Right now, buying a laptop requires a little more thought, what with Intel Kaby Lake processors rolling out and Intel Skylake processors making their exit. Do you dive in now in the hopes of scoring a good deal on a Skylake-powered laptop, or wait for the moderate advantages that Kaby Lake brings?
In our opinion, if all you need is a reliable laptop for everyday use, Skylake is just fine—particularly if you’re buying at a discount. That brings us to today’s deal: Walmart is currently selling the HP Pavilion 15-au030wm for $450.
This Windows 10 laptop features a 15.6-inch touchscreen with 1366x768 resolution, a dual-core 2.3GHz Intel “Skylake” Core i5-6200U processor with HyperThreading, 8GB RAM, and a 1TB hard drive. This laptop does not come with discrete graphics, but laptops in this range typically don’t. Rounding out this laptop’s features are two USB 3.0 ports, one USB 2.0 port, 1 HDMI out, memory card reader, and ethernet.
Now, we have seen deals for 15.6-inch laptops with a 1920x1080 display that have gotten close to this price, but those were part of winter holiday sales—and they still cost anywhere from $50 to $100 more. The advantage to this model’s lower-resolution screen is that you should get decent battery life: HP promises 7 hours. And for this class of laptop, it has features you wouldn’t normally find, like a Core i5 processor, touchscreen, 8GB of RAM, and slightly lighter frame. (At 0.89 inches and 4.73 pounds, it’s no ultrabook, but for a machine that packs a DVD burner, it’s on the svelter side.)
One aesthetic hang up for this sale item is that it only comes in gold, but if you can handle the color, it’s a great deal.
