Gaming PC, creative PC, office PC… Laptops as light as they are powerful, with the best screens and the best components. You can’t help but look for the best of everything, but it’s impossible to find it: you will necessarily have to balance each aspect to find the perfect compromise.
So if you’re looking for an ultrabook that’s also capable of playing the latest video games, finding a laptop like the HP Pavilion Plus 14 with a graphics card might be tempting. Let’s see what he has in his stomach.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFTechnical sheet
| Model | HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NF |
|---|---|
| Screen size | 14 inches |
| Definition | 2880 x 1800 pixels |
| Display technology | OLED |
| Touchscreen | No |
| Processor (CPU) | Core i7-1255U |
| Graphics chip (GPU) | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050 |
| Memory (RAM) | 16 GB |
| Internal memory | 1TB |
| Wi-Fi standard | WiFi 6E |
| Bluetooth version | 5.3 |
| Operating system (OS) | Microsoft Windows 11 |
| Dimensions | 224.2 x 18.4 x 313.5mm |
| Weight | 1400 grams |
| Repairability index? | 5.6/10 |
| Price | €1,099 |
Product sheet |
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFDesign
HP, or Hewlett Packard for those old-timers at the back of the room, is in an odd position in the market in terms of design. On the one hand, it has the Specter brand often at the forefront of modern lines. And on the other… There’s Pavilion. This category that our product is part of, which seems to be locked in the same lines since the early 2010s and has never really evolved. This is the remark that we naturally make when taking the computer in hand.
Because yes, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is “light”… like an ultrabook from the beginning of the previous decade, i.e. 1.4 kilos when many are now approaching a kilo or even falling below this bar. It has the lines of a 2010s MacBook copycat, with a slightly rounded (but not too much) light gray metal body whose inspiration leans towards unibody but whose construction isn’t. . And it has the same dimensions, moreover, at 31.35 x 22.42 x 1.84 cm, when finesse has also become very accessible in the meantime.
All this does not mean that the formula no longer works. Quite the contrary: the HP Pavilion Plus 14 remains a very well-built laptop, easily transportable everywhere, and which will never shock the eye of the onlooker passing by. Like Dell, HP is actually still very influenced by its place in the B2B market where originality is not really in order, but this very pragmatic side could be an advantage for some users.
Keyboard and touchpad
It is perhaps precisely this experience in B2B that allows HP to integrate here a keyboard that is instinctively perfect. The keys are well spaced, have a deeper actuation distance than most benchmarks on the market, and a very satisfying bounce. We can also count on some navigation shortcuts slipped on the right side of this configuration.
The touchpad is superbly centered at the bottom of the device, and is diagonal enough to be comfortable at all times. Only, its plastic coating is quite disappointing considering that in this price category, glass coatings are legion. The same goes for the integration of its fingerprint scanner, placed below the arrow keys and not integrated into any start button like other competitors. Here again signs of a lack of evolution in the designs of the manufacturer.
connectors
On the left of the device, there is a combo jack, a USB A 3.1 5 Gb/s port and a micro SD card reader. On the right, there is a second USB A port with the same specifications, an HDMI 2.1 port as well as two USB C 3.2 Gen 2 ports at 10 Gb / s supporting Power Delivery charging and DisplayPort 1.4.
Source: Frandroid – Chloé Pertuis
Source: Frandroid – Chloé Pertuis
A connection which on paper is not so bad, but remains disappointing by noting the forgetting of an ever more important standard which is however technically well supported by the configuration of the device. Yes, we are talking about Thunderbolt, which should be integrated on all Intel configurations sold at four digits these days.
webcam and audio
The five-megapixel webcam doesn’t really have much more to offer than the market average, namely a rather dull and poorly defined image, eaten away by noise. What to do video conferencing, and nothing more.
No good surprise on the audio configuration either. The speakers are once again located below the device, at the exact place where the laptop (emphasis on “lap”) rests on your legs which block the audio output as a result. The speakers themselves are nothing remarkable, since they still lack the general definition to be truly satisfactory. They’ll do fine for social media videos, basically.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFScreen
The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is equipped with a 14-inch OLED panel in 2880 x 1800 pixel definition, i.e. a 2.8k screen with a 16:10 ratio. This supports a refresh rate of 90Hz, but is not tactile and is not anti-reflective.
