PC World - USA (2020-03)

MARCH 2020 PCWorld 87

Pavilion line is solidly mid-tier elsewhere, the

reliable family sedan of gaming laptops.

With both the Omen and Pavilion lines, HP

opted for Intel’s familiar Core i7-9750H part,

allowing us to do some head-to-head testing.

And you know what? The Pavilion Gaming

Laptop really is an Omen in disguise. Below

you’ll see the results of our HandBrake test,

wherein we use the free utility to encode a 30GB

MKV file down to the “Android Tablet” preset.

We’ve tested and tested and tested the

Core i7-9750H and the Core i7-8750H before

it, so any deviation sticks out. Notice that the

Pavilion Gaming Laptop drastically

underperforms compared to the Dell G7 and

MSI GS65—with the Omen 17 sitting right

alongside. Both struggled with this task, taking

nearly five minutes longer than the norm.

As I said in our Omen 17 review, it

doesn’t really matter. Most games are

constrained by the GPU, not the CPU.

definitively comes
out on top.
You could also
argue the Omen
keyboard’s zone
RGB lighting is
better than the flat
single-color lighting
on the Pavilion,
though that’s less
crucial. Just be sure
to get the color
variant you prefer,
either green or white. Regardless, HP’s laptop
keyboards continue to impress me. They’re
stiff, but with a satisfying click.
Lastly, ports. As I said in our Omen review,
“Accolades for putting all the ports on the
side.” Too many gaming laptops put
important I/O on the rear—great for keeping
cables out of the way on a desk, but a pain to
access on the road. The Pavilion Gaming
Laptop includes power, two USB 3.0 ports,
and a 3.5mm jack on the right side, plus
HDMI-out, an additional USB-A 3.0 port,
ethernet, an SD card reader, and a USB-C port
on the left.

PERFORMANCE
Don’t expect record-setting benchmarks
here. Yes, we tested the “high-end” Pavilion
15 with a Core i7-9750H, GTX 1660 Ti, and
16GB of RAM, but the quotation marks are
there for a reason. What’s high-end for the

Dell G7

(Core i7-9750H)

MSI GS65 Stealth 9SD

(Core i7-9750H)

HP Pavilion 15 Gaming Laptop

(Core i7-9750H)

HP Om(Core i7-9750H)en 17

Acer Nitro 7 (Core i7-9750H)

Acer Nitro 5 15(Core i5-9300H)

HandBrake 0.99.0 Encoding (H.264)

(Seconds)

SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE

1,740

2,220

2,070

1,838

2,642

2,115