Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

By LapTop-master

Laptops Review » The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Perfect Laptop for Blogging and Beyond » Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
FoxLaptop
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The official website of the manufacturer does not indulge in information on the HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur model (and those close to it, and there are many of them), so we won’t be able to talk about who HP sees as potential buyers. But this is unlikely to upset our readers: the main thing is the facts, and everyone can draw conclusions for themselves. To help you orient yourself, let’s say right away: the laptop is very budget (although not frankly cheap), and if someone is not interested in such products in principle, there is no point in reading further. And now we turn to these very facts and our observations.

 

Configuration and equipment

HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur (22Q07EA)
Processor AMD Athlon Gold 3150U (14 nm, 2 cores/4 threads, 2.4/3.3 GHz, 15 W)
RAM 8 GB (2 × 4 GB) DDR4-2666 Samsung M471A5244CB0-CTD Dual Channel
Video subsystem AMD Radeon Graphics Integrated Graphics
Screen 15.6″ 1920×1080 IPS semi-matte (Chi Mei CMN1515) 40/60Hz
Sound subsystem Realtek ALC236 codec, 2 speakers
Accumulator 1 × SSD 256 GB (Kioxia KBG40ZNV256G, M.2, NVMe, PCIe 3.0 x4)
Optical drive none
Cardreader SD
Network interfaces Wired network none
Wi-Fi network Realtek RTL8821CE (802.11b/g/n/ac, 2.4 and 5GHz, MU MIMO 1×1)
Bluetooth Bluetooth 4.2
Interfaces and Ports USB 1 × USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C
2 × USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A
RJ-45 none
Video outputs 1 × HDMI
Audio connectors 1 combined headset (minijack)
Input Devices Keyboard with number pad, no backlight
Touchpad clickpad
VoIP Webcam 720p (HP True Vision HD)
Microphone 2
Battery 41 Wh Lithium Ion
Dimensions 358×243×21.5 (18.5 mm without legs)
Weight without power supply 1.58 kg
Power adapter 45 W (19.5 V/2.31 A), weight 0.27 kg (with cables)
Operating system Windows 10 Home

The device comes in a box made of the most ordinary cardboard with minimal design and without a carrying handle (which is not really needed).

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The kit includes only the laptop itself, a power adapter with a power cord and several paper media with information.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

 

Look and Ergonomics

The body color is graphite gray, all surfaces are covered with a small pattern – slightly convex, and therefore slightly rough.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The thickness of the laptop, although not a record low, is very small: the maximum falls on the back, where our measurement showed 18.5 mm. The front is slightly smaller – by an incomplete millimeter, although it visually seems that the device becomes noticeably thinner towards the leading edge, but this is due to the wedge-shaped side ends.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

There are also legs, or rather longitudinal rubber inserts on the bottom. Taking them into account, the thickness at the back will be 21.5 mm, at the front – 19 mm.
The body panels are plastic, and therefore not very durable, but you can’t expect anything else in inexpensive models.

The width of the frame around the screen on the sides is 6 mm, at the top – 13.5 mm (there is a webcam with the usual 720p image quality for laptops, as well as holes for microphones), at the bottom 19 mm to the protrusion with hinges; the values ​​​​are quite average, you can’t name a particularly thin frame. There are rubber shock-absorbing inserts.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The camera is not equipped with a shutter, there is only an indicator of its operation.

At the edges of the upper part of the frame are the antennas of the Wi-Fi adapter, they are located inside – they cannot be seen from the outside.

On the bottom, closer to the trailing edge, there is an area with ventilation holes (this area itself is not very large, and the holes are small, but there are a lot of them). Air is taken in through them to cool the components, so you should not put the laptop on a soft surface.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

There are several rows of very small holes behind the keyboard, and on the beveled part of the case adjacent to the protrusion with screen hinges, there are larger slots. All of them are designed to remove heated air – as is often the case in modern laptops, the bottom of the screen is heated.

At the edges of the grill behind the keyboard are stereo speakers.

