HP Pavilion 15.6" Gaming 15.6-Inch Micro-EDGE Review

The HP Pavilion Gaming 15 is a budget-friendly laptop that tries to do a bit of everything. It packs a 9th Gen Intel i5 and a GTX 1650 GPU, which sounds decent for the price. But you're getting older hardware in a chassis that's a bit chunky by today's standards.

It's positioned as an entry point for gaming and multitasking. The specs suggest it can handle some modern titles, but you'll need to keep your expectations in check. This isn't a powerhouse, it's a starter kit.

Let's be real, the performance is a mixed bag. The GTX 1650 is okay for 1080p gaming on low-to-medium settings in games like Fortnite, but it's in the 66th percentile, so it's being left behind by newer cards. The CPU is even weaker, sitting in the 14th percentile. That means multitasking can get sluggish fast with only 8GB of RAM, which is in the bottom 4% of laptops. The 256GB SSD is tiny, so you'll be managing your game library carefully.

At $775, the value proposition is tricky. You're paying for last-gen tech that was mid-range when it was new. The low RAM and tiny storage are real deal-breakers that will cost you more to upgrade. If you can find it for under $600, it might be a consideration for a very tight budget. At this price, you're better off looking at used or refurbished options with better specs.

Stacked against its peers, it struggles. A Lenovo Legion with a newer RTX GPU will run circles around it for not much more money. Even compared to something like an ASUS Zenbook, you're trading all portability and screen quality for a slight gaming edge. The Apple MacBook Pro isn't even in the same conversation for gaming, but it highlights how far behind this HP is in CPU power and efficiency. The MSI and Gigabyte competitors are in a higher performance tier entirely.

Only buy this if your budget is absolutely locked at $800 and you must have a new laptop for light gaming today. For everyone else, save a little longer for a model with 16GB of RAM and a better GPU, or hunt the refurbished market. This laptop shows its age and limitations too clearly to recommend at full price.