About
Reviews (3)
Jan 31, 2016
Excellent desktop
Needed to replace my old hp Compaq desktop that had I upgraded over twelve years (!) to the point where the case is just looking dated. What I needed was a solid workhorse that could churn through MS Office for work and be upgraded to provide a games system too. So top of my list of priorities was a good case that would have "stretch" built in, and the Pavilion 500 is a champ in that respect. It even had enough space to wriggle in an old nVidia GTX 570 graphics card I needed to test, something that can defeat other compact tower cases. Please note the included hp PSU is not going to run a really power-hungry card and lots of other upgrades all at once, but the motherboard has standard connectors and the Pavilion's case will take standard ATX PSUs. I'm looking forward to many years of using this desktop.
Feb 21, 2016
Low power draw, low noise, excellent performance!
In comparison to an nVidia GeForce GTX 570 it replaced, so much easier to install because it is so much smaller, and only requires one PCIe power connector, yet delivers even better performance. Indeed, I have yet to play a game this card cannot handle easily! About six years ago, disappointed by buggy driver updates, I swore I would never buy another Radeon card, but I'm so glad I decided to give them another go.
Dec 24, 2015
So close to perfect.
I bought this for my wife to use for browsing, emails, a bit of picture editing and home business MS Office use.
First, the good! This is not a ruggedized laptop and the shell is not going to stand up to harsh use, but for indoor/office use it is fine and attractively designed. The laptop is light and easily held when moving about, the case being of a material that looks sleek but is not slippery to hold. All the ports are logically sited and do not interfere with each other, and the screen is large and very clear, with excellent colors and contrast in just about all light levels. The keyboard and touchpad are both comfortable to use, accurate and feel like quality items. Boot with Win10 (I upgraded it from Win8.1 out-of-the-box) is fast and the CPU and RAM do a good job of keeping everything spinning along nicely even with lots of applications open. Video playback is excellent and DVDs run just fine, and the Ethernet is stable and speedy. The built-in hp update tools are simple and effective and do not slow the system.
Now, the one bad point. The Wifi is not brilliant, but if it had been I would have given this laptop five stars instead of four. We have a rather feeble Wifi modem that gives poor reception at one end of our house, but other devices such as phones, an iPad and other laptops manage to maintain a link of at least two-of-five bars, but not this laptop. I checked the power settings and it goes to medium Wifi power when not plugged into the charger, but even setting this to max power did not help. When connected to the charger it also often drops the link in this one area of our house. If you have poor Wifi reception in the area you intend to use this laptop then you may want to use either an Ethernet connection or a Wifi extender, otherwise this laptop is excellent value for money.