HP 255 G10 review: a balanced laptop for a student, or a new office standard

Maximum features for minimum money — this is the motto that guided the engineers who created the HP 255 G10. This laptop won’t appeal to demanding image enthusiasts or modern gamers, but it fully meets the needs of the vast majority of the population. In addition to its balanced characteristics, the hero of the review has a low price, which makes it one of the best laptops on the Ukrainian market in its class. We tested the device in work scenarios, games, evaluated ergonomics, battery life, measured heat, noise, and battery life in different conditions.

Technical specifications of HP 255 G10

Technical specifications of HP 255 G10
Screen	15″ 1920×1080 60 Hz IPS
Processor	AMD Ryzen 3 7330U
RAM	16 GB DDR4 3200 MHz
Drive	512 GB SSD PCI-E 3.0
Video card	AMD Radeon Vega 6
Wireless interfaces	Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi 6
Connectors	HDMI 1.4b
	2 x USB A 3.2 gen2
	1 x USB C 3.2 gen2
	3.5 mm jack
Camera	HD 720p with a curtain
Audio	Realtek ALC3247, 2 speakers
Power supply	45 W
Battery	41 W*h
Housing material	matte plastic
Weight	1.52 kg
Dimensions	360x236x19 mm
Operating system	MS DOS

Equipment

The HP 255 G10 is packaged as modestly as possible, which is rather an advantage. The box and sealing frame are made of plain cardboard. There are no colored inscriptions, and there is minimal polyethylene inside (only a small bag for the laptop and power supply).

The package includes only a laptop and a 45W power supply with a proprietary connector, no additional accessories. Modest and budget-friendly, as it should be. The fact that the bundled operating system is MS DOS, not Windows 11, is an advantage, as it would have affected the final cost of the device.

Appearance, interfaces of the HP 255 G10

The laptop is medium in size and light in weight. The case is made of plastic and has a matte finish. Only the back of the case collects fingerprints, as you can see in the photo. Although the materials are cheap, we can’t complain about the build quality.

The lid is tight, and you can’t open the laptop with one hand. HP 255 G10 fails the «test on MacBook». The screen does not tilt 180 degrees like many competitors.

The left side contains a USB Type A 3.2, HDMI 1.4, 3.5mm audio jack, and USB Type C 3.2. On the opposite side is another fast USB Type A, and next to it is a connector for a proprietary power supply. The laptop cannot be charged using the Type C connector.

The Bluetooth 5.3 and Wi-Fi 6 wireless interfaces did not disappoint. The laptop stably picks up the router signal within a private house. Everything depends on the capabilities of the provider’s tariff and network equipment.

Keyboard, touchpad

The laptop has a full keyboard with a numeric pad. Students of the College of Accountancy will be satisfied when working in Excel spreadsheets. There is no backlight, but there is an engraving of the Ukrainian letter ґ. The keys are marked with English, Ukrainian, and Russian letters.

The touchpad is quite large, which is not often found in budget models. The sensitivity is adequate, it supports gestures, and it’s convenient to work with, although it can’t be compared to the panels of premium ultrabooks on Mac OS. It is thanks to its large size that the user can set the sensitivity to low and control the cursor quite accurately.

Display, camera, sound HP 255 G10

The screen is rather ambiguous, because on the one hand it’s an FHD IPS 60 Hz matrix with adequate viewing angles and a soft image, and on the other hand we get poor color coverage. The brightness is low, up to 250 nits, but in the sun the laptop behaved quite well. The panel absorbs most of the light, almost without reflecting it.

The sound is relatively flat and of medium volume. It’s enough for watching movies in bed or listening to music for undemanding users. The camera is HD 720p, the quality is adequate only in perfect lighting conditions. In the evening, with a 5W LED lamp, it is better not to turn it on. A nice advantage is the built-in curtain, which Mark Zuckerberg would definitely appreciate.

Work productivity

Benchmark / Mode	BATTERY	PSU
Geekbench 6	1497/4420	1700/4710
Speedometer 3	11,7	14,2
Google Octane 2.0	61052	69200
Corona 1.3	253s	317s
WebXPRT	186	242
CPU-Z	584/2603	555/2808
OpenCL	8456	11104
Vulkan	9133	9808
Cinebench R24. Single/Multi	68/244	81/293
Blender Radeon	60,36	64,38
Blender Ryzen	68,11	76,85

The HP 255 G10 doesn’t perform too well, but it’s almost independent of the power mode. The laptop works equally well from the battery or from the wall outlet, with minimal performance drops. In most cases, they do not exceed 10%.

According to Geekbench 6 tests, the hero of the review has performance on par with modern Android flagships, although it is much faster in the browser. The Speedometer results are neither impressive nor disappointing, so to speak, this is the minimum standard for 2024.

The HP 255 G10 can handle any office software, although the heaviest sites do not load lightning fast (after the flagship models, it can’t be otherwise).

Heavy benchmarks such as Cinebench, CPU-Z, Corona 1.3 fully load the processor. The rendering speed is not impressive, but it is unlikely that anyone will use this laptop to process 3D graphics. In any case, AMD Ryzen 3 7330U works for every hryvnia, and the battery life is adequate.

