Introduction
HP’s main gaming line, as you are probably aware of, is the OMEN series. We have reviewed a handful of OMENs in the past. They’re beefy laptops which shout “gaming” in all caps. LED lighting, top-of-the-line specifications, angly-curvy builds, etc. They cost a bomb too.
HP’s mainstream line of laptops, the Pavilion are a lot more generic in their approach, and unlike their gaming cousins, they’re easier on the wallet. And that is what makes this marriage of “Pavilion” and “Gaming” interesting. You’re done away with the bells and whistles of the OMEN series, but you what you get is functional specifications designed for gaming in mind.
Let us see how this marriage unfolds….
Aesthetics & Build
The Gaming 15’s prime aesthetics are a perfect blend of a standard Pavilion laptop fused with a gaming laptop. The result: a lightweight powerhouse standing at just 2.14 kgs in weight. Compared to its predecessor, the Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 looks completely different. The model is slight more aggressive in terms of appearance than the older models. Sharp edges, angled sides, motifs, the Gaming 15 2018 definitely speaks more “gaming” than any other Pavilion laptop we’ve ever seen.
The first big change in design that we noticed was the removal of thick bezels around its gorgeous screen. This change hit home with us straight away, as in this day and age, bezels are getting more thinner and thinner. More so, the thinner bezels allow for an overall more thinner laptop, that’s slightly more convenient to carry around.
The main chassis of the Pavilion Gaming 15 is made of plastic, however, HP did add metal around the keyboard which makes up for the plastic’s fragility. Overall the build did seem pretty solid, no complaints here.
The keyboard is matte-finish, and has big and comfortable keys. Only, just like in other HP laptops, even the OMEN ones, our complaint are the arrow keys. The Up and Down keys are half the size of the other keys. We know that WASD are used in games instead of arrow keys, but still, for tasks like scrolling down a webpage, the small arrow keys seem uncomfortable. However, HP has managed to fit in a NumPad. Say hello to your Macros!
The trackpad is lined by Red Chrome that fits well with the overall look of the laptop. It is slightly aligned to towards the left hand side, which is a questionable call. Some might get used to it right away, while some might find it distracting. The trackpad is quite large in size though, and supports use of multi-finger gestures.
On the leftside you get two USB 3.0 ports and a SD Card reader. On the right side, there’s one USB Type-C port. HP got the basics covered here. (Yes, having a USB Type-C port is a basic requirement in today’s day and age). You also get a USB 3.0 port, HDMI, Ethernet and a combined headphone/microphone port on the right side. The combined headphone/microphone port is another questionable choice by HP. This straight away removes support of Gaming Headsets that require dedicated ports for both operations.
Display
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 comes with a Full HD (1920 x 1080) panel with a model number AUO B156HAN08.2 (AUO82ED). The size of the screen is 15.6-inches with 9.8mm bezels and matte finish. It has a pixel density of 142 ppi and pixel pitch of 0.18 x 0.18 mm.
Viewing angels of the screen are pretty good. The recommended distance for viewing is 24-inches, at this distance, the screen is Retina i.e. the eye will not differentiate between pixels. The maximum brightness of 338 nits could have been a little better. The display covers 96% of the sRGB spectrum. Also, the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 does not use Pulse-width modulation (PWM) to control monitor brightness.
Since this is a gaming laptop, Response time of the screen becomes an important aspect to consider. We recorded a response time of 9 ms, which puts this among the fastest panels we have ever tested on a laptop. This makes this great for hardcore and competitive gamers.
Battery
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 is available in two different battery configurations – 52.5Wh and 70Wh. Our review unit had a 70Wh battery.
We used Window sBetter Performance setting and all other programs turned off. Here are our results:
Web Surfing – 194 minutes
Video Playback – 200 minutes
Gaming – 82 minutes
These are not impressive battery life numbers, and certainly not as per what HP advertises. The battery on the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 performs worse than the Lenovo Legion Y530, the ASUS ROG GL504 and the Dell G5 15, all of which are similar spec’d laptops.
Performance
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 is available in two CPU configurations: the Core i5-8300H and the Core i7-8750H. Our review unit had the later. Although, we would recommend going for the i5 as it would suit all your gaming needs. The i7 Octa-core processor is pretty much overkill and is bound to be bottlenecked by the GPU that the laptop comes with (GTX 1050 Ti and GTX 1060).
Other specs of the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 are pretty top of the line. You get 8GB DDR4 RAM, Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti GPU, 128 GB SSD + 1TB HDD. Mind you, the SSD is NVME, so you will get top speeds.
With the GTX 1050Ti graphics card, you can run all modern games in Mid/High settings at stable 30 fps. Running them in Ultra or Very High will prove challenging, since the GTX 1050Ti is a mid-range GPU.
Temperatures
In our temperature tests, we employ 100% load on all CPU cores. In this scenario, we measure the temperatures during three time slots, 0:02 – 0:10 sec, 0:15 – 0:30 sec, 10:00 – 15:00 min. We test in such scenarios to see how the laptop handles intensive task during long term usage.
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 reached a maximum of 86°C during extended loads of above 10 minutes. This number is certainly not low. It is worthy to note that in this scenario, the frequency of the CPU is about 20% higher of the base frequency.
During gaming sessions, with the GPU under 100% load, the maximum temperature after 10 minutes of work is 86°C again.
Other Aspects
The speakers are placed above the keyboard throughout the width of the laptop. They have a very unique, modern, triangular patterned design. They’re made by high-end audio company Bang & Olufson. These might just be the best speakers we have ever heard among similarly sized laptops. They’re even better than the speakers of the Macbook Pro. The sound is crisp and clear, with little to no distortion at high volumes.
The preinstalled webcam has good wide angles, but poor resolution and quality. It performs terribly under low light conditions.
Conclusion
The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 has a lot of things we like. The aesthetics, are a balance of understatement and gamey, a combination that works well. It’s not all looks, the build quality is good too, the aluminium panel gives the laptop the necessary stability. We dig the super thin bezels too. The 144 Hz screen is gorgeous, has great detail and colours, although the brightness could have been a notch higher. A small but significant feature of the monitor is that it doesn’t use PWM, which makes is safer for the eyes.
We also liked the audio system, the keyboard (minus the arrow keys) and the responsive and large touchpad.
Our complaints with the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018 aren’t deal breaking, but still worthy enough to mention in our Conclusion. 3-5 hours of battery life is downright disappointing for a 2018 laptop. Since this is a gaming laptop, there should have been a dedicated headphone and microphone port, but there isn’t. Also, we wonder why HP hasn’t provided a Thunderbolt port in the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 2018.
The laptop is available on Amazon for ₹ 98,160. It is slightly cheaper than the Dell G5, which has roughly the same specifications. The ASUS ROG GL504 costs a lot more, but it a more thorough gaming laptop than the Pavilion 15. A GTX 1060 variant of the Pavilion 15 2018 is available in other countries but not in India.
