HP introduced the Pavilion Gaming laptop line in 2018 with the idea that it’s possible to offer a decent gaming experience in a laptop with starting price well below $1000.
The original HP Pavilion Gaming laptop packed a 15.6 inch display, an 8th-gen Intel Core H-series processor, and support for NVIDIA or AMD graphics.
Now HP is launching a new model with support for up to an Intel Core i7-10750H hexa-core processor and up to NVIDIA GeForce 2060 Max-Q graphics. The new HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 also has a slightly larger display, and it’s available with up to a 144 Hz refresh rate.
The new HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 measures 14.6″ x 10.3″ x 0.9″ and weighs about 5.2 pounds with a 52.5 Wh battery.
The notebook has a 16.1 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel IPS display (with support for up to a 144 Hz 3–nit refresh rate, although 60 Hz versions are also available.
Under the hood, there are two SODIMM slots for DDR4-2933 memory and the notebook supports PCIe NVME solid state storage, Intel Optane memory, and .5inch SATA hard drives.
Ports include:
- HDMI 2.0
- USB Type-C (5 Gbps with DisplayPort 1.4 output)
- 2 x USB Type-A (5 Gbps, including one with HP Sleep and Charge support)
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 3.5mm audio
- SD card reader
The laptop has stereo speakers, a backlit, island-style keyboard with a numeric keypad, and a touchpad that the company says is 22-percent larger than the previous-gen model. HP also says the 16.1 inch display offers 7-percent more viewing area than a 15.6 inch screen.
You don’t get some premium features with the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16. There’s no Thunderbolt 3 port, for example. And the graphics top out at RTX 2060 rather than NVIDIA’s higher-performance RTX 2070 or RTX 2080 GPUs.
But what you do get is a relatively affordable gaming notebook with a relatively compact body featuring a 80-percent screen-to-body ratio. I just wouldn’t expect stellar battery life while gaming with that 52.5 Wh battery.
The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 should be available this month.