HP Pavilion 15-EH1040AU 

The HP PAVILION 15-EH1040AU  which is also known as Ultrabook is a tough one to define. If you take the word to mean any laptop with the appearance of being slim then this absolutely slots in there. The hp pavilion 15 ryzen 5 looks absolutely fantastic for its price point, with HP trimming things back a long way. The screen, for example, is plenty thin and far stiffer than typically plastic-cased laptop. It’s clearly well-braced inside because it doesn’t have the benefit of a glass front to offer it extra rigidity. This does make using the touchscreen a little sticker than the same experience on a glass panel, but that’s a simple concession that is easily made to hit a price point. The base is similarly svelte-looking, with clever angles used to hide its slightly bulbous belly. Which does bring us to the other potential meaning of the word Ultrabook. When compared to the older 2019 design, this new model has narrower top and bottom bezels for a smaller footprint while using the same metal and plastic materials. The speaker grilles along the top of the keyboard are now gone for a more simplistic appearance. Also checkout our Pavilion Gaming Series

Processor

The HP PAVILION 15-EH1040AU is equipped with the 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 micro-architecture. 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 long-term performance sustainability of a mobile CPU tends to depend on hevily on power limits as well as the cooling system performance of a laptop. That being said, the average 5500U in our database proves to be a very capable ULV CPU with performance levels approaching 45 W Intel Core i7 parts such as the Core i7-9750H and Core i7-10750H. The Ryzen will have no trouble chewing through pretty much any workload, as of late 2021.

Display

The display of HP PAVILION 15-EH1040AU is good. It’s good in that the contrast ratio is relatively high for a budget laptop at over 1000:1 and that images are sharp because of the glossy overlay. Response times are also decent for reduced ghosting when playing games. In the Pavilion 15’s display, HP has opted for a tried-and-tested Full HD 1080p resolution that’s ideal for day-to-day working. The sizable 15.6-inch IPS display presents enough screen real estate for an ideal experience when streaming films or television. In addition, the display only covers about 67.6% of the sRGB color space used by most applications and websites. Coupled with a gamma of only 1.78 (2.2 is usually ideal), everything’s going to look a bit washed out compared with more high-end displays, and colors were far from accurate in our measurements. That means when the computer sends a specific shade to the screen, the screen might display a shade that’s a bit “off” from the intended color (with this particular display casting a slight blue hue compared to the ideal). If you aren’t doing photo and video editing, that probably won’t matter a ton to you, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

Keyboard

The keyboard layout has changed slightly from the 2019 model. The power button, for example, is now a regular keyboard key instead of being off to the left corner. Otherwise, the typing experience remains largely the same. Feedback is surprisingly firm and with good travel to be better than the spongier and lighter keys of the Asus VivoBook or Lenovo IdeaPad. The NumPad keys offer similar feedback to the QWERTY keys for a good sense of uniformity. It’s unfortunate that the NumPad keys are narrower and therefore more cramped for larger fingers.

Touchpad

The Precision clickpad is relatively large at 11.5 x 7.4 cm to be essentially the same as the clickpad on the Envy 15. Traction is smooth when gliding at medium-to-fast speeds while slower speeds will result in moderate sticking to aid in precision. On the other hand, clicking on the clickpad is both shallow and spongy for an uncomfortable experience without an external mouse.

Ports

The HP PAVILION 15-EH1040AU is equipped with two USB ports, one HDMI port, an Ethernet port, and a headphone jack. A simple port selection for a simple laptop. One will find the basic port selection having everything they need, all except for the ones who need every port known to man for their work. In that case, the Apple Macbook Pro 13 has a much more diverse port selection that should be more suitable.

Battery

The battery of HP PAVILION 15-EH1040AU lasts for 7hrs 30mins in the benchmark test Capable of lasting for one working day. The benchmarks demonstrate that the HP Pavilion 15 is a laptop punching above its weight when it comes to performance

Verdict

The HP Pavilion 15’s modern looks and sturdy build quality make it ideal for those who want a laptop that will last and look the part in-office meetings. Many modern Ultrabooks have ditched what would now be deemed as legacy ports, such as older USB-As and HDMI, so it’s nice to see HP support these rather than forcing you to convert to USB-C and Thunderbolt. With its stellar benchmark scores in PCMark 10 and the Geekbench 5 multi-core tests, the Pavilion 15 is ideal for those who want to power through their office workloads without any slowdown.