Late last year, I reviewed the HP Pavilion Aero featuring AMD processors and gave it a perfect score, which is super rare. The reasons are obvious: It weighs less than 2.2 lbs (0.9kg), has excellent performance, has a non-cheap design that looks great, and it has an exceptionally good keyboard, touchpad, and display.
HP is running a fire sale on this one and instead of it being $800 it can be yours for $479.99, a savings of $320.
As someone who mostly spends their time reviewing high-end laptops that can run north of $2,000, the HP Pavilion Aero was the first “budget” laptop that I could easily use as my daily driver with no regrets.
Its chassis is all-metal instead of cheap plastic and the cutouts for the speakers and vents are tiny, drilled holes that look awesome.
| Category | HP Pavilion Aero 13 |
|---|---|
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home (Windows 11-ready) |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen 5 5600U AMD Ryzen 7 5800U |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon graphics |
| Display | 13.3-inch, 16:10 aspect ratio, 400 nits, 100% sRGB 1920×1200 (WUXGA) 2560×1600 (WQXGA) |
| Ports | 2x Type-A 1x Type-C (PD) HDMI Headphone/mic |
| Camera | 720p front-facing, dual mics |
| Audio | 2x Bang & Olufsen (bottom) |
| Battery | Up to 10.5 hours |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 6 (1×2) and Bluetooth 5.2 Wi-Fi 6 (2×2) and Bluetooth 5.2 |
| Weight | 2.2 pounds (0.9kg) |
| Color | Pale rose gold Warm gold Ceramic white Natural silver |
| Price | From $749 |
The 13.3-inch 16:10 display has a 90% screen-to-body ratio and 100% sRGB color gamut. You rarely find such features in a laptop that costs <$800!
Ports are modern with two Type-A, one Type-C with power delivery (PD), HDMI output, and a standard headphone/mic jack. You also get Wi-Fi 6 and very up-to-date Bluetooth 5.2.
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The model HP has on sale today features Windows 11 Home, 8GB of RAM, AMD Radeon graphics, 256GB SSD for storage, and is powered by an AMD Ryzen 5 5625U (4.3GHz with 6 cores and 12 threads).
The Pavilion Aero 13 is the perfect laptop for students, people who spend a lot of time on the web, movie watchers, those who work in Microsoft Office, or even some light gaming (especially Xbox Cloud Gaming).
Heck, it even gets good battery life clocking in over 10 hours in our synthetic battery test and around 8 hours in my real-world usage.
Look, I’ve used this laptop and it’s fantastic. To pay less than $500 for it is absurd as you are getting a great-looking, all-metal laptop that weighs a featherlight 2.2 lbs with an edge-to-edge keyboard. If you’re on a budget (and who isn’t these days) and you are looking for the perfect productivity laptop that ticks all the core boxes, the HP Pavilion Aero (13z-be100) is a hard and easy recommendation.
Go get it!
