this is the hp pavilion aero 13. what’s so special about it you may ask well it’s a thinner light laptop featuring amd’s ryzen 5000 user cpu a 16 by 10 display which is a big thing for me these days and the best part is that it starts at eight hundred dollars now we’ve taken a look at numerous thin light devices here the studio for less than a thousand dollars and one of the common things that we’ve noticed specifically with amd based models is that a they’re extremely difficult to find and b companies usually tent out too cheap on things like the display build quality io and the list just kind of kind of goes on but i’m happy to report that the arrow 13 is actually trying to break that barrier and i’m super excited to share my thoughts about it because this thing this is a hidden gem for budget laptop buyers so let’s dive in but first a quick word from today’s video sponsor play your games
the right way with a much improved virtuoso rgb wireless xt with bluetooth support fantastic swivel hinges deeper ear cushions tactile controls with usbc charging a beefy microphone to step up your comms game and awesome wireless sound reproduction check it out below all right so as usual let’s get to pricing in specs it starts at 800 which i mentioned earlier and for that you get a ryzen 5 5600u cpu with 6 cores and 12 threads 16 gigabytes of ram 256 gigabytes of pci nvme ssd a 16 by 10 1200 p ips display and amd’s integrated radeon graphics you’ll also find a few models with eight gigabytes of onboard memory the next tier which is what i have over here comes with a ryzen 7 5800u cpu with two additional cores and four threads and half a terabyte of storage for about a thousand dollars and at the time of making this video i saw this particular model go for 750 and the ryzen 5 model for 690 dollars and they’re actually available to buy which is something that i’ve never been able to say with any amd thin and light laptops lately so hey additionally keep in mind that both these processors are based off the zen 3 architecture so you are getting the latest offering in terms of performance and efficiency from amd the design is very sleek and simple guys it certainly borrows a few trades from the envy series because they’re trying to keep it consistent across the lineup you can actually pick
this model in four colors like rose gold ceramic white warm gold and natural silver which is what i have over here and i really like it build quality is okay the chassis consists of recycled ocean-bound plastics which is thoughtful of the environment but it does come with a few trade-offs like there’s a little bit of keyboard flex and the display also flexes up a little bit it does a great job at resisting fingerprints and the hinge is really stiff which results in less wobble it also elevates the keyboard at an angle which complements a typing experience so that’s nice as for size it’s really compact guys in fact it lines up with the xps 13 the zenbook 13 and most 13-inch laptops on the market the zen height is only 0.67 inches or 17 millimeters and given that this thing is made out of plastic it only weighs around 2.2 pounds which makes it one of the lightest thinner light laptops that i’ve ever got my hands on here in the studio so you won’t even feel this thing in your bag the power adapter is also very light and easy to carry around the cable is long enough which i’m sure will come in handy when you’re in a coffee shop or lecture halls the one thing that i wish for is usb type-c charging since this one uses a barrel style connector which gets a job done but having usb type-c would have added another useful port for both power and data moving on to the interior space and what we have over here is a standard keyboard layout that’s maximizes the edges to accommodate the larger keys speaking of which they’re actually pretty good i was actually surprised by the amount of throw distance since it felt similar to the spectre series that i tried a while back oddly on my sample the left shift key has a small rattle but otherwise you know the feedback is great and for typos this will get the job done
really well unfortunately you don’t get any backlighting with this laptop but if you configure it with hp’s website there’s a 20 option to add that feature then again given the silver finish of these keycaps the light reflecting off the display will actually help you distinguish the keys at night there is a fingerprint reader right below the arrow keys and to be honest it was a bit finicky with my testing but i’m glad that at least it’s there instead of relying on windows hello which on other laptops i just tend to have a really tough time getting used to because it just doesn’t work with my face for some reason the trackpad is functional it’s a smooth surface trying to replicate glass but hey i mean it gets the job done it’s not the best or the worst that i’ve tried but i did notice some or at least small hiccups every now and then with palm detection the primary left and right buttons are tactile and thankfully they don’t get stuck like the dell inspiron series so that’s definitely great the port situation is actually interesting on the arrow 13.So on the left hand side you get a full-size hdmi 2.0 port a usb type-a 3.2 gen 1 port a type c 3.2 gen 2 port and an audio jack switching over to the left hand side you have power in and another usb type a port keep in mind that both usb type-a ports are 5 gigabits per second and what i meant by interesting earlier was the fact that these boards are hinged which makes me question durability when you plug things a million times so i would just handle it with caution when you’re plugging stuff in this is the webcam test on the nv13 now the quality looks pretty good but i will say that it does tend to overexpose my skin tones quite a bit but the definition is certainly better than some of the most expensive thin lights that i’ve checked out in the past notably the xps 13.
