HP Pavilion Aero 13 (2024) Laptop Review

The HP Aero 13 is also available in a Sky Blue colorway. See the bottom of the laptop here.

The HP Pavilion Aero's build quality is a mixed bag. Its chassis is recycled aluminum and plastic. While these materials don't attract oil or fingerprints, they easily scratch from regular use, like when putting the laptop in your backpack. It's light; this is good for portability, but the laptop feels hollow, making it seem fragile and cheap. The chassis itself is solid when the screen is closed but significantly less so when open, as it twists and flexes. Finally, the keyboard deck has some flex to it.

This laptop's hinge is poor. While it offers a decent range of adjustability and is stable when typing, it's far too tight for the laptop's weight. In practice, you'll need to use two hands to open the laptop or adjust the screen due to the disparity between the laptop's weight and hinge resistance.

Accessing the internals is straightforward; you need to remove five Phillips head screws (although the screws aren't all the same size) and undo the latches holding the bottom panel with a prying tool. The included drive is an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD.

You can find the service guide here.

• User documentation
• 65W USB-C power adapter and cord

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is available with the following displays:

• 13.3 inch IPS 1920 x 1200 60Hz
• 13.3 inch IPS 2560 x 1600 60Hz

The FHD+ display looks sharp on the 13.3-inch screen. You'll only notice individual pixels if you get very close to the screen. The QHD+ panel is sharper, with a pixel density of 227 PPI. All display options use a 16:10 aspect ratio; this is great for productivity tasks as you get additional vertical space for spreadsheets or Word documents compared to traditional 16:9 aspect ratios.

The HP Aero 13 is only available with 60 Hz displays. The FHD+ panel has a fairly slow response time, resulting in ghosting behind fast-moving objects. We expect the QHD+ panel to perform similarly.

The display's contrast is decent and in line with most IPS panels. That being said, it's low in comparison to other panel types like VA or OLED; the lower contrast makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The QHD+ panel likely has the same contrast.

The FHD+ display's brightness is great. It gets bright enough to overcome glare in almost all indoor settings. It's okay for outdoor use but will still struggle in very bright situations. The QHD+ display has the same advertised brightness.

This display's matte coating handles reflections well. It diffuses reflections from direct light sources like lamps or the sun across the display's surface, so you'll barely notice reflections when viewing bright content.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out quickly as you move to the side. You can still share the screen with someone else for casual content; however, it's best to be directly in front of the screen if you need perfect accuracy for color-critical work.

The display's vertical viewing angle is decent. The image dims and washes when viewing from above and below, so you need to look at the screen straight on to see an accurate image. This may be a pain if you have limited space, like traveling.

This display's color accuracy is mediocre. While most colors aren't too far off, whites are inaccurate. The color temperature is also warm, giving the image a yellowish tint. Finally, the gamma is too dark in almost all scenes, except for very bright ones, which are too bright.

The HP Pavilion Aero's display fully covers the commonly used sRGB color space, so most content, like websites and YouTube videos, will look great. It doesn't cover the wider Adobe RGB and DCI P3 color spaces for print photography and HDR video production.

The HP Aero 13's keyboard is good. Despite the small form factor of the laptop, the keyboard feels spacious, and the layout is easy to adapt to. Although, the function keys may be a bit small if you have larger fingers. The keys have decent travel but require a decent amount of force to actuate, which some people may find fatiguing. There isn't any rattle on the spacebar or modifier keys. The adjustable backlighting gets bright and shines through the keycaps; however, you can also see the light from the bottom of the keycaps. This doesn't affect useability, it's just an annoyance.

The HP Aero 13's touchpad is decent. It's an average size for a 13-inch laptop but generous enough that you still have ample space for navigation. Palm detection is great, as it rarely makes errors. It does a good job tracking inputs, even along the edges. However, you can only click on the lower two-thirds of the touchpad. There are also minor issues registering continuous inputs across the touchpad, like dragging and dropping icons on the desktop.

The speakers are great. The speakers sound surprisingly clear and rich, and they get quite loud. They do lack bass, and there's some rattle at max volume. Still, these speakers are fine for casual media consumption.

Although the webcam is 1440p, it doesn't look very good. Its image is very overexposed, resulting in an unnatural appearance. By contrast, the microphone sounds clear, and voices come across with little background noise. The privacy cover is only a physical barrier, meaning the system can still record audio with it closed.

