HP Pavilion Gaming Laptop 15.6" Core i5-8300H 15.6-inch Diagonal Full HD IPS Anti-Glare WLED-Backlit Display(1920 x 1080) with 8GB RAM + 1TB HDD Storage

From the budget end of things, this gaming laptop works wonders. It contains a Nvidia Geforce GTX1050Ti graphics card which runs older and more modern titles quite well. On medium loads the fan noise is very low, and on heavy loads it is around as loud as a moderately strong breeze (can't quite come up with a better comparison) and the sound is more than bearable.That said, being a laptop, it does get relatively hot near the top of the keyboard during heavy loads (such as long gaming sessions or very graphics intensive work) but the heat does not spread too far down to where your hands normally touch. Also, as it is a gaming laptop, it does not have a very long battery life, but that is quite par for the course for these kinds of computers.The keyboard has a one color neon green backlight that looks very cool when turned on in a dark environment, and you can turn it off when you're not using it.Overall quite a capable gaming laptop for those on a budget (as gaming laptops do get quite pricey).

I'll describe different situations in which you'll use this laptop in the following review. (Kinda detailed review incoming)-When gaming:Fortnite FPS epic settings: ~80 (with low, it was only around 90-100)Insurgency FPS high settings: 80-300 depending on the map and what you set individual graphics settings toTotal War Warhammer II high settings: ~40BEWARE that playing at very high settings on games like these can get your computer very hot. Try to keep it around 60 degrees Celsius, but since this is a laptop, 75 is acceptable and 80 would probably be the max if I were you. Why not 90? Well sure, go for it if you want maximum performance but I also want the parts to last 4-5 years.LAPTOP COOLING PAD IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I have a Kootek one - just be sure to get a good one.Perhaps replace thermal paste/grease if you are tech-savvy.Battery lasts like an hour or 2 when gaming. Be sure to be plugged in.-When idle:The battery on complete idle seems to last 6-7 hours with battery saver on and on 2 brightness.Idle temperatures are around 40 degrees C, and are normally lower than said number.-When working/(school or studying)Under working conditions like tabs opened on Chrome, it will last 3-5 hours. Possibly bring your charger with you to school or such if needed for a whole school day. Good processor and a good amount of RAM allow work to be done quickly.-Other (mostly for more tech-savvy things):Buy an SSD if you will and put it in the m.2 slot. SATA or PCIe NVMe work great. I changed it to boot and get 10 second boots whereas hard drive was giving me 30 seconds (trust me, that 30 seconds would turn into 1 minute if I actually started filling it up with files). No screw to keep down the SSD. You'll have to get your own.Again, replace the stock thermal paste with your better one.Be sure to check out power options under control panel to control CPU processor management, and to manage sleep/hibernate settings for maximum battery life.Mine came with a Thunderbolt USB port so I could hookup an external monitor if wanted.Screen is 60hz. However playing up to 120fps is good since mouse input lag is reduced and I'm pretty sure you won't experience screen tearing unless you're getting a very high amount of frames or if GPU/CPU are putting in some serious work.Beware the screw cases seem to strip easily. Maybe I'm just a rookie, but I accidentally budged it the wrong way 2-3 times and the screw got stripped enough for me to use retrieval methods.Do install the drivers in HP Support Assistant like Intel storage, graphics, and NVIDIA graphics.Since this is an American laptop, you'll need a switch/plug converter, if you're like me who lives in New Zealand.If you made it this far, thank you for reading and be sure to make an informed decision. Best of luck with your buy.

Bought from Amazon to have UPS fail with delivery of a damaged empty box then refused. Anyways I picked up the same computer at Fry's for $50 less. With that said these are my experiences since having this.First thing I personally did was yank the 1tb hard drive and install a 2tb SSD with an 250gb NVME drive. Which sped up the boot time to less than 4 seconds. Then I bought 2 16gb ddr4 2666 modules and upgraded it to 32gb Ram. Running stable so It can handle 32gb no problem.Onto how it runs. It runs like any budget gaming laptop. Has no problem running Counter Strike/Starcraft/FPS or even some more graphics intense games might have to reduce to medium to get those frames. And runs most other office style applications with ease. With that said there are still some major set backs with this particular model. First being the trackpad is terrible, it feels like cheap plastic and has terrible tracking. Second and my biggest complaint is the ventilation that HP integrated into this. If you have this sitting on a level service EA/table or counter/ and your gaming the unit will throttle down and cause the computer to freeze. I purchased a Cooler Master Laptop cooler to fix that. Other than those 2 major complaints overall its a solid budget friendly computer. Even though I spent another $100 on storage and ram options it was still worth it until the newer RTX laptops are out and reviewed for awhile.