HP Notebook 15-EF2126WM

The top and bottom, as well as the edges of the affordable HP Notebook 15-EF2126WM are made of metal, the areas around the keyboard and display are made of a more affordable-looking plastic. The transitions between the materials are even, but they are very visible. The manufacturer forgoes extremely slim bezels to some extent, making the bezel above the display slightly thicker. However, this also means that the webcam does not need to wander to some more exotic place. The lid opening angle is limited to about 140°, and the hinges hold the lid tightly in place. The workmanship is good, but the bottom of the case cannot be opened without a large amount of effort. To simply remove the screws is not enough to open the bottom of the case. Even using some fancier tools such as plastic prying tools, we gave up trying to open the case out of fear of damaging it.

Processor

The HP Notebook 15 is equipped with AMD Ryzen 5 5500U is a hexa-core APU of the Lucienne product family designed for leaner laptops. Its six CPU cores are based on the Zen 2 microarchitecture. The cores run at 2.1 (clock speed) to 4 GHz (Boost) and support SMT for a total of 12 threads. The chip is manufactured on the modern 7 nm TSMC process. The costlier Ryzen 5 5600U is based on newer Zen 3 architecture and also has higher clock speeds. Compared to the older Ryzen 5 4500U (Renoir), Ryzen 5 5500U has SMT support but the specs are otherwise very similar betweeen the two.