HP is refreshing its lineup of budget Pavilion notebooks at an unlikely place -- the Coachella music festival in Indio, Calif. The company is hoping to gain some street cred by showing its laptops first to the glassy-eyed, flower-wearing Generation Z attendees, because it wants to show how its technology helps young people express themselves.
Besides the questionable debut venue, the new laptops, a clamshell Pavilion and a 2-in-1, the Pavilion x360, actually seem pretty nice at first glance. They both use aluminum shells in a variety of colors: Opulent Blue, Silk Gold, Orchid Pink, Mineral Silver and Empress Red. Both laptops are set to launch in either May or June, starting at $349 for the 11.6-inch x360.
The regular Pavilion has Intel Celeron, Core i3, i5, i7 and AMD E2 or A10 CPU options, with storage up to 1TB for HDDs and 512GB for SSDs and up to 16GB of RAM. You can choose to add Nvidia GeForce 940MX and AMD Radeon GPUs. It has an optional infrared camera for Windows Hello facial login, and a variety of ports, including USB Type-C 3.1, USB Type-A 3.1, HDMI and an SD card slot. It comes in 14, 15.6 and 17.3 inch varieties.
The Pavilion x360 comes in 11.6-inch, 14-inch and 15.6-inch versions in metal or "Strata" brushed patterns. You can pick from Intel Pentium, Core i3, i5 and i7 CPU, up to 1TB HDD, 512GB SSD or dual storage (128GB SSD and 1TB HDD, except on the 11-inch version, which can't fit two drives). It also has the same Nvidia and AMD discrete GPU options and an infrared camera as an add-on.
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The 14-inch and 15-inch x360s have a USB Type-C port and 2 USB 3.1 ports, while the 11-inch version trades Type-C for a third USB 3.1 port. It also includes a stylus in the box.
Both laptops will include HP's Jumpstart software for easy registration and software downloads and Orbit to connect the laptop to a phone, and HP claims that it will come with less preinstalled bloatware, with only the recycle bin on the desktop.
We'll have more information and full reviews when we get the Pavilion and Pavilion x360 in our labs.
Photos: Andrew E. Freedman / Laptop Mag
