Pros: Quad Core processor, 6 GB of RAM, 1 TB of storage, Touchscreen, ultra low price.
Cons: Not a gaming laptop.
Finding an affordable and functional 17 inch laptop may prove to be a challenge for many of us. However, sometimes we come across a gem in the making like the one we're going to tackle on today; the HP Pavilion 17-g151cy.
We say it's a gem because of its competitive pricing (check out its price over here), mid range specs and an attractive 17 inch touchscreen. That said, we don't want to spill all the details on the intro so we would like to invite you guys to keep reading as we unravel our full review of the HP Pavilion 17-g151cy. Jump in!
Do people love or hate this laptop? Find out here!
HP Pavilion 17-g151cy Reviewing a 17 inch touchscreen laptop
Design and Display
The HP Pavilion 17-g151cy is a bit different from the get go, but we say that as a good thing. This particular model comes with an attractive design with a purple exterior and a brushed metal polish on the "palm rest section". It features a fully fledged island style keyboard with a dedicated numeric pad and an ample trackpad well suited for gesture controls.
As stated, we're looking at a 17 inch laptop, specifically a 17.3 inch laptop with a WLED backlit display and a conventional 1600 by 900 pixel resolution over your standard 16:9 aspect ratio. HP didn't exactly reinvent the wheel over here but the touchscreen provides an added bonus, especially if this laptop is bought with children or designers in mind.
The overall weight of the laptop is of 6.7 pounds and in terms of thickness it occupies a little over an inch. All in all, these are the standard measurements of notebooks of this size.
AMD processor and a whole lot of RAM. What does this mean?
When taking a peek over at the internals we should point out that the Pavilion 17-g151cy houses an AMD A4-6210 processor. This particular model works with 4 cores, 2 MB of cache and clocks in at 1.8 GHz.
If you're not accustomed to AMD processors and you come from Intel models then this would be the equivalent of a third generation Core i3 CPU.
Overall this is a fundamentally good processor for most of our "regular tasks". Surfing the web, gossiping on friends through Skype and watching movies from your bed shouldn't pose an issue as this CPU is basically meant for that kind of stuff. Of course if you need more horsepower because you're going to be working the processor round the clock with several demanding programs and games then we can tell you upfront that this CPU won't be able to fit the bill.
As far as RAM goes, we were happily surprised when we uncovered that the 17-g151cy comes with 6 GB of DDR3L SDRAM. This should be enough for most of our multitasking needs and if you consider that 4 GB is the standard within this price point you're really getting quite a bargain from that point of view.
Let's talk gaming...
You can probably tell by now that this is not a gaming laptop. Far from it. The HP Pavilion 17-g151cy in review comes with an AMD Radeon R3 integrated graphics card. This is a card that can play some 2013/2014 titles at a decent rate when we lower our resolution but overall it's not a good choice for gaming.
Games like Dirt Rally will run at a decent 49 frames when resolution is lowered significantly to a 1024 by 768. Sims 4 will also perform quite well under that same resolution. However, other titles such as Assassin's Creed Unity and Far Cry 4 will basically beg you to smash your laptop on the wall, even at the lowest of settings.
Plenty of storage and an average battery life
Generally speaking, it's not easy to find notebooks with ample storage at this price. However, the HP Pavilion 17-g151cy does serve us with 1 TB of Hard Drive storage that works at your standard 5400 rpm speed.
As far as battery life is concerned, we've got a 4 cell battery that, while the company doesn't disclose the amount of time we have of battery life it's fair play to speculate that the number moves around the 3 hour range. After all, it's a 17 inch laptop so we know it wasn't really designed with the intention of being dragged from one place to another.
What can I plug into this notebook? And what else do I need to know?
As is expected on a 17 inch notebook, the 17-g151cy houses plenty of ports. Starting off with 2 USB 3.0 ports, we've also got an additional USB 2.0 port, an ethernet port, HDMI as well as your run of the mill audio combo. There's also your standard webcam and SD card reader.
There's also your standard WiFi b/g/n connectivity though surprisingly there doesn't seem to be Bluetooth support. The OS in question is our beloved Windows 10 in its 64 bit variant and we would like to give a shout out to the B&O speakers technology.
Closing Statements
Finally, in wrapping up our review of the HP Pavilion 17-g151cy we gotta say we've been very pleasantly surprised. Sure, this isn't what one would call a powerhouse laptop but for those of us who don't actually NEED to do a million things at a time and render 4K video while we juggle rocket designs, it's actually a very compelling laptop.
What we love the most is it's touchscreen, vast RAM and ample storage. The CPU could be better but for everyday tasks you probably won't even notice the difference. Overall, it's a 4 star notebook on our book.
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