[Review] HP Pavilion 15-ab292nr Spectacular Laptop at a Remarkable Price

Right off the bat, one of the first things we appreciate when looking upon HP's new notebook is the stylish and refined design that this laptop features. With a solid build and a polished metal design, the HP Pavilion 15-ab292nr doesn't resort to flashy colors to catch our attention but rather to a premium body which is something we appreciate far more.

The screen is one of the laptop's main attractions. Specifically we're looking at a 15.6 inch Full HD IPS display with touchscreen capabilities and a typical 16:9 aspect ratio. Personally I don't see much of a point in touchscreens within laptops but if it doesn't hurt the price or the performance (as is this case) then i'm all for it.

Finally, in regards to the keyboard, it's not backlit as some of you might be wondering, however we do have a fully dedicated numeric pad, something that's becoming more of an exception as we move in the direction of more portable laptops.

If you're reading this review on the HP Pavilion 15-ab292nr it's probably because you saw it has a Skylake CPU and thought it deserved a look considering the price. Fortunately for you, you're spot on.

The processor in play here is none other than the Intel Core i7 6700HQ. This is, as you can tell by the name, a 6th generation Skylake processor. Domestically, and within the market of consumer laptops that are not designed for gaming, this is one of the best processors available which means you can throw the most resource intensive tasks at this laptop and you'll hardly have any problems, that's how good it is.

Moving on to the more technical points worth considering, this CPU has 6 MB of cache, runs 4 cores, it's built on a 14 nm technology and clocks in at 2.6 GHz reaching a maximum speed of 3.5 GHz once Turbo boost is activated. Not too shabby of you ask me.

In terms of memory thing are looking quite good with 8 GB of DDR3L RAM running at a standard 1600 MHz. This is plenty of RAM for general multitasking and for those who like running several programs at a time it should be more than enough. However, for those who wish to futureproof the laptop even more we should point out that it's possible to expand the memory up to 16 GB.

This is an extremely unnecessary amount of RAM for the use we give laptops today but if you're eager to keep this laptop with you for quite a few years then it's a worthy and relatively inexpensive investment (8 GB of compatible RAM is very cheap)

The short answer to the latter question is : no, this is not a gaming laptop. That said, it doesn't perform badly with games it's just not designed for that purpose so it doesn't do a great job at it.

The graphics card HP placed on this laptop is an integrated Intel HD Graphics 530. This graphics is good for running games like supreme commander or warframe, but running high end modern games like witcher 3 or Fallout 4 at a good frame rate is pretty much out of the question.

For occasional or "casual gamers" this laptop should be a good fit but for those looking for an affordable full on gaming laptop they should really turn towards something like the Dell Inspiron i7559-763BLK (full review here).

Storage is a sticky subject nowadays. You can either get ample storage or really fast storage but for an affordable price you can very rarely get both. In this case HP took the safe bet and placed a Serial ATA hard drive with a 1 TB storage capacity. 

We insist that you can upgrade to a 250 GB SSD for less than $100 but truthfully, as fast as this laptop is on its own we don't know if it's something that most people would really notice on a regular basis. You would notice it with stuff like video rendering and the likes but if you don't do stuff that require quick response times from the storage then you might as well keep the hard drive that's in place.

As for the battery life, it's not bad but as we all know a Core i7 CPU is a bit more powerhungry than an i5. That said, with it's 4 cell battery HP promises up to 7 hours of battery life.  Translating this onto real life usage and we could probably get about 5 hours worth of battery life without breaking a sweat.

Wrapping things up, the HP Pavilion 15-ab292nr comes with all the standard connectivity options we have come to expect of mid to high range laptops. That means 3 USB ports (two of them being USB 3.0), a HDMI 1.4 port to connect the laptop onto another display, an ethernet port for ultra fast internet connection, Bluetooth 4.0 and of course a top notch WiFi connection with the latest 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac standard.

We would also like to take a second to mention the quality of the audio, courtesy of B&O (Bang & Olufsen) technology. This will make stuff like streaming movies or listening to music a more enjoyable experience.

There's also a Full HD webcam that we couldn't ignore, a DVD burner and a card reader to pass on all the pictures from our cameras.

It's not everyday that we find a laptop that meets nearly all of our requirements and that's essentially a great laptop, independently of the price it has attached to it. After reviewing the HP Pavilion 15-ab292nr we can say that this laptop is one of those models. A model whose price is irrelevant because it's quite simply a great computer.

The screen is crisp and clear, the processor is top notch, the RAM is more than enough yet still upgradable, the graphics card is good for some gaming and great for everything else, the storage is ample and the battery life is good. The only thing we would change would be, perhaps, add an SSD unit, though we're unsure if the difference would be worthwhile in this case.

Overall, you simply can't go wrong with this laptop.