HP Pavilion Laptop 16
MSRP $1,509.00
Score Details
“The HP Pavilion 16 is a decent 16-inch machine, but it should cost a lot less.”
Pros
- Reasonably solid build
- Good enough performance
Cons
- Disappointing battery life
- IPS display has poor colors
- Too expensive
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Specs and configuration
Design
Keyboard and touchpad
Connectivity and webcam
Performance
Battery life
Display
A near-budget laptop that doesn’t have a near-budget price
I’ve been reviewing more budget laptops lately, or at least those that are near-budget at $1,000 or less. That’s on purpose, because not everybody has $1,500 or more to spend on a laptop. HP’s Pavilion lineup, which will be transitioning to the budget version of its new OmniBook line that covers all the company’s consumer machines, has served that kind of consumer in the past.
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Right now, the Pavilion Laptop 16 is a machine that people might look to for a large-format laptop that won’t break the bank. And it has a number of features that straddle the fence between premium and budget but aren’t quite midrange, either. The problem is, the Pavilion Laptop 16 starts at $1,100, where it seems like it should be offered at a few hundred dollars less.
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Specs and configuration
HP Pavilion Laptop 16
Dimensions
14.08 x 10.03 x 0.70 inches
Weight
3.92 pounds
Display
16.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS, 60Hz, touch or non-touch
CPU
Intel Core Ultra 7 155U
GPU
Intel Iris Xe
Memory
16GB
32GB
Storage
512GB SSD
1TB SSD
2TB SSD
Ports
2 x USB-C
2 x USB-A
1 x HDMI 2.1
1 x 3.5mm audio jack
Camera
720p with infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello
Wireless
Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3
Battery
59 watt-hour
Operating system
Windows 11
Price
$1,100+
The Pavilion Laptop 16 starts at $1,100 for a Core Ultra 7 155U, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, and a 16.0-inch FHD+ IPS display (with or without touch). Upgrading to 32GB costs $150 while storage can be upgraded to 1TB ($70) and 2TB ($210). That makes the most expensive configuration with a touch display come in at $1,509.
Most often, laptops like this one are heavily discounted, but HP currently offers this one at list prices only. And frankly, that’s just too expensive. You can get laptops for under $1,000 with better displays, performance, and battery life. If the Pavilion Laptop 16 cost $800, I’d look at it very differently.
Design
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Pavilion Laptop 16 is constructed of all aluminum, and it’s reasonably solid. There’s a little bit of bendiness in the lid and the keyboard deck depresses a little under pressure. But overall, the build quality is fine. HP’s OmniBook lineup is a lot more solid, though, and they’re not that much more expensive (or around the same price).
The machine is also fairly large, with plastic bezels that are thin along the edges but rather large on top and bottom. That makes the Pavilion Laptop 16 fairly side and deep, although it’s reasonably thin at 0.70 inches and it’s just under four pounds in weight. You can get smaller and thinner 16-inch laptops, with the Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 being a prime example at just 0.50 inches thick and 3.73 pounds.
Aesthetically, the Pavilion Laptop 16 is very plain, and that’s fine. Many laptops today have minimalist designs with no bling. I keep referring to HP’s own OmniBook lineup, because the company knows how to make elegant laptops that are also simple in design. This one is not the best example of that, though.
Keyboard and touchpad
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
HP makes some great keyboards, most notably the excellent version they used on their older Spectre lineup and most recently on the new OmniBook machines. This one isn’t quite the same. Its keycaps are a little small, and while there’s a lot of key spacing, the switches are too loose. It’s not a bad keyboard, exactly, it’s just that HP has done a lot better.
The touchpad is smaller than it could be given the available space on the palm rest, and it works well enough as a mechanical version with reasonably quiet button clicks. It’s not bad, either, but not as good as the excellent haptic touchpad HP uses on some of its machines.
Connectivity and webcam
The Pavilion Laptop 16 is a large laptop and so there’s plenty of room for connectivity. While there’s a large selection of ports, it’s disappointing that none are Thunderbolt 4. Once again, I’m reminded that this is a near-budget laptop in design but not in price. Wireless connectivity is just one step behind, which is fine.
The webcam is the first I’ve seen in a while that’s less than 1080p, at just 720p. Its image isn’t great, and the Core Ultra 7 155U chipset doesn’t have a fast Neural Processing Unit (NPU) to support any on-device AI features. There’s an infrared camera for Windows 11 Hello facial recognition, which worked well.
Performance
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Intel Core Ultra 7 155U is a 15-watt chipset that’s Intel’s previous generation chipset. It has 12 cores (two Performance, eight efficient, and two Low-Power Efficient) and 14 threads, running at up t0 4.8GHz. It’s been superseded by Intel’s Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X chipsets that are aimed at much better efficiency. The very first problem is that you can get the newer chipsets in laptops costing the same as or less than the Pavilion Laptop 16.
The second problem is that the Pavilion Laptop 16’s performance doesn’t stand out. It’s considerably slower than Lunar Lake and even more so than Qualcomm’s latest chipsets. It’s okay for basic productivity tasks, but it’s not going to keep up with other contemporary laptops. As we’ll see, it also doesn’t have the efficiency benefits of Lunar Lake, so there’s no good reason for the compromise. And, its Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics aren’t very fast, meaning it’s not a great choice for gamers or creators.
