HP Pavilion 17-e117dx Big-Screen Laptop with Intel i3 & 750GB HDD

The HP Pavilion 17-e117dx is a 17.3-inch laptop PC, with a decent Intel Core i3 processor, a roomy 750GB hard drive, and an affordable price. It’s a classic 17.3-incher with 1600×900 screen resolution, spacious keyboard with numeric pad, built-in DVD optical drive, a wide selection of ports and slots, a profile of 1.3″, and weight of 6.4 pounds. This system shouldn’t be mistaken for the 17-e117dx TouchSmart version, which additionally provides touchscreen support.

The included Intel Core i3-3130M dual-core 2.6GHz processor is from the 2012 “Ivy Bridge” CPU family. Since it’s not a 2013/2014 “Haswell” part and belongs to the “M” series instead of common “U”, it doesn’t have a great power-efficiency. On the upside, it’s faster than the “Ivy Bridge” and “Haswell” i3 “U” chips and even matches performance of many Intel Core i5 models. That’s what really matters on a laptop which is rather a replacement for a desktop PC than a travel companion. For instance, the i3-3130M achieves around 3,600 points in PassMark CPU benchmark, just like the latest i5-4210U. Overall, the i3 is an excellent choice for all the daily chores of the average user, and even has some potential for video production and professional handling of high-resolution photos. As for gaming, it includes the Intel HD 4000 series integrated graphics, which is good only for the basic 3D game rendering. On the other side, the Intel HD 4400 found on “Haswell” chips provides enough oomph for the latest demanding games if graphics settings and resolution are set to lower ones. HP’s Pavilion 17-e117dx packs 4 Gigabytes of DDR3L RAM memory, which ensures seamless multitasking. Optionally, users can upgrade it themselves to 6 or 8 GB. The battery is a 47WHr unit, but we have no info on battery life. Since this notebook has a large display needing a lot of backlight and the CPU isn’t among the most power-efficient, the battery life probably won’t be so good. Judging from the specs, one can expect about 4 hours at best with light usage.

The chassis is made of plastics. The palmrest is glossy black, while the back of the LCD panel is silver-colored.

The 17-e117dx has stereo speakers, a 720p web camera, HDMI and VGA video ports, three USB ports with one of them supporting USB 3.0 standard with fast data transfer speed, and a multi-in-one media card reader. For getting you online, it sports 802.11N Wi-Fi wireless and Ethernet LAN jack. The notebook isn’t Bluetooth-enabled.

All factors combined, the HP 17-e117dx is not a fancy laptop with Full HD display resolution, keyboard backlight, and other advanced perks, but it’s capable of getting the home and office job done.