Verdict
The bombardment may be small and the display colourless , but this cheap HP Pavilion SE 14 is still a well - balanced and low-priced all - rounder . It has the latest genesis Intel Si and a great webcam to boot .
Pros
Cons
Key Features
Introduction
If you are in the market place for a budget laptop , you want to be train for some aspects of it to be pretty vile . gratefully , HP thinks the impecunious laptop emptor deserves better and has deliver the sub-£500 HP Pavilion SE 14 to market with no dazzling want .
Design and Keyboard
You do n’t get a high design for this kind of money , but the HP Pavilion SE 14 is still a smart and attractive laptop with no sharp edges and no creak or groans when you manhandle it . The lid is stiffer than many I ’ve encountered , and the hinge find very robust . Once you get it in your hands , you’re able to state that it is made largely from charge card , but it still feels pretty strong . It is also eminently portable , press 1.4 kg and measuring 323.7 x 215 x 17.9 mm .
For a garish and cheerful laptop computer , the HP Pavilion SE 14 has a fair choice of ports with two USB - A 3.2 Gen 1 data ports ( one on each side ) , a Type - speed of light port , again 3.2 Gen 1 specification , an HDMI 1.4 telecasting output and a 3.5 mm audio frequency combo squat . The Type - C embrasure does n’t indorse charging or DP Alt Mode television , so you will want to keep the small 45W DC charge brick on hand .
The keyboard only has one design flaw : the power button is part of the main layout and sits between the Delete and Print Screen button , which is just ideal . On the plus side , the F1 key opens the Windows emoji computer menu , which is more commodious than typewrite Win + > whenever you want to send a straightaway thumb up . The deck of cards is not all rigid , but you have to press quite firmly in the middle to notice what footling flex there is .
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The keycaps are made from a boisterous - look grey plastic , which I prefer to the smooth silver affairs in general found on HP ’s gimcrack dwelling house laptops . The white graphic are very clear , which is handy given that there ’s no backlight , though I ’d have been surprised to find one at this Leontyne Price point .
Given the price Mary Leontyne Price , I was surprised to find a fingerprint reader conveniently situated on the right field of the keyboard deck below the cursor keys . Biometric protection is never given in laptop in this cost square bracket , so kudos to HP for conform to it to the HP Pavilion SE 14 .
dumbfound inside the HP Pavilion SE 14 involve removing the two gumshoe flight strip that play as feet and cover two of the six gaoler holding the base plate and getting quite brutal with the plastic locating snip , a rough-cut characteristic of HP laptop design . Since involve a knife to retrospect samples and doing permanent hurt is broadly frowned upon , I left well alone .
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If you rip the invertebrate foot off and twist the shaping clips complimentary , you’re able to patently get at the two SODIMM one-armed bandit and the single SSD bay , but I ca n’t vouch for that . It ’s moot if getting the base off is so unmanageable that it will discourage most owners from take in charge basic upgrades or substantive cleaning .
Like many people , I ’ve two earphone chargers lie around that could easily charge the HP Pavilion SE 14 , so using a Type - speed of light port to accuse and making the 45W great power brick an optional supernumerary would be an obvious green move . From spring 2026,Type - 100 charging on laptops will be mandate by EU law , so it would be good to see major laptop makers anticipate this .
The HP Pavilion SE 14 is EPEAT Gold registered , and HP claim that it is made from recycle material such as “ aluminum , ocean - bound plastics , and H2O - based paints , ” but it does n’t go into any detail regarding what percentage of the content is recycled . The promotional material is made all from composition board with no styrofoam , which makes for easy recycling .
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Display and Sound
At this price stratum , the most you may bear from a laptop display is that it ’s jolly bright , 1,920 x 1,080 in resolution and IPS , the latter a vault the Asus Zenbook 15 I late try fall at , thanks to a low rent TN display .
The HP Pavilion SE 14 does better than the Zenbook thanks to an IPS panel that put up panoptic viewing slant without any speck of chromatic shifting . maximal brightness is a reasonable 267nits , which , when combine with a matte finish , does a good line of work of keeping reflections at bay . maximal black luminance registered at 0.2nits , resulting in a expert demarcation ratio of 1270:1 .
Colourful , the cover is not , covering just 58.1 % of the sRGB gamut , 40.5 % AdobeRGB and 41.5 % DCI - P3 . The Delta E colour accuracy was a middling woeful 5.4 , which means anyone with a direct eye will be able-bodied to sport that things are out of whack . It just look like the colours are tone down and dull to the rest of us , but again , it ’s not insufferable for a budget laptop .
The talker system performs well . The maximum intensity measured against a pink dissonance generator at a 1mn distance was a solid 74.8dB(A ) , and the sound quality was good , with a reasonable amount of bass part and plenty of detail and space . Even at maximum volume , there was no torture , making listening to music a pleasant experience .
I was shocked to discover that the webcam is a highly able 1080p affair that raise a acuate and quite colourful image even in less - than - perfect lighting conditions . I ’ve encountered much speculative on laptops that be much more . The tv camera also has a physical privacy shutter to keep unwanted remote surveillance .
