Sometimes less is more, and the HP 14-fq0032ms holds up that statement nicely. It doesn’t cost much, but everything from a clean design to a colorful display and quality audio represent good value for the buck. That’s certainly a win in our books. For less than half a grand, you get an AMD Ryzen 3 processor, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD storage.
Clearly, the HP 14-fq0032ms isn’t a performance beast – one that you’d use to edit videos, push content or design power-intensive graphics. Instead, it is designed to run basic tasks smoothly, that includes web surfing, watch videos, runs MS Office tasks, and more.
It’s a great choice for an everyday laptop; best suited for business, college or office use, especially when on a tight budget.
Design
The silver-white chassis is lightweight, but not anything close to the super-light ultraportables like the Asus ZenBook 13 (2.6 pounds) that we reviewed recently, but at 4.41 pounds, it’s still portable and won’t bog you down on daily commute. In fact, it feels lighter than the listed weight, and even with a 14-inch display, the 14-fq0032ms looks and feels pretty compact.
Port selection is decent for the price. There’s a MicroSD slot, a USB Type-C Port, two USB Type-A port, and microphone/headphone combo and a power port.
HP 14-fq0032ms display
The HP 14-fq0032ms has a 14-inch 1366 x 768 touch display, that isn’t very bright or colorful, but it delivers the level of performance you’d want in an average laptop. However, we feel it would have been clever for HP to sacrifice the touch function and offer a higher resolution, maybe 1920 x 1080 would have been better.
At 220 nits, the HP 14 laptop’s display is ahead of the category average (205 nits), but behind its closest category rivals: Aspire E 15 (227 nits), Spin 3 (226 nits) and VivoBook Flip (221 nits).
Keyboard and Touch
The advantage of 14-inch laptops over competing 13-inch (and below) laptops is that the former offers enough space for a comfortable keyboard, and the HP 14 we’re reviewing is no exception. The keyboard has Chiclet-style keys that are clicky and responsive, with large keycaps, which I appreciate. For typing long term papers or finishing on a business spreadsheet, it’s among the best you can get at this price range.
Just below the keyboard is a large, responsive touchpad with two buttons. The smooth surface is agile and seamless when navigating websites or documents, and registers Windows 10 gestures well, such as two-finger swipes and three-finger taps.
Performance
With AMD’s AMD Ryzen 3 3250U processor, integrated Radeon graphics, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD, the HP 14-fq0032ms can handle your day-to-day computing requirements. It doesn’t matter whether you’re reading emails, pushing a few documents, surfing the web, watching YouTube videos or playing casual games, it will do a solid job.
I will add that this is a budget laptop, so don’t expect to run any resource-sipping applications like Photoshop or modern games. However, you can use the laptop for some light editing in Adobe Photoshop if you really need to, but I don’t recommend it for you if you need to do intensive work or a rush project.
Should you find it necessary to run full-fledged design apps and modern AAA games, we recommend that you get a laptop with a more powerful CPU and maybe a dedicated graphics card – the MSI GL65 Leopard 10SFK-062 and Razer Blade 15 are great alternatives to check out.
Battery Life
The HP 14 lasts around 8 hours 57 minutes overs continuous web surfing at 150 nits of brightness. That’s not far much below the 9:13 mainstream average, but the Acer Swift 3 (SF313-53-78UG) clocks in at 11 hours and 18 minutes, while the Lenovo Flex 5 lasts 12 hours 27 minutes on a single charge.
Bottom Line
The HP 14 Laptop is a great budget system for business and college, offering solid overall performance, a comfortable keyboard, good battery life and is fairly portable. The only downsides are its meh screen resolution and lean storage option (but at least it’s a fast SSD).
Still, I really like the HP 14 laptop for what it is. Its sleek, nicely designed, gets a lot of day-to-day thing done, and is super affordable.
If you have a flexible budget and looking for upgrade options, our Editors’ Choice for budget laptops the HP 15-dy2021nr offer better overall performance, almost all-day battery life and a crisp, full HD (1080p) screen. Highly recommended.
Otherwise, if all you need is a value system for low-to-midtier tasks, the HP 14-fq0032ms is a great choice. It works the way it’s supposed to, has a wonderful form factor and is a joy to carry around, and is an incredible cheap date. For all its worth, i think it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.