Review: HP Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook

Over on the performance side, it’s all pretty standard fare. Intel’s 3rd generation Core i5 technology is used here, literally on the brink of being switched over for fourth-gen, also called “Haswell.”

Despite this impending chip change, the lappy isn’t a bad performer, and should suit most people with a need for a decent office worker, web surfer, and even the occasional game.

In fact, HP has thrown in a discrete graphics card here – the Nvidia GeForce 630M paired with 1GB of RAM – which is a tad better than Intel’s HD graphics, so you can get some gaming done if needed.

The inclusion of a 1TB drive is something few thin laptops offer, and that means there’s plenty of space available.

Truthfully, there isn’t 1024 gigabytes here, and once you give 24GB to HP’s recovery partition – in case you need to reinstall anything – and then take out the space reserved for Windows 8, you’ll find roughly 870GB. Still, that’s more than enough for most users, especially when Ultrabooks typically have a maximum of either 256GB solid-state or 500GB hard drives, with less still after everything is installed.

Switching the machine on shows the difference in speed between using a hard drive and a solid-state drive in a laptop, with a regular three second revival from being on standby, while being off to on took us 22 seconds, roughly twice what you often see on SSD-based Ultrabooks.

There are also some neat features for making your laptop use a better experience.

CoolSense is one of these, and is a sensor that works out the position your laptop is in and changes the performance of your computer (and its fans) based on comfort level, in case you’re using the notebook on your lap, because nobody wants a burning crotch.

HP Connected Remote is another app which offers some decent functionality, making it possible to use some of the apps on your laptop with a smartphone or tablet, with video and DVD software chiefly among them. To its credit, HP does include some software from Cyberlink here, though we’re a little surprised why DVD reading software is considered useful on a laptop that doesn’t have a DVD drive.

For the most part, the $999 TouchSmart Pavilion is a decent piece of kit, and provides a comfortable computing experience in both usability and weight, but there are things that niggle at us, such as the look.

Sure, it’s sleek, and we can’t argue with the sparkle sitting under the glossy black colouring the laptop has, but it sure is a fingerprint nightmare. From the prints picked up by the lid to oily smudge marks left by your wrists, this is a machine that will look grubby very quickly.

HP’s choice of display technology isn’t the best, either, with the company sticking with a familiar dose of HD-capable 1366×768, which looks a tad pixelated in a 14 inch screen size.

The pixel quality is the least of this screen’s problems, though, with an insane amount of gloss and reflectivity visible here, making it hard to use without paying attention to the reflections.

HP has also used a fairly low grade panel here, noticeable thanks to the terrible viewing angles put out by this 14 inch screen. At horizontal angles, it’s not terrible – a glimpse of screen wash out – but change your vertical angle even a little and everything starts inverting.

As such, you’ll often set up the right angle for the display, but even if you move just ever so slightly forward or backward, the screen will change, and not for the good.

It’s the sort of display we’d expect to see on a $500 machine, and not one that fetches a thousand dollar tag, that’s for sure.

HP also needs to work on its mouse, and it’s not just the weaker Synaptics drivers that bothered us on Toshiba’s Kirabook. No, there’s poor responsiveness whenever you use a multitouch gesture, with scrolling more or less wasted on the touchpad, and the pinch-to-zoom marginally faster.

Thankfully, you have a touchscreen , and that is responsive, with both zoom and scroll having no problems whatsoever, but it’s surprising that HP has released a laptop that lacks balance across both its types of input.

Finally there’s the battery, which comes in at just under four hours. That’s not a brilliant amount of juice, and that’s with WiFi on for web surfing, writing, and the regular amount of work. If you plan on hauling this machine to work or uni, bring the adaptor. It’s a must.

Conclusion

With a long title and plenty of space for movies and music, the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 14 Sleekbook *gasp* seems to centre itself on one type of person: the laptop buyer who wants something thin but with plenty of storage to spare.

We’re sure there are plenty of those people out there, and at $999, it’s not a bad ask, but next time, HP really needs to up its game when it comes to battery life and display technology, because a one grand price tag should net you better results than what’s provided here.