HP Back On Top: The Best Price/Performance Laptop I've Used Yet
Written: Dec 07 '08 (Updated Dec 07 '08)
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Pros: Great processor, memory, USB/eSATA ports, touchpad override, HDMI, Mem Card Slot, weight, price.
Cons: Screen quality could improve slightly, fixed resolution, hard drive a bit small.
The Bottom Line: One of the best laptops I've used. Great features, form, function, and price. This is one of the best machines in this price range you'll find. (The dv5 1000us model).
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| customeright's Full Review: Hewlett Packard HP Pavilion dv5-1150us NoteBook In... |
Through both personal and work uses, I've had experience with a lot of different laptops over the years. While primarily my laptops have been by Dell, I've also used Lenovo/IBM's, Sony (Vaio), Apple's, and Toshiba Satellite's. In my experience, from the late 90's until about 5 years ago Dell made the best product. Since then however, recent experience has convinced me that Dell has lost its competitive edge. So when the time came for a new laptop a couple of months ago, I researched everything in the price range I was looking for, and I arrived at what I think is the best bang-for-buck laptop money can buy right now: the HP Pavilion dv5 1000us with Intel Core 2 Duo P7350.
Form
Neither the largest nor the smallest laptop on the market today, I think the Pavilion dv5 is the perfect size for a portable desktop replacement laptop. It's big enough to have everything integrated, and it's small enough to be portable. (Unlike some of the huge 19 incher's I've seen people lug through the airport. Great screen, probably has everything, but can't be fun to carry.)
Physical Dimensions of the dv5
-Screen Size: 15.4"
-Width: 14.05"
-Depth: 10.20"
-Height (thickness): 1.37-1.65"
dv5 Weight
-5.83 lbs.
For what's on-board, I think the weight is just about as good as it gets. You can lift it with one hand and rather easily pass it around a room if you're showing pictures to a group. Even my 90 year old grandmother could hold it.
Looks
The cover/lid is a nice black shiny finish that's professional looking, although prone to fingerprints. It has a light-up HP logo on the lid that's lit when it's on (a blatant Apple rip-off and mostly useless, except that it lets you know whether the screen is on with the lid closed). Under the lid, the keyboard is a silver/chrome finish called Onyx chrome 2, that's nicely done although has a slightly cheap feel.
Features
Physical Features
In general the features on the dv5 are the main reason to buy this great laptop. In two words: it's loaded. It's got all the standard equipment like an ample number of USB 2.0 ports, a built in CD/DVD 'Super Multi' drive, a PC-Card/Express Card slot, an IR port and an on-board speaker system by Altec Lansing.
The dv5 also comes with a modem/phone jack (I'm not sure how much longer these will last), and a hard wire LAN port, built-in 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless (and Bluetooth), and a set of soft-touch 'buttons' along the top of the keyboard that includes: volume control up/down, volume mute, play/pause, stop, next and previous grack and 'Quickplay' (an HP/Microsoft collaboration media program), and finally a built-in web cam with microphone.
Hardware Performance Specs
Processor: Intel Core2 Duo (64-bit), chip P7350, 2Ghz clock, 1066MHz FSB, 3MB L2 onboard cache
Memory: 4 GB DDR2 (upgradable to 8GB)
Hard Disk: 250GB, 5400 RPM SATA (the Epinions product description lists it as 320GB, but the product number is the same, and mine came with 250GB)
Display: Widescreen supported XGA, high-definition 'Brightview' LCD, 1280x800 resolution.
Battery: 6-cell Li-Ion
Software Specs and Features
The OS is Microsoft Vista 64-bit, and the machine comes pre-loaded with Microsoft Works (the most watered down version of MS Office), Cyberlink DVD Suite and Webcam Suite, and a host of other useful applications and and an array of games from HP (which I haven't tried yet).
Built-In Recovery: The dv5 has an interesting new feature for system recovery. The hard drive has a reserved space on it that contains backup OS data which presumably can be used to recover the machine. The negatives here are that it doesn't come with disks, and it uses 10GB of the hard drive, but it's nice to have. Of course if the hard drive crashes it's waste, but they give you the option to create your own disks.
Other Notable Features
I won't go over the rest of the little features here, but the main ones I like and which I'm most impressed with are as follows:
-Built-in eSATA Port that doubles as a USB port when needed. This is a nice option as eSATA is getting more popular as a high speed link for external hard drives. It's a great option, and the fact that it support USB as well is nice.
-Built-in SD-MS/Pro-MMC-XD card slot. I love this because all of my cameras and most of my other devices use SD cards, and it's great to not have to carry around an external SD card reader anymore. Plus, Windows Vista has a feature to utilize external memory as extra internal memory if desired. While it's not as fast as true DDR memory, but it's a nice option if you run many many programs at once.
-Built-in HDMI Port. This is one of those features I didn't know I needed until I brought this laptop home. I didn't even consider it in my research, but now that I have it, I can't live without it. I absolutely love having the ability to plug my laptop directly into an HD television. Not only does having a 40" external 'monitor' great when you need it, it's even better for watching movies, youtube, or even internet radio. Latelly we've been using it to watch Netflix instant watch.