The lid opens at an angle of up to 140 degrees and is well fixed in any position (of course, from among reasonable ones, from 30-35 degrees), and when closed, it confidently adheres to the plane of the keyboard panel. The force of the hinges does not allow you to open the lid with one hand – you have to hold the laptop case. You need to pick it up with your finger in the middle of the front edge, where there is a special ledge.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The thickness of the cover is only about 6.5 mm, so it has little rigidity for deformation and twisting. This is also observed in much more expensive models that have a small thickness, so it makes no sense to attribute this to serious disadvantages.

The end of the lid open to the maximum slightly touches the table, but this is unlikely to lead to rapid abrasion of the edge – such an angle is rarely needed in practice.

At the back of the left side of the laptop are a connector for connecting the power adapter with an indicator (orange during charging, white when fully charged, blinking when the charge is low) and a pair of USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A ports.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

On the right side at the back are HDMI and USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-C ports, as well as two white indicators: disk activity and power (lights up during operation and blinks in power saving mode). With a normal position of the operator behind the laptop, these indicators are not visible, you have to look from the side.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The audio headset combo jack and SD card slot are also on the right, but closer to the front edge.

The instructions do not mention the possibility of powering a laptop via a Type-C connector from an adapter that supports Power Delivery, it only talks about working from a standard PSU.

The keyboard is a membrane type with an island arrangement of buttons and a full-fledged digital block, but without backlighting. It is slightly recessed, but the upper planes of the keys are still higher than the rest of the body surface. The indents along the edges are small, about 9 mm.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The main keys are of a normal size (15x15mm), both Shift keys are wide, but not the same – the right one is slightly wider. The distance between the centers of the keys in one row is 19 mm, between their edges – 4 mm. Printing is quite comfortable, the sounds during printing are not too loud. The full travel of the keys is, according to our measurement, 1.3 mm.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

In the top row, the function keys are slightly narrower and noticeably smaller in height, which is quite common and familiar. The arrow buttons are different: left-right are the same as the others, and up-down with a normal width have half the height, and this is perhaps the most unfortunate decision in the design of the keyboard.

The Power button is located on the left outside the area with the keys, which eliminates erroneous pressing when typing. By itself, it is narrow and elongated, with a noticeable actuation force, so in any case, an accidental shutdown of the laptop will be unlikely.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Some keys (Caps Lock, F6/Mute) have tiny LED indicators built into them to indicate that the respective mode is enabled.

The touchpad measuring 115×60 mm is traditionally located in front of the keyboard, and slightly recessed. It does not have dedicated keys, however, the left and right near parts of the touchpad may well work as the corresponding mouse buttons, while you don’t have to apply excessive force to press. The touchpad also supports gestures, and pressing can be performed on almost its entire area.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

There are no special complaints about the convenience of working with the touchpad, but the ability to quickly turn it off with a keyboard shortcut is not provided.

The power adapter is a small oblong box with rounded edges, from one side of which a 1.8 m long cable comes out (unmarked, rather thick, you can’t detach it; there is a Velcro for fixing it in a twisted state). On the opposite side surface there is a C6 socket (IEC60320) for a network cable (length 95 cm, C5 connectors and CEE 7/7 Europlug). It is difficult to say why such massive three-pin connectors were needed in the AC circuit, but they also increase the weight noticeably, and the cable with such connectors takes up a lot of space when carrying.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

After removing the bottom cover of the case, access to the RAM, SSD-drive in the M.2 slot, battery, cooler and wireless network adapter is revealed.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

SO-DIMM memory modules are installed in slots, there are no free ones – if you need to increase the volume, the modules will have to be changed. The second M.2 slot is also not provided, you can’t install another drive.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

 

Software

The drive has a single user-accessible partition in which Windows 10 Home is installed, as well as MS Office 365 and McAfee Personal Security (Try & Buy), which are common for most laptops.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

There are a number of HP utilities, including Audio Center and PC Hardware Diagnostics, as well as detailed help documentation.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

 

Screen

The HP 15s-eq1156ur Notebook PC uses a 15.6-inch (39.6 cm) IPS panel with a resolution of 1920×1080.

The outer surface of the matrix is ​​black, hard and semi-matt (the mirror reflection is well expressed). There is no special anti-reflective coating or filter, and there is no air gap. When powered by mains or battery and with manual brightness control (no automatic adjustment by light sensor), its maximum value was 257 cd / m² (in the center of the screen on a white background). The maximum brightness is not very high. However, if you avoid direct sunlight, then even this value allows you to somehow use the laptop on the street, even on a sunny summer day.

