HP 15.6" 2025, Core i7-1355U, 32GB, 1TB SSD, Silver

The HP 2025 packs 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD into a business laptop with a backlit keyboard and touchscreen. The Core i7-1355U is fine for everyday work, but the 1366 x 768 display is a major weak spot. Pricing is unclear, so value depends on where it lands. Buy it for the memory and storage, not the screen.

The Core i7-1355U is a 10-core, 12-thread chip that can boost up to 5.0 GHz. In our database, it lands in the 43rd percentile for CPUs, which is solidly middle of the pack. For everyday office work, web browsing, and light multitasking, it'll feel snappy. The 32GB of DDR4 at 3200 MHz is the real performance story here. That's enough headroom to run a virtual machine, keep 50 Chrome tabs open, and still have room for a Zoom call without the system grinding to a halt.

The 1TB NVMe SSD is another bright spot. Boot times will be quick, apps will load fast, and you won't feel the storage bottleneck that plagues cheaper laptops with spinning drives or tiny eMMC storage. The integrated graphics are the weak link. With a 14th percentile GPU score, this thing will struggle with anything beyond basic photo editing or very light video work. Don't expect to render 4K footage or play anything more demanding than Minesweeper without the fans spinning up and the frame rate tanking.

The competitors listed here are all in a completely different league. The Apple MacBook Pro M4 Max, ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14, Lenovo Legion Pro 7i, and MSI Raider are all high-performance machines with dedicated GPUs and premium displays. Comparing this HP to those is like comparing a reliable commuter car to a Formula 1 racer. They're not really playing the same game.

That said, if you're cross-shopping, the Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition is the closest philosophical match. It's a business-focused machine with solid build quality and a much better screen. You'll likely get less RAM and storage for the money, but the display and overall polish are significantly better. The trade-off is clear: HP gives you more memory and storage, Surface gives you a better screen and build. For most people, the Surface is the better daily driver. For the RAM-hungry multitasker on a budget, the HP makes a case for itself.

Pricing is a bit of a mystery here since the listing doesn't include a price at the time of writing. That makes value hard to judge. If this lands under $600, the 32GB RAM and 1TB SSD combo is a steal for a business laptop. If it creeps toward $800 or more, you're paying a premium for memory while getting a screen that belongs in 2012.

Compared to other laptops in our database, the storage and RAM are the value drivers. The CPU is average, the screen is near the bottom, and the port selection is below average. So the value proposition hinges entirely on how much you care about memory and storage versus display quality and graphics performance. For a specific kind of buyer, that math works out. For everyone else, it's a harder sell.

The HP 2025 is one of those laptops that looks great on a spec sheet until you squint at the screen. Literally. You get a 10-core Intel Core i7-1355U, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD, which sounds like a serious workhorse. But then HP paired all that with a 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 display that sits in the 11th percentile for screens in our database. That's a weird combo, like putting racing tires on a minivan.

This is a business laptop aimed at people who need memory and storage more than pixel density. Spreadsheet wranglers, data entry folks, students with a million browser tabs, maybe a developer who lives in a terminal. The 32GB of RAM is the real story here. Most laptops at this tier ship with 8GB or 16GB, so having 32GB out of the box is a genuine differentiator. The 1TB SSD also lands in the 80th percentile, which means you won't be juggling external drives anytime soon.

But let's be clear about what this isn't. It's not a gaming machine. The integrated graphics score a 10.6 out of 100 for gaming, which is about as useful as a chocolate teapot for anything beyond Solitaire. And that screen, well, we'll get to that. The touchscreen and backlit keyboard are nice touches, and Windows 11 Pro means it'll slot into a corporate environment without IT throwing a fit.

If you do any kind of creative work, photo editing, video editing, or gaming, skip this. The integrated graphics and low-resolution screen will frustrate you constantly. Look at the ASUS ROG Zephyrus G14 or a MacBook Air instead. If you're a developer who spends hours reading code, the 1366 x 768 panel will make text look fuzzy and limit how much code you can see at once. A Microsoft Surface Laptop 7th Edition or a ThinkPad with a 1080p or better display will serve you far better.

Also skip this if you need modern connectivity. The single USB-C port without Thunderbolt support and HDMI 1.4 means you can't drive a 4K external monitor at 60Hz. If you dock to a workstation setup, this will feel limiting. Anyone who values screen quality, port selection, or graphics performance should look elsewhere. This HP is for the RAM-hungry office worker on a budget, and that's about it.

If you're a student or office worker who lives in spreadsheets, documents, and browser tabs, this HP will serve you well. The 32GB of RAM means you can be sloppy with your tab management and never feel the pinch. The 1TB SSD gives you room for years of files without external storage. The backlit keyboard with numeric keypad is genuinely nice for anyone who types a lot or works with numbers.

But if you care about screen quality at all, look elsewhere. A 1366 x 768 panel in 2025 is rough. Text looks soft, you get less vertical space for documents, and watching video on this thing is a compromised experience. The touchscreen helps a bit, but it can't fix the resolution. For developers, the RAM is tempting, but the screen will drive you nuts when you're trying to read code. For anyone doing creative work or gaming, this is simply the wrong tool.