Hi, if you're on the market to find a new gaming laptop you've probably heard about
the 2019 Acer Predator Helios 300.
It's one of the best laptops that you can buy right now for just over $1000, but recently
i had an opportunity to test the new 2019 HP Pavilion 15 Gaming which to my surprise
turned out to be absurdly good, but really strange laptop.
Do you wonder which one is better choice?
In this video you will find the answer, so make sure to watch it to the end, and find
out about about all the pros and cons of both laptops.
If you don't know my channel yet and you like this kind of comparisons consider subscribing
Tech Finds and hit notification bell to not miss the upcoming videos.
As always in the video description i left Amazon links for the USA and also for other
countries to check the correct price.
To skip to any part of this video you can use the timestamps down below.
I'm Chris from techfindsreview.com and now let's jump into the comparison.
If it comes to design the HP Pavilion is a pretty clean looking device for a gaming laptop.
The lid is made of black plastic with only shiny green HP logo in the middle.
The deck is also plastic and i like that there are no any colorful fancy accents.
The laptop doesn't catch the fingerprints so easily as Predator, so it is easier to
keep it clean.
Above the keyboard you can find up firing speakers covered by a great looking perforated
area.
The back looks nice as well, but the hinge on the center makes the screen a little bit
more flexy.
The Predator is the winner if it comes to build quality.
It feels more premium and solid as the lid and deck are made of metal.
On the other hand it looks more fancy.
On the lid you can find blue accents and the Predator logo that lights up blue.
Inside there is blue accenting on the touchpad and on some of the keys.
The back of 2019 Predator looks awesome - I love the triangular exhausts with blue heat
sinks inside.
Despite the matt texture of the deck, fingerprints show very easily, but they are easy to wipe
away.
Both laptops come with thin bezel display and in both you can find a 720p webcam located
properly on the top bezel.
If it comes to dimensions the Predator is slightly smaller, but the HP Pavilion is about
150g lighter thanks to plastic build.
I had no problem carrying any of these laptops and both can fit in the regular bag with ease.
The keyboard in Pavilion is pretty good, but the layout and function keys size take a bit
longer time to get used to.
It has 1.5mm key travel and it's comfortable to type on.
However it has no dedicated button for control center app or boosting the fans, and what
i find absolutely terrible idea is the arrow keys layout.
It's far from comfortable to play games on such small keys.
The keyboard in Predator has 1.7mm key travel, good spacing and comfortably big arrow keys.
You have also one dedicated key to open the control center app, and the turbo button which
improves the performance and sets the fans to max, more on that later.
The keys with white strokes look great but the lighting is not as strong and vivid as in HP.
You have 4 zones of lighting and few simple effects, so you can customize the keyboard
a bit but please note that the most popular $1100 model with 1660Ti comes with only blue
keyboard lighting in the USA.
The models with higher specs and some of 1660Ti models come with RGB, so make sure that you
buy the right one.
Pavilion is available with solid green, solid white and solid violet kayboard lighting and
the key strokes have the same color as lighting.
But certain colors may not be available in every country.
I've got the green one and i like it.
The lighting is stronger and more vivid than in Predator.
If it comes to touchpads we've got few differences.
The main thing is that Pavilion has Elan touchpad while Predator's uses Windows Precision drivers,
so it has better gestures and tracking.
Nonetheless i had no complains to Pavilion's touchpad.
Despite the plastic surface it was nice and smooth, the tracking was very good and i actually
like the clean look of it much more.
Predator has also smooth plastic surface, but different shape.
It's higher, but narrower.
In terms of ports selection my choice is the HP Pavilion, because it has a SD card slot
that i often use.
The Predator is missing it, but on the other hand it has MiniDisplay port and security
lock that HP is missing.
The rest of I/O is the same for both laptops and if you ask none of them support Tbunderbolt 3.
If it comes to display unfortunately i had two laptops with different pannels.
The Predator had 144Hz display and the Pavilion was 60Hz, but if you want you can buy Pavilion
with optional 1080p 144Hz screen or 4K 60Hz as well.