To evaluate the readability of the screen outdoors, we use the following criteria obtained from testing screens in real conditions:

Maximum brightness, cd/m² Conditions Readability score
Matte, semi-matte and glossy screens without anti-glare
150 Direct sunlight (over 20,000 lux) Unreadable
Light shadow (about 10000 lux) Barely readable
Slight shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) work is uncomfortable
300 Direct sunlight (over 20,000 lux) Barely readable
Light shadow (about 10000 lux) work is uncomfortable
Slight shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) work comfortably
450 Direct sunlight (over 20,000 lux) work is uncomfortable
Light shadow (about 10000 lux) work comfortably
Slight shade and light clouds (no more than 7500 lux) work comfortably

These criteria are very conditional and may be revised as data accumulate. Note that there may be some improvement in readability if the matrix has some kind of transreflective properties (part of the light is reflected from the substrate, and the image can be seen in the light even with the backlight turned off). Also, glossy matrices, even in direct sunlight, can sometimes be rotated so that they reflect something quite dark and uniform (on a clear day, for example, the sky), which will improve readability, while matte matrices need to be blocked from Sveta. In rooms with bright artificial light (about 500 lux), you can work more or less comfortably even with a maximum screen brightness of 50 cd / m² and below, that is, in these conditions, maximum brightness is not an important value.

Let’s return to the screen of the tested laptop. If the brightness setting is 0%, then the brightness is reduced to 14 cd/m². In complete darkness, the brightness of its screen can be lowered to a comfortable level.

There is no flicker (neither visible nor detected in the stroboscopic effect test) at any brightness level. If we approach it very strictly, then the dependences of brightness on time at low brightness reveal the presence of modulation, but its nature (frequency of the order of 24 kHz and small amplitude relative to the maximum brightness) is such that flicker is never and under no circumstances detected and cannot at least somehow then affect the user’s vision. Here are graphs of brightness (vertical axis) versus time (horizontal axis) at various brightness settings:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

This laptop uses an IPS type matrix. Micrographs show a typical IPS subpixel structure (black dots are dust on the camera’s matrix):

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Focusing on the screen surface revealed randomly located surface microdefects, which are responsible for the matte properties:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The grain of these defects is several times smaller than the size of the subpixels (the scale of these two photographs is approximately the same), so the focusing on microdefects and the “jumping” of the focus on the subpixels with a change in the angle of view are weakly expressed, because of this there is no “crystal” effect. We measured brightness at 25 screen points spaced in 1/6th increments of the screen width and height (screen borders not included). The contrast was calculated as the ratio of the brightness of the fields at the measured points:

Parameter Average Mean Deviation
min., % max %
Black box brightness 0.35 cd/m² −50 99
White box brightness 250 cd/m² −10 6,2
Contrast 780:1 −59 63

If you step back from the edges, then the uniformity of the white field is good, but the black field and, as a result, the contrast is much worse. Contrast by modern standards for this type of matrices is typical. The photo below gives an idea of ​​the distribution of the brightness of the black field over the screen area:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

It can be seen that the black field in some places, mostly closer to the edge, is slightly brightened. However, the uneven illumination of black is visible only on very dark scenes and in almost complete darkness, it should not be considered a significant drawback.

The screen has good viewing angles without a significant decrease in brightness and color shift even at large deviations of the gaze from the perpendicular to the screen and without inverting shades (but IPS-matrices in monitors are usually better in this regard). However, the black field, when deviated diagonally, is strongly highlighted, and acquires a red-violet hue.

Black-White-Black transition response time 20ms (11ms on + 9ms off), grayscale transition total (from hue to hue and back) takes 29ms on average. The matrix is ​​not fast, there is no overclocking.

We determined the total output delay from switching pages of the video buffer to the start of displaying the image on the screen (recall that it depends on the features of the Windows OS and the video card, and not just on the display). At 60Hz refresh rate, the latency is 12ms. This is a small delay, it is absolutely not felt when working on a PC, and in very dynamic games it is unlikely to affect performance.

