HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1 14 Laptop Review: Premium & Flexible Thin-and-Light

Following the pandemic, the rise of remote working led many PC makers to build laptops that were both efficient and capable. HP was one such brand, launching various notebooks that fit the growing requirements of consumers across the globe.

Recently, the brand unveiled the 2023 Pavilion x360 2-in-1 14 model, which was built to cater to casual consumers and professionals. We’ve had the chance to review this laptop, so let’s see if it is worth the Rs 83,999 price tag and whether it holds its own against the competitors.

Design & Display

With a premium price tag, buyers would expect to get a laptop that looks great and feels luxurious. The HP Pavilion x360 delivers on this with a full metal body that has a soft finish and a compact and lightweight design. It measures just 1.89cm in thickness and weighs around 1.51 kilograms. This makes it a thin-and-light notebook that offers excellent portability that people working remotely would appreciate. Special mention to the Pale Rose Gold colour, which looked gorgeous under certain lighting.

It features a full 360-degree hinge that lets you use the laptop as a tablet by flipping the keyboard to the back. The Pavilion x360 doesn’t offer a full-sized keyboard (you’ll be missing the Numpad), but the small form factor didn’t ruin the typing experience. HP ensures that the keys have decent spacing, and despite the key travel being rather shallow, the overall typing experience was pretty decent. Right underneath the keyboard, the trackpad can be found, which isn’t too large, but it is accurate and responsive. For security, there is a fingerprint scanner as well, which never had a false reading in my almost month-long testing.

Ports on the left (USB Type-C, a 3.5mm audio jack, and HDMI)

Arriving at the display, the notebook sports a 14-inch IPS LCD panel that is surrounded by thin bezels on the sides. The top bezel houses a 5MP HP True Vision webcam that also offers a manual shutter for added privacy as well as dual microphones. The screen outputs 250 nits of peak brightness. This is a bit disappointing since its usability outdoors on bright days falls drastically, and the display is quite reflective, too since any light source hitting the screen directly will take away from the viewing experience.

Apart from these nitpicks, the display offers great viewing angles, and watching anything on this laptop was a good experience overall. Another ace up its sleeves was the touchscreen support. We have personally never really liked touchscreen support on the Windows platform, but we admit that HP’s laptop did sway me a bit since it was pretty convenient in many situations. It won’t be my primary input source, but the feature is handy. The laptop also comes with an HP Rechargeable MPP2.0 Tilt Pen that lets you edit, write, and doodle on this laptop with ease. But there was an issue with the input latency at times.

Performance

The HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1 14 model that we reviewed was equipped with an Intel i5-1335U processor that was unveiled earlier this year. This processor from Team Blue is a 10-core mobile CPU that has a base frequency of 1.3GHz and a max frequency of 4.6GHz. Long story short, it ensured that my experience with the laptop was a breeze with no stutters, even when we had a dozen tabs open while downloading large files, sitting on Discord, and listening to music on Spotify. This chip is paired with 16GB of LPDDR4 RAM and 1TB of PCIe NVMe SSD storage.

Since this is a thin-and-light model, we wouldn’t recommend gaming on the Pavilion x360. Although the processor and its Intel Iris Xe iGPU are capable of handling competitive games like Valorant. This game isn’t exactly a good benchmark, but the laptop managed to get between 80 to 100fps at 1080p resolution on low settings. There were some stutters, and gaming for too long will have the Pavilion get really hot.

For synthetic benchmarks, we ran the device through Cinebench, PCMark 10, and 3DMark. It scored 5,712 points on the multi-core test and 1,058 points on the single-core test. On 3DMark, the Time Spy Score came in at 1,293 points (1,153 Graphics score & 4,197 CPU score). PCMark 10 gave it a score of 4,249 points. Keep in mind that benchmarks don’t offer a full picture of performance, but these are decent scores for a 13th Gen Intel i5 (U series) processor.

Audio & Connectivity

HP’s Pavilion x360 features twin speakers that are housed on the bottom and are optimised by Bang & Olufsen. However, these aren’t all that loud, so wearing headphones or using external speakers would be better when you’re watching your favourite movies or series.

Ports on the right (2 x USB 3.2 Type-A ports, microSD card slot, and charging port)

The laptop comes with a healthy selection of ports. You get a USB Type-C port for power delivery and DisplayPort 1.4 function along with two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a 3.5mm audio jack, and a microSD card slot. It also supports Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 connectivity, both of which were stable, and we never had any issues with wireless connections.

Battery

We were pretty satisfied with the battery life on the 2023 HP Pavilion x360. On average, we managed around 5 to 6 hours on a single full charge. This was with around 70% brightness levels and balanced power mode. While our regular use wasn’t too intense, the typical day did have us running a bunch of tabs on Chrome along with Spotify and Discord throughout the day. The laptop was powered by a 43Whr battery pack that supports 65W fast charging (present in the box).

So is it worth buying?

In this price range, the competition is high, and there are many great options to choose from. For Rs 83,999 price tag, the ASUS Vivobook S 15 OLED is also a great rival. This model offers an OLED display, a faster i5-13500H processor, and a larger battery. However, this doesn’t mean that the HP Pavilion x360 2-in-1 14 laptop is under-delivering.

Thin-and-light laptops with a compact 14-inch display that offers a touchscreen panel aren’t too common in the market at this price range. So for those looking to get the utmost performance or a colour-accurate display, this laptop isn’t for you. But if you are looking for a laptop with a premium design, good battery life, and the convenience of touchscreen functionality, the 2023 HP Pavilion x360 is an easy recommendation.

Also read: Nothing Phone 2 Review: A Complete Package?

PriceBaba’s Rating: 8.5/10

Reasons To Buy:

• Premium design with a lightweight body
• Good battery life
• Decent performance overall
• Touchscreen support
• A healthy selection of ports

Reasons Not to Buy:

• Stylus isn’t useful for creative professionals
• The display could be better (resolution, brightness, refresh rate)
• Speakers are below average

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