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14 Sep

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HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 Review: Superlight, Superexpensive

September 14, 2021
Posted by Samson

HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 sits on the desk.

HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 review: Super light and super expensive

RRP $ 2,679.00

"The HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 is a super light business laptop with a high price."

advantages

Solid build quality and yet light
Bright, color-accurate display
Good productivity performance
Superior battery life
Industry leading suite of business tools

disadvantage

Very expensive
16: 9 display is old school

How important is half a pound in laptop design? Well, that's enough for HP to justify a new brand called "Aero" in its line of laptops.

There's the budget-conscious Pavilion Aero 13, which packs a ton of power into a 2.18-pound chassis. A lighter laptop could be even more convenient for business people, and that's why HP has an Aero for you too. The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 accomplishes this goal of being half a pound lighter than its non-Aero version.

I tested the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 with a Core i7-1185G7 and a 14-inch 1080p display. Unfortunately, it comes in the old school 16: 9 aspect ratio and comes at an extremely high price of $ 2,679. But it's light, powerful, and packed with business features that your IT staff will appreciate.

draft

If you compare the Aero version of the EliteBook 840 G8 with its non-Aero sibling, you will find a laptop that is almost identical in size, just a few centimeters in width and depth and just as thick at 0.70 inches. But HP made the EliteBook Aero 840 G8 out of magnesium instead of aluminum, and managed to cut almost half a pound from 2.92 pounds to 2.5 pounds. It's light for a 14-inch business-class laptop and noticeably easier to carry around.

While there are 14-inch consumer laptops in the same weight range as the Acer Swift 5, which weighs 2.31 pounds and is 0.59 inches thick, there aren't many business devices that can match this. The Dell Latitude 7420, for example, weighs 2.7 pounds with carbon fiber in its construction and 2.89 pounds with an all-aluminum chassis while being 0.68 inches thick.

HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 sits on the desk. Rear view from above / cover. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

One laptop that goes with the EliteBook is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 at 2.49 pounds and thinner 0.59 inches, which also uses magnesium in its case and is more flexible. Ultimately, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 achieves its goal of being extremely light, even if it is not the thinnest notebook on the market.

The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 also manages to get around a common pitfall of magnesium chassis, namely that they tend to be less stiff than aluminum. The EliteBook is solid all round, with a lid that only bends if there is inadequate pressure, a keyboard deck that shows no bend, and a case bottom that doesn't give way. Business laptops tend to be more solidly built than some consumer laptops, like the MSI Prestige 14 Evo, which is made of aluminum but still has a slightly flexible lid, so it's nothing new. But being so light and so solid is a great combination and not too often. The laptop's hinge is a bit tight and requires two hands to open the lid, but it's tapered all around to make it easier to open and it retracts to 170 degrees for collaborative viewing.

Aesthetically, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 fits the general HP EliteBook look and feel. It's all silver with few decorations. There's a chrome HP logo on the lid and a subtle EliteBook logo on the keyboard deck, and the speaker grilles on each side of the keyboard have a laser-cut pattern, but otherwise we're talking about a minimalist design. The Dell Latitude 7420 is similar in its simplicity, as are other business laptops.

Business laptops need to be connected, and the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 delivers.

Manufacturers tend to be conservative in their designs for this class of notebooks – you don't want a laptop that attracts attention in a conference room. However, that by no means makes the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 a bad looking laptop. It's pretty attractive and has just enough angles and rounded tail and lid edges to give it a fairly modern look. I'll note that the large top and bottom display bezels detract from that perception a bit – the EliteBook has an 85% screen-to-case ratio, which is low for a modern laptop.

Right side view of the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8. Plugins and ports.

Left side view of the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8. Plugins, connectors and hinges ..

Business laptops need to be connected, and the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 delivers. On the left you will find a nano security lock, two USB A 3.1 Gen 1 ports, a 3.5 mm audio jack and an optional smart card reader. On the right is a proprietary power connector (my test unit came with a USB-C charger), a full-size HDMI 2.0 port, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4, and a nano-SIM slot for 4G LTE or 5G support. In addition to WWAN support, WI-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 are on board.

