HP Laptop 14 14" B8QE1UA#ABA Natural silver

The HP Laptop 14 is a budget-friendly Windows touchscreen laptop with a decent SSD and port selection, but it's held back by a dim, low-resolution 1366x768 display and just 8GB of non-upgradeable RAM. It's okay for light daily tasks if you can find it around $530, but most people should save up for a laptop with a better screen.

The Ryzen 5 7520U is a 4-core, 8-thread chip built on an older Zen 2 architecture. In our database, its CPU performance sits in the 19th percentile, which means it's slower than the vast majority of laptops we test. For basic multitasking, a few browser tabs, and Office apps, it chugs along fine. But throw a heavy spreadsheet or a bunch of background tasks at it, and you'll feel the lag. The integrated AMD Radeon Graphics are better than Intel's old UHD stuff, landing in the 68th percentile, but that's still only good enough for very light gaming or older titles at low settings. Don't expect to play anything modern smoothly.

The 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM is another bottleneck. It's soldered, so you can't upgrade it later, and 8GB is the bare minimum for Windows 11 these days. Our data puts it in the 23rd percentile for memory, which is underwhelming. The 512GB SSD is a bright spot, hitting the 53rd percentile for storage, and it's a genuine NVMe drive so boot times and app launches feel snappy. Just keep your expectations in check: this is a machine for light, everyday work, not creative projects or number crunching.

Stacked against the Apple MacBook Air M4, this HP feels like it's from a different decade. The Air's display, build quality, and performance are in another league entirely, though it costs significantly more. The ASUS Zenbook UX3405CA-PS99T also runs circles around the HP with its OLED screen and much faster CPU, but again, it's a premium ultrabook. A more direct budget rival would be something like an Acer Aspire or a Lenovo IdeaPad with a Ryzen 5 7000 series and a 1080p screen, which you can often find for a similar price. The MSI Prestige and Samsung Galaxy Book5 Pro 360 are both far more powerful and have stunning displays, but they're aimed at creators and professionals, not the budget crowd. If you need a cheap laptop right now, the HP works, but a little more money gets you a much better screen and more RAM in the Windows world.

Pricing on this model is all over the place. We've seen it as low as $530, which is reasonable for a basic Windows laptop with a touchscreen and 512GB SSD, but some vendors have it listed for absurd amounts up to $12,350, which is frankly a joke. If you can snag it at the low end, it's an okay value for a secondary machine or a student on a tight budget. But at anything over $600, you're getting into territory where you can find laptops with a Full HD display and a more modern processor. The best deal we spotted was on Amazon, but always double-check the seller and price before clicking buy.

The HP Laptop 14 B8QE1UA#ABA is one of those machines that looks like a solid deal on paper until you squint at the details. You're getting an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 14-inch touchscreen, all wrapped in Windows 11 Home. For everyday tasks like web browsing, email, and streaming, it's a competent enough companion, and the touchscreen is a nice bonus at this end of the market. But the spec sheet hides some corners that got cut pretty aggressively.

The display is the biggest red flag. A 1366x768 resolution on a 14-inch panel in 2025 feels like a relic, and the 250-nit brightness with 45% NTSC color coverage means it's dim and washed out. If you've used a modern smartphone or tablet, this screen will feel like a step backward. On the flip side, the port selection is practical with USB-C, USB-A, and HDMI, and the physical camera shutter is a thoughtful privacy touch you don't always see on budget laptops.

At around $530 from some vendors, it's priced like a budget machine, but we've seen it listed for wildly inflated prices elsewhere, so you need to shop carefully. It's best suited for students or anyone who needs a basic Windows laptop for light work and doesn't care about a sharp display. Just don't expect it to handle anything demanding.

Skip this if you care about screen quality at all. Photographers, designers, or anyone who watches a lot of movies will hate the dim, low-res panel. Power users who keep dozens of browser tabs open or run demanding software should also steer clear because of the 8GB of soldered RAM and weak CPU. If you need a laptop for gaming or creative work, look at something with a dedicated GPU and a better display, like a Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming or an ASUS Vivobook with a Ryzen 7 and 16GB of RAM. Even for basic office work, a refurbished business laptop with a 1080p screen will be a better daily driver.

The HP Laptop 14 B8QE1UA#ABA is a tough sell unless you find it at a steep discount. The touchscreen and SSD are nice, but the low-resolution display and soldered 8GB of RAM make it feel dated out of the box. It's fine for very basic tasks like writing, email, and streaming video, but the screen quality will grate on you if you've used anything better. For a kid's first laptop or a machine that lives in a drawer for occasional use, it's passable. For anyone who stares at a screen all day, look for something with at least a 1080p panel and 16GB of RAM, even if it means spending a bit more or buying refurbished.