It had McAffee installed and I removed it, and it's running ok now.
Main Question: if McAffee was enough to make it freeze up, should I return this laptop?
New: HP 15z touch Ryzen 3-2200U 8GB, 1TB/5,400 HDD. Wifi speed 60Mbps measured.
The Ryzen borrows 1GB of the system RAM for graphics...