Security and privacy

You will not spend that much money on the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 for the conservative, light housing and the relatively standard components. Rather, you – or, more likely, your company – will make the investment to gain access to the wide range of security and management tools built into HP's business machines.

It is this level of security and manageability that justifies the laptop's very high price.

The EliteBook uses HP's Wolf Security for Business, which has many features that enable the laptop to meet the most demanding business security needs. The list is complete and begins with HP's Management Integration Kit (MIK), which makes it easy to integrate the laptop with Microsoft's System Center Configuration Manager for better manageability. The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 offers optional Intel vPro and thus expands its ability to be integrated into enterprise IT systems.

HP's Endpoint Security Controller (ESC) runs at the lowest tier of the laptop and features hardware-assisted technology that provides a hardware root of trust through HP Sure Start that is physically isolated and protects the laptop's critical firmware. The protection also works during runtime, constantly monitors the security system and uses cryptographic hardware functions from Wolf Security. HP Sure Recover minimizes downtime with built-in recovery tools, network-based recovery, and the ability to support corporate images. HP Tamperlock protects against physical attacks on the chassis and DMA, flash replacement, side channel and TPM probing attacks.

We'll stop here, but suffice it to say that the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 is very secure and easy to manage, giving users and businesses the peace of mind that their machines and data will stay safe. It is this level of security and manageability that justifies the laptop's very high price.

power

HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 sits on the desk. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

My test device was equipped with the 11th generation Intel Core i7-1185G7 with vPro. This top U-series GPU in Intel's product range is aimed at thin and light laptops and offers a theoretical increase in performance compared to the more popular Core i7-1165G7.

In our benchmarks, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 was able to compete with most of the similarly equipped notebooks in our comparison group. It was the third highest in Geekbench 5, with the HP Elite Dragonfly Max taking first place in this test. In our Handbrake test, which converts a 420 MB video to H.265, the EliteBook does well for the CPU and takes fourth place, with only the MSI Summit E13 Flip Evo being significantly faster than the Intel pack.

I added the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED to give a taste of the AMD Ryzen 5000 series performance, and as you can see, it is significantly faster on CPU-intensive tasks. The EliteBook is also in the midfield in the Cinebench R23 benchmark, another test that loads the CPU. In PCMark 10, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 maintained its average performance, which extended to the Complete Score listed in the table as well as the areas of Essentials, Productivity and Content Creation of the benchmark.

Overall, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 is a solid productivity performer that is not at the top, but can keep up. You will find it useful for keeping up with your demanding productivity workflow, but you will not want to use it for creative applications. However, that's not a blow to the EliteBook as it applies to all current Intel U-series laptops. You need to turn to AMD for better creative performance.

	Geekbench 5 (single / multiple)	Handbrake (seconds)	Cinebench R23 (single / multiple)	PCMark 10	3DMark time spy
HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 (Core i7-1185G7)	1569/5279	204	1474/4496	4868	1663
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 (Core i7-1165G7)	1327/5201	170	1469/4945	5147	1776
MSI Summit E13 Flip Evo (Core i7-1185G7)	1352/4891	203	1360/4392	4872	1751
HP Elite Dragonfly Max (Core i7-1185G7)	1570/5297	252	1385/3604	4724	1468
Dell XPS 13 (Core i7-1165G7)	1540/5432	201	1399/4585	3859	1589
HP Specter x360 14 (Core i7-1165G7)	1214/4117	236	1389/3941	4728	1457
Asus ZenBook 13 OLED (AMD-Ryzen7 5800U)	1423/6758	124	1171/7824	6034	1342

The gaming performance of the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 corresponded to that of other laptops that are equipped with Intel's integrated Iris Xe graphics. That said, it wasn't great. In Fortnite, you get around 29 frames per second (fps) on 1080p high graphics and 22 fps on epic graphics.

This is good enough for older titles or newer titles with greatly reduced resolution and graphics. But this is a business laptop and doesn't pretend to be a gaming device.

