HP Pavilion Chromebook review

Until now, most Chromebooks have been around the size of a netbook. HP’s new Pavilion Chromebook, however, has a 14in screen and all the connectivity you’d expect from a regular laptop. A bigger screen means a higher price, though it’s still a bargain compared to Windows 8 laptops.

Its glossy black chassis looks similar to HP’s Pavilion series, but its largely plastic exterior has been reduced to 21mm in height. This makes it significantly thinner than the Budget Buy-winning Acer C7 Chromebook, and the result is a surprisingly attractive laptop. Its 1.8kg weight still makes it heavier than other Chromebooks we’ve seen, but it’s just as portable.

Of course, the Pavilion Chromebook’s main selling point is its 14in screen. It has an unremarkable 1,366×768 resolution, but we were pleased with its overall image quality. Colours could be richer and blacks a little deeper, but its contrast levels are great for a laptop at this price. We were able to pick out a high level of detail in all our high contrast test images and, although its glossy finish can be reflective at times, we could always tilt the screen to a comfortable position. Its viewing angles were good, too, and we only noticed a shift in contrast when the screen was tilted all the way back.

The Pavilion Chromebook really benefits from its larger keyboard. The extra space certainly makes working on the Pavilion Chromebook much easier for long periods of time, and its Chiclet-style keyboard makes typing comfortable. It’s by far our favourite Chromebook keyboard to date, as previous Chromebook keyboards have felt cramped and had certain keys placed in odd locations. Here, they’re all sensibly laid out with just the right amount of space between each key. The keys are flat, but provide lots of tactile feedback. We think it’s a much better keyboard than the Acer C7’s.

A row of media buttons runs along the top of the keyboard, and it also has two dedicated search keys. Tapping one lets you search the web without having to open a browser, and also provides access to your apps and widgets. You can pinpoint certain Google Docs and emails from your Gmail account too, as long as you’ve opened them on the Pavilion Chromebook before.

We liked its touchpad. It’s quite small, but was very responsive when moving our cursor around the screen. It supports a few multitouch gestures as well. We couldn’t use it to pinch-zoom, but two-finger scrolling worked perfectly.

Sitting above the keyboard is a pair of Altec Lansing speakers. No laptop speakers will ever compare to a set of dedicated speakers, but we were impressed with the overall sound quality. We could hear a fair amount of bass in our test tracks and we didn’t particularly feel the need to reach for a pair of headphones.

As for processing power, the Pavilion Chromebook has a 1.1GHz Intel Celeron 847 processor and 4GB of RAM. This is the same processor that powers Acer’s C7 Chromebook, but we were hoping the 4GB of RAM might have made the Pavilion a little quicker in our benchmark tests. Sadly, it didn’t make much of a difference. We couldn’t run our usual multimedia benchmark tests as they’re incompatible with Chrome OS, but it completed our SunSpider JavaScript benchmarks in a time of 519ms. This is roughly the same score as the C7, but it’s still a good 200ms faster than Samsung’s Series 3 Chromebook.

Unfortunately, its onboard Intel HD Graphics chip struggled when we tried to play games on it. Since we were limited to games only available on the Chrome Web Store, we ran the Chrome version of Bastion in full screen mode. It wasn’t particularly smooth, though, and the processor couldn’t keep up with our mouse movements. This led to lots of lag in our onscreen actions, but 2D Flash games like Cut the Rope and Angry Birds worked fine. We didn’t notice any visible slowdown when running these in the Chrome browser, so you’ll still be able to play a few games on the Pavilion Chromebook as long as they’re not too demanding.

One of its main advantages over other Chromebooks is its wide range of connections. It has three USB2 ports, an HDMI port for connecting it up to an external monitor, an SD and MMC card reader, a fast Ethernet port and a combined headphone and microphone jack. It also supports Bluetooth and has 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi.

Our primary concern was its appalling battery life. We managed just 3 hours and 38 minutes with the screen set to half brightness and Wi-Fi turned off, and three hours and 24 minutes with Wi-Fi enabled. The screen isn’t particularly bright either, and we found anything less than maximum brightness was a shade too dull for everyday use. Maximum brightness will drain the battery even quicker, though. We don’t think this is the best laptop if you want to spend a lot of time working away from mains power.

Any Chromebook only truly comes alive when it’s online. As Chrome OS is based on Google’s Chrome web browser, Chrome OS takes full advantage of Google’s cloud-based services such as Google Drive and Google Play Music. Should you find yourself without an internet connection, don’t panic, as there’s still a fair amount you can do with the Pavilion Chromebook offline. Once we’d downloaded the Offline Gmail app and synced our Google Docs and Google Play Bookshelf, we didn’t have any problems editing MS Word documents or writing emails with Wi-Fi turned off. Sadly, services such as Google Play aren’t available offline, but at least there’s some room on the 16GB SSD to store a small media collection.

The HP Pavilion Chromebook certainly makes a compelling case for a larger Chrome OS experience, but the Acer C7 Chromebook is still marginally better value. However, if a full-sized keyboard is one of your top priorities, the HP Pavilion Chromebook is for you.