The HP Pavilion 15 is a portable powerhouse. Everything on this laptop seems well thought – from its clean design, crisp display, quality audio to a palatable price tag. In fact, it’s among the first laptops we’re reviewing with Intel’s 11th generation Core i7-1165G7 processor, and for the price, it looks like a win.
For less a grand, in addition to the 11th Gen chip, you’re getting Intel Xe graphics, 16GB RAM and 512GB SSD storage. The HP 15-eg0021nr isn’t the best laptop for editing content or design tasks, but still, it does a good job where it matters. With that, we mean it can handle everyday tasks smoothly, ranging from web surfing, emails, watching videos, and pretty everything else you’d wish to do on a laptop. All these make it a great choice for an everyday laptop.
HP Pavilion 15-eg0021nr design
The Pavilion 15-eg0021nr sports a minimalist gray chassis and an easy-to-open lid, that might make many creatives to mistake it for another professional notebook, but the stylized Chrome HP logo on the lid is visible enough to give the game away. Nevertheless, the chassis sleek and feels luxurious, marking it for the professional laptop that it is.
For portability, the HP Pavilion 15 is a very compact laptop, but as with most 15-inch laptops, it doesn’t carry a small profile – measuring 14.18 x 9.21 x 0.70 inches, 3.86 pounds – with a full-size chiclet keyboard, number pad and a 15.6-inch display with thin bezels.
In terms of ports, the right-side holds a single USB Type-C port (with Type-C display support), USB 2.0 Type-A, HDMI and a microSD slot. The left side has a single USB 2.0 Type-A and the charging port. Wireless connectivity comes via Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.
Display
The HP Pavilion 15’s display is not the strongest when it comes to photo editing. Yes, it features a full HD (1920 x 1080 resolution), an integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, but it still doesn’t cut for a reliable photo work or digital art. All it does is let you watch and process data on a bright screen, with wide color gamut coverage at 250 nits brightness.
If you’re after a laptop for any kind of photo work, you’re better off with one that rock a dedicated graphics card and better screen brightness. In any case, if your laptop of choice can’t give you at least 300 nits of maximum brightness in 2021, you should seriously reconsider it. For that, you can consider something like the HP Envy 13 or the Razer Blade Stealth 13.
Keyboard & Touchpad
The HP 15-eg0021nr has a nice keyboard, that’s easy to type on. The keys have nice key travel – not Lenovo ThinkPad T490 good, but they still feel comfortable than most laptops at this price range. They have underlighting, which means you can work away late at night without straining.
Another thing to note about this keyboard is that the power switch is located on the top-right of the keyboard, rather than being a button or switch on the side of the chassis. Again, the keycaps feel similar to those on the HP Envy 13, but since the HP Pavilion is bigger, there’s room for a number pad here.
The trackpad is a bit complex to use out of the box, but once you adjust the sensitivity level all the way up in settings, you’d be able to use it with ease. Having reviewed the Asus ZenBook 14, which has the slickest trackpad around, I just feel that all other trackpads are not the best for me.
HP Pavilion 15 performance
The HP Pavilion 15 is absolutely fine for daily PC office work. In fact, performance is one of the compelling features, especially the model we’re revieing with an 11th generation Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD of storage. That right there is a strong feature set for a non-gaming laptop, designed for office or school work.
As we mentioned before, this isn’t a gaming laptop, but the amount of overlap between hardware used by professional creatives and gamers make it for a distinction without much difference, except for the graphics card option. With the Pavilion 15, you can only run basic games, but on other office tasks, it’s one of the best you can get around.
With that in mind, you’re certain that the HP 15-eg0021nr might not be your next gaming laptop, it isn’t the Acer Predator Helios 300 or the ASUS TUF Gaming A15. But if you’re looking for a work computer that will turn around and deliver some quality on day-to-day use, you can’t go wrong here.
Battery Life
Broadly speaking, the HP Pavilion 15 offers good battery life – around 6 hours 32 minutes off the mains is great, with the display’s brightness maxed at 150 nits. HP’s official spec sheet say over 8 hours, but in my experience, that. Figure only makes sense if you’re really not doing much on the laptop.
Bottom line
The new HP Pavilion 15 packs solid processing power at a reasonable price, and this is especially true when you’re not spending more for the latest 11th generation Core i7-1165G7 processor. It stands out as one of the few powerful workstations you can nab without paying a premium. Also, the sleek chassis and compact design make it a perfect companion for toting around on daily travel or to college.
However, if you need something portable for gaming and complex media editing, we’d recommend the Razer Blade Stealth 13, that also features a newer Intel Core i7-1165G7 quad-core processor and a dedicated GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics card.
That said, if all you need is a sleek looking, powerful and reasonably priced laptop that can be tweaked for performance, the HP Pavilion 15-eg0021nr is an excellent choice.