HP PAVILION 14

Design

The HP Pavilion 14 x360 took its design cues from HP’s flagship notebook Spectre, but reversed the color scheme. The shiny gold plastic lid, with its reflective HP logo, is rather ostentatious. Opening the laptop reveals a black plastic deck with a wood-grain pattern, an island-style keyboard with gold keys and a 13.3-inch, 1080p display surrounded by a thick bezel. We found the combination to be a bit loud, while a few of our colleagues found it less offensive, and one absolutely loved it. Let’s have a look at our HP Pavilion Series

Display

The 13-inch, 1080p display the HP Pavilion 14 produces sharp images. When we watched the trailer for Doctor Strange, the picture was crisp enough for us to see all the cracks around Kaecilius’ eyes. The yellow in a wizard’s cloak and Strange’s burgundy cape were true to life, but they didn’t exactly pop. The Pavilion’s panel reproduced just 62 percent of the sRGB color gamut, the same amount as the Inspiron 13, but less than the ultraportable average of 92 percent. The Switch and Aspire were far more vivid at 101 and 109 percent, respectively.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard and touchpad on the Pavilion x360 are responsive, but a tad mushy. The keys have 1.4 millimeters of vertical travel, and they require 58 grams of force to press. We managed to type at 107 words per minute with our usual 2 percent error rate.

Ports

The Pavilion has a fairly standard assortment of ports that should suffice for most of today’s peripherals. The left side of the laptop is home to the lock slot, a USB 2.0 port and headphone jack. On the right side, you’ll find an SD card reader, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output and power jack

Audio

HP and Bang & Olufsen speaker partnership has led to a number of great speakers, and the Pavilion x360s are among them. When I listened to Kanye West’s “Jesus Walks,” the vocals were loud and clear over the rhythmic chanting and sharp drums. The music easily filled our lab with sound way before the laptop reached maximum volume. The B&O Play Audio Controls app offers three audio presets, though I would recommend leaving it in music mode. You can also address the bass, treble and vocals with corresponding sliders.