HP 15 Laptop, Intel Core i3-1005G1, 4GB SDRAM, 128GB SSD, Natural Silver, 15-dy1024wm

This computer is thin. Another part of that is the solid state storage. Most people call it a hard drive, but how can it be a drive with no moving parts? Whatever, it's fast. The camera is very nice, at least for basic Skype. The wireless connection is as good as any I have used. It does as good a job of streaming as my home system can handle. One nice feature is that it has a USB-C input jack. According to the paperwork, you can use this for external power instead of the charger. There are, of course, standard USB sockets as well and a photo card reader.

Upon unpacking, my first impression was how cool looking this laptop is due to its black-silver color combination. The three factors I value the most in a laptop are: Weight, battery life and performance. This one falls into lightweight category for its size. Before I talk about battery life and performance, here is what I did first. Upon finishing the initial setup, I took the machine out of default Windows S mode since I like to have better control over the machine and avoid S mode restrictions. Then I removed all the undesired applications that came by default with the machine. I updated Windows, setup family member accounts, installed programs that I use regularly. Just by keeping only what I need, I automatically enhance the battery life and performance of the machine. Since many of us are working or study remotely these days due to Covid-19 pandemic, battery life and performance are lot more critical. Because some applications consume more battery than others, in my case, the battery life does not last whole day like it claims on the laptop sticker. I am a happy person if the battery lasts at least ~4 hours on a single charge, which this one easily does. It is perfect for my purpose of working remotely. While working, many times I have to zoom into my screen, though this is not a touch-screen laptop, it has a wonderful feature of zooming in using the touch-pad which I find enormously helpful! One thing I do want to mention, that when I powered on the first time, there was some bios error briefly then there were few screen flickers but it did not happen subsequently, so I suppose that was one off thing. I tested camera, USB port etc. and those are working fine. The performance remained consistently good throughout the usage. Overall, I am very happy with this laptop. If you are a student, this could work very well for you too.