Close-up of the screen of the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

I'm not a fan of full HD displays (1,920 x 1,080), not even 14-inch displays. I like higher resolutions. However, I liked the power-saving display of the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 more than usual – apart from its traditional 16: 9 aspect ratio. The display was bright, the colors were dynamic without looking excessive, and black text appeared on a white background. Subjectively, it's one of the better 1080p displays I've used on a laptop that isn't specifically designed for developers.

My colorimeter supported me. First, the display was actually bright at 479 nits, well above our 300 nit threshold and well above the premium average. This is a display that you can probably use in sunlight. The contrast of 1,740: 1 was also excellent for an IPS display and is again well above our preferred threshold, in this case 1000: 1. It is better than the display of many other business laptops, including the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, which only delivers 306 cd / m² and had a much lower contrast ratio of 970: 1.

The colors were also good for a non-creator display with 77% AdobeRGB and 99% sRGB. That is a few percentage points above the average of the premium display and again surpasses the 76% and 96% of the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9. The display of the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 was with a Delta-E of 1.11 (1.0 or less is excellent) is also accurate, compared to the ThinkPad with 0.99.

All in all, I found the display a pleasure to use for productivity work and Netflix binge. Again, I would have preferred a higher resolution display, but many people will find a full HD display to provide a sufficiently sharp image on a 14-inch display. I wish the display had been touchable though, and that's an option for those who feel the same way.

Sound is provided by two upward facing speakers on either side of the keyboard. HP advertises the speaker volume and bass, and I found the claims to be true. Fully turned up there was a lot of sound and no distortion. Mids and highs were nice and clear, and yes there was a hint of bass. The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 can't live up to the audio standards of the Dell XPS 15 or MacBook, but it's good enough for watching Netflix and occasionally listening to music.

Keyboard and touchpad

Close up on the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 keyboard. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

HP's EliteBooks all have great keyboards. The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 has been redesigned to be even better, especially to provide a consistent feel across all keys. The redesign includes adding a programmable hotkey and moving the power button onto the keyboard, and requires a little more pressure and longer holding to activate it. The mechanism of the keyboard is deep, with a snappy floor movement and very quiet. I would rate it on the HP Specter keyboards, which have long been my favorite Windows 10 keyboards, and better than Dell's XPS line of keyboards. Only the Magic Keyboard in the MacBook is better.

The touchpad is medium in size with a smooth glass surface and Microsoft Precision touchpad support. I found it serviceable, with reliable performance using Windows 10's multi-touch gesture suite, however, it's smaller than it could be to accommodate buttons for the Lenovo TrackPoint-like cursor nubbin in the center of the keyboard. This works well if you're into that type of control, and provides a textured surface to stay in control.

Windows 10 Hello support is provided by both a fingerprint reader in the upper right corner of the palm rest and an infrared camera for facial recognition. Both worked quickly and easily, so that the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 could log in without any problems.

Close-up of the HP EliteBook 840 Aero G8 webcam. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Battery life

The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 offers a 53 Wh battery, which is average for a 14-inch laptop. With a 1080p display, I'd expect good but not great battery life, probably enough to last you through a day of work but not enough to last through the evening.

As it turned out, the battery life was a little better than I expected. I saw about 11 hours on our web browsing test which is a strong result. The MSI Summit E13 Flip Evo with the same CPU, Full HD + display (1,920 x 1,200) and 70 watt hour battery is only one minute longer. The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9, a more direct competitor, lasted for about another hour. In our video looping test, which is playing a local 1080p film trailer, the EliteBook again managed a good time with 14 hours and 15 minutes. Anything over 12 hours is exactly what we would expect from a premium laptop. I have to say that the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 lasted a spectacular 21 hours, so that the EliteBook does not completely dominate the business class.

