Test HP Notebook 15-ba009dx

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Our verdict

Even for a budget laptop, the HP Notebook 15-ba009dx is not recommended due to its cheap build quality, boring display, and short battery life.

To the

Decent speakers for the price

Against

Feels cheap;

Weak, boring display;

Very short battery life;

flat keyboard;

No AC WiFi;

blurry webcam;

Listen, I don't expect much from a notebook that costs under $300. To make something at this price point, you have to cut corners somewhere. But the $259.99 HP Notebook 15-ba009dx cuts just about everywhere, from the cheap build quality to the subpar display to the battery life, which is less than half that of its nearest rivals. Sure, the speakers sound okay, but you can get a laptop that cuts fewer corners elsewhere, and I recommend you check this out to do.

draft

It shouldn't come as a surprise that this cheap laptop feels really, well, cheap. It's made of black plastic, and the knurled lid with HP logo flexes a lot when pressed down. Lifting the lid reveals the 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 display visible; an island-style keyboard with a number pad; and a black deck with some racing stripes. The black plastic edges around the deck are sharper than I expected, which gave me some trouble when typing (see below).

At 4.6 pounds and 15.1 x 10 x 1 inches, it's an average size for a budget 15-incher. The $349 Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM is 5 pounds and 15 x 10.2 x 1.2 inches tall. The $159 14-inch Dell Inspiron 14 3000 weighs 3.5 pounds and 13.6 x 9.6 x 0.9 inches, while the $209 Asus L402SA is only Weighs 3.3 pounds and 13.3 x 9.3 x 0.9 inches.

On the left side of the laptop there is an Ethernet jack, an HDMI output, a headphone jack and a pair of USB 2.0 ports. On the right side there is a USB 3.0 port, an SD card reader and a DVD Drive.

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The 15.6-inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display of the HP Notebook 15 is the motto. When I watched a trailer of The Big Sick in 1080p in a dark room, I couldn't make out most of the characters' facial features, and a scene in a hospital was blown out by the light from the windows. People's blue and red shirts were all muted.

The HP notebook covers just 70 percent of the sRGB color space, which is well below the 94 percent average for mainstream notebooks. Both the Inspiron and Aspire were more vivid at 81 percent and 159 percent, respectively.

It has a Delta-E of 1.3 (0 is ideal), so its colors are more accurate than some of the competition. The average is 2.1, while the Inspiron (3.4) and Aspire E (6.2 ) were significantly less accurate.

The HP laptop's display is dark at just 174 nits, but brighter than the disappointing 135 nits of the Inspiron. The Asus L402SA and Acer E 15 measure 206 and 215 nits, respectively.

keyboard and touchpad

I typed at my usual 107 words per minute on the HP Notebook 15's keyboard, but it wasn't fun. The keys are flat with just 1.2 millimeters of travel and 71 grams of force to press, and the cheap plastic gives them a hollow feel .The edge of the palm rest is sharp and will dig into your arms if you're not careful.

The touchpad feels cluttered and cheap, but it does the job. I used it to navigate Windows 10 with ease, although some multi-touch gestures, like activating Cortana with three fingers, required a few tries.

Audio

HP's speakers were actually pretty decent for a budget notebook. When I heard "Waving Through a Window," from the soundtrack to "Dear Evan Hansen," Ben Platt's vocals were clear and loud enough to fill our small conference room.

While the violins were also clear, the bass and the rest of the orchestra were quite mellow. There are options in the DTS Audio Control app to focus on speech or movie playback, but I was perfectly content leaving it alone in the default music mode to permit.

perfomance

With its 2GHz AMD-A6-7310 CPU, Radeon R4 graphics, 4GB RAM and 500GB, 5400rpm HDD, the Notebook 15 isn't exactly the computer for professionals. In my tests, it stuttered occasionally, only when trying to open the file manager and couldn't consistently keep up with my typing when typing on 10fastfingers.com. I had 10 tabs open in Google Chrome when I saw a lag when switching between them.

It also doesn't use 802.11ac, the latest Wi-Fi standard, so you won't get the fastest internet speeds.

On the Geekbench 4 overall performance test, the notebook scored 3291, beating the Inspiron (1807, Intel Celeron N3060) and L402SA (1934) but not as well as the Aspire (5408, Intel Core i3-7100U).

