HP Essential 17 Laptop, 17.3" HD+ Touchscreen, Intel Core i7-1255U, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD, Webcam, HDMI, Wi-Fi 6, Backlit Keyboard, Fingerprint Reader, Windows 11 Home

I love it. Fast easy to use.

Purchased laptop from this seller and it worked less than 15 minutes. Upon 2nd power-up laptop did a bios update indicating laptop needed to be repaired. When contacting HP for warranty repair, HP advised me that the seller had not followed HP protocol for upgrading and the original HP warranty was immediately voided. No actual manufacturer warranty exists due to up-grader NOT FOLLOWING HP PROCEDURES and manufacturer warranty was voided prior to seller even shipping product to customer. Cannot advise purchasing anything from this Amazon Seller. *****UPDATE***** At the time of the above review, seller had not contacted me at all. As of this past Friday, 3/8/24, seller DID CONTACT ME and issued a prepaid return label to send the defective laptop back to them for repair. I will issue a NEW and REVISED summary of the completed repair once they return the laptop, and will update my complete seller rating. However I anticipate that I still will have no manufacturer warranty based on input from HP. ****** FINAL UPDATE ****** Amazon customer service indicated to me that this company has recently changed hands, but I'm not certain this is correct. At one point they were considered an HP Authorized service center according to some of their business websites, but my initial experience with no feedback at all from them indicated otherwise. Upon finally hearing from them and returning the defective unit, this Seller serviced my non-working laptop and returned it within a few days, and upon installing my software and starting to use the laptop everything appears to be in fine working order so far, however a couple of programs will not function appropriately, but I am fairly sure the problem is within the upgraded Windows 11 environment; (Programs work OK under Windows 10 but not Windows 11). I may try to re-configure the laptop back to Windows 10 but don't know if I can do that at this point. Will plan to use this laptop as a back-up unit for now. Seller should be considered to be fine to buy from, and I will revise my rating to a much higher business profile. You should be fine doing business with this company based on my experience with their (possibly new) customer service dept. They did stand behind the product and got it back to working order. I am still a little disenchanted that an HP warranty was not available with the product, and thought I was buying a product that did have a mfg. warranty, however that was not the case according to HP. That was a big factor to consider should I ever buy another enhanced laptop from a re-seller in the future. Buyers should research warranties and who they are from, prior to making purchase decision for any purchase on Amazon. When buying a laptop from a re-seller, most offer free returns within 30 days. So be sure to thoroughly test your units as soon as they are received, and don't let them sit around for a few weeks like I did! Another important notice; I purchased an extended warranty from a separate company that was offered during the original purchase, and was surprised to find out on attempting to file a claim on this unit that they do NOT cover SOFTWARE issues as part of their service contract. They only cover damage or problems outside software issues. That separate contract purchase was cheerfully refunded by the seller with assistance from Amazon Customer Service. Amazon Customer Service is excellent and gets my highest rating. And the NEW rating for this re-seller is now 5-star, and would have been 6-star if I hadn't had to return the laptop for repair.

Overall, this laptop has been a solid performer. I got the 64 gig RAM model because I do high-end software development on industrial-quality microcontrollers (think of a 450mhz Arduino with 250 meg of flash and 10 meg of SRAM). The extra RAM makes software compiles much quicker and debugging much easier. In normal daily use, like emails and shopping on Amazon, I don't notice any difference. The extra RAM and more cores may be overkill unless you're a gamer, edit large videos or compile programs that are several hundred megabytes long.The 17 inch screen is great! I had a 15 inch on my last laptop. 2 inches doesn't sound like much but it makes a huge difference.I use network and cloud storage to store my software in case the laptop dies so having a terabyte of SSD isn't as big a benefit as having the extra RAM I mentioned earlier.The touch screen has plusses and minuses. I'm so used to using a mouse and a CAD drawing tablet that I don't really use the touch screen. Once in a while, I or a colleague have accidentally touched it while reviewing a design and triggered an unintended action. Thankfully there's UNDO. :-)Now for the negative. This product does not appear to support DisplayPort on the USB-C port. DisplayPort lets you use a docking station to expand the number of monitors, which can be an incredible boost to a software engineer's productivity. I had it on my last laptop and was able to use 3 monitors plus the laptop display. Now I'm limited to just 1 external monitor and the laptop display. {Just as an aside, having multiple external monitors lets me easily record and edit training videos for customers.)So, if all you need is to check email, watch a few cat videos and shop on Amazon, this laptop is probably excessive. If you need the extra oomph for high-end online gaming, editing large videos, etc., be aware of the monitor limitation. Other than that, I have no problem recommending this laptop. I give it better than 4 stars but not quite good enough for 5.