The HP Aero 13 has a good port selection. One USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps, while the other supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 speeds of up to 5Gbps. Both USB Type-C support USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speeds, Power Delivery, Sleep and Charge, and DisplayPort 1.4

The HP Pavilion Aero 13's wireless adapter is a Realtek RTL8852BE WiFi 6. It's also available with the MediaTek Wi-Fi 6E MT7922. Wi-Fi 6e gives access to the 6GHz band, which offers lower latency, faster speeds, and less signal interference than previous Wi-Fi standards. However, you need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The HP Pavilion Aero 13 is available with the following CPUs:

• AMD Ryzen 5 8640U (6 cores/12 threads, up to 4.9 GHz, 16MB L3 cache)
• AMD Ryzen 7 8840U (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1 GHz, 16MB L3 cache) 
• AMD Ryzen 7 8840HS (8 cores/16 threads, up to 5.1 GHz, 16MB L3 cache)

These CPUs are a mix of low-wattage U series for thin and light laptops and moderate-wattage HS series for higher performance in thin chassis laptops. The U-series CPUs are better for people who need to perform light productivity tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, or media consumption. However, the Ryzen 7 8840U will have enough power for some more demanding tasks as long as the material isn't overly complex. The HS-series processor can handle fairly demanding tasks and is the better choice for people who need to do programming or video editing. In multi-threaded applications, the Ryzen 7 8840HS is noticeably faster than the Ryzen 5 8640U, almost 30% faster in some workloads.

The HP Aero 13 comes with integrated AMD Radeon Graphics. While AMD's integrated graphics have steadily improved, they still lack the graphical horsepower necessary for intensive or AAA gaming at 1080p. The iGPU is fast enough for older titles or some light puzzle games.

This laptop only comes with 16 GB of soldered RAM; it isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure the HP Aero 13 with 512GB or 1 TB of storage. HP offers two different 512GB drives, a performance and value option. The SSD is user-replaceable; the slot supports an M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD.

Although the HP Aero 13 has an excellent overall score in Geekbench 5 benchmarks, don't expect it to be adequate for full 3D rendering or video editing workflows. It's in line with other ultraportable laptops, which means it performs great for general productivity tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, web browsing, and video playback. Although the Ryzen 7 CPUs will perform even better for heavy multitasking or the occasional demanding workload, this isn't a workstation laptop. Like most integrated GPUs, the Radeon Graphics processor performs poorly and isn't suitable for demanding workloads.

The AMD Ryzen 5 8640U performs excellently in Cinebench R23. With two additional cores, the AMD Ryzen 7 CPUs will perform better for multi-core workloads, and the increase in clock speeds will also provide a small to moderate bump to single-core performance, depending on the model. While not a workstation, these CPUs are fast enough for some intensive workloads; they just take longer.

The Ryzen 5 8640U performs well for 3D rendering, and the Ryzen 7 models will perform even better. However, getting a laptop with a discrete GPU is best, as even an older entry-level GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, can render images faster.

The integrated AMD Radeon Graphics lacks the power for intensive or AAA gaming. It's fine for older gaming on low settings.

Borderlands 3 isn't playable. The gameplay is extremely choppy, even on the lowest settings. You'll achieve slightly higher frame rates with the Ryzen 7 configurations, but don't expect a much better gaming experience.

Civilization VI performs acceptably at 1080p with high settings. While you don't need very high framerates to enjoy a turn-based strategy game like this, turning down the settings will provide you with one. The average turn time is decent, so you won't need to wait too long to see barbarians plundering your trade routes yet again.

While you get good framerates at low settings, Counter-Strike 2's performance is sub-par as there are a lot of stutters during gameplay. The integrated graphics on the HP Aero doesn't provide the smooth and responsive experience you want when playing competitive FPS games.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider performs poorly at 1080p with high settings. The integrated AMD Radeon Graphics isn't powerful enough for AAA titles at 1080p with high settings. While you can get over 60 fps at low settings, the gameplay is still choppy.

This laptop stays cool while under load. The hot spot is in the middle of the keyboard, but it isn't hot enough to cause discomfort. It's also quite quiet; the fan is barely audible under load.

There are many pre-installed applications, including:

• AMD Software: Lets you adjust display and hardware settings.
• Dropbox promotion: Ad for Dropbox file hosting service.
• DTS Sound Unbound: Lets you use DTS surround and spatial sound plug-ins for headphones and speakers.
• HP Connection Optimizer: Automatically recovers the driver of a communications device that stops functioning.
• HP Enhanced Lighting: Adds a virtual light ring on the screen to improve lighting during video calls.
• HP PC Hardware Diagnostics Windows: Helps diagnose system issues.
• HP Privacy Settings: Lets you choose what type of information you share with HP.
• HP Smart: App for HP printers.
• HP Support Assistant: Lets you access information on how to repair and diagnose issues. Also contains guided troubleshooting via a virtual assistant.
• HP System Event Utility: Lets you see the system's information and run diagnostics.
• McAfee: Antivirus software. Requires subscription.
• myHP: Lets you tweak the laptop's performance and fan speed, view system information, optimize audio and video quality during video calls, tweak the speakers' sound, and change the display's color profile.
• OMEN Gaming Hub: Lets you access your installed games, HP rewards, and picture gallery. It also lets you see system information like CPU and GPU usage and temperatures, optimize the PC, and change the power profile.
• Solitaire & Casual Games: Solitaire, FreeCell, Spider, Mahjong, Sudoku, and other casual games.

There's a facial recognition IR camera. You can use it to log in quickly, authorize purchases in the Windows Store, and auto-fill saved passwords on supported websites.