acoustic guitar – tracks where there's a lot of resonance – did not audio great at high volumes. Steve Howe's Mood for a Twenty-four hours, a recording which seems purpose-congenital to make laptop speakers rattle horribly, sounded muffled if pushed beyond 60% book.

Generally speaking though, the speakers are very practiced and a notch to a higher place most. Music and dialogue is certainly better than you might expect to hear coming out of an £800 laptop.

HP Pavilion xv brandish – Can I apply the HP Pavilion xv for photo editing?

The HP Pavilion 15's display is not well suited to photo editing. Depression maximum effulgence and poor colour gamut coverage mean that I wouldn't recommend this even for the most bones of photo piece of work or digital art. Fifty-fifty if all yous're doing is resizing your vacation snaps, if you're subsequently a laptop for any kind of photo piece of work, you'd be better off picking upwardly something like the HP Green-eyed xiii or the Razer Bract Stealth 13 (2019).

I recorded a maximum brightness of 223.55 nits using an X-Rite i1Display Pro colorimeter and DisplayCAL 3. That's a poor score and explained why websites, photos, and games looked a little dull and washed out. If a laptop can't give you at to the lowest degree 300 nits of maximum brightness in 2019, you should reconsider it.

That said, a low black level of 0.fifteen nits means that contrast is high – I recorded an acceptable contrast ratio of 1432:1, and while things were a piffling on the tedious side, nothing looked excessively murky or washed out.

Colour gamut coverage was poor, still, with but 61.seven% of the sRGB (Standard RGB) infinite covered. As the name suggests, sRGB is the standard colour space used past developers, website designers and digital artists, and equally such is a good indicator of how vivid and vibrant websites, webcomics, or video game visuals volition look on a brandish. Ideally, a display will give you 100% sRGB coverage but, in reality, any laptop brandish which covers 80% or above is good.

The wider Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour spaces are more of interest to digital photographers and videographers, and while yous won't be doing whatever heavy edits in Premiere Pro on the HP Pavilion 15, it'southward worth mentioning the Adobe and DCI scores are very low – 42.9% and 44.0%, respectively. Again, that's below par. You lot should hope for effectually seventy% coverage of both of these colour spaces.

Past dissimilarity, the HP Envy 13 covered 69.two% and 71.7% of the Adobe RGB and DCI-P3 colour gamuts when I tested it.

Related: Intel Ice Lake

If you lot desire Fortnite to look this pretty on the HP Pavilion 15, you tin can expect to prowl at 30fps most of the time

HP Pavilion 15 gaming – How well does information technology run Fortnite and Apex Legends?

Using FRAPS to measure game functioning, I recorded average frame rates of around 30-40fps and 70-100fps on Fortnite with the graphics settings on Epic and Depression respectively, and 20-30fps and 50-60fps on Noon Legends, with textures and shadows dialled all the style up, and all the way downwardly.

While the 60Hz display means y'all won't be able to capeesh the higher frame rates y'all can achieve on the HP Pavilion 15, you could always hook this up to a Total HD gaming monitor. HDMI 1.4 is old hat – information technology'south all about HDMI two.i these days – but it still supports 1080p video at 144Hz. So, if you are in the market for something to play battle royale shooters on, and you already own or are thinking about getting a cheap Full Hard disk monitor anyway, you at to the lowest degree have the choice of that as a workaround.

Don't expect AAA titles similar Control or The Division 2 to run well on this, though. I ran the in-game benchmark on Dirt Rally – a game from 2015 we still use in reviews to see how systems handle older games – and on Ultra settings, I got an average frames per second count of 44.95. I was simply able to comfortably clear 60fps here when I dipped the graphics settings down to Medium, where the HP Pavilion 15 gave me 77.92fps on average, and a maximum fps count of 110.24.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider did not fare so well. I averaged 29fps and 30fps with the graphics set to High and Medium. Every time I tried to run the benchmark with visuals at the highest settings, the game crashed. In fairness, the HP Pavilion 15, with a graphics menu from 2017, can't be expected to run demanding titles well and it'due south good plenty for boxing royale shooters and older PC games.

You will want to selection upwards a gaming mouse though, because when it comes to tense firefights, that trackpad is non your friend.

Related: Best gaming mouse

Ports on the left-paw side of the HP Pavilion 15 from left to right: HDMI 1.iv, Ethernet, Type-C USB, iii.5mm audio jack

HP Pavilion 15 general performance – What'southward the HP Pavilion xv like for bones PC use?

The HP Pavilion 15 is absolutely fine for everyday PC role piece of work. Despite average SSD read and write speeds, I did not struggle at any point to go through a day'south work on this.