Performance
The HP Pavilion SE 14 is built around an Intel Core i5 - 1335U processor with 8 GB of DDR4RAMand Intel ’s integrated Xe graphics solution . The 1335U is a 10 - heart potato chip with two performance centre , a maximum turbo hike up speeding of 4.6GHz and a standard TDP of 12W. It ’s not what you ’d call a stump - puller , but it has more than enough poke for mundane home and business tasks .
The Cinebench R23 scores of 5,950 multi - effect and 1,684 single - core are nothing to get wide excited about , but they are both close to the sort of rafts you would require to see from a 2020 11th - generation Tiger Lake Core i7 - 1185G7 chip which gives you an meter reading of the performance stride that Intel has made in the last two years .
The HP Pavilion SE 14 did n’t seem as hopeless at play as expected . Clearly , you wo n’t be playing Cyberpunk 2077 on it , but the baby boomer taw that everyone is presently talking about , Turbo Overkill , ran comfortably at 40fps once I ’d set the solvent to 720 x 1,280 and lowered some detail context from High to Medium . The less demand Serious Sam 4 meanwhile ran at 58fps at 1,920 x 1,080 : You ca n’t ask for more from a cheap laptop with a U - serial publication C.P.U. and no dGPU .
TheSSDinside the HP Pavilion SE 14 is a Samsung - made 512 GB PCIe 4 unit that achieved average sequential read and write swiftness of 3,595MB / s and 2,580MB / s , respectively . All of those facts are rather telling when at the price , you often cease up with a 256 GB PCIe 3 drive from a manufacturer you ’ve never learn of .
The Realtek RTL8852BE wireless circuit card supportsWi - Fi 6but only over the 2.4Ghz and 5GHz wavelengths andBluetooth 5.3 . The absence of 6GHz Wi - Fi was hardly unexpected , and the web performance was otherwise entirely acceptable .
Software
unfold up the All Apps list , and you ’ll get no less than 9 HP apps listed , ranging from HP Audio Centre to HP System Event Utility , plus the MyHP and Omen Gaming Hub control panels . For the average user , all bar the first , are somewhat much useless . have gadget direction apps like MyHP and the Omen Gaming Hub on a laptop this canonical is pointless as there are no configurations to manage .
Along with the inevitable anti - virus packet ( McAfee in this suit ) , there is a selection of apps from Dropbox , Adobe , Booking.com , ExpressVPN , LastPass and the Alexa app . These can all be deleted well enough .
Battery Life
No matter how efficient the processor is , you are not going to get a prima run time from a battery capacity of just 41Wh . I expected between 5 and 6 minute from a rush , so the 6 hours 10 minutes ensue from the PCMark 10 Office battery trial was at the upper end of my expectations . It is potential to eke out 7 hour if you are very careful , but even 6 hours is n’t a big result for a small , garish laptop computer .
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Should you buy it?
As a computer software , it has few flaws , offering good performance , decent electric battery life , a melodious sound system and a display that , if not good per se , is good enough for the price . The high - quality webcam and fingerprint scanner were unexpected features on a laptop computer at this price .
The display is drab and makes any content face dreary and uninteresting . The difficulty in get admittance to the inside also reckon against it . Upgrading the Aries the Ram and storage and clean the fans are basic sustainment job that should n’t involve special science or peter or inflict permanent wrong .
Final Thoughts
For £ 550 , there really is nothing seriously awry with the HP Pavilion SE 14 . execution is good , and it ’s a stylish and well - made bit of kit . The show could be better , but that is more a suit of grow what you expect for the money rather than getting more than you expect .
The obvious competition for the HP Laptop 14 comes from Acer ’s Aspire range of budget laptops , and we ’ve recently reviewed theAspire 3andAspire 5 . The Acer sell for a similar price to the HP Pavilion SE 14 but only has a 256 GB SSD and a low - tear TN display . Given the choice , I ’d take the unexampled HP in a heartbeat .
For a general - role laptop computer for quotidian dwelling house , school , or piece of work function , the HP Pavilion SE 14 ticks all the box and should bring home the bacon several years of authentic service thanks to the latest - gen Intel processor . It ’s just a shame that HP has made accessing the internals so unnecessarily difficult .
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How we test
Every laptop we retrospect goes through a series of unvarying checks design to gauge key things , admit build quality , performance , screen character and battery life .
These include formal synthetic bench mark , written test , and material - human beings tab .
FAQs
Absolutely . For the money ( £ 550 at the prison term of written material ) , the HP Pavilion SE 14 is a great little general - intent laptop with an up - to - date Raptor Lake CPU and a decent amount of random access memory and storage . The webcam and verbaliser deserve extra kudos , and it ’s a very well - equilibrate package .
Yes . This range sits at the bottom of the HP laptop lineup , below the mid - range Envy series , and high - end Spectre series . These machines do n’t appear or experience as cheap as their toll tag suggest reach them good value purchase .
Test Data
Full Specs
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