However, since this is a budget brand from HP they mostly sell it with 60Hz pannels.
If you're planning to buy it on Amazon be careful, because some models are listed as
144Hz while they're actually 60Hz according to people's reports, so before you buy contact
the seller and ensure that you'll get the right model.
I found my 60Hz, 1080p IPS HP Pavilion very good for gaming, but i can also recommend
it for content creation.
The 60Hz pannels usually have very poor color reproduction, but in this case it it's different.
You have 100% of sRGB color gamut, 78% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 295 nits.
Of course no G-Sync here and i actually found the screen tearing to be more noticeable here
than in other 60Hz laptops.
By the way i'm not sure if every 60Hz model has such good color reproduction since i've
seen couple of reviewers showing much lower numbers.
My Predator has 1080p 144Hz 3ms response time IPS pannel without G-Sync.
It's much smoother than 60Hz, but i am pretty sure that there is no really big difference
between Pavilion's optional 144Hz pannel and the Predator that i've got here.
The colors are very vivid and sharp, and the display has perfectly balanced cold tone.
It can reproduce 97% of sRGB color gamut, 75% of AdobeRGB and the brightness is 315 nits.
I think that the games look perfect and any kind of color corrent work can be done on
this laptop without problem.
However there was one thing that was not perfect.
I found screen bleeding which was also slightly noticeable during normal use when the content
on the screen was black.
This may vary between laptops because of diversity in the production process, however this is
only a cosmetic issue which you may not even notice.
On the other hand HP has almost no backlight bleeding which is a very good sign.
Alright, so now you probably wonder how is the price.
Speaking of it i prepared a list with available configurations and approximated prices of
both laptops as for today, but please note that the prices may vary with time.
So in the video description I left the Amazon links for the USA and other countries to check
the current price.
Let's talk about the Predator first.
You can get it with the GTX 1660Ti, RTX 2060 or RTX 2070 Max-Q.
If it comes to processor it's available with 6-core i7-9750H or 4-core i5-9300H.
As a default the 2019 Predator comes with 144hz display, but I've heard about 60hz models
too depending on the country.
The most popular GTX 1660Ti model is well known for the best price to performance ratio
out there, but if that's not enough it was few times on sale for $999 on Amazon.
If you're planning to buy one stay tuned and don't forget to check the current price, especially
in the Black Friday.
The 2019 HP Pavilion has wider range of configurations if it comes to budget segment.
The GTX 1660Ti Max-Q is actually the strongest option here.
For the processor you can choose between i7-9750H and i5-9300H.
Since this is a budget laptop it's worth mentioning that GTX 1650 model has pretty good price
that may suit some of you, but the GTX 1660Ti is usually the point where you don't pay much
more money and the performance increases drastically, especially that it's usually paired with the
i7 like in this case.
Please note that the models of Pavilion that i am talking about come with less than 16GB
of RAM, and both Predator and Pavilion usually come with only one M.2 SSD, so you'll probably
wanna add some Hard Drive for more storage.
Now these are not very cheap devices, and i believe that some of you may worry about
breaking something during upgrade, so i made a step by step detailed guides where i am
showing how to disassemble and upgrade both of them.
In my upgrade videos you can also find compatible RAM and storage drives, so if you're planning
to add more RAM, swap out your hard drive or SSD, you can check it out.
Links to the videos will be in the description.
The performance comparison is probably what you're most interested in.
I've got both laptops with the same specs, except the fact that the GTX 1660Ti in HP
is Max-Q. As i said at the beginning the HP Pavilion is a very strange laptop.
The i7-9750H is limited to 30W here, but sometimes for no reason the power limit doesn't kick
in and the processor runns on 45W.
I tried different ways to get rid of the limit, but it seems to be factory setting that you
can't change, so i tested it on 30W.
You might think that with Max-Q GPU and limited CPU power the performance will be much worse,
but to my surprise Pavilion was not so far behind.
