Laptop Review: HP 15-inch FHD with 10th Gen Intel Core i5-1035G1 (15-dy1036nr)

I think this is a great time for folks looking to buy a budget or a mid-tier laptop. This is because both Intel and AMD are making available their best quad-core CPUs for budget and mid-tier laptops. For a while these CPUs could be found only on premium laptops like Microsoft’s Surface laptop 3 and Dell XPS 13. But now you can get Intel's latest 10th generation Icelake CPU in select mid-tier laptops. And I have got one of these laptops here with me today. This is HP Notebook 15 and it brings Intel’s 10th gen Icelake CPU at an affordable price point. Now, the price on Amazon tends to fluctuate. So please checkout the link that I have put at the bottom of the page. OK, so let's put HP Notebook 15 through 10 rounds of gruelling test and find out if this laptop is worth its price. Let's get started



1 Build-Quality

HP Notebook 15 weighs 3.75 pounds and it is only 0.7 inches thick. For a 15.6 inch laptop, this is a fairly thin and light profile. You can easily toss this laptop in your backpack and carry it around without any issues. At first glance, this laptop looks like a high end premium machine. It comes in royal silver metallic color with matte finish which does a good job repelling fingerprint smudges. There is a silver colored HP logo at the center of the top lid nicely complementing the overall look. The body is made of polycarbonate but HP has reinforced the chassis with aluminum sheet giving it plenty of structural rigidity. The edges have smooth curves which not only look good but feel comfortable while holding the laptop. 

When you open HP Notebook 15 you are greeted with a 15.6 inch screen with minimal bezels. The bezels are matte black in color and they contrast nicely with the silver color of the laptop. HP has really nailed the aesthetics on this laptop, there are no gaudy logos or stickers anywhere. Even the Intel core-i5 sticker is silver in color and nicely fades into the background. The keyboard island and the palm rest are both silver in color, but the keys have a soft matte finish while the palm rest has a brushed metal finish showing off a vertical brushing pattern. Overall, I am very impressed with the design and build quality of this laptop. Compared to similarly priced laptops from Acer, Asus and Dell, I think HP has hit the ball out of the park. Good job HP!

2 Display

This laptop comes with a 15.6 inch Full HD widescreen display. It's an LED backlit IPS panel with an anti-glare matte coating. I am a big fan of matte finish because it helps cut down glare and reflections. The screen on this laptop is of average brightness maxing out at 220 nits of brightness. When using this laptop in my home office which is a bright lit area, I had to crank up the screen brightness to about 85%. I think you will be able to use this laptop in a classroom or office space at high brightness without issues. But outdoors, this screen will struggle. I wish HP had made the screen a little more bright. Now, when it comes to color reproduction, this screen does a fairly good job. Pictures and videos look bright and colorful. 

While the 45% NTSC color gamut is not going to win any awards, it's good enough for watching video and movies on youtube and netflix and checking out pictures on Instagram. The bezels on this display are really slim and gives this laptop a very modern look. The side bezels measure only 6.5 mm giving this laptop a screen to body ratio of 82%. I think that's very impressive for a laptop in this price range. Overall, I think this is a pretty good display not only for media consumption but also for productivity tasks like word processing and web browsing. But note one thing, this is not a touchscreen display. If you are looking for a touchscreen laptop, I would recommend checking out my recommended 2-in-1 laptops

3 CPU

OK, now let's talk about the CPU. HP Notebook 15 is powered by a 10th generation Intel core i5 processor. Specifically this is Core i5-1035G1 from Intel’s Icelake family. This CPU is built using Intel’s latest 10nm process technology. It is a  quad-core processor with hyper-threading enabled. That means you get 8 execution threads which is great for effortless multi-tasking. For the longest time Intel would disable hyper-threading on their budget CPUs. But thanks to increased competition from AMD, Intel has now changed its tune. 