The rendering of graphics in Blender on the CPU and video card is almost identical, which is rarely seen in this benchmark. The graphics accelerator turned out to be rather weak, which is confirmed by the Geekbench Open CL and Vulkan tests. The power of the integrated graphics is at the level of the desktop NVIDIA GT 1030.

PCI-E 3.0 storage, fast and stable. After partial filling, we have slight performance drops. There are no complaints about the SSD, especially if it’s a laptop for 17 thousand UAH and the disk capacity is 512 GB.

The RAM turned out to be slow. The Aida 64 test shows that the RAM operates in single-channel mode, so we have low read/write speeds with mediocre delays. Another slot is free, so whether to add RAM or not is an individual matter because not everyone needs 32 GB.

Gaming performance of the HP 255 G10

Of course, the HP 255 G10 is not positioned as a gaming solution, but we still tested several well-known games. All tests were performed twice: on battery and power supply in Full-HD resolution.

Conventional notation:

• ULTRA — maximum graphics settings;
• LOW — minimum graphics settings;
• FSRQ — FSR in Quality mode;
• CASQ — Fidelity CAS in Quality mode;

Civilization IV you can play without any problems. The benchmark shows about 50 FPS at the later stages of development. Turn-based strategies will run easily on this laptop.

Counter Strike 2 does not show excellent performance. It’s hard to hit enemies with this FPS, but I managed to make a few accurate headshots.

F1 2022 is famous for its optimization, so you can play with FSQ on the minimum settings. The picture becomes a little soapy while driving, but the FPS increase is 40%.

Forza Horizon 5 gives a poor picture and low performance with FSR Quality, and activating Fidelity CAS improves image quality and increases performance. In active races, we have 20–25 FPS, and when moving freely around the map, 30-35 FPS.

Portal 2 as always, does not disappoint. Maximum graphics, great visuals, and many interesting puzzles at 70+ FPS are guaranteed. The laptop is well suited for such classics.

Titan Quest is much harder. In light locations, it’s just over 40 FPS, although there’s no smoothness at all. This shows that not all old games are well optimized for AMD Radeon graphics cards.

Autonomy, cooling, power consumption, noise

The laptop demonstrates an average level of autonomy, but not in all scenarios. It’s perfect for office work, but in games the battery melts before your eyes. The gaming battery life is terrible, but good in office mode. With low backlighting and the power saving profile activated, the HP 255 G10 will easily last more than 10 hours when used in «typewriter» mode.

The power supply charges the laptop in 2 hours, you can play Titan Quest for only an hour, and watch 4K videos on YouTube for 3 hours and 20 minutes. By reducing the brightness and video quality, it is quite possible to increase this figure to 5–6 hours. It could have been better, given the low-cost components.

At the beginning of the process, the PSU consumes about 40 W, but the power quickly drops as the battery is charged, down to 10 W. Under the maximum load in the Aida 64 Stress Test, the power adapter operates at full capacity. In this mode, we recorded up to 44 W with a wattmeter.

The processor heats up to 87 °C, according to the sensors. The pyrometer recorded 49 °C above the keyboard and 43 °C on the rear panel. These are the hottest spots because in other places you can see 30-35 °C.

When idle, the fans do not work, there is no whistling of the throttles. Under load, the cooling system starts to produce up to 49 dB if you put a microphone directly above the keyboard or 39 dB half a meter from the laptop. The cooling system is not entirely bad, but far from ideal.

The problem is that with identical noise meter readings of the HP 255 G10 and a premium laptop, it is not perceived in quite the same way. Top gaming laptops produce lower frequency noise, which is not as «cutting» to the ear. In most light scenarios, the laptop is quiet.

Experience using the HP 255 G10

The laptop left a pleasant impression. It can be used by representatives of most specialties without any problems, with the exception of photographers.

The screen doesn’t really reproduce colors very realistically, but it doesn’t make your eyes tired. I especially liked the matte finish and the low level of minimal backlighting.

The HP 255 G10 laptop is quite light (1.5 kg) for its form factor. Most analogs are heavier, and this one feels like a 13-inch laptop.

This model can be confidently recommended to students of almost any specialty and to anyone for whom a laptop is primarily a device for viewing email, movies, TV shows, creating documents, online learning, etc.

Is it worth the money? It definitely is. Without special offers and mega promotions, the HP 255 G10 has an adequate price tag. Personally, I only missed a card reader and the ability to charge using a USB Type C cable, although the latter is not at all critical with a power bank with attachments.

Price and competitors

HP 255 G10 is officially sold for UAH 17,000. Despite the fact that this is a bargain laptop with good specs, it has many competitors. We will only take into account analogs with 16/512 GB of memory.

Asus Vivobook 15 M1502YA is slightly pricier, but has a more powerful AMD Ryzen 5 7530U processor.

Lenovo V15 G4 AMN – is a direct competitor to the hero of the review. The model has faster DDR5 memory and a more powerful power supply, although it loses out on wireless interfaces.

Acer Aspire 3 A315-24P also has a more modern RAM and boasts aluminum inserts in the case (weight 1.78 kg).