Two refresh rates are available in the screen settings – 60 and 40 Hz, the second reduces consumption by 0.2 watts. At least at native screen resolution, the output is at a color depth of 6 bits per color.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

This leads to the fact that on monochromatic areas with a number of shades, you can see a static mixture of shades, it looks disgusting.

Next, we measured the brightness of 256 shades of gray (from 0, 0, 0 to 255, 255, 255) at default settings. The graph below shows the increase (not an absolute value!) in brightness between adjacent halftones:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The growth of the increase in brightness is more or less uniform, and only in the highlights do several of the brightest shades merge with white. In the darkest area, all shades are hardware and visually different:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Approximation of the resulting gamma curve gave an indicator of 1.98, which is lower than the standard value of 2.2, so the picture is slightly brightened. In this case, the real gamma curve noticeably deviates from the approximating power function:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The color gamut is noticeably narrower than sRGB:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Therefore, visually the colors on this screen are pale. Below is the spectrum for a white field (white line) superimposed on the spectra of red, green and blue fields (lines of the corresponding colors):

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Such a spectrum with a relatively narrow peak of blue and with wide humps of green and red colors is typical for screens that use a white LED backlight with a blue emitter and a yellow phosphor. The spectra show that the matrix filters significantly mix the components to each other, which narrows the color gamut.

The balance of shades on the gray scale is good, since the color temperature is not much higher than the standard 6500 K, and the deviation from the blackbody spectrum (ΔE) is below 10, which is considered acceptable for a consumer device. At the same time, the color temperature and ΔE change little from shade to shade – this has a positive effect on the visual assessment of color balance. (The darkest areas of the gray scale can be ignored, since the color balance does not matter much there, and the measurement error of color characteristics at low brightness is large.)

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Let’s summarize. The screen of this laptop does not have a very high maximum brightness (up to 257 cd / m²), but anyway, the device can somehow be used outdoors on a bright day, blocked from direct sunlight. In complete darkness, the brightness can be reduced to a comfortable level (up to 14 cd / m²). The advantages of the screen include a low output lag, no flicker, good white field uniformity, good color balance. The disadvantages are the low stability of black to the deviation of the gaze from the perpendicular to the screen plane, 6-bit color and a narrow color gamut. In general, the screen quality is not outstanding, but at least not on a TN matrix – and that’s good.

 

Sound

When listening to music and watching movies, the sound is without significant distortion, but not too loud, although the volume reserve is quite enough for individual use.

The aforementioned HP Audio Center utility will allow you to adjust the sound settings to your liking.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

The loudness of the built-in loudspeakers was measured while playing an audio file with pink noise. The maximum volume was 73 dBA, so among the laptops tested at the time of this writing (minimum 64.8 dBA, maximum 83 dBA), this laptop is slightly quieter than average.

Model Loudness, dBA
MSI P65 Creator 9SF (MS-16Q4) 83
Apple MacBook Pro 16” 79.1
HP ProBook 455 G7 78.0
MSI Alpha 15 A3DDK-005RU 77.7
Dell Latitude 9510 77
Apple MacBook Air (Early 2020) 76.8
Asus ZenBook Duo UX481F 75.2
MSI GE65 Raider 9SF 74.6
HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur 73.0
Honor MagicBook Pro 72.9
Huawei MateBook D14 72.3
Asus ZenBook 14 (UX434F) 71.5
Omen by HP Laptop 17-cb0006ur 68.4
Lenovo IdeaPad 530S-15IKB 66.4

 

Battery life

When studying autonomy, a lot depends on the methodology, so let’s see what our tests show. The screen brightness during testing is set to 100 cd/m² (in this case, this corresponds to about 65%, the nominal frequency is 60 Hz), so laptops with relatively dim screens do not benefit.

