i'm NEVER buying HP again 12/08/2026 17:26 i got this HP Pavilion 15 laptop back in 2021. it has an AMD Ryzen 7 3700U, 12GB DDR4, and a 512GB NVMe SSD. ever since acquiring it, everything started going down. first, windows 11 (bleeding edge back then) broke itself out of literal nowhere, leaving the start menu unresponsive, winUI apps not working **at all**, the notification menu/control center did not open. i clicked the windows button in the taskbar, it did the animation like it was going to open the start menu, but it just didn't. and this was in the middle of a trip, so i had no other laptop to use. for whatever reason, i just so happened to have a ZorinOS bootable USB (and i know it sounds opportunistic and maybe even sounds like Linux propaganda, but trust me, it happened) and could use this laptop for a couple days until i came back from that trip. reinstalled windows, windows 10 this time because FUCK windows 11. this PC was not meant to run Linux anyway, as MS Office was required. then, out of nowhere, it simply stopped powering on. not even to a bootable USB, heck, not even to the BIOS (yes i know it is actually called UEFI, you don't have to tell me). so this was clearly a hardware issue, out of my knowledge. i took it to the repair shop, they said it was an issue with the battery, but the replacement was unbelievably expensive, so i just said "eh, fuck it, i'll use it without a battery". so the technician removed it and returned me the laptop alongside the battery. now, on windows 10, i decided to try a very simple game that runs even on the computer i got for free (which has a Celeron and just 4GB of RAM), Minecraft 1.8.9 (a PVP client). and even though the results weren't necessarily bad, in fact the game ran at a smooth 120 FPS (on performance mode and while plugged in), which would be good... except my Celeron laptop ran the exact same version at nearly 400 stable FPS. something was clearly wrong. the Radeon Vega in this laptop is severely underperforming. oh, did i mention it shorted due to a storm while i was away? yeah, that broke the speakers. now when i try to listen to any audio it doesn't play. at all. i was hoping it was a windows driver issue, that would be fixed when switching to Linux. but no. the issue was still there. the drivers were installed and working, the earphone jack worked. but not the speakers. then, one day i said "okay, fuck windows, let's install CachyOS". the installation went mostly fine, i had to load the secure boot key so it wouldn't whine about security, which was a bit messy but doable. i don't remember exactly what i saw, but i remember clearly: there were a few sparse pixels that were not of the color they should. i thought it was just that the screen was dirty, but after touching it i noticed it wasn't dirt, it was broken hardware. "eh, it's a 1080p screen, a few sparse dead pixels aren't noticeable", i said. not to mention that sometimes, while i'm typing on this keyboard (which is already uncomfortable, the keys don't provide as much tactile feedback when pressed), i get shocked. literally. the metal panel in this laptop passes electricity that often gives me a small shock. and lastly, the minor issues: the amount of USB ports is insanely low (2x USB 2.0 ports and 1x USB C port), the position of the charging cable is on the right side instead of the left side like any other laptop, same with the HDMI port, and the SD card port works fine but is too loose (and again, doesn't provide feedback of any kind), the metallic trackpad is not good (as it is too sensitive to stuff touching it, like a cable or a piece of cloth), the hinges don't go past a certain angle (120°? not sure). anyways, this has been probably the worst laptop i have ever used, aside from an Exo Smart E18 that ran off of a 32GB eMMC.