While you might come across issues loading up multiple photos in Photoshop, GIMP or your freeware photo editing app of selection, this should non be a big deal since the screen isn't really up to scratch for serious photo piece of work anyway.

I ran PCMark 10, a full general performance benchmark, and got a upshot of 4220. This is just shy of the 4500 baseline score PCMark 10 developer UL says indicates a PC is suitable for office piece of work. For what information technology's worth, in my feel the HP Pavilion 15 is fine in this regard and laptops that have returned scores of 4000 and just beneath have also been totally capable of running bones PC tasks, for example browsing the spider web with several tabs open, word processing, e-mail and video calls.

Meanwhile, Geekbench 4 spat out scores like to those I've seen on laptops powered by an Intel Core i7-8565U Whiskey Lake processor – 4668 on the single-core test, and 13,081 on the multicore examination. I recorded similar scores when I ran the same test on the Lenovo ThinkPad T490s (4647, 13,742) and Dell XPS 13 (4281, 14,167). Both of these laptops characteristic the same Whiskey Lake processor. The HP Green-eyed thirteen model I tested returned similar scores, too (4877, 14,509), despite running on a less powerful Core i5 Whiskey Lake CPU.

In plain English language, all of these numbers hateful that, yes, the HP Pavilion 15 and its processor are perfectly fine for role piece of work.

I also ran 3DMark'south Fire Strike benchmark, which is designed to test out the graphics rendering capabilities of a GPU, and got 5948, a fairly average score in this day and age. We've already established the HP Pavilion fifteen'southward gaming credentials, and so it'due south not really worth going around the houses on this.

Finally, the CrystalDiskMark benchmark, which tests the read and write speeds of SSDs and hard drives, gave me an OK 1735.8MB/s read score, and a not-and so-OK 742.90MB/southward write speed. Saving large projects could take a while here, only if you're storing most of your written piece of work in Google Docs or Microsoft OneDrive, this is perhaps less of an issue.

Ports on the correct-hand side of the HP Pavilion xv from left to right: SD card reader, Kensington lock slot, ii ten Type-A USB ports

HP Pavilion 15 battery performance – Will the HP Pavilion 15 run all solar day long?

Broadly speaking, yes. In my experience, I've been able to get shut to 8 hours out of the HP Pavilion xv off the mains, with the display's brightness locked at 150 nits.

HP'southward official spec sheet says you'll be able to get over 16 hours on this, but in my feel that figure but makes sense if y'all're really not doing much on the laptop. If you lot're working – writing, cropping photos, sending and replying to several emails, all with music pumping in the background – you volition be able to comfortably cruise through a working twenty-four hours without having to worry too much about reaching for the charger.

That said, running PC Marker 8's Work benchmark, with the brightness pinned to 150 nits until the battery hit critical levels, gave me a result of 3 hours and iii minutes, which is far beneath what I've observed in day-to-day apply. I'grand not sure why such an atypical effect was returned, given that most Whiskey Lake laptops I've tested will give you something between eight to 11 hours off a unmarried accuse. The presence of a defended graphics processor is a factor – you lot can always manually disable this via the Nvidia Control Console if you need to switch to the CPU's integrated graphics.

Luckily, y'all can become the HP Pavilion fifteen's 68 Wh li-ion battery topped support to 100% in just over two hours. Later half an hr of charging, await to become 40% in the tank, and 69% afterwards one hour.

Should I buy the HP Pavilion 15?

Given that you can become the Dell XPS thirteen and the HP Envy xiii for not much more than money right at present, I would advise against buying an HP Pavilion 15, unless you're able to pick one upward in a Black Fri sale with a tidy discount.

Considering that it costs £850, and that nosotros'll exist seeing laptops like the Acer Swift five – featuring next generation Intel Ice Lake laptop processors – going on auction very soon for near the same money, it is hard to justify dropping the better part of a 1000 on this correct now.

In that location'south zippo terribly incorrect with the HP Pavilion 15, but information technology'southward coming to marketplace with an outdated GPU, a non-terribly-good display and a cost that very soon won't be that competitive.

Your options are to either look for the price to fall or pick up an alternative: if you want a cheap laptop for nether £1000 to do bones PC work, pick upward the HP Envy 13 instead. It's smaller, merely the overall experience is far better.

If you want a cheap laptop for lite gaming, get an Acer Nitro five, which is similarly priced and comes with 16 Serial Nvidia graphics options instead of 10 Series. If you desire something which straddles both camps, consider a Dell XPS xiii or a Razer Blade Stealth 13 (2019).

Verdict

A decent enough lifestyle laptop simply currently overpriced for what you get.

• Buy Straight from HP

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