In the PCMark 10 Applications battery test, which provides the best indication of the battery life, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 achieved a strong 13.75 hours and is thus at the upper end of our database. The ThinkPad dominates again with 17.25 hours. I also ran the PCMark 10 gaming battery test, which saw the EliteBook hit a little over five hours – the longest we've seen. However, this test seems to show how hard a laptop works on battery power, rather than absolute battery life, so expect reduced performance when turned off.

Overall, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 was a robust performer in terms of battery life. It exceeded my expectations and will keep you working well into the evening if necessary. You may not get the fastest performance while on battery life, but it will keep you going when you are not on a charger.

Our opinion

HP took the EliteBook 840 G8 and made it easier with the Aero version, giving business users a solid alternative that leverages HP's powerful suite of enterprise security and management tools. The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 is well made and yet very light, offers good performance and offers excellent battery life.

It's expensive though. You are definitely paying for the business functions and most likely it will not be the user who is paying for it. But organizations looking for a great business laptop should keep the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 on their shortlist.

Are there alternatives?

The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 is a strong competitor in terms of performance and battery life and is cheaper with the same configuration ($ 2,260 on offer), but only has a one-year warranty, Lenovo also packs several business features, but they are not quite as extensive as the selection from HP.

Dell offers another solid alternative with the Latitude 7420, which is also cheaper at $ 2,020 (with a three-year warranty). Dell has its own suite of business tools, and the Latitude will serve companies well when they need easy-to-manage security measures.

If you don't need a business-class laptop, there are a variety of consumer alternatives. But in this case, the EliteBook 840 Aero G8 shouldn't even be considered.

How long it will take?

The EliteBook 840 Aero G8 is well made and should trust that it can last many years in typical business operations. The components are state-of-the-art so that they will keep pace with Windows requirements for years. You will appreciate the three-year warranty that can be expected for business-class devices, but is not always offered at no extra cost.

Should you buy it?

Yes sir. It's expensive, but worth it when you need a laptop that your business can trust.

Editor's recommendations

18 Aug

Blog

HP Pavilion Aero 13 Review: Ultra-Light, Ultra-Powerful?

August 18, 2021
Posted by Samson

HP Pavilion Aero 13 sits on a table.

HP Pavilion Aero 13 Review: Ultra-light, ultra-powerful?

RRP $ 1,000.00

"The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is as powerful as it is light."

advantages

Mostly solid build quality
Excellent performance
Very good battery life
Extremely light
Minimalistic good looks

disadvantage

Keyboard is a bit rough
Lid is too flexible

Light laptops usually come with compromises. Chunky performance and flimsy build quality are common.

The new Pavilion Aero 13 from HP tries to resolve these misunderstandings. Although the HP Pavilion Aero 13 weighs just 2.18 pounds (and is technically categorized as a budget laptop), it's a fast, well-built, and surprisingly high-quality small laptop.

I tested a mid-range configuration of the Pavilion Aero 13 for $ 1,000 that comes with an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800U CPU and a modern 16:10 Full HD + (1,920 x 1,200) IPS display. Most buyers will be interested in the $ 750 base configuration with a Ryzen 5 5600U and half the RAM and storage.

But no matter what you choose, this isn't your dad's budget pavilion.

design

The Pavilion Aero 13 is the first in its product line in which the entire chassis is made of a magnesium-aluminum alloy. That makes it extremely light at just 2.18 pounds – in fact, it's the lightest consumer laptop HP has ever made. The HP Envy 13 is slightly wider and slightly flatter and is the same thickness at 0.67 inches but weighs 2.88 pounds.

The previous generation Pavilion 13 was larger in all dimensions, 0.70 inches thick, and weighed 2.71 pounds – without an all-metal design. The Pavilion Aero 13 clearly stands out among the thin and light 13-inch laptops from HP.

HP Pavilion Aero 13 sits on a table. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

It also beats the best 13-inch laptop on the market, the clearly high-quality Dell XPS 13, at least in terms of weight. This laptop is 0.58 inches thick, weighs 2.8 pounds, and is a bit thinner even with its own 16:10 display. The reason: HP has raised the hinge a bit, which tilts the keyboard for better typing and improved airflow, and so the chin of the Pavilion Aero 13 is larger than it appears when the lid is open. A closer competitor is the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED ($ 1,000 with 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and an OLED display), which is slightly larger in width and depth and heavier at 2.5 pounds, but only 0.55 inches is thick.

