Pros & Cons of the HP Pavilion HP 15-AB227TX laptop for LR use.

[IanGains58]

Hi everyone,

A friend of mine has recently acquired the above PC, & is interested in using it for Lightroom CC, to edit Canon 7D .CR2 RAW files. I have researched its specs, & the screen seems (to me) to be the main worry......it's a "Bright View WLED backlit display" with a resolution of 1366 x 768. I fully intend to colour calibrate this with an X-Rite i1 Display, or similar, but I would appreciate the thoughts of anyone who uses this PC with LR.

It has an Intel i7 processor (dual core I believe ?), 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and a NVIDIA GTX940M 2GB graphics card. Processor speed is 2.4GHz.

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

 

[Replytoken]

Is there something in particular that you are concerned about? Are you looking to purchase the same model? If it is has already been purchased, is there value in seeking opinions about it if it cannot be returned or exchanged?

Having said that, I will say that the screen is a bit resolution challneged for any extensive work in LR, and you will be well served to purchase an external monitor. You could possibly add more RAM, but 16GB is normally sufficient, and you could opt for a higher performance SSD, but the gain over the installed model will be modest at best. As there is not much you can do to improve it hardware other than pick up an external monitor, I would just use it.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

I have the same questions as Ken. In addition to those, I'm not too concerned about the 15" monitor. In fact 15" is probably on the large size for mobility. When you are not mobile (presumably most of the time), you might consider getting a 21" or larger HiResolution monitor for LR work. Your GPU seems to be on the supported list for using GPU acceleration. The biggest draw back is having only 2 cores and a very small SSD. You'll need a portable EHD in a short period of time because you are going to need to keep at least 100GB of the SSD free for use as a Swapfile and for TEMP storage. LR uses a lot of temporary files. If you fix up the SSD, performance with really bog you down.
The 18mp Canon CR2 files aren't terrible large RAW files by today's common camera models, but they will eat up that 256GB SSD quickly. If you think about this, 256GB is only about 8 of 32GB SD Camera cards full of photo images.

 

[IanGains58]

Thanks for the comments Ken and Cletus. I use a late 2012 rMBP, but I'm going to be helping out the HP owner get going with LR, & I was under-whelmed by the screen when seeing images on it for the first time. Agreed on the need for an EHD to keep enough of the SSD free for LR functions. At least it is good to know that the GPU is on the list for using GPU acceleration. As you have pointed out Ken, maybe an external monitor purchase is on the cards down the track.
Cheers, Ian.

 

[clee01l]

...I was under-whelmed by the screen when seeing images on it for the first time....

This is understandable once you are used to a HiDPI screen. It is a shame that many Windows mfgs are still selling WXGA displayed or less.