Load Scenario Opening hours
Working with text 9 hours 02 minutes
View video 6 hours 28 minutes

The results are not the most impressive, but we must take into account the modest battery capacity (remember: only 41 Wh), and then they can be assessed as good.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

There are no settings that allow you to limit the level of charge and affect autonomy.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

It took 2 hours 23 minutes to fully charge the battery (up to 100%, controlled by the Windows Battery Settings snap-in) after the text test, and 1 hour 58 minutes after watching the video.
For the latter case, let’s give a little more detailed data: up to 50% the battery is charged in 41-42 minutes, up to 80% in 1:06, and another 50 minutes are required for the last twenty percent. Thus, if the maximum energy reserve in the battery is not required, then it is enough to charge it for an hour or a little longer.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

 

Load and Heat

Like many similar models that do not have a powerful discrete graphics card, the cooling system is very simple – it contains a single fan, which, as already mentioned, sucks in air through holes in the bottom and directs it to a radiator connected by a heat pipe to a heat sink plate mounted on the processor, and then throws it back, to the bottom of the screen (more precisely, in the direction of the plastic casing of the hinged hinge of the lid, while heating the screen itself is not too significant).

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

Below are thermal images obtained after a long-term operation of the laptop under maximum load on the CPU and GPU:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
From above (the “torch” of heated air thrown back and up is visible)
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Bottom
Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
Power Supply

Under maximum load, working with the keyboard is comfortable, since the places under the wrists practically do not heat up. However, when working in this mode for a long time, the heating of the keys located to the right of the middle of the keyboard, that is, above the processor, begins to be felt.

Keeping a laptop on your lap is unpleasant – the bottom area with significant heat falls on the right knee.

The power supply does not heat up very much, but still, when working with high performance for a long time, it is better to make sure that it is not covered with anything.

To evaluate how the operating parameters of the system components change under different load scenarios (the only mode, switching is not provided), we present a plate in which the maximum / steady-state values ​​are given through a fraction. The fan automatically increases or decreases speed as needed; there is no information from the speed sensor displayed in any utilities, you have to focus on the sound.

Load Scenario CPU Frequencies, GHz CPU temperature,  °C CPU Watts
Idle 44 2
Max CPU load 3.3/2.85 93/68 25/15
Max CPU and GPU load 3.3/2.0 85/62 30/15

Now a little more.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

When a load is applied to the processor, it runs at its maximum frequency of 3.3 GHz for quite a long time, about three minutes, so the consumption rises to the 25 W limit indicated in the AMD specification, the temperature quickly rises to 92-93 °C, and the fan increases rpm to the maximum. This is followed by a decline: frequencies – up to 2.8-2.9 GHz, consumption – up to 15 W, temperatures – up to 68-69 ° C, the fan slows down somewhat (unfortunately, it is impossible to track the rotation speed); this process stabilizes.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

If only the GPU is loaded, then the video core operates at the 1 GHz frequency indicated for it in the specification, the temperature first rises (but to a moderate value of 66 ° C), and then, as the fan speed increases, it decreases to 60 degrees. There are no further changes, the fan does not go to the maximum.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

With simultaneous load on the CPU and GPU, there is a short burst in frequency (up to 3.3 GHz) and consumption (up to 30 W), followed by a rapid decline to 2.8 GHz / 25 W. The temperature rises to 85 °C, the fan spins up more and more, but then, as in the first case (only not after three, but after about 2.5 minutes), another drop follows – up to 2 GHz, 15 W and 61-63 degrees. The graphics core operates at a lower frequency than in the second test: after a short initial burst to 1 GHz, first at 800-850 MHz, and then at 550 MHz. In steady state, the fan runs at medium speed.

 

Noise Level

We measure the noise level in a special soundproof and semi-silenced chamber. At the same time, the sound level meter microphone is located relative to the laptop in such a way as to imitate the typical position of the user’s head: the screen is tilted back by 45 degrees, the microphone axis coincides with the normal emanating from the center of the screen, the front end of the microphone is at a distance of 50 cm from the screen plane, the microphone is directed to the screen . The load is created using the powerMax program, the screen brightness is set to maximum, the room temperature is maintained at 24 degrees, but the laptop is not specially blown, so in the immediate vicinity the air temperature may be higher. To estimate the real consumption, we also show (for some modes) the consumption from the mains (the battery is pre-charged to 100%):

Load Scenario Noise level, dBA Subjective evaluation Power consumption, W
Inactive 16.0 (background) conditionally silent 9
Maximum CPU load 30,0 quiet 26 (maximum 39)
Maximum GPU load 28,3 quiet 29 (maximum 32)
Maximum CPU and GPU load 30,0 quiet 28 (maximum 50)

If the laptop is not loaded at all, then its cooling system can work in passive mode, that is, silently. In the BIOS settings, you can enable the constant fan mode, but it’s not very clear why this might be needed.

