Bright and Cheerful Jamshed Avari, 15 August 2014
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HP Pavilion 15 p029TX Review: Bright and Cheerful
HP's latest range of laptops comes in a variety of colours, and we have the bright blue Pavilion 15 p029TX with us for review today. Obviously, the colour won't appeal to everyone, but it does have a certain youthful exuberance and there will be people who will want to buy it for this reason alone. In a sense, this is the laptop equivalent of an iPhone 5c.
The p029TX is priced a bit above the entry level but is not quite in the premium space. It has a few features that come across as great value right at the outset. Based on first impressions alone, it would be very easy to see this laptop as suitable for students, home users and even working professionals who need a machine that can last for several years.
We are therefore very curious to see how well it holds up in our test suite and whether it's a worthy buy - regardless of its unique appearance.
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Look and feel
The first thing that will hit you when you take the Pavilion 15 out of its box is the particular shade of blue that HP has chosen. It's almost too bright and cheerful, and reminds of the cyan shade made iconic by some of Nokia's first Lumias. It's also very plasticky, with a matte finish and sculpted corners. The lid has a ribbed texture which helps in getting a grip on the device. The sides and bottom are the same colour, except for the strip which houses the battery. Thankfully the keyboard deck and screen bezel are black - we're sure we would have begun to suffer from eye strain otherwise. The blue on the hinge and edges becomes a sort of accent for the inner surfaces, which is fine.
This is a pretty bulky laptop, with a 15-inch screen and full-sized keyboard with a number pad. It weighs 2.27kg which is just a little more than we would have liked, and is definitely not in the race to be the slimmest. It has a DVD-RW drive and a removable battery, both of which are rarities these days. There aren't any flaps for access to components, but it seems as though the entire back should pop off easily when unscrewed.
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All the ports are on the two sides: there's a power inlet, charge indicator LED, Ethernet jack, HDMI output, two USB 3.0 ports and a multi-format card reader on the left, while the right houses the DVD-RW drive along with a Kensington lock slot, headset port, USB 2.0 port and tiny power and HDD activity indicators. If HP had students in mind when designing this laptop, it shouldn't have left out a VGA port which is still needed for connecting to projectors.
The clickable trackpad is quite large and doesn't have separate buttons, which is the norm today. It's positioned such that your palms will have to rest on it while typing, so we'll have to see whether that becomes a usability problem. The keyboard is a bit shallow and mushy, which isn't a good thing for those who will be typing a lot. HP has a bad habit of squashing the arrow keys on its keyboards to fit in a single line, and that's still the case here. The Scroll Lock and Pause/Break keys have also been left off, though most people won't miss them.
The speakers are in an uncommon position above the keyboard. Thanks to the chassis' contours, they're actually angled right at you. To the right of the rather large grille is a Beats Audio logo. Apple might own the company now, but its licensing deal with HP is