HP Pavilion 15 2022, Core i5-10300H, 16GB, 512GB SSD, GTX 1650, Black

The HP Pavilion 15 is a budget gaming laptop with a GTX 1650, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It handles esports and older games fine at 1080p, but the 4-core CPU and 4GB of VRAM hold it back in newer titles. At $920 USD, it's an okay deal if you find it on sale, but there are better options if you can spend a bit more.

The Core i5-10300H runs at 2.5GHz base and boosts up to 4.5GHz, which sounds better on paper than it feels in practice. With only 4 cores and 8 threads, it sits in the 19th percentile for CPUs in our database, meaning it's near the bottom of what we track for gaming laptops. That's not a dealbreaker for casual use, but if you're doing anything CPU-heavy like video editing or streaming while gaming, you'll feel the squeeze. The 16GB of DDR4 RAM helps smooth things over, though it's also in the 26th percentile, which tells you how much the market has moved toward 32GB configurations.

The GTX 1650 is the star here, relatively speaking. At the 72nd percentile for GPUs in this category, it's a solid performer for a budget card. You'll get playable frame rates in games like Fortnite, Valorant, Apex Legends, and CS2 at 1080p with medium settings. Older AAA titles like The Witcher 3 or GTA V will run fine too. But don't expect much from ray tracing or anything released in the last couple years that demands more than 4GB of VRAM. The 512GB NVMe SSD is about average for this class, sitting at the 52nd percentile, and it'll load games and boot Windows 10 Pro quickly enough.

Stacked against the Lenovo Legion 5i, the HP Pavilion 15 loses on almost every front. The Legion 5i typically comes with newer CPUs and GPUs, better cooling, and a higher refresh rate display, though it usually costs a bit more. The ASUS ROG Flow Z13 is a completely different beast, a 2-in-1 with far better performance but also a much higher price tag. If you're comparing this to an Apple MacBook Pro M4 Pro, well, they're not really in the same conversation. The MacBook destroys it in CPU performance, battery life, and build quality, but it also costs two to three times as much and can't run most PC games natively.

The MSI Raider is another competitor that outclasses the Pavilion 15 in gaming performance, though it's also heavier and more expensive. The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition is a better choice for productivity and portability, but it's not a gaming machine at all. So the Pavilion 15 occupies this awkward middle ground where it's not the best at anything, but it's also not the worst value if you find it on sale.

At $920 USD, the HP Pavilion 15 is in a tough spot. You can find laptops with RTX 3050 or even RTX 4050 GPUs in the same price range if you catch a sale, and those will run circles around the GTX 1650 in modern games. That said, if you specifically want 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD without having to open the thing up, this config saves you some hassle. The RAM is upgradeable to 64GB, which is a nice future-proofing option, but the CPU will likely become the bottleneck long before you need that much memory. For pure gaming value, there are better options out there. For a general purpose laptop that can also game, it's a reasonable but not exciting buy.

The HP Pavilion 15 sits in that weird middle ground between a budget gaming laptop and a general purpose machine that happens to have a discrete GPU. At around $920 USD, it's not the cheapest thing with a GTX 1650, but you do get 16GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD out of the box, which saves you from immediate upgrades. The Core i5-10300H is a 4-core chip from Intel's 10th gen lineup, and while it's not going to blow anyone away in 2025, it handles everyday tasks without much drama.

People searching for a budget gaming laptop under $1000 will probably stumble across this one, and the question is whether it's still worth buying in a market full of newer options. The short answer is that it depends on what you play. The GTX 1650 with 4GB of VRAM can manage esports titles and older AAA games at 1080p, but newer releases will force you to drop settings pretty aggressively. The 15.6" IPS display is fine for the price, though it's nothing special in terms of color accuracy or brightness.

For a laptop marketed as a gaming machine, the port selection is actually decent. You get a USB-C port with DisplayPort support, three USB-A ports, HDMI, and even Ethernet, which is more than some pricier thin-and-lights offer. Wi-Fi 5 is a bit dated at this point, but it'll get the job done for most people.

Skip this if you want to play modern AAA games at high settings, do any serious video editing or streaming, or care about battery life and portability. The 4-core CPU and 4GB VRAM will frustrate you within a year or two. If you're a creator, the 46.6 out of 100 creator score tells you this isn't the machine for color-critical work. Instead, look at a Lenovo Legion 5i for gaming or a Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition for productivity. And if you're an Apple person, the MacBook Pro M4 Pro is in a completely different league, though your wallet will feel it.

Should you buy the HP Pavilion 15? If you're on a tight budget and mostly play esports or older games, it'll do the job. The GTX 1650 is still a capable 1080p card for less demanding titles, and the 16GB of RAM means you won't be constantly closing browser tabs. But the 4-core CPU is a real limitation, and the reliability scores in our database are concerning, sitting at the 33rd percentile.

If you can stretch your budget by $100 to $200, you'll find laptops with significantly better CPUs and GPUs that will last you much longer. If you can't stretch, this is an acceptable stopgap, but don't expect it to age gracefully. The gaming score of 52.8 out of 100 in our database reflects that reality pretty accurately.