The OLED display, while great for productivity and entertainment, unfortunately, takes a bit of a toll on battery life. And you'll probably want to remove much of the pre-installed software that HP packed in. But otherwise, the HP Pavilion Plus 14 is an amazing value.
The Pavilion is HP's affordable mid-range; not as fully featured as his Envy PC, but a step up from his entry-level models simply called HP notebooks. The Pavilion Plus combines higher-end hardware, including the option for basic discrete graphics and a few features not found on the regular Pavilion, such as a 720p HD camera compared to the Plus' 1080p webcam.
You won't find a 2.8K OLED display as an optional extra even on regular Pavilion laptops. Compared to the typical LCD you'd find on the Pavilion and other sub-$1,000 laptops, the OLED display has a higher contrast ratio, sharper text, more vibrant colors, and a wide color gamut covering 100% of the DCI-P3 color space. The configuration I tested also came with a high-performance 12th-generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of memory, for a regular price of $1,000. However, it is regularly on sale; currently, it's only $800. In the UK, the Pavilion Plus starts at £799, and in Australia it's AU$1,599.
Laptop HP Pavilion Plus 14-eh0097nr
Price reviewed $1,000
Display size/resolution 14-inch display 2880 x 1800
CPU 2.3 GHz Intel Core i7-12700H
Memory 16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz RAM (integrated)
Graphics 128 MB Intel Iris Xe graphics
Storage 256 GB NVMe PCIe SSD
Wireless network connection 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6), Bluetooth 5.2
Connections USB Type-C (10Gbps, x2), USB-A (5Gbps, x2), HDMI 2.1, 3.5mm audio jack, microSD card slot
Windows 11 Pro operating system
A close-up of the ports on the right side of the HP Pavilion Plus 14 laptop.
The Pavilion Plus has a good assortment of ports, though I wish HP had split the USB-C ports for more flexible charging.
For its price, the Pavilion Plus 14 performed great both in general use and in our benchmark tests (results at the end of this review). It is an excellent choice for school and office work, entertainment and gaming at low graphics settings or even better for cloud gaming. HP actually outperformed the MacBook Air M2 on several metrics.
If you're considering this HP for content creation, you'll want to configure the Pavilion Plus 14 with the optional Nvidia GeForce RTX 2050 discrete graphics card. It's an entry-level chip, but it speeds up rendering times compared to the integrated graphics in my review laptop. And it doesn't add much to the price either. Graphics performance is where it falls short compared to the Air, along with battery life, by a lot.
OLED displays may look great, but they generally use power. The Pavilion Plus managed just 4 hours and 40 minutes in our streaming video test with the display brightness set to 50% and audio played through headphones at 50% volume. There are things that can help, such as keeping the brightness as low as possible and using Windows Dark Mode. Even with normal use with some power management, I averaged about 6 hours of use before having to connect. On the plus side, HP recharges quickly and will recharge back to 50% in 30 minutes.
The rest is really great for the price, with just a few niggles. The webcam is much better than what you would have found at this price a few years ago. The image is sharp and detailed, and if you don't have enough light, the HP Enhanced Lighting application turns part of your display into a ring light. HP also has another app, Duet, that lets you wirelessly use the tablet as a secondary display.
However, you'll probably want to remove something like ExpressVPN, McAfee Personal Security, WildTangent Games, and Booking.com from each Enhanced Lighting and Duet app. Yes, this is how HP is able to keep the price down, but expect to deal with pop-ups and other annoyances until you uninstall everything you don't want.
There's only one other quibble, and that's the absence of power switches for the camera and microphones. Maybe they're reserved for the higher-end Envy and Spectre; you will definitely find them on those models. That's understandable, but with a high-resolution webcam, it makes sense to include them in the Plus model as well.
Again, these are fairly minor issues in the grand scheme of things, with the only potential deal breaker being battery life. But that doesn't stop it from being a bargain. HP's service video for the Pavilion Plus 14 also shows that all memory except the memory is functional as it is soldered.
A closed HP Pavilion Plus 14 laptop with a depiction of the rear hinge and Pavilion branding resting on a gray microfiber chair.
If you want something with better battery life that's also smaller, lighter, and an excellent value, consider the HP Pavilion Aero 13. There's no OLED option, but it'll last more than 10 hours and weighs just 2 pounds. If you have your heart set on getting an OLED, both Asus' smaller Zenbook S 13 OLED and the 14-inch Acer Swift 3 OLED are worth considering. Both have better battery life, but are also more expensive.
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