HP Pavilion Chromebook review

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.