Other less important but interesting features include a little remote control that's stored in the PC-Card slot when not in use. It's very small and comes with a battery. It's primarily setup to control Windows Media Center, but the volume control works with anything and it's a nice option if you don't have a long HDMI cable and have the computer next to the TV.
Also built in are dual headphone mini-jacks and a microphone mini-jack on the front so two people can plugin without a splitter. The DVD drive comes with 'Lightscribe' technology, which allows you to burn images onto the front of a CD or DVD to label it after you create the disk. I have this on my older desktop computer and it's nice to have for fun, but in practice I don't use it much because it takes a while.
Function and Experience
That's Entertainment
The words 'HP Pavilion Entertainment PC' are printed in small characters on the bottom-right inside edge of the laptop. This implies that the machine is powerful enough to handle movies, videos and games. In my experience a machine that can handle that without problem, also has plenty of 'horsepower' for almost all other tasks needed, and in practice with the dv5 I'm pleased to say that's true. The windows 'user experience index' rates the machine at 3.8 out of 5 which is good enough for almost all applications. Although it's 1.2 points from the top, I can't imagine a machine could be a whole lot faster for what I need. Movies don't hang, wait times for loading programs are quick, web pages load fast (when I'm on a good network), and with two cores, I find that I can multi-task and use multiple programs at once without concern.
The transfer rates with external devices are fast, the hard drive is fast, and I have yet to actually bring the machine to it's knees from regular use. One time I did have to turn off the Norton virus scan program to make movies play smoother, but there may there may have been somthing else going on then (such as indexing) because that only happened once.
Use and Feel
Keyboard: As a desktop replacement, this computer is now my main machine. While typically I have used an external keyboard when at my desk, with this laptop I don't have to. I find that the keyboard is of ample size and adequate feel to not need anything else. There is room to rest your wrists, and while the keys might feel a little cheaper and a bit light perhaps, the feedback provided is just about right. In fact, I've had 3 other people who've used the keyboard comment about how nice it feels compared to theirs.
Touch Pad: Another typically sore point for me is the love/hate relationship I have with laptop touchpads. While I like them better than the 'eraser dot', touch pads are either too big, too small, uncomfortable, in the way, or too out of the way. While I still don't love touchpads, the dv5's touchpad is the best one I've used. It's big enough to have room for side and bottom scrolling (a must-have if you don't use it), and the pad is sensitive enough for very accurate double-tap/double-click. But one of the BEST features of the pad, is the manual button to turn it off. While I don't use an external keyboard at home, I do still use an external mouse. So to avoid the accidental touch-pad-hit that puts your pointer in random places when typing, you can simply push a button and an indicator light goes red, showing that the touch pad is off. A great feature I must say.
Display: The 15.1" display on this machine is perfect for me. It's bright, the picture is good, and the reslolution is adequate. While it's not the best display out there (I actually like the display on the Toshiba Satellite line better), I really only have one complaint: the resolution is fixed at 1280x1024. While it's very usable, there are times when I want smaller fonts and icons and more screen real estate. With the dv5, without an external monitor there's no way to do that. (Vista locks out unsupported resolutions, which in this case is all of them other than 1280x1024.)
Other Experience Items of Interest
Portability: As I noted above, the machine is very light at under 6 lbs, and it's easy to carry. I've had it through numerous airpots already and I find it very easy to run through security. Additionally the included power supply 'brick' is one of the smaller ones I've seen and is light as well.
Battery Life: One of the biggest complaints about laptops I've had other than portability is battery life. With this machine I find that the battery lasts on average about 3 hours with heavy use. This isn't stellar and is quite a bit less than the claimed 4-6 horus, but it's not terrible for a machine in this price range. On one flight from Colorado to Florida I was able to get the battery to last over 3.5 hours (with the brightness turned down and doing word processing using OpenOffice, which is rather processor intensive).
Conclusion
There are more expensive and less expensive laptops on the market right now. If you're a hard-core 3D gamer or number crunching scientist you might need a little more speed or power. If you're an E-Mail and Internet-only road warrior you may want something a little smaller and lighter. But for those of us who just need a decent desktop replacement that's portable, I think this laptop is a really great solution for practically everyone.
My only complaints are that the hard drive could have been a little bigger (320GB is pretty standard now but this has 250), and the fixed resolution is somewhat limiting. Plus, adding a BlueRay player would be nice. Otherwise, I have basically no substantial complaints with this laptop. No, it's not a $2500 piece of hardware, but for what you get compared to what you pay, I really think that with the dv5 (model 1000us with Intel P7350 chip), HP has finally figured out what it takes to make a great laptop.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 750
Operating System: Windows
Processor: Other
Processor speed: over 1000
Screen Size: 15 inches
RAM: More than 256
Internal Storage: CD-RW and DVD
Hard Drive (GB): Over 50
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Epinions.com ID:
customeright
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Member: Alan
Location: Orlando, FL, USA
Reviews written: 71
Trusted by: 15 members
About Me:
Consultant by day, reviewer by night, but one thing I know: the customer's right!
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