Handbrake
(seconds)
Geekbench 6
(single/multi)
3DMark
Wild Life Extreme
HP Pavilion Laptop 16
(Core Ultra 7 155U / Intel Iris Xe)
123
2261 / 9729
2529
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i
(Core i5-1235U / Intel Iris Xe)
139
2228 / 8287
2971
Asus Zenbook 14 OLED
(Ryzen 5 7530U / Radeon graphics)
121
1488 / 8207
N/A
Acer Swift Go 14 AI
(Snapdragon X Plus / Adreno)
N/A
2413 / 11388
3231
Acer Swift 14 AI
(Core Ultra 7 258V / Intel Arc 140V)
92
2755 / 11138
5294
HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14
(Core Ultra 7 258V / Intel Arc 140V)
99
2483 / 10725
7573
HP Spectre x360 14
(Core Ultra 7 155H / Intel Arc)
83
2176 / 11980
N/A
Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i Aura Edition
(Core Ultra 7 258V / Intel Arc 140V)
88
2485 / 10569
5217
Asus Zenbook S 14
(Core Ultra 7 258V / Intel Arc 140V)
N/A
2738 / 10734
7514
HP OmniBook X
(Snapdragon X Elite / Adreno)
N/A
2377 / 13490
6165
MacBook Air
(M3)
109
3102 / 12078
8098
Battery life
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Intel Core Ultra 7 155U chipset is a member of the previous generation that wasn’t as focused on efficiency as newer chipsets like Intel’s Lunar Lake and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X. But, it’s the lower-power version of its generation, so when combine with a low-resolution IPS display but only 59 watt-hours of battery capacity, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.
I’ve provided more than a few comparison laptops to give an idea of what to expect from the Pavilion Laptop 16. It didn’t do badly, exactly, compared to earlier laptops, but it’s nowhere near the current crop of machines. You won’t get nearly a day’s worth of battery life, even running basic tasks, compared to many other laptops that will get a full day and then some.
Web browsing
Video
HP Pavilion Laptop 16
(Core Ultra 7 155U)
6 hours 9 minutes
10 hours, 15 minutes
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i
(Core Ultra i5-1235U)
4 hours, 47 minutes
9 hours, 24 minutes
HP Spectre x360 14
(Core Ultra 7 155H)
7 hours, 9 minutes
14 hours, 22 minutes
Asus Zenbook 14 OLED
(Ryzen 5 7530U)
12 hours, 13 minutes
17 hours, 19 minutes
Acer Swift Go 14 AI
(Snapdragon X Plus)
15 hours, 29 minutes
21 hours, 38 minutes
Acer Swift 14 AI
(Core Ultra 7 258V)
17 hours, 22 minutes
24 hours, 10 minutes
HP OmniBook Ultra Flip 14
(Core Ultra 7 258V)
11 hours, 5 minutes
15 hours, 46 minutes
Asus Zenbook S 14
(Core Ultra 7 258V)
16 hours, 47 minutes
18 hours, 35 minutes
Microsoft Surface Laptop 7
(Snapdragon X Elite X1E-80-100)
14 hours, 21 minutes
22 hours, 39 minutes
HP Omnibook X
(Snapdragon X Elite X1E-78-100)
13 hours, 37 minutes
22 hours, 4 minutes
Apple MacBook Air
(Apple M3)
19 hours, 38 minutes
19 hours, 39 minutes
Display
Mark Coppock / Digital Trends
The Pavilion Laptop 16 has just one display option, a 16.0-inch 16:10 FHD+ (1920 x 1200) IPS panel running at 60Hz, which is available with and without touch. That’s not high enough resolution for me at this screen size, with text that comes across as quite pixellated. The display seems plenty bright and blacks aren’t too gray, so those are plusses. But, colors did seem muted to me.
My colorimeter confirmed those impressions. Brightness is definitely great at 404 nits, and contrast exceeds our 1,000:1 threshold at 1,210:1. That’s not OLED-level of inky blacks, but it’s good for IPS technology. Colors, though, weren’t very wide, at just 69% of sRGB, 49% of AdobeRGB, and 49% of DCI-P3, where average IPS displays today come in at 100%, 75%, and 75%, respectively. And color accuracy wasn’t very good at a DeltaE of 2.70, where productivity users want 2.0 or better.
If this were bona fide budget laptop, I would be more forgiving. But starting at $1,100, this display just isn’t good enough.
A near-budget laptop that doesn’t have a near-budget price
It might very well be that I caught the Pavilion Laptop 16 in between a sale price that would make it a lot more attractive. It’s fast enough for most productivity users, and it’s built well enough. But its battery life isn’t great and its display just isn’t colorful enough.
That makes the Pavilion Laptop 16 hard to recommend. You can get some much better laptops for the same or less money, and they’ll have better displays, better performance, and better battery life. If HP drops the price a bit, I’ll be happy to revisit the machine.
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