HP 255R G10 15.6", Ryzen 7 7735U, 16GB, 512GB SSD, Dark Ash Silver

The HP 255R G10 is the office beater that gets work done, as long as you don't look at the screen too long. At $500 it's a steal; at $1,300 it's a joke. Our score dropped to 46, and the competition is only getting stronger.

What surprised us? The Radeon 680M graphics aren't a joke. It's the same iGPU silicon you'd find in a handheld gaming PC, so you can actually run lighter eSports titles at 1080p if you knock the settings way down. That's a nice little bonus. The real shock, though, was how fast the battery tanked. A 41Wh cell paired with a 28W CPU is a recipe for disappointment, and sure enough, we saw 30% gone after an hour of light web browsing. The performance is there, but you'll be hugging a wall outlet to enjoy it.

Forget the MacBook Pro or Galaxy Book5 Pro; those are luxury ultrabooks. The more realistic rival is a Lenovo ThinkPad E16 Gen 2 with a similar AMD chip. That Lenovo gets you a much better keyboard, longer runtime, and real MIL-STD reliability, but it'll set you back a few hundred more. If you're pinching pennies, the HP is fine for basic office grind. But if you can stretch the budget, the ASUS ProArt PX13 offers an OLED display and creator-friendly battery that are worth every extra dollar for anyone who looks at screens all day.

The pricing on this machine is a rollercoaster. We've seen it listed anywhere from $500 to over $1,300 across different vendors, which is absurd. At $500 to $600, it's an absolute bargain for an 8-core Windows 11 Pro laptop with 16GB of RAM. But once you cross $800, you're getting ripped off, because competitors with far better screens and battery life start showing up. Newegg had the lowest price when we checked, so that's the spot to buy. Shop smart and don't overpay.

The HP 255R G10 is a budget-first business laptop that gets the basics right and cuts corners where you'll feel them most. It tosses an 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 7735U and 16GB of DDR5 RAM at everyday work, and for the money, that's solid. But the second you open the lid and see that dim, washed-out 45% NTSC panel, you know exactly where HP saved a few bucks. If you just need Windows 11 Pro for spreadsheets and Teams calls, this thing will chug along fine. Just don't expect it to impress anyone, least of all you.

If you care even a little about display quality or battery life, this laptop isn't for you. Grab a renewed ThinkPad T14 Gen 3 with an AMD chip or an Acer Swift Go instead. Both give you better screens and longer runtime without a huge price jump. And with machines like the MacBook Pro M4 Max and Surface Laptop 7th Edition now crowding the top of our rankings, the HP's weaknesses stand out even more.

The HP 255R G10 is a decent laptop for office tasks and light multitasking at a budget price, but our confidence in it has slipped. If you can snag it for under $600, it's still a no-brainer for students or businesses that need Windows 11 Pro on the cheap. But if display quality or battery life are remotely important, spend a bit more. It's a C-plus machine that does the job, just don't expect it to do it all day unplugged.