In the case of a heavy load on the processor and / or video card, the noise from the cooling system is quite moderate and even, without overtones that attract attention, and therefore does not irritate.

For a subjective assessment of the noise level, the following scale is applicable:

Noise level, dBA Subjective evaluation
Less than 20 conditionally silent
20-25 very quiet
25-30 quiet
30-35 clearly audible
35-40 noisy
40-45 very noisy
45-50 loud
Above 50 very loud

Below 20 dBA, the computer is conditionally silent; from 20 to 25 dBA, a laptop can be called very quiet; 35 dBA noise is clearly audible, 35 to 40 dBA noise exceeds the comfortable level for long-term work, 40 to 45 dBA the laptop is very noisy and needs to be masked by background music, for example, 45 to 50 dBA noise level is very uncomfortable, and 50 dBA and above, the noise is so loud that headphones must be used.

The scale, of course, is very conditional and does not take into account the individual characteristics of the user and the nature of the sound.

 

Performance

The laptop uses a 2-core (4-thread) AMD Athlon Gold 3150U processor with a base frequency of 2.4 GHz and a maximum of 3.3 GHz. It belongs to the AMD Picasso (Ryzen 3000) series and appeared a long time ago – the announcement took place in January 2020. The processor is designed for office-class laptops, so energy saving is a defining parameter: the nominal TDP is only 15 W, but can vary between 12-25 W.

The processor contains integrated AMD Radeon Graphics (Radeon RX Vega 3 – 3 cores, clocked at 1000 MHz) and works with up to 32 GB DDR4-2400 RAM in dual-channel mode.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

True, our laptop has faster DDR4-2666 modules, but they operate at frequencies supported by the processor controller.

The device is equipped with a Kioxia SSD model KBG40ZNV256G – this is an NVMe drive installed in an M.2 slot and connected to an internal PCIe 3.0 x4 port. In the test, it shows mediocre results, in full accordance with the budget of the laptop itself:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

You can compare with the results of the more powerful Kioxia KXG60ZNV1T02 drive, which was tested in a Dell XPS 13 9310 laptop:

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

It was not possible to select more or less fresh laptops with a close price for comparison – we rarely get budget models for tests. Therefore, in addition to our reference sample, we chose several more expensive devices: Realme Book RMNB 1002 ($1100) with Intel Core i5-1135G7 (4 cores / 8 threads, 2.4 / 4.2 GHz, 12-28 W) and Intel Iris Xe Graphics, 8 GB of RAM and SSD for 512 GB, as well as Honor MagicBook 14 Nbl-WAQ9HNR ($900) with an AMD Ryzen 5 3500U processor (4 cores / 8 threads, 2.1 / 3.7 GHz, 12-35 W) and integrated AMD Radeon Vega 8 video , RAM 8 GB and SSD 256 GB. Both competitors are about 200 grams lighter, but they also have 14-inch screens instead of 15.6” for the hero of this review.