Under our probe and with the DisplayCal software, we can observe that the panel covers 168% of the sRGB space, 119% of the DCI P3 space and 116% of the Adobe RGB when it leaves the factory. Peak brightness is measured at 416 cd/m² in HDR mode, which is pretty decent for this HDR-capable setup up to 500 cd/m², although it would have benefited from the support of an anti-reflective coating to optimize increasing the readability of the screen.
Overall colorimetry isn’t impressive, but isn’t bad either. We can count on an average color temperature of 6200K, slightly very warm compared to the 6500K sought, and an average Delta E00 of 2.65 slightly far from the 1.5 sought in our test, but not bad.
We appreciate whatever happens to see a screen with a brightness greater than 300 cd / m², the average observed when manufacturers are looking to save money on their panels, and a refresh rate of 90Hz competitive in this sector.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFSoftware
The manufacturer HP never hesitates to integrate a lot of adware into its formula, and did not hold back on the Pavilion Plus 14. We are always greeted by the heartbreaking McAfee and its treacherous practices, in addition to regular notifications for a subscription to ExpressVPN or to create a Dropbox storage space.
Other than that, the management software suite provided by HP isn’t bad, but it’s not very advanced either. Half of its apps look more like a big advertisement or a mini help blog than something genuinely useful. When the application is, like HP Command Center, it fulfills its function without offering much customization and fine tuning either.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFPerformance
The HP Pavilion Plus 14-eh0001nf we’re testing here is powered by the 12th Gen Intel Core i7 1255U, a 10-core, 12-thread SoC backed by 16GB of DDR4-3200MHz RAM and 1TB of PCIe Gen 3 x4 storage . We also have a 4GB GDDR6 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2050 here at just 35W TGP.
Yes: although the SoC is recent, it is not supported by state-of-the-art hardware. Whether it’s 3200 MHz DDR4 RAM, PCIe Gen 3 storage, or that mobile RTX 2050 GPU that isn’t particularly useful on this configuration, this Pavilion Plus 14 feels a bit like a pot. – rotten components ordered in bulk by the manufacturer the year before.
General benchmarks
In terms of benchmarks, there are no bad surprises on this Intel i7-1255U, which offers us a score of 6805 points in multi core and 1712 points in single core on Cinebench R23. We have seen this SoC pushed to better scores, but these results remain average. This is further underscored by its PC Mark 10 score of 5641, which highlights that the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is fighting in the same category as its rivals.
The GeForce RTX 2050 also shows somewhat disappointing, but not surprising, performance. With a score of 1595 on Time Spy Extreme, we can’t really say that it will be able to support a heavy gamer for the next few years, but it will launch popular competitive free-to-play without problems in 1080p.
No problem to highlight on the side of the SSD provided by Samsung either, which offers the expected performance for a PCI Gen 3. The only problem is that we are entitled to expect PCIe Gen 4 storage these days.
Cooling and noise
The HP Pavilion Plus 14 has at least one advantage: it controls its heating quite well. Although it still reaches 40°C on its lower hull when pushed fully, it remains very discreet and does not take off towards other skies. In this aspect, it remains an ultrabook.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFAutonomy
The HP Pavilion Plus 14 incorporates a 51Wh battery and is compatible with the DisplayPort standard and therefore recharges via the USB-C port. It is compatible with a power supply up to 90W, whose charger is provided in the box.
The autonomy of the device is surely one of the most disappointing elements of its configuration. Since it presents itself as an ultrabook, we expect the longevity of an ultrabook; it is not so. On advanced office use, we can only count on it for 3 or 4 hours.
By really giving it every chance, by activating the energy saving mode and with limited backlighting, we therefore turn around 6 hours on average. Without even going as far as MacBook records, laptops in the Windows universe now easily reach ten hours. The HP Pavilion Plus 14 is far too limited on this point.
HP Pavilion Plus 14-EH0001NFPrice and availability
The HP Pavilion Plus 14-eh0001nf is already available in France. Our test configuration is sold at 1,599 euros on the manufacturer’s official website.
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