A few years back I made entry about my search for a good laptop for writing. Unfortunatley the model I went with ended up being a bad choice. Fast forward to today, I’ve finally found one that I’m really happy with. I actually ended up finding it when shopping for a laptop for my daughter to use for online school during the pandemic, and fell in love with it. It’s the HP Pavilion x360. It’s been perfect for her schooling, but has also been an amazing writing laptop as well.
Here are a few of the specs for my Pavilion x360:
14″ touch screen
10th gen Intel Quad-Core i5-1035G1 processor
16GB RAM
Hard drive: 512GB SSD
Another big plus for me is that the laptop is convertable into a tablet, so you have options for how you’d like to write.
As a writing laptop it’s been amazing and super-fast. The hardware is more than powerful enough for writing and other every day work.
Here are a list of pros and cons I’ve experienced so far.
Pros:
- Starts up extremely fast when powering on and restarting.
- Runs fast in general in every application I’ve used so far.
- Windows 10 has run totally smooth with no hangups so far.
- The solid state dard drive means no moving parts (which to me means: less to break!)
- It’s so light! Weighs in at a little over 3 pounds.
- The display is really nice and the touch screen works well.
- More than enough power for writing.
- Works well and fast with Photoshop Elements, in case you use that program for light designing like myself.
- Backing up your writing is super easy and automatic with One Drive (I’ll have more on that in an upcoming entry.)
- The battery life has been outstanding so far.
- The ability to convert to a tablet is super convenient, and if you like to type on the touch screen, is another option for writing.
- While I haven’t had the laptop long, so far the construction has seemed durable.
Cons:
- While it’s nowhere near the most expensive laptops out there, it isn’t cheap.
- It may be a little more than what you need if only using it for writing.
In conclusion, the x360 has been amazing for me. Is it overkill? Perhaps. But after my last experience I’m finding that you get what you pay for, so it’s been more than worth it for me personally. If the x360 is more than you’re looking to spend (which is totally understandable), I’d recommend avoiding super cheap laptops, and try to get something that has better specs than that of my last experience, which ended up being pretty much useless. You may be able to strike a balance and find something reliable that works for you. If you can spring for the x360 however, I highly reccomend it.
What do you use for writing? Has it been a good or bad experience? Let me know in the comments here or on Facebook!
-Clint
Next up: Backing up your writing
Feralia - Home of the Feralia fantasy novels by Clint Cassa 