HP HP 15.6" 250R G10 Notebook Review

Look, the HP 250R G10 is a perfectly fine laptop if you just need a basic machine for school or office work. It's got a decent 10-core Intel chip and a solid 16GB of RAM, which is more than enough for a dozen Chrome tabs and Microsoft Office. But the one thing you absolutely need to know is this: the screen is terrible. It's dim, it's a basic VA panel, and it lands in the bottom 7th percentile for screens. For a 15-inch laptop in 2024, that's just not acceptable.

The performance is exactly what you'd expect from the specs, which is to say, it's fine. The Intel Core 5 120U handles everyday tasks without a hiccup. The 512GB SSD is quick for booting up. Nothing here will surprise you, good or bad. It's a 62nd percentile CPU in a sea of much faster options, so it gets the job done but won't win any races. Just don't even think about gaming on the integrated graphics.

At around $870, this laptop is overpriced for what you get. You're paying for the Windows 11 Pro license and the HP brand, but you're getting a bottom-tier screen and mediocre build quality. It's not worth it.

Forget the high-end gaming laptops on the competitor list; they're in a different league. The real comparison is with other basic laptops. The ASUS Zenbook Duo, while more expensive, offers a revolutionary dual-screen design for multitasking. More directly, you can find Lenovo Ideapads or even older ThinkPads at this price that offer better screens, better reliability, and often similar or better performance. The 250R G10 loses on value and quality against almost any alternative.

I can't recommend the HP 250R G10. The awful screen alone is a deal-breaker at this price. You're better off looking at refurbished business laptops from Lenovo or Dell, or spending a bit more for a model with a decent IPS display. This one is a hard skip.