Here is a quick preview of the game performance, but if you want to see more games tested,
check out my gaming benchmark videos where i tested 20 games on each laptop.
Links will be in the description.
What is important is that everytime i test the performance i set the maximum possible
laptop settings to see it's full potential.
If it comes to Pavilion there is no any control center app to set the fan speed or overclock the GPU.
In Predator you can click the turbo button which instantly overclocks the GPU, increases
the CPU power limit and sets the fans to max.
You can also tweak this all separately in the Predator Sense app.
Now let's talk about cooling, because here's where the biggest differences begin.
The Helios 300 performs better, but with max fan speed it's about 1/3 louder than HP, and
increased CPU power limit with overclocked GPU generate a lot of heat, which brings us
to the thermals.
Despite running on highest possible clock speed the Predator deals with the temperature
very good.
It has efficient cooling system that allows to keep the average CPU temperature of 83
degrees Celcius and the GPU temperature of only 71 degrees.
However the HP Pavilion thanks to lower power limit and Max-Q graphics doesn't usually exceed
80 degrees Celcius.
The average CPU temperature was only 79 degrees, and the GPU average was 68 degrees.
It doesn't usually happen to see such low temperatures in a gaming laptop nowdays, but
in this case we know the trade off already.
Nonetheless it's not a very big performance loss here.
If it comes to sound i find both laptops equal.
They have noticeably more bass than many other devices and i was surprised how clear was
the sound.
In both cases on stock settings it had a lot of detail and depth without really big distortion
on highest volumes.
To equalize the sound in Predator you have Waves MaxxAudio software.
Pavilion uses Bang & Olufsen Audio Control.
By the way, this time i also tested the speed of M.2 SSDs in both laptops and the Predator
had 2x faster read and over 3x faster write speed.
As for the battery life i managed to use the Predator for up to 6 hours when browsing the
web and doing light productivity work.
When gaming battery died after 1,5 hour.
The HP was a little bit behind - it ran for up to 5 hours when light work, and 1 hour
when gaming.
Alright, it seems to be everything that you need to know to wisely choose one of these
laptops, but before we finish let me share my closing thoughts.
So if it comes to the 2019 Acer Predator Helios 300 i think that the biggest advantage of
it is the price.
For just over $1000 you're getting the specs and features that you can find in $400 more
expensive laptops.
It has premium metal build, smooth 144Hz 3ms response time display with good color accuracy
and great cooling system.
Compared to HP Pavilion it performs better, it allows you to control the fan speed and
overclock the GPU in the software, the keyboard is better and more practical, it's easier
to upgrade and you can buy it with up to RTX 2070 Max-Q. Worth mentioning is that it often
goes on sale which makes it even better deal.
The only issue was the screen bleeding, but it vary between laptops and i believe that
it's not so visible in most cases during normal use.
It's also louder and it has higher surface temperatures than HP.
On the other hand we have the 2019 HP Pavilion 15 Gaming which thanks to power efficient
GPU and limiting the CPU power is probably the quietest gaming laptop on the market.
It runns much cooler than vast majority of gaming laptops and the trade off which is
the performance is not really big.
I think that Pavilion looks cleaner than Predator, it's a little bit lighter and the plastic
build doesn't feel cheap at all.
Considering that it's a budget brand from HP i have to admit that they didn't cheap
out on the features.
The 60Hz version has very good color reproduction and brightness.
It was actually as same good as Predator's 144Hz display if it comes to colors.
The up firing speakers are above average as well.
Pavilion costs slightly less than Predator and it has even cheaper GTX 1650 configurations.
However it usually comes with only 8GB of RAM.
For the weak sides of this laptop we can include screen tearing on 60Hz display, lack of control
center app and difficult upgrading process.
If i had to choose i'd rather go for the 2019 Helios 300, but i am curious what is your choice.
I hope that this video helped you decide, so if you know which laptop you're gonna buy
now, let us know in the comments.
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and more.
Now thanks for your time and see you in the next video!