The Most Expensive Budget Laptop - HP Pavilion Aero 13
ShortCircuit
·ShortCircuit
·2022-05-05
·
1,659 words · ~8 min read
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- You guys asked for it. Guess what? This laptop, it's under $1,000.
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Now, I don't know if I'd call it a budget laptop.
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It's maybe like a budget premium laptop or a very expensive budget laptop, either way.
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It's the HP Pavilion Aero 13, and I think it's gonna be pretty good.
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You can see right here, right off the bat. Not quite as fancy as other laptops.
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Not that it really matters. That's kind of spooky how it just stood up like that.
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So what do we get? Set up instructions, easy,
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a little power brick, this thing's tiny, actually, 45 Watts.
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So yeah, this is not a beast. You're not gaming on this.
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- [David] How about solitaire? - Oh, this thing would be a solitaire beast.
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- [David] Yes. - Here it is, the HP Pavilion Aero 13 and wow.
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That is light. So this is an all magnesium chassis, which is like,
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that's the first thing that's like, that's not a budget laptop kind of thing.
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You don't put magnesium into a budget laptop.
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Although it feels really good. Like I think it's under a kilogram.
1:01
So LG gram spec. Nice, and we get very solid bit of IO,
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especially given how small this is. So we have headphone right there, USB type C.
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It's not Thunderbolt. This is an AMD machine. So no Thunderbolt yet.
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USB type A, full-size HTMI. Another type A port, and there's our power input.
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Yeah, that's everything that you need right there. Should we just get into it? - Yeah.
1:24
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1:28
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1:31
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Actually just before we get into it, this right here is the natural silver color.
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I think I'd go with the white one. It's a $20 addition,
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but the ceramic white one looks really sick. Anyway, let's do it.
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That's a laptop. We're gonna move this just so you know that it's not
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that flexing, but this is an extremely stiff feeling
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chassis, definitely not budget feeling, much more premium.
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The only thing that would give away that you didn't spend over $1,000 on this are the bezels, it's just plastic.
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And we also get a 16 by 10 display. Love to see that, love to see that it's making its way down.
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What should we look at first, David? what do you wanna see? - How's the screen? - How's the screen?
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The screen looks pretty good. So it's a matte finish, 400 nits peak brightness.
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There are two options. So you can either choose from 1,200P or 1,600P,
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1080P and 1440 except you know, taller.
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So this is a 1920 by 1200 version.
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I feel like you're gonna have a really hard time on a display of this size,
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noticing the difference between quad HD and just normal, full HD.
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I guess we're getting this close maybe. Let's just try the keyboard. (keyboard clicking)
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I can confidently say that this is an excellent keyboard. It feels basically identical to what you would find
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on HP's Envy lineup, which is awesome. Those are all A-plus keyboards.
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So good job, HP. Actually, this whole thing just feels like an Envy.
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HP is really bad for doing this where they make like the Spectre lineup, and they're like,
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oh, it's our new premium one. And they make the Envy. That's a lot cheaper, but pretty much just as good.
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And then you're like, okay, why the hell would you ever buy a Spectre?
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And now we have this Pavilion Aero that is basically a lighter Envy 13.
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And I don't know why, based off of my small amount of use of this
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you would spend the extra money for the Envy. Actually I can think of one.
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This doesn't have a touch screen, but like getting eight-core AMD processor,
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AMD Ryzen 7, 5,800 U, eight-core 16 threads, wicked.
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That one is like $140 option, and when you're in a computer like this one,
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do you wanna spend the extra amount? I'd probably stick with the Ryzen five one
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like six cores is going to be enough, but I would go for the 16 Gigabytes of memory.
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I find that I use up eight really fast these days.
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As for SSD it's 500 Gigabytes and AMD Radeon graphics,
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pretty solid overall, also the track pad's good, I've just been using it here.
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They've used basically all of the space that they have here. There's no speakers up top to move the keyboard down,
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and with the 16 by 10 display, there's just more space,
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especially on a 13-inch-laptop, that gets you a lot more keyboard space,
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moving just that little bit of extra display on the bottom there.
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Just looking at it here, this is a very nice display. It does cover full SRGB.
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So, you know, unless you're a professional photo editor, it's gonna it.
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Speakers though. (upbeat electronic music)
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Okay, that's pretty good. I would say that I'm impressed. It's going to get wrecked by the XPS 15,
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but like it's a much larger and much more expensive laptop.
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Like I don't know what to expect really for a 13 inch device, that's not obscenely expensive.
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That's very respectable. What even are they? Ah, they're down firing, cool. (upbeat electronic music)
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Yeah, it's not even close, but I wasn't expecting it to be, I'm not even going to bother looking at it,
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but the display on the XPS is a lot nicer. But then again,
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the display on this XPS is a $400 addition,
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which is more than half of what this entire laptop costs.
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So like yeah, absolute beast.
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People have been speaking for a long time
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about how incredible the Aero 13 is at solitaire and they were right.
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One thing that we needed to check. So this one right here has a real tech Wi-Fi 6 card,
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but there are two options. One's a two by two, and one's a one by two.
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The additional cost to go to the two by two is not very much,
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but it'll make your Wi-Fi experience way better. So let's just hop into the configurator real quick,
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figure out what exactly you want to buy. 'Cause I think that's a lot more important on this guy
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than a lot of other laptops. 'Cause you can kind of screw yourself with a couple of these options.
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So first of all right now it's on sale. $80 off makes a big difference in a laptop like this,
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669.99, very nice, yeah.
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First of all, ah, we won't bother changing the color, because like whatever.
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Now we get to choose between two different processors, the Ryzen 5 5,600 U and the 5,800 U,
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I would go for the 5,600 U. But the 16 Gigabyte version,
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which adds $50, now have the full HD
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versus 1440 P display, 30 bucks, do you think you'd go for it, David?
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- [David] For 30 bucks? - Yeah, I probably would as well, realistically.
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256 gigabytes, I feel like isn't enough right now.
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Now this is the one that annoys me. What do you see that's wrong with this image, David?
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- [David] I don't know. - There's no keyboard backlight, terrible.
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It's a $20 option. - What? - And we come down here, two by two.
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You want to get that. So all in all this $669 laptop,
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one you have that's spec'd as you want is $830,
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800, if you got a 10 ADP, pretty respectable, like you're getting 16 gigabytes of RAM,
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half a Gigabyte storage, half a Terabyte of storage, I mean,
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this is obviously better. If Dell is going to send me a like $2,500 laptop,
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I'm going to use it and be like, this is a good laptop.
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For the vast majority of what I do, I'd probably be happier with this laptop,
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because it is so much lighter. Yeah, if you're looking for a budget premium laptop
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or a very expensive budget laptop, that feels kind of like a premium laptop,
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but isn't quite as good looking, but in almost ignorable ways,
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the HP Pavilion Aero 13 is your best bet. Oh also it has a fingerprint reader right there.
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That'll probably be nice. It also has a webcam. Actually, let's see.
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This webcam had a little bit of trouble at first. Oh, it's having trouble again.
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But like this isn't bad at all. It's only lightly blowing up my face, I'm like,
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there's no detail back here, but like whatever, this is a very challenging situation.
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So good job HP. I'll use the Dell briefly just so you guys know
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how terrible it is. Just complete butt on the side of the XPS,
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well, there you go, HP Pavilion Aero 13. If it's what you're looking for, I would say get it.
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It seems pretty good to me. So anyway, hit like, get subscribed,
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and just have a great day. Especially you, David. - Aw, you too, Alex.
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- Give your dog a treat.