You probably know that HP's Pavilion brand is for consumer PCs priced and positioned below its upscale Envy and Spectre lines. But Pavilion is only the second-lowest rung on HP's notebook-PC ladder.

The company's first-tier laptops (the Pavilion x360, the Pavilion Mini 14) are solid workhorses. They can run the latest games and get about average battery life. They're about as good as it gets.

One of the best optional upgrades on any Pavilion is the optional touch trackpad. It's one of HP's weak points, and continues to be a factor in some of its computers. To compensate, HP updated its touch trackpads last year, giving their customer base the option to touch-up their machines. But those upgrades come later, after owners of mainstream machines have paid the $100 or so that upgrading the performance bumps you even extra. [Update: ONE delete.]

The goal for the 14-d2020nr? Simple: offer a savings perk for Envy owners who want true productivity performance with an attractive price tag. It's a lovely, wonderful machine.

Design

That's right: Envy owners get the 12-inch Probook.

The chassis is not all brown, gold, and silver — it's suede. (Very certain this applies to all 12-inch Envy laptops.) However, it looks like the same Skylake desktop maker flavor (i7 6Y75, 28GB of RAM, flash storage, Nvidia GTX950M) that we've seen populate the other HP bodies.

Comparison to the MacBook Air and XPS 13

Build quality and design are unchanged in the Pavilion 14-d2020nr. But it differs from more expensive Envy models in a number of ways. Very attractive matte aluminum washer cover, detachable power cord, 10-hour battery life boost (Daddy necksetter), spilled coffee sack mold remediation, additional speaker grilles design both forward and rear, for example.

The laptop is maybe a hair lighter than new BG359WM. Our venue test label issue at 12:25PM MST reveals 4.5 lbs, 2.7 inches (w/ Laptop, 1.78 lbs, 2.29 inches, @ 13.2 h of ultrabook standby). It's waterproofed and splash-resistant, but the wait may have I know. It's unlikely that the water-resistance and that of the lap trackpad are by any stretch to be considered complete.

It looks great, meets desktop standards, and assimilates into existing environment. It regularly names drop before a headliner brand. At 4.5 lbs, it
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