HP 15-R137wm Touchsmart Review
Michael Smith 
- Affordable
- Portable
- Good overall performance
The Hp 15-r137wm strikes a delicate balance between, design, mobility, performance and productivity. The mid-range priced Notebook comes in a regal purple color designed for students, office use and home based users with the energy to handle all your tasks with ease. It comes fully loaded with a dual core Intel Core i3-4005U clocked at 1.7 GHz, integrated video card and 6 GB of RAM. In the battery mode, the TouchSmart can run up to 5 hours. Lets see how it stacks up the competitive mid range laptop category.
First things first, unless you’re looking for a touch-enabled laptop, for fairly less, you can get powerful laptops. For instance, our Editors Choice-ASUS F555LA-AB31, with its Intel Core i3 processor and premium design.
The system comes with Windows 8.1 but offers free upgrade to windows 10 that seems to work smoother for the ultimate all new experience. With an intuitive touchscreen and a sleek, lightweight design, this computer allows you to enjoy true reliability at home or on the road with a simple, yet powerful value-packed notebook that accomplishes almost all tasks.
Design
DesignThe HP measures 10.20 x 14.88 x 1 inch and comes with a 15.6″ diagonal HD WLED – backlit touchscreen display and 1366×768 resolution that allows you to watch all your movies and view photos in a clarity typical to entry level laptops. The speakers are backed up with Beats Audio technology that lets you enjoy a superb sound when it comes to entertainment. If you are in need of a laptop that doesn’t cost too much but works with all common applications and programs, then the HP 15-r137wm deserves a closer look.
It comes with HD webcam and inbuilt SuperMulti DVD burner which burns both CD and DVD. Network connectivity is supported by 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and Fast Ethernet. Conspicuously missing on this laptop is Bluetooth connectivity, however you can purchase an adaptor to enjoy this services. The 15.6” LED backlit touch display offers native resolution of 1366 X 768 pixels resolution that can only support 720p playback. In case you need to watch 1080p content on the laptop, you will have to use an external display through the HDMI or a compatible TV.
Connectivity
The Hp 15-r137wm offers ports and connectivity features that are not outstanding, however we did not expect much at this price. It comes with Multi-format digital media card reader for Secure Digital cards, 1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0 for connection of more accessories and peripherals,, 1 HDMI output for broadcasting media on larger screens, 1 RJ-45 (LAN) and 1 Headphone-out/microphone-in combo jack.
Performance
The Hp 15-r137wm is powered by Intel core i3-4005u processor which operates with base frequency of 1.7GHz and has two cores that can handle atleast or more demanding productivity and daily multimedia tasks at the same time without any lags. The processor is hyper threading enabled, thus two cores can handle four threads at a time. The 6GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory grants you the power to handle most power-hungry applications and tons of multimedia work with a lot of ease.
The 500GB 5400rpm speed SATA Hard drive is sufficient enough at this price of sub-$600 for storage of your documents, movies and music. The laptop comes with Intel HD 4400 graphics which supports low end gaming. You can play Sims 4, Wow and Dota 2 in low to medium details and settings but can’t play Titanfall, Thief, watch Dogs, Risen 3 among others but the ASUS VivoBook S400CA promises to shell all your performance problems with an Intel Core i5 processing power.
Summary
The Hp 15-r137wm offers strong performance with a pretty look for day to day tasks like running Microsoft Office, web browsing with multiple tabs, listening to music, watching videos on screen or on an external display. It also supports entry level photo and video editing. The new Windows 10 has a more user friendly interface than the Windows 8 and some new features you would enjoy. If you are not obsessive about specific color, you can take a look at Acer Aspire E5-571P-31LT which is a touchscreen laptop with 4GB memory and 500GB hard drive and comes with slightly better processor.
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