This light metal alloy has its price. While the lower chassis of the Pavilion Aero 13 only yields slightly under good pressure, the lid is quite flexible. Because the metal is not only more flexible, it is also quite thin. Build quality is one area where the Pavilion Aero 13 proves its budget pedigree – although it's by no means bad. Nevertheless, a higher-quality notebook like the XPS 13 or the HP Specter x360 13 gives the impression of rock-solid rigidity that the Pavilion cannot achieve.

The ZenBook 13 OLED has a lot going for it too, but it's hard to say which one is more solidly built without comparing them side by side. I have to note that the hinge on the Pavilion Aero 13 is excellent – you can open the lid with one hand and there is only a tiny wiggle when you type.

Aesthetically, the Pavilion Aero 13 has a modern look that is reminiscent of the Envy line. It's a minimalist design with clean lines and angles that comes in four colors – the natural silver of my review unit, pale rose gold, warm gold, and ceramic white. Whichever color scheme you choose, you get a simple and attractive look without being overbearing. It's also modern thanks to the small bezels of the display that give it a screen-to-body ratio of 90%. The XPS 13 and Specter x360 13 are more standout machines, but there's plenty of room for a laptop that looks this good without attracting attention.

Left side view of the HP Pavilion Aero 13. Connections shown: HDMI, USB, micro-USB and headphones.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

HP Pavilion Aero 13 right side view, charging port.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

HP Pavilion Aero 13 right side view, charging port.

Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Connectivity is mixed up, with a full-sized HDMI 2.0 port, a USB-A port and a USB-C port on the left, and a second USB-A port on the right. This is great legacy support, but there is no Thunderbolt support due to the AMD chipset. There is also no SD card reader, which is disappointing. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 offer wireless connectivity.

perfomance

HP Pavilion Aero 13 fingerprint scanner. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

Equipped with an 8-core / 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 5800U CPU, together with 16 GB RAM and a 512 GB PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD), the Pavilion Aero 13 promises to be quite powerful. AMD's chip is faster than Intel's 4-core / 8-thread Core i7-1185G7 of the 11th generation for CPU-intensive tasks.

These additional cores are most important to anyone using applications such as creative software that are CPU demanding. Video editing stands out here, and according to our benchmarks, the Pavilion Aero 13 offers a surprising amount of performance in such a light package.

The Pavilion Aero 13 is the fastest notebook in our comparison group and is on par with other notebooks equipped with the Ryzen 7 5800U, such as the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED. These two swapped places from benchmark to benchmark, with HP leading the way in Handbrake with an excellent score of less than two minutes to encode our 420 MB test video in H.265 and in Cinebench R23. These benchmarks show how well a laptop performs not only on creative tasks such as video rendering and display, but also on most tasks that place stress on the CPU for an extended period of time. They not only show the processor performance, but also how well the thermal design of a laptop keeps the CPU running at full speed.

The performance of the HP Pavilion Aero 13 was impressive across the board.

At the same time, the ZenBook 13 OLED came out on top in Geekbench 5 and the PCMark 10 Complete Score, tests that show how well a laptop performs at a mix of productivity tasks such as web browsing, video conferencing and office applications, as well as multitasking. The difference wasn't that big, and so it would be fair to call the two laptops equivalent. And as you can see in the table below, both laptops outperformed the Intel competition with quick results that are well above the price of about $ 1,000 for each laptop. Apart from single-core scores in Cinebench R23, the Intel chips couldn't keep up. The division of the PCMark 10 benchmarks into the points Essentials, Productivity and Content Creation resulted in the same inequality.

Simply put, the Pavilion Aero 13 was impressive across the board. If you run the CPU-intensive apps above, you will find few thin and light laptops that can keep up. The Pavilion Aero 13 was pretty quick during my tests and handled everything I threw at it without hesitation. I highly recommend this incredibly light laptop for its performance alone.

