Seventeen-inch laptops toe the line between portability and size, making them more expensive than your average laptop. Some of the best 17-inch laptops can easily cost you thousands of dollars. Luckily, there HP has come up with a very budget-friendly solution in the form of the HP laptop 17z, and while it’s not one of the best laptops on the market, it is an excellent budget-oriented choice for a 17-inch laptop. Even better, HP currently discounts it down to $300 from the usual $560 price tag, which is a significant $260 off.
Why you should buy the HP Laptop 17z
As the name implies, the HP Laptop 17z has a large 17.3-inch screen running a 1920 x 1080 resolution and can hit a peak brightness of 250nits, which isn’t a lot, but it’s good enough for a well-lit room, especially with its anti-glare coating. You could potentially upgrade to a touch version of the screen for $30, but since it would knock the resolution down to 1600 x 900, it’s not worth it, especially with a larger 17.3-inch screen. What will be worth the upgrade is taking the networking option from the Wi-Fi5 and Bluetooth 4.2 standard up to the Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 standard for an extra $20, which will make sure your laptop has a strong connection for streaming or doing online meetings and will be future-proof for at least the next 5-6 years.
In terms of performance, you get an entry-level AMD Athlon Gold 7220U processor, which will be enough for basic tasks like web browsing and streaming content. That said, we’d probably spring for the $90 upgrade that brings it up to an AMD Ryzen 3 7320U, a much better desktop-grade processor, which might still be entry-level but will give you a better quality of life in the long run. As for the RAM, you get 8GBs, which is on the lower end but perfectly fine for most use cases, as is the 128GB SSD, although that’s probably worth an upgrade to at least 256GB for an extra $25. Alternatively, you could just grab one of these external hard drive deals and get a bit more versatility.
While the HP Laptop 17z isn’t going to win any awards, it’s the perfect device for those who want the basics and need a larger screen, and with a couple of upgrades, it can be a very solid long-term investment. Be sure to take advantage of HP’s discount, which brings it down to $300, or check out some of these great 17-inch laptop deals from other great laptop brands on the market.
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