HP 15-eg0025nr Review

The HP Pavilion 15 is a portable powerhouse. Everything on this laptop seems well thought – from its clean design, crisp display, quality audio to a palatable price tag. It’s among the first laptops we’re reviewing with Intel’s 11^th generation Core i7-1165G7 processor, and for the price, it’s real value for money.

In addition to the 11^th Gen chip, you’re getting Intel Xe graphics, 16GB RAM, and 512GB SSD storage. This is the same spec sheet you get with our top pick from last year, the HP 15-eg0021nr, only that the new model comes with Windows 11 OS pre-installed, while its predecessor comes with Windows 10 but is still upgradable to the latest operating system.

Everything else, from design, battery life, and performance, remains similar on HP Pavilion 15 laptop models. Both handle everyday tasks smoothly, ranging from web surfing, emails, watching videos, and pretty everything else you’d wish to do on a laptop. All these make the HP pavilion 15 an excellent choice for anyone looking for a daily-use notebook for work and school.

HP 15-eg0025nr Specs

Design

The Pavilion 15-eg0025nr sports a minimalist gray chassis and an easy-to-open lid that might make many creatives mistake it for another professional notebook, but the stylized Chrome HP logo on the cover is visible enough to give the game away. Nevertheless, the chassis is sleek and feels luxurious, marking it for a professional laptop.

For portability, the HP Pavilion 15 is a very compact laptop. Still, as with most 15-inch laptops, it doesn’t carry a small profile – measuring 14.18 x 9.21 x 0.70 inches, 3.86 pounds – with a full-size chiclet keyboard, number pad, and a 15.6-inch display with thin bezels.

In terms of ports, the right-side holds a single USB Type-C port (with Type-C display support), USB 2.0 Type-A, HDMI, and a microSD slot. The left side has a single USB 2.0 Type-A and a charging port. Wireless connectivity comes via Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.

Display

The HP Pavilion 15’s display is not the strongest in photo editing. It features a full HD (1920 x 1080 resolution) and integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, but it still doesn’t cut for reliable photo work or digital art. All it does is let you watch and process data on a bright screen, with wide color gamut coverage at 250 nits brightness.

If you’re after a laptop for any photo work, you’re better off with one that rocks a dedicated graphics card and better screen brightness. In any case, if your computer of choice can’t give you at least 300 nits of maximum brightness in 2021, you should seriously reconsider it. For that, you can consider something like the HP Envy 13 or the Razer Blade Stealth 13.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The HP 15-eg0025nr has an excellent keyboard that’s easy to type on. The keys have nice key travel – not Lenovo ThinkPad T490 good, but they still feel comfortable than most laptops at this price range. They have underlighting, which means you can work away late at night without straining.

Another thing to note about this keyboard is that the power switch is located on the top-right of the keyboard, rather than being a button or switch on the side of the chassis. Again, the keycaps feel similar to those on the HP Envy 13, but there’s room for a number pad here since the HP Pavilion is bigger.

The trackpad is a bit complex to use out of the box, but once you adjust the sensitivity level up in settings, you’d be able to use it easily. Having reviewed the Asus ZenBook 14, the slickest trackpad, I feel that all other trackpads are not the best for me.

HP Pavilion 15 performance

The HP Pavilion 15 is magnificent for daily PC office work. Performance is one of the compelling features, especially the model we’re reviewing with an 11^th generation Intel Core i7-1165G7 processor, 16 GB RAM, and 512GB SSD of storage. That right there is a robust feature set for a non-gaming laptop designed for office or schoolwork.

As we mentioned before, this isn’t a gaming laptop. Still, the overlap between professional creatives and gamers’ hardware makes it for a distinction without much difference, except for the graphics card option. With the Pavilion 15, you can only run basic games, but it’s one of the best you can get around on other office tasks.

With that in mind, you’re sure that the HP 15-eg0025nr might not be your next gaming laptop; it isn’t the Acer Predator Helios 300 or the ASUS TUF Gaming A15. But if you’re looking for a work computer that will turn around and deliver some quality on day-to-day use, you can’t go wrong here.

Battery Life

The HP Pavilion 15 offers good battery life – around 6 hours 32 minutes off the mains is excellent, with the display’s brightness maxed at 150 nits. HP’s official spec sheet says over 8 hours, but that is in my experience. The figure only makes sense if you’re not doing much on the laptop.

Bottom line

The new HP Pavilion 15 packs solid processing power at a reasonable price, and this is especially true when you’re not spending more for the latest 11^th generation Core i7-1165G7 processor. It stands out as one of the few powerful workstations you can nab without paying a premium. Also, the sleek chassis and compact design make it a perfect companion for toting around on daily travel or to college.

However, suppose you need something portable for gaming and complex media editing. In that case, we’d recommend the Razer Blade Stealth 13, which also features a newer Intel Core i7-1165G7 quad-core processor and a dedicated GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q graphics card.

That said if all you need is a sleek-looking, powerful, and reasonably priced laptop that can be tweaked for performance, the HP Pavilion 15-eg0025nr is an excellent choice.