HP Laptop 17 17 Laptop (17.3" Review

This is a one-trick pony: a huge 17.3-inch screen for $700. The catch? The AMD Ryzen 5 7430U CPU is mediocre, the battery is tiny, and it's hilariously non-portable. Only consider it if a big, basic desktop replacement is your absolute goal.

The HP 17 is a big-screen laptop with a surprisingly small price tag of $700. It's built around a 17.3-inch FHD display and an AMD Ryzen 5 7430U processor, promising a comfortable, spacious experience for basic tasks. The 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD are solid specs for the money, but the real story here is the trade-off: you're getting a massive screen in a chassis that's decidedly not compact, all powered by a fairly average CPU.

Performance is a mixed bag, and it's all about expectations. The AMD Ryzen 5 7430U lands in the 38th percentile for CPU performance, which means it's squarely middle of the pack. It'll handle web browsing, office apps, and streaming just fine, but don't expect it to blaze through video encodes or complex spreadsheets. The integrated AMD Radeon Graphics are a bit better, sitting in the 68th percentile, so you might get away with some very light, older games on low settings. The 16GB of DDR4 RAM is a decent amount, but its 33rd percentile ranking shows it's slower than what you'll find in most modern laptops. The 512GB NVMe SSD is about average for storage speed. The real standout spec, for better or worse, is the 41Wh battery trying to power that big screen; we'd expect runtimes to be pretty short.

At $700, the HP 17 is priced for its screen size, not its performance. You're paying for the expansive 17.3-inch canvas and the basic 16GB/512GB configuration. When you look at the component rankings—a middling CPU, slow RAM, a basic display—it's clear the budget went into the panel size. Compared to a more balanced 15-inch or 14-inch laptop at this price, you're making a clear choice: screen real estate over everything else.

Stacked against its peers, the HP 17's role is narrow. The Apple MacBook Pro or ASUS ProArt PX13 are in a different league for performance and screen quality, but they cost two to three times as much. A more direct competitor might be a Lenovo Ideapad or Dell Inspiron 17-inch model. The key differentiator here is often the lift-hinge, which is a nice touch. However, many competitors in this price range offer newer, more efficient CPUs (like Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen 7040 series) that would provide better battery life and snappier performance, making the HP 17's older 7430U a harder sell unless you find it on a deep discount.

Skip this laptop if you need to carry it around often. Its 4th percentile compact score means it's one of the least portable laptops we track. Also, avoid it if you need strong CPU performance for tasks like coding, video editing, or data analysis, as its processor ranks in the bottom half. Anyone prioritizing battery life or a premium display should look elsewhere.

We can only recommend the HP 17 if your top priority is a giant screen on a tight budget, and you plan to use it mostly plugged in. The performance specs are unremarkable, the portability is terrible, and battery life will be a constant worry. For $700, there are more balanced 15-inch laptops that offer better performance, better build quality, and much better battery life, even if you sacrifice a couple of diagonal inches.