But i want to focus on the microphone quality because as you hear or as you’re hearing right now it’s really good there’s barely any background noise i mean i have the hvac system running in the background i mean it focuses on my vocals without adding too much compression i don’t know what sort of sorcery hp is doing with the built-in microphones on these laptops especially for this price point but this thing is awesome let me know what you guys think about in the comments the speakers are located at the bottom and hp says they’re custom tuned by the experts at bang olsen but we all know that that’s just a marketing gimmick because there’s no base whatsoever uh trebles do tend to get a bit distorted especially at higher volumes so i would keep your expectations low even the built-in dac powering the headphone jack is really bad i mean there’s very less power output so no bass or anything like that honestly when it comes to the audio setup that’s where this thing kind of falls apart switching gears to the display and guys this is something that surprised me the most you see usually with laptops ranging between seven hundred to a thousand dollars come with cheap panels that suffer from color reproduction and brightness this on the other hand breaks that barrier because what you’re looking at is a 16 by 10 aspect ratio screen that’s 1200 p and ips and the colors simply put are beautiful it covers 100 srgb 80 adobe rgb and 83 dcip3 that’s sadly better than my main monitor that i use for editing videos and of course some gaming laptops or even thin light devices that cost way more than this also on top of that this panel gets really bright i mean i got a peak reading of around 500 nits which doesn’t make any sense because according to hp spec they say 400 nits i ran the test multiple times and it was consistent so i mean that’s definitely good news in fact i was able to tell that this was a really bright panel when i started using this thing for the first time here in the office you see experiencing a screen like this a laptop that costs less than a thousand dollars is genuinely mind-blowing because you’re not sacrificing or making that compromise that i mentioned earlier you can actually use it for photo editing or even a little bit of video editing given that this thing has a cores i mean seriously hp you guys deserve a standing
o for this as for upgradability this is where i left scratching my head a little bit you see the screws to access the components are hidden underneath the silicon straps so you’ll have to peel them which loses its integrity so you’ll have to find replacement adhesives to attach them back in place i know it sucks but once you get in you only have access to the single m.2 slot housing the nvme ssd and the drive speeds are really fast our half a terabyte sample scored a little over three gigabytes per second in read performance however writes where half of that which is still pretty fast the memory is started onto the pcb but luckily 16 gigabytes is the default option uh on the ryzen 5 model so no issues there alright so now on to a bit of testing and usually at this point i go through all the power modes but on the arrow 13 there’s only one power mode so it’ll actually make things a lot more easier first of all hp has set the arrow 13s 58hu to run at a constant 15 watts that’s actually the lower end of amd spectrum but perfectly acceptable for this class of notebook i mean remember this thing has access to 16 threads so there’s more than enough horsepower to go around and some manufacturers have chosen to run it as low as 10 watts now with that kind of power it runs along 2.35 gigahertz which is par for the course
too and it doesn’t move from that even during an intensive all core workload this is actually a bit on the high side mostly because temperatures are being better managed than even i expected i mean check this out the cpu never went above a maximum of just 70 degrees and even after a 50 minute workload it leveled out to around 66 degrees now you might think noise was sacrificed but that isn’t the case here since this one’s actually one of the quietest slim and light laptops that i’ve got here in the studio i mean you can hear the aero fence if it’s chugging through an intensive rendering or something else but it doesn’t get noisy or annoying at all surface temperatures are really good too honestly i’m just amazed at this thing there weren’t any uncomfortable hot spots on the keyboard area and your hands are saved from the exhaust heat since all the air is blown towards the back of the screen even the underside stayed almost cool to the touch other than a small area near the vents now before i get into any of these benchmarks there’s actually something that i need to mention you see the arrow 13 is one of the first laptops in the charts using windows 11 and that’s an issue because if our last cpu reviews have told us anything it’s that windows 11 nails pretty much every system with lower performance and battery life compared to windows 10.
But since every new laptop’s come pre-loaded with microsoft’s crappy new os there’s just no way to avoid it other than installing windows 10. i also want to mention that when we were testing this under windows 11 we disabled vbs and made sure all the updates were applied so in this case the patches full rides and cpus have been effect so just wanted to get that clear anyways starting with battery life and i was actually pleasantly surprised now even with a combination of the smallest battery capacity here and windows 11 of course this thing actually lasted for more than or almost 14 hours in our light load test it’s also got that slightly larger 16 by 10 screen which uses a bit more power than some of the other laptops here as well the heavy load tests are pretty respectable too given how small the battery is and the fact it’s powering an 8 core 16 thread processor i mean i wish hp would have popped more battery capacity into this thing since it would probably be among the best that we’ve tested in real world applications the performance is exactly what you’d expect from a 5800u running at 15 watts under windows 11.
It absolutely demolishes everything intel can throw at it but in heavy multi-core applications it can be beaten by a 15 watt 5700 use system using windows 10. that’s because the security overhead of windows 11 becomes more apparent in those situations but move on to lightly thread scenarios and the arrow 13 can really shine in pretty much every app and since most folks will be using a thin and light laptop for you know things like basic office or productivity tasks these results are probably even more important than the full load tests switching over to gaming it’s actually pretty much in line with what i’ve seen before from this platform but it’s still good to see these kinds of numbers from a budget oriented laptop now for light gaming this is perfectly fine and while amd’s integrated graphics can’t keep up with intel’s xe all the time overall their game compatibility is much much better so final thoughts on the pavilion arrow 13 from hp hopefully
everything that i talked about this laptop has convinced you guys as to how much of a hidden gem this really is i mean the first thing that comes to my mind is the display it’s just beautiful with more screen real estate it’s bright topping out the competition uh the design is very modern and sleek the keyboard and the trackpad they get the job done and uh you actually get um you know a handful number of ports oh and i can’t forget about the built-in microphone quality i mean that thing is just it blew my mind as well and if i were to look for downsides i would have preferred usb type-c charging a more refined and robust usb type a port setup and maybe a little bit more power pumped into the cpu but honestly guys the pros certainly outweighs the cons and you know especially for a laptop that costs less than a thousand dollars it’s just a no-brainer and if you’re in the market for a thin and light laptop within that price range the aero 13 should be and i mean should be on the top of your list because it’s really that good so that notes thank you so much for watching i hope you’re able to take away everything that you needed to know about this this hidden gem i’m here with howard canucks thanks again for watching and uh i will talk to you guys in the next one oh and spend responsibly my friends
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