The computer took 2 minutes and 7 seconds to copy 4.97 GB of mixed media files, which translates to a speed of 40.1 MB/s. The Inspiron (27.9 MB/s) and Aspire (36, 6 MB/s) were both slightly slower. The L402SA, which has eMMC storage instead of a hard drive, was far behind at 14 Mbit/s.

It took the HP laptop a whopping 11 minutes and 40 seconds to pair 20,000 names and addresses in our OpenOffice spreadsheet macro. The Inspiron (13:33) and L402SA (13:15) were even slower, but the Aspire only needed 5 :14.

battery life

Always keep the Notebook 15 near a charger. It only lasted 3 hours and 36 minutes on the Laptop Mag Battery Test, which continuously surfs the web over Wi-Fi. The Asus L402SA manages a much stronger 6 hours and 9 minutes. While the Inspiron (9:01) and Aspire (8:16) both lasted long enough to get through a workday.

cam

What a mess. The 640 x 360 webcam takes blurry, pixelated images that aren't even good for skyping with a friend. In one shot at my desk, I looked so blurry and pixelated I had to be careful not to cling wrap was over the camera. The lights behind me had all gone out and the colors weren't nearly as vivid as they appeared in real life.

heat

Whether it's on your desk or lap, the Notebook 15 stays cool. In our testing, the laptop never crossed our 95-degree comfort threshold after streaming 15-minute HD videos from YouTube. The bottom measures 88 degrees Fahrenheit, which The keyboard between the G and H keys measures 87 degrees and the touchpad is a cool 81 degrees.

software and warranty

Unfortunately, if you want to uninstall all the pre-built bloatware on the Notebook 15, you will need some time. The junk includes McAfee LiveSafe, WildTangent Games, Simple Mahjong, and Shortcuts for Amazon.com and Priceline.com, among others. That's all you have to do with all Windows 10 machines, like Netflix, Twitter, Candy Crush: Soda Saga and Royal Revolt 2.

HP does include some useful utilities, however. Amateur videographers will appreciate CyberLink's video editing tools, while HP Orbit pairs your laptop and smartphone for file sharing. The preinstalled Dropbox app gives you 25GB of storage for a year if you log on to the laptop.

HP sells the 15-ba009dx notebook with a one-year warranty. See how the company works on our

Ranking of the best and worst brands

and

Technical support showdown

.

bottom line

I don't expect budget notebooks to offer top-notch performance, displays or even design, but the HP Notebook 15-ba009dx underperforms on almost every level. It lasts less than 4 hours on a charge, has a weak and dull display, a flat Keyboard and a plastic case with a noticeable yielding in the lid. It doesn't even support the latest WLAN standard.

If you can add another $90 to your budget, the $350

Acer Aspire E 15 E5-575-33BM

gives you a 1080p display, larger hard drive, AC WiFi, and an Intel Core i3 CPU. It also lasts over 8 hours on a charge. It's not perfect, but the differences are impressive.

If you can't spend more than the notebook costs 15, you get a lot more bang for your buck. The $209

Asus L402SA

has a comfortable keyboard, a colorful display and a much better build quality than the HP notebook. The $230

Dell Inspiron 14 3000

has much less storage (only 32GB), but if you don't keep documents, photos, music or videos on your laptop, it will last at least 9 hours on a charge.

Photo credit: Shaun Lucas / Laptop Mag

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HP Notebook 15-ba009dx Specifications

brand

hp

CPU

2GHz AMD A6-7310 APU

card slots

SD memory reader

corporate website

hp.com

screen size

15.6

graphic card

AMD Radeon R4 (integrated)

disk size

500GB

hard drive speed

5,400 rpm

disk type

HDD

Highest resolution available

1366x768

native resolution

1366x768

operating system

Windows 10 Home

optical drive

Super Multi DVD

Connections (except USB)

HDMI Out, Headphone/Mic, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, Ethernet

R.A.M.

4GB

size

15.1x10x0.96

touchpad size

4.6 x 2.2 inches

USB ports

3

Warranty/Support

1 year

Weight

4.6 pounds

Wireless Internet access

802.11 b/g/n/ac

WiFi model

802.11b/g/n (1x1)

Fewer