HP Pavilion 15-af008ax (N4F83PA) Laptop (AMD Quad Core A8/4 GB/1 TB/DOS/2 GB)

Ordered on 21st July and got it for Rs.25640 because of a prevailing discount and additional off on payment by debit card.Also got a free laptop bag along with it although it wasnt mentioned in the description. nnComing to the laptop,it has a fantastic built and awesome specs at this price.Simply put,it is not possible to these specs at this price anywhere else.There is only lenovo that is comparable to this range but my suggestion is dont go for lenovo 45-50 or 50-55 because it has a horrible display.Whereas this model hp 15-af008ax has a decent display.Also comes with 2 redemption offers for which i have applied but yet to get a response(will update). nnUPDATE on redemption offers:I received all the redemption benefits including extended warranty and insurance,bms tickets as well as mcafee antivirus package and unistal utility software.The last to arrive was HP wireless mouse and headphones.Took a good 2 months to arrive but,they did arrive at last.I am yet to visit an airtel store to get my dongle. nWindows installation:Got to tell you that the driver installation and windows boot up takes about 5 hours if you have a decent internet connection.Helps if you have prior knowledge in this area or a friend who knows how to install Windows on a dos based system.Again avoid windows 7 or 8 or ubuntu,directly go for windows 8.1 since the drivers work well only for this OS. nBluetooth:Some people have complained that bluetooth doesnt work in this line of HP models.But contact customer support and they will send you a new driver which will make the bluetooth work flawlessly.Gotta say the HP customer care was helpful and prompt.highly satisfactory service. nnGraphics:Amazing graphics.It has an APU which takes up 512MB of RAM from 4GB.This is used when the graphic requirement is low like in movies or videos.The dedicated 2GB graphic card comes into picture when the shit gets real like in games.(played Far Cry 4 in med settings without lag and a decent fps)If you feel that RAM is less after a few years of usage ,you can always upgrade to 8GB for as low as 1800 bucks. nBattery : Its great and lasts for over 5 hours with normal usage on power saver mode. nnSound: Gotta say the sound quality is poor but not a concern for me since i use earphones most of the time nnRUNNING UPDATE AFTER 4 months of usage:n1)Stays very cool even in high performance.n2)No lags experinced with heavy softwares like ANSYS or MATLAB or even soliworks and catia.n3)Battery lasts about 3-4 hours with browsing,movie watching and such usage.Better to plug in for heavy usage because power saver mode will kick in on battery usage and deter higher graphics.(can be controlled in graphics properties though)n4)Do not feel the need to upgrade the ram even while playing fifa16 or far cry 4.Plays COD 4 on high settings comfortably.n5)Fairly happy after 4 months of usage.Only cons are low speaker sound and slightly lower data transfer speeds on usb(or just that my pendrives are getting old LOL). nnps:Pro tip: dont upgrade to windows 10 if you want the lightening boot up speed that this pc has with windows 8(about 3 seconds)

Well, to begin with, for under 30K you just can't expect anything more, Yes there are other laptops with no dedicated GPU and sparse specs, but there is something with AMD machines with makes them feel faster, smoother than the competition! No i'm never gonna talk about synthetic benchmarks, i'm gonna talk about Real world performance, the only thing that matters, Yes reviewers will sing praises of intel based on benchmarks, but I find it irrelevant. nnComing to the review part, it's been 5 days I got this machine and since then it hasn't been kept on sleep or been shut down. Didn't show any signs of slowdown yet. And oh, i'm running windows 10. My observations so far- nn1) The build quality is strictly average for the Lid part, inconsistent panel gaps and some rough edges can be seen. But things change dramatically with the base, it feels solid without any squeaks or lose feel to it. The Cross brushed gunmetal gray colored pattern looks absolutely gorgeous! The Lid has diamond texture and the HP logo is finished in Black, that too looks pretty neat.Overall looks are pretty impressive. Neat! It isn't just another shiny flashy Silver thing. nn2) Speakers are the worst part of this almost perfect package. Yes the volume is low and enhancing the sound from the DTS audio panel will only boost the gain, resulting in higher vocals and completely destroyed Mid and Bass. Somehow i feel the issue is with the Audio chip used by HP, even with my Creative ep630, the sound clarity is nowhere close to what a mobile phone would give you. Not good for listening to music with many instruments, it just cant render all those frequencies with clarity. Mushy. Or maybe i'm addicted to poweramp :P nn3) Performance is great, surfing, multitasking, using photoshop, illustrator, Autocad, everything works great, no lag what soever. It'll be a good idea to invest in a good 1600mhz 4 gb ram for about 2k, since windows 10 has many apps running in the background all the time, the ram usage is much higher than what you'll get with the light and zippy windows 7. Always close to 50% even when you're doing nothing. Some of the reviewers have reported the ram being of 800Mhz, they clearly don't understand the way DDR works. It'll always show 800mhz in your task manager, but effective frequency is 1600, same thing happens with your GPU memory clock. So chill, it is 1600mhz. nn4) GPU is an entry level R5 M330, but even with 40-50K machines, they're using the same chip. Gaming performance isn't something that'll make you go WOW, but it is good. Battlefield 4 works great, Dirt franchise too, Assassin's creed games after AC3 are poorly optimized for PCs, specially for AMD GPUs, so don't even expect to play any new AC game without lag or Stutter. GTA V works at 25-30 fps but yet again, poorly optimized for switchable graphics and struggles to use dedicated GPU. Playing 4K video is not possible but 60fps 1080p videos are smooth and stutter free. nn5) The laptop runs very cool, i haven't seen the core temperature going above 40-45c while surfing or on moderate workloads. Even when gaming, the max i've seen is around 65-70c and that's obviously because if the heat from GPU. nn6) Surprisingly there are no Air intake vents in the bottom of the laptop or anywhere around the shell. There's just the exhaust vent. It took me some smoke from an incense stick to find out how the air flow works, the fan sucks air from the keyboard! :O Near the gaming keys(w a s d). So it essentially means that you can simply put the laptop on a bed or on your lap and never worry about air vents getting blocked. The bottom doesn't heat much, it just gets warm just a wee bit warm, you won't even notice. But on the downside, a conventional cooling pad won't be effective, you'll have to get a conduction based cooling pad with heat absorbing gel. nn7) Only one usb 3.0 port is a bit of a downer, 1tb HDD is from Toshiba and operates at 5400rpm, the 720p Webcam is good, smooth framerates(30fps) even in low light. Screen is almost as weak as the speakers, even slight change in the angle will result is massive contrast shift. Colors are bit off, there's a prominent blue tint to the screen, it'll take some tuning in the AMD catalyst control app to get acceptable colors and skin tone. But that's the case with almost every low cost laptop(even with some mid range laptops). nn8) Drivers are easily available on HP's site, touchpad is neatly integrated with design of the shell, the surface is smooth and is same that of the shell. Keyboard is good and keys have a tactile feel to them, doesn't make that tick tick tick cheap sounding noise. nnBottomline is, for 27K this thing is simply amazing, if you need something for daily use along with some commendable gaming capabilities, this is more value for the money.nCheers! :)