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Review on HP I7 1065G7 Fingerprint Nightfall TechWarehouse by Richard Eledge

Revainrating 5 out of 5

Best 13 " Win Machine - Price

I've had great fun with the 15" Specter for over 6 months and when my Mac refugee wife wanted a 13" model, we got this model. Everything about it is excellent - the screen is sharp and clear, with a thin bezel and touchscreen, a surprisingly useful feature. The speed of the Intel i7 is great, perhaps overkill for non-gamers, but it's nice to have blazing fast downloads, updates, and file transfers. Battery performance and charging times are impressive. There is no fan, so it is absolutely silent. The knees can get a little warm, but don't overheat. The sound quality is much better than you would expect from a 13-incher. Spotify sounds great in the background. The camera is very clear, ideal for zooming. A tiny switch manually turns the camera off, so the paranoid doesn't have to cover the lens with a regular piece of black tape. The clear camera means login with facial recognition works reliably, a handy feature for those who are inexplicably not paranoid. Personally, I'm sticking with the fingerprint reader, and I even have my doubts about it, such is the age we live in. The conventional PIN or password input still works perfectly. System mics capture volume and clarity in zoomed calls. I've had a few momentary power outages when using Bluetooth connected mics and headphones, so now I go "natural" when zooming in (I'm wearing pants). I paid for 16GB of RAM because you can't have too much RAM. The operating system alone consumes a lot of it, so if you like to work on several projects at the same time, you need a lot of RAM. The drive, on the other hand, is not too big. I opted for a 256 GB SSD, which is more than enough for documents and installed software. Because all documents are mirrored in the One Drive cloud, you no longer have to worry about saving everything to your local drive. I/O ports are limited, but a USB-A and a USB-C can be plugged into inexpensive hubs if you need more. The touchpad is very responsive and the backlit keyboard feels nice and isn't overly cramped. A blind typist will have no problem. The pen functions work great, although even this compact device is too big and too heavy to be a practical tablet. You can collapse the screen when you have a heavy drawing project (I do this to write freehand music), but otherwise just grab the keyboard to add pen annotations. I chose Win-10 Home ("Business" includes Outlook and other resources I don't need) and an inexpensive Student/Home Office 2019 license (Word, Excel, Ppt, OneNote). The Office 365 subscription service didn't work for me, but if you want to update your software every year or two, it's cheaper. I opted for the 2 year extended warranty, expensive and possibly optional for HP, but I've had computers that failed after 13 months and at that price point the slight increase seemed worth it. However, if a computer lasts 90 days, it typically lasts ten years. The device comes with a 1-month trial of McAfee Security, not the best, but you can get started as long as you buy the best antivirus (e.g. Bitdefender, Malware Bytes, Webroot). My kit didn't come with the advertised 64GB flash drive so don't count on it. But it comes with a more convenient and beautiful faux leather case. I bought my 15" Specter direct from HP at a slightly higher price (with shipping) because I couldn't get my specs from AMZ or BB, but it took 7 weeks for HP to ship it. I bought this 13" from AMZ because it had everything I needed and arrived in 10 days. Finally, the Specter is beautiful and a pleasure to look at.

Pros
  • Feels good
Cons
  • Not the best