HP introduces its first 16-inch gaming laptop: Here's what you need to know

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The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 looks promising

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16
(Image credit: HP)

HP's gaming laptops have always been relatively tame compared to the competition, but it seems like the gaming side is doing a little experimentation, like busting out an affordable 16-inch gaming laptop.

The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 is slated to launch sometime this June starting at just $799.

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 design, ports and specs

The HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 doesn't look as bulky as its predecessors, despite being a 16-inch laptop, but the design is very much the same: bland. The black lid is home to a gross green HP logo, while the interior features a plain black deck and a green keyboard. It screams of the tired budget gaming design.

For a 16-inch laptop, the HP Pavilion 16 is pretty light. It comes in at just 5.2 pounds and 14.6 x 10.3 x 0.9 inches.

In terms of ports, this machine is packing an HDMI 2.0 port, two USB Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port, an RJ45 Ethernet port, a headphone jack, an SD Card slot and a power jack.

There are two configurations of the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16. The starting configuration offers Intel Core i5-10300H processor, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti with 6GB of VRAM, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD with 32GB of Intel Optane memory. The other config keeps the same GPU, but bumps you up to a Core i7-10750H CPU, 12GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD and a 1TB HDD.

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 display, keyboard and audio

There are two panels you can get with the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16, both are 16-inch, 1920 x 1080 screens. One is a 144Hz display that sports 72% NTSC color gamut and 300 nits of brightness. The other is a 60Hz panel with a 45% NTSC color gamut and 250 nits of brightness.

The keyboard features a full sized numpad, and its keys are backlit by an "acid green" color which sounds as cheesy as it looks in the photos. And as always, this HP laptop will be sporting dual speakers by none other than Bang & Olufsen.

HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 battery life

HP hasn't officially rated the battery life on the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16. However, we do know what kind of battery it's carrying around -- a 3-cell, 52.5 Wh Li-ion polymer battery. It's not a very big battery, so we imagine you won't get very long battery life out of this machine, but we won't know for sure until we test it ourselves.

Outlook

17-inch laptops are a little too big for my taste, but maybe a 16-inch gaming laptop is what the industry needs. We're excited to get our hands on the HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 16 and to see what it's all about. Stay tuned for our future review and benchmarks when it launches sometime in June.

Rami Tabari
Rami Tabari
Editor

Rami Tabari is an Editor for Laptop Mag. He reviews every shape and form of a laptop as well as all sorts of cool tech. You can find him sitting at his desk surrounded by a hoarder's dream of laptops, and when he navigates his way out to civilization, you can catch him watching really bad anime or playing some kind of painfully difficult game. He’s the best at every game and he just doesn’t lose. That’s why you’ll occasionally catch his byline attached to the latest Souls-like challenge.