The chassis of the Aero 13 is made entirely of gray plastic. The Chrome HP logo adorns the back of the screen in the center of the card. Despite weighing 951 grams, the Aero 13 is not particularly thin. The use of plastic makes weight control possible, but at a lower quality rendering cost than aluminum or magnesium alloys. The Aero 13 looks a bit hollow, but twists too much under pressure without a chassis.
The opening of the cover reveals a matte screen with relatively thin borders, even on the bottom.
The keyboard game keys are the same color as the rest of the chassis. The disadvantage of gray keys is that the activation of the backlight makes the keys unreadable, not to mention that the light intensity is not very important.
Typing is a little blank and large keys (space, shift, return) are slightly affected by the game. HP made a bizarre choice regarding the fitting of the “low” index key: the latter is located in the “right Ctrl”. On the left side of the “left arrow” key, it can lead to many typing errors. Under the arrow keys, the Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint reader is integrated into the palm of the hand. We want its integration directly into the Start button on the left side of the “Delete” key.
The touchpad offers a nice slip, the windows gestures are perfectly taken into account, while the other hand is especially hard to pull with one finger.
Pavilion Aero 13’s connect HDMI 2.0 port, two USB ports (5 Gb / s) and a USB-C port (10 Gb / s) charging and display port.
WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2 are also included to ensure wireless connectivity. 720p webcam completes the equipment of this Pavilion Aero 13. With good lighting, the quality is perfect even if there is no detail in the picture. In the dark, it is a little more complicated, the picture is too loud and suffers from discoloration.
To cool its processor, Pavilion Aero 13 uses a single fan, which makes it even more sensible from Raison 5 even under high pressure. We specify 35.1 dB during video encryption. On the heat output side, Aero 13 is very contained (37.6 ° C at the hinge).
To access the components, it is necessary to remove the two non-slip straps to unscrew the 5 Phillips screws holding the shell. You should gently unwrap the overlay around the chassis and in the center of the overlay.
Inside, the WiFi card, SSD and battery are accessible and replaceable. On the other hand, the memory is ignited. Aero 13 is available with 8GB or 16GB RAM and we advise you to opt for the 16GB version for durability.
The HP Pavilion Aero 13 features an AMD Ryzen 5 5600U processor, 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD. The Ryzen 5 5600 has 6 cores. Hyper thread 2.3 GHz and occasionally 4.2 GHz. In practice, during encryption, its average frequency is 2.72 GHz, with a maximum frequency of 4.24 GHz.
This is the first time the Ryzen 5 5600U has passed our hands and it works well. With the performance index 95, it surpasses the entire Intel lower power limit and comes against the Core i7-11390H, which has twice the thermal casing than the Ryzen 5 5600U.
A word about the on-board SSD: it reaches 1.8 GB / s and 1.6 GB / s in readability. We did not notice any significant slump during the transfer of our video rushes which allowed us to perform our tests.
Pavilion Aero 13 is not distinguished by its dimensions, they are on average 13.3-inch chassis: 29.7 x 20.9 cm, A4 sheet size. Since its thickness is 1.69 cm we can not talk about sophistication. Pavilion Aero stands out for its weight, which is exactly 952 grams at our size. However, its proprietary 65 W charger weighs almost 300 grams with its “Mickey” cable. HP may have provided a USB-C charger, which makes it possible to save extra USB-C port and weight.
The lightness of the chassis is mainly explained by the small 43.3 Wh battery that HP used in its Aero 13. So it’s not surprising to get 5 hours and 50 minutes of battery life in video playback (Netflix under Chrome at 200 cd / m²) The only way to increase this autonomy is to reduce the brightness. As an adjustment, the USB-C port supports charging, so it is possible to plug in an external battery.
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