	Geekbench (single / multiple)	Handbrake (Seconds)	Cinebench R23 (single / multiple)	PCMark 10	3DMark time spy
HP Pavilion Aero 13 (Ryzen7 5800U)	1373/6430	112	1381/8304	5756	1212
Asus ZenBook 13 OLED (Ryzen7 5800U)	1423/6758	124	1171/7824	6034	1342
Dell XPS 13 (Core i7-1185G7)	1549/5431	204	1399/4585	n / A	1380
HP Specter x360 14 (Core i7-1165G7)	1214/4117	236	1389/3941	4728	1457
Razer Book 13 (Core i7-1165G7)	1548/5374	210	1508/4519	4878	1776
MacBook Pro 13 (M1)	1707/7337	n / A	1487/7547	n / A	n / A

When it comes to gaming performance, however, the Ryzen chips do not dominate. The Pavilion Aero 13 achieved the lowest 3DMark Time Spy test in our comparison group and could not convince in our test game Fortnite.

It reached 29 frames per second (fps) at 1080p and high graphics and 15 fps with epic graphics turned on. That's about the same as what you get from the built-in Intel Iris Xe graphics, and not enough for older titles or newer titles with reduced resolution and graphics detail.

HP Pavilion Aero 13 sits on a table. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

For the Pavilion brand, HP has moved the larger 16:10 aspect ratio downwards and has equipped the Pavilion Aero 13 with a 13.3-inch 16:10 IPS panel in one of two resolutions. You can choose from Full HD + (1,920 x 1,200), which my test device has, or QHD + (2,560 x 1,600) displays.

I was impressed with the display, which was so much better than you usually find on a Pavilion or other supposedly budget laptop. Again, it's a $ 1,000 machine, so it's reasonable to expect a good display – and HP delivered. My subjective experience matched my objective results, which I'll outline in a moment, with colors showing up without oversaturation and appearing accurate enough for all but the most discerning creative professionals. While the contrast was lower in absolute terms than I would like, black text on a white background still stood out – important for anyone who works with words or numbers on the screen.

The ultra-bright display of the HP Pavilion Aero 13 holds up particularly well in direct sunlight.

According to my colorimeter, the Pavilion Aero 13's display was primarily a high quality premium display. It was very bright at 437 nits, well above our 300 nit threshold and close to the 458 nits of the Dell XPS 13 Full HD + display. In comparison, the Asus ZenBook 13's OLED panel delivers 397 nits of brightness. Each of these displays may even be useful in direct sunlight, but the Pavilion Aero 13 holds up particularly well. The only disappointment with the Pavilion Aero 13 was the contrast ratio, which was only 830: 1 – below our 1,000: 1 threshold for the best displays. The XPS 13 was much better at 1350: 1, while the ZenBook 13 OLED enjoyed the extreme contrast of this display technology at 396,690: 1.

The color saturation of the Pavilion Aero 13 was average of 77% AdobeRGB and 99% sRGB, a little better than the premium average. The XPS 13 achieved 75 and 98% respectively, while the ZenBook 13 OLED again benefited from the display technology with an excellent 100% of both color spaces. The HP's colors were reasonably accurate with a DeltaE of 1.8 (less than 1.0 is considered excellent), the XPS 13 with 1.36 and the ZenBook 13 OLED with a phenomenal 0.49.

The tone was not quite the same standard. The volume was too low, even though there was no distortion when fully turned up. The mids and highs were clear, but there was no bass which made the sound a bit lifeless. It's fine for system sounds and the occasional YouTube video, but you'll need headphones or bluetooth speakers to enjoy Netflix or listen to music.

Keyboard and touchpad

HP Pavilion Aero 13 keyboard and trackpad. Mark Coppock / Digital Trends

The Pavilion Aero 13 has a keyboard that looks like that of the Specter and the latest Envy laptops. It's well spaced with nice sized keycaps and the same row of position keys along the right side. But it doesn't use the same mechanism that I've gotten used to. There are good trips out there, but without the precise ground motion and click feel you get with the high-end devices from HP.

