HP Pavilion 15.6" 2025, Intel i5-1235U, 8GB, 256GB SSD + 160GB SSD, Silver

A budget laptop with a good CPU and a screen that won't hurt your eyes, but 8GB of RAM is a ticking clock. Buy it for basic tasks, not for anything ambitious.

The i5-1235U is a solid little workhorse for everyday tasks, and the Iris Xe graphics can handle light photo editing or older games without falling over. But that 8GB of RAM lands in the 14th percentile for this category, which means Chrome with a dozen tabs will start wheezing sooner than you'd like. The 256GB SSD plus a 160GB docking station set is a weird combo, and the storage overall sits at the 29th percentile, so you'll be managing space more than you'd expect.

The HP Pavilion 15.6 sits in a weird middle ground. The Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition and Apple MacBook Pro M5 are in a completely different league for performance and build quality, but they cost a lot more. The Lenovo Legion 5i and ASUS ROG Flow are gaming machines that crush this thing in graphics, but they're also heavier and pricier. For pure budget office work, this HP is fine, but it's not competing with any of those on raw power.

At CAD 689, this is a reasonable price for a basic Windows 11 Pro laptop with a decent CPU. But the RAM and storage situation means you're likely to feel the ceiling within a year or two. If you can stretch your budget a bit, you'll get a lot more longevity elsewhere.

The HP Pavilion 15.6 is a budget laptop that knows exactly what it is, and mostly doesn't pretend otherwise. You're getting a 10-core i5-1235U, a 1080p IPS screen, and Windows 11 Pro for CAD 689. That's a fair deal for office work and streaming, but the 8GB of RAM is the elephant in the room. It's the kind of machine you buy for a student or a home office, not for anything that needs real muscle.

If you're looking for a laptop that can handle video editing, modern games, or heavy multitasking, this isn't it. Go get something with 16GB of RAM and a dedicated GPU, like the Lenovo Legion 5i or ASUS ROG Flow, and save yourself the frustration.

If you need a cheap, no-frills Windows laptop for email, documents, and Netflix, the HP Pavilion 15.6 does the job. But the 8GB of RAM is a real limitation, and the storage setup is odd. It's a decent buy at this price, just know what you're signing up for.