 

This CPU has a base clock frequency of 1 GHz and Max Turbo Frequency of 3.6 GHz. Even though 1 GHz base clock frequency sounds kind of low, this CPU delivers excellent performance. This is because Intel has dramatically improved the IPC on Icelake family CPUs. IPC stands for instructions per clock and it represents the amount of work a CPU can do in 1 clock cycle. Icelake CPUs can do more work at low clock frequency, thereby delivering a kickass performance while preserving battery life. 

For e.g. let's compare this processor with Intel's last generation core-i5 processor clocked at 1.6 Ghz. So you would think that a 1.6 GHz core-i5 processor would be faster than 1 Ghz Icaleke processor. But in Passmark benchmark rating, Core i5-1035G1 clocked at 1 Ghz scores 7,937 points while the last gen intel chip clocked at 1.6 Ghz managed to score only 6311 points. So that means Icelake CPU is  25.8% faster than last gen intel chip. I think HP has picked an awesome CPU that delivers great performance at low 15 watt thermal envelope resulting in extended battery life. You will have no trouble running any application on this laptop. Whether you are doing casual internet surfing, watching youtube videos or running productivity apps like microsoft office, this laptop will breeze through all these tasks

4 GPU

Now lets talk about the GPU. HP Notebook 15 is using Intel’s integrated UHD Graphics. This is a power efficient GPU suitable for casual gaming, multimedia playback and lightweight photo and video editing. The base clock speed on this GPU is 300 MHz and its max dynamic frequency is 1.05 Ghz. I played fortnite at low settings and got an average frame rate of about 45 fps. The frame rate maxed out at about 60 fps which is good enough for a smooth gaming session. This GPU also supports hardware acceleration of all popular codecs like h264, AVC and vp9. This means smooth 4K video playback on youtube and netflix with no dropped frames. But remember this is an integrated GPU. Dont expect Nvidia & AMD discrete GPU class performance. If you plan to do hardcore gaming, you are probably better off buying a gaming laptop. I have reviewed plenty of awesome gaming laptops on this channel. I will throw a link in the description if you want to checkout those reviews

5 RAM & SSD

Now let's talk about the system memory and on board storage. HP Notebook 15 comes with 8GB system RAM and 256 GB of fast PCIe NVMe SSD. Unfortunately RAM is not user upgradeable which kind of of sucks. But at least there is 8GB RAM which should be fine for most folks. I was able to run over 20 chrome browser tabs and switch seamlessly between them without any issues. The laptop always felt very snappy when running productivity apps like word-processor and excel sheet. When it comes to expanding onboard SSD storage, HP does offer a 2nd M.2. slot for adding another SSD. This is really awesome, because very few laptops in this price range offer 2 M.2 slots. I will drop a link of compatible PCIe NVMe SSD that will work with this laptop if you are interested in adding a 2nd drive.

6 Battery

Let's talk about battery life. HP Notebook 15 comes with a 3-cell 41wh battery which coupled with power efficient Icelake CPU gives fantastic battery life. HP claims over 10 hours of battery life, but in my testing I got 8 hours of battery life during web-surfing with WiFi turned on. With continuous video playback at 50% brightness, I got almost 9 and half hours of battery life which is pretty impressive. This battery supports fast charging and you can juice it up from 0 to 50% in under 45 minutes. This makes HP Notebook 15 an all-day laptop. 

I think this is an ideal laptop for students and working professionals on the go. Regarding thermal heat dissipation, the laptop never overheats because the onboard fan does a good job keeping it cool. The laptop got little warmer during my game play, but never got too hot. The fan kicked in during heavy workload, but it was not dramatically loud. I think the power efficient 10nm Icelake chip is responsible for good thermal performance of this laptop along with its long battery life.