Reference result
(Intel Core i5-9600K)
HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur
(AMD Athlon Gold 3150U)
Realme Book RMNB 1002
(Intel Core i5-1135G7)
Honor MagicBook 14
(AMD Ryzen 5 3500U)
Video conversion points 100 27 72 50
MediaCoder x64 0.8.57, c 132 460 181 250
HandBrake 1.2.2, c 157 655 221 351
VidCoder 4.36, c 386 1389 528 720
Rendering points 100 30 79 60
POV-Ray 3.7, c 99 356 156 180
Cinebench R20 122 385 150 209
Blender 2.79, c 152 483 199 248
Adobe Photoshop CC 2019 (3D rendering), c 150 523 156 227
Video Content Creation Points 100 29 89 51
Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2019 v13.01.13, c 299 1306 702
Magix Vegas Pro 16.0, c 364 1105 402 621
Magix Movie Edit Pro 2019 Premium v.18.03.261, c 413 1634 984
Adobe After Effects CC 2019 v 16.0.1, c 469 1341 584 713
Photodex ProShow Producer 9.0.3782, c 191 199
Digital photo processing scores 100 47 109 55
Adobe Photoshop CC 2019, s 864 1436 815 1223
Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Classic CC 2019 v16.0.1, c 139 379 108 275
Phase One Capture One Pro 12.0, c 254 536 270 541
Text recognition score 100 29 86 61
Abbyy FineReader 14 Enterprise, c 492 1679 571 801
Archiving points 100 33 104 58
WinRAR 5.71 (64-bit), c 472 1515 415 805
7-Zip 19, c 389 1124 408 672
Scientific calculations, points 100,0 32 78 57
LAMMPS 64-bit, c 152 439 190 236
NAMD 2.11, c 167 619 241 325
Mathworks Matlab R2018b, c 71 203 101 119
Dassault SolidWorks Premium Edition 2018 SP05 with Flow Simulation 2018, c 130 385 141 253
Integral result without accumulator, points 100 32 87 56
WinRAR 5.71 (Store), c 78 58 25 76
Data copying speed, s 43 28 16 35
Integral result of the accumulator, points 100 142 338 111
Integral performance result, points 100 50 131 69

The results, frankly, are not impressive. But we emphasize once again that the comparison had to be made with more expensive laptops equipped with not 2-core, but 4-core processors, and the reference desktop had 6 cores at all.

However, the test is designed to show something else: a variety of applications, sometimes creating a very high load on components, work successfully, nothing freezes or bugs. That is, for professional work with applications from our list, the HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur is categorically not suitable – which, in fact, was clear from the very beginning. But if the need arises, then, as an exception, you can do something on it, in addition to working in office applications and “traveling” on the Internet.

Review of inexpensive office laptop HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur

It is clear that the HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur can hardly be classified as a gaming laptop even with a huge stretch, but we nevertheless conducted a test with a couple of games at three resolution settings. The table shows the average (minimum in brackets) frame rates.

Game and Resolution Low quality Medium quality High quality Maximum quality
1920×1080
World of Tanks 116 (49) 26 (14) 10 (6)
Far Cry 5 10 (8) 8 (6) 7 (6) 6 (5)
1600×900
World of Tanks 139 (64) 34 (20) 13 (9)
Far Cry 5 12 (10) 10 (9) 9 (8) 8 (7)
1280×720
World of Tanks 168 (84) 49 (27) 19 (12)
Far Cry 5 17 (15) 15 (13) 13 (11) 12 (10)

Probably, comments will be redundant, as well as attempts to launch other games.

 

Conclusion

The HP Laptop 15s-eq1156ur is neither particularly thin, nor light-weight, nor outstanding in our tests, both in terms of performance and battery life.

However, it has a little bit of everything: the size and weight are moderate (especially considering the diagonal of the screen), the battery will allow you to work in a text editor for a whole working day, and restoring energy in it, even completely, does not take very much time.

The power supply is compact and does not take up much space in the bag, but today I would like to see not a proprietary connector, but Power Delivery support and the corresponding Type-C connector, then it will be much easier to choose a replacement adapter.

The device coped with all the proposed tasks – although with a considerable investment of time, but without any signs of overheating, and it cannot be called noisy in operation. Unless the laptop is unsuitable for modern games from the word “absolutely”, but this, I think, is not the biggest drawback.

Someone will benefit from a numeric keypad, and the lack of backlighting can hardly be attributed to indisputable shortcomings: sometimes such a function is present mainly for the sake of the external surroundings and the desire of developers to follow fashion, but it does not contribute much to the convenience of working in a darkened room.

You can make claims to the screen – yes, not the best, but with better quality and the price would be different. It is somewhat worse that the device does not have a wired network adapter, and USB ports are still not enough.

And the general conclusion will be this: the presented HP laptop is far from the worst choice for the money.

Share the material in social networks:
Laptop Master

Laptops are an essential tool for students, professionals, and anyone who needs a portable device for work or entertainment.

In this site, we'll be taking a closer look at some of the best laptops currently available on the market. We'll be focusing on factors such as performance, design, and price to provide you with a comprehensive overview of each laptop.

Rate the author
( 2 reviews,
average 5 of 5 )
Most Popular Articles