The Specter keyboard is my favorite among Windows 10 laptops, and the Pavilion Aero 13 isn't stackable. It's better than many budget laptops, but this is a $ 1,000 device – the keyboard is a budget holdover that doesn't belong. The Asus ZenBook 13 OLED has a better keyboard for the same price. I should mention that the Pavilion Aero 13's keyboard is also a bit noisy, and not backlit, without paying a $ 20 premium – a disappointment given the $ 1,000 price tag.

The touchpad is better – it's 23% larger than the previous version and takes up most of the available space on the keyboard deck. It's bigger than the touchpad on the Specter x360 13, but not as big as the version of the Specter x360 14. It has a smooth finish and supports Microsoft's Precision touchpad drivers, so it supports Windows 10 multi-touch gestures well. There's no touch display option, and that's a disappointment because I don't really like non-touch displays – but not everyone feels the same, and that might not be a deal-breaker for most buyers.

Windows 10 Hello support is provided by a fingerprint reader on the keyboard deck, and it worked fine. I was able to log in straight away without my password, that's all you want the feature to do.

Battery life

The Pavilion Aero 13 is equipped with a 43-watt-hour battery, which is a bit small for a 13-inch laptop. I've seen mixed results with Ryzen battery life, so I wasn't expecting great longevity even with the Full HD + display.

I got the most encouragement in my benchmark tests. The Pavilion Aero 13 lasted 10.5 hours in our web browsing test, which is a solid result. The Dell XPS 13 Full HD + managed 8.5 hours, while the Asus ZenBook 13 OLED achieved a staggering 15.7 hours even with an OLED display. In our video test, which ran through a local 1080p trailer, the Pavilion Aero 13 again achieved just over 10.5 hours, the XPS 13 with 12 hours and the ZenBook 13 OLED with 15.5 hours. It struck me that, unlike Intel laptops, Ryzen computers do not always show such a large increase from web browsing to video testing.

The Pavilion Aero 13 managed almost 11.5 hours in the PCMark 10 Applications battery test, a strong score that is right at the top of our database. The XPS 13 lasted almost 10 hours; we didn't test the ZenBook 13 OLED with this benchmark. The Pavilion Aero 13 only lasted 94 minutes in the PCMark 10 gaming battery test, which is at the lower end of our database, while the XPS 13 lasted almost four hours. However, this PCMark battery test is highly dependent on how aggressively a laptop runs on battery power, and so it is likely that the HP maintained full speed while the Dell throttled during the test.

Overall, the Pavilion Aero 13 achieves an all-day battery life and a few more. You can take up some work in the evening without joining, or enjoy Netflix for a few hours. In view of the low weight of the laptop, this is a commendable result, also thanks to the lower battery capacity.

Our opinion

With the Pavilion Aero 13, HP has added a few premium features to the Pavilion line and at the same time increased the price. The all-metal chassis and 16:10 display aspect ratio are welcome additions and give the Pavilion Aero 13 a justification for its $ 1,000 price tag. The performance and battery life were also good enough to make the price seem reasonable, even if it's more than we'd expect from a machine that's supposed to be a budget option.

Add in the extremely light nature of the Pavilion Aero 13 and you have a very compelling option in the 13 inch space. If you are looking for a notebook of this class, you will be happy with the Pavilion Aero 13, even considering midrange and premium alternatives.

Any alternatives?

I'm not mentioning the HP Envy 13 because it's a great alternative, but because for the same $ 1,000 you can get a less-performing laptop with an old-school 16: 9 display. It shows how aggressively HP positions the superior Pavilion Aero 13 against the rest of its product lineup.

The Asus ZenBook 13 OLED is a more competitive alternative that also costs $ 1,000. It runs the same CPU but includes a larger 1TB SSD and an OLED display.

Finally, you could go for the Dell XPS 13, which is more expensive but also of higher quality. You get better build quality, a slightly better display, and a sleeker look and feel.