7 Keyboard & Trackpad

HP Notebook 15 comes with a full size island-style keyboard. The keys are silver colored and nicely complement the overall aesthetics that HP is going. The keyboard island sits slightly lower than the palm-rest. This allows the keys to have a good travel distance while still not touching the screen when the laptop is closed. The keys are large in size, nicely balanced and are quite responsive. They offer an actuation force of about 80 grams which results in a nice typing experience. These keys stay very quiet during typing which makes this an excellent laptop for students taking notes in the classroom. I enjoyed the tactile feedback and was able to hit my maximum typing speed in few minutes. The keyboard deck has brushed metal finish and offers a smooth resting surface for your palm during long typing sessions. Overall I would say this is a fantastic keyboard and punches weight above its weight. 

Now, let's talk about the trackpad. It is fairly large trackpad measuring 4.5 by 2.5 inches. While it's made of plastic and not glass, it's quite clicky. The surface is very smooth and I didnt have any trouble scrolling web pages. The laptop comes with windows precision drives and supports all windows 10 gestures. So stuff like pinch and zoom, double tap for right click and customizable 3 finger gestures all work without issue. The trackpad does not have a separate left or right click button. Instead you just press the left or the right bottom corner, to register left or right click. Overall I think this is a pretty decent trackpad with just the right size. Any larger, and it would interfere with your typing. Any smaller, and you would have trouble scrolling webpages efficiently

8 Audio and webcam

Ok, now let's talk about the webcam. This feature has been neglected by laptop makers for over a decade. But now in this age of working from home, webcam has become a really important feature. This laptop comes with a 720p webcam and a dual microphone setup. Using noise reduction software, this dual mic system is able to capture very good audio. This is great for video chats and conference calls on services like zoom and skype. But I wish laptop makers would start putting a higher quality 1080p webcam. When your cheap 300 dollar android phone has a better webcam than a typical 800 dollar laptop, something is very wrong. 

OK, moving on to speakers. HP has done a good job here. The laptop comes with top firing stereo speakers and they are really loud. For a budget laptop, I am very impressed with these speakers. They are great for watching youtube and netflix videos and also for listening to music. The laptop also comes with a headphone jack, so you are welcome to use high quality headphones if you are planning to game, watch a movie or indulge in some private listening.

9 ports

HP Notebook 15 comes with plenty of ports and I am glad that HP hasn't cut any corners here. You get 1 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-C port supporting data speeds upto 5 gigabits per second. Unfortunately the USB type-C port does not support power delivery. So that means you cannot charge this laptop via USB type C port. You also get 2 USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A for connecting old school USB devices including external mouse, keyboard and USB drives. This laptop supports the latest WiFi 6 standard which will give you the fastest and most robust wireless internet connection assuming you have the compatible router. 

It also supports Bluetooth 5.0 which allows connecting multiple bluetooth devices to this laptop. You also get an HDMI port for hooking this laptop to an external monitor. I was able to connect this laptop to my 4K monitor and create a kickass dual screen setup. The laptop had no trouble driving 4K resolution at 60fps. This is really useful for folks working from home who would like to take advantage of dual screen setup to boost their productivity. BTW HP Notebook 15 also comes with a full-size SD card slot which is great for folks like me who routinely need to transfer pictures and videos from their mirrorless cameras to PC. So, overall I think HP has all your bases covered when it comes to port selection.

10 Conclusion

OK, so what do I think of this laptop? For 599 I think HP has a winner. You are getting the latest Intel CPU offering great performance and battery life, good quality 1080p screen, great keyboard and trackpad, and plenty of ports. The only negative that I can think of is the lack of user upgradeable RAM. HP should learn something from Acer Aspire 5 laptop which offers both RAM and SSD upgrade option. So that is it for today guys. What do you guys think about HP Notebook 15?
 

Purchase Links

👉 Buy HP Notebook 15

👉 Buy recommended PCIe NVMe SSD upgrades
👉 Buy 1080p webcam
👉 Buy 3TB USB HDD
👉 Buy M.2 NVME SSD Enclosure Adapter
👉 Macrium reflect free for SSD cloning



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