Unlike the American market, HP do not allow you to customize the laptop here in the UK. There are two pre-configured models, naturally one higher end and one lower end. The higher end Screen: 13.3-inch screen WXGA (1280 x 800) with XBRITE-ECO (glossy finish)
- Screen: 20.1” 1680 x 1050 WSXGA+ High-Definition HP Ultra Brightview Widescreen Display
- Colour: Black with Dragon laser etching
- Processor: 2.20 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500
- Hard Drive: 400 GB hard drive (SATA, 2x200GB, 4200RPM)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM (667 MHz, DDR2 SDRAM, 2 x 1GB) -- 4 GB max memory
- Optical Drive: HD DVD ROM with SuperMulti DVD±R/RW Double Layer
- Ports and Slots: 4 USB 2.0, 1 HDMI connector, 1 eSata connector, 1 VGA port, 1 RJ45 ethernet connector, S-video TV out, Headphone out, 1 mic-in, 1 IEEE 1394, remote control infrared port (remote optional), integrated stereo mic, cable docking connector, One ExpressCard/54 slot
- Wireless: Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection (802.11a/b/g/n)
- Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT with 256 MB dedicated video memory
- Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium
- Dimensions: 47.5 cm (L) x 33.95 cm (W) x 5.85 cm (min H/max H)
- Weight: 7.05 kg (15.5 lbs), 8 kg package weight
Reasons for Buying laptop
I was looking for an all round laptop, something that could work as a solid gaming machine as well as being a good entertainment laptop for watching movies. Initially, I considered the Toshiba Satellite X205 (X200) as well as the Dell XPS M2010 and XPS M1710. I then heard some news about the HP HDX, but did not really consider it much until I saw it. I saw an HDX in a showroom playing “Fast and Furious 3” on HD-DVD, and I knew I had to have it.
Where and How Purchased laptop
When I was looking into buying the HDX, HP had only just released the laptop in the UK and so no retailers had any in stock. The UK Price via HP is £1,699, which is around $3,400 USD. That’s expensive! But, I had the money and so I swallowed the cost and ventured onto the HP website to place the order. To my surprise, on that particular day HP listed the item on their site at £1,349, over £350 less than their standard price. I was sure it was a mistake, but I placed an order anyway. Very shortly after that, HP restored the price to its £1699. At that point, I was sure HP would cancel my order, stating it as a pricing mistake.
While it did not get cancelled, HP did delay the laptop delivery by over 3 weeks. I’m not sure if this was an attempt to get those of us who managed to place an order at the cheaper price to cancel, but the HP Customer Service throughout the delay was shockingly bad. They only informed me of a delay when I called HP to ask what was going on. It seems that HP like their rival Dell are not too good at handling delays.
Build & Design laptop
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The HDX laptop comes in a lovely big well designed box, and as you would expect from such a premium product, everything has an air of quality surrounding it. I liked the effort they put into creating the manual (rarely seen these days), as well as some nice novel touches such as including a micro-fibre cloth (to keep it shiny) and a nice poster.
Notice the unique hinge (view large image)
Here is the HDX closing (view large image)
For a laptop of this size and cost, you would expect the build quality and design to be flawless, and it is. The laptop is constructed using strong plastics and alloys for that all important hinge mechanism. There’s no flexing or wobbling here. Naturally, the design revolves around the screen and is beautiful. I think HP are doing very well in their design for the Pavilion laptops, and I’m glad all the best features are incorporated here. The use of the touch buttons also gives the laptop a good futuristic feel. I mean, technically speaking, there is no need for the eject button as there is a good old fashioned eject button on the drive itself, but boy do I love using the touch button. Volume touch controls are an especially nice touch.
A close-up view of the new "Dragon" high-impact Imprint finish. (view large image)
Screen
Here’s the unique selling point of a laptop like this, its huge screen. If the screen was poor, then this laptop would make no sense. Thankfully, HP does not disappoint. The 20” screen is absolutely gorgeous with brilliant colours, brightness and flawless viewing angles. There are rumours that HP are working on a full 1920x1200 resolution screen version of the HDX, but personally, I find the current WSXGA resolution more than enough. Also, in terms of HD-DVD playback, 1080P is not shown to be hugely advantageous in quality terms on screens less than 32” and bigger. The screen is the best I have ever seen on a laptop.
I’ve taken some pictures of the screen at varios viewing angles. Seen in the images is Transformers the Movie on HD-DVD. Sorry about some blur and grain in some photos. I didn’t want to ruin the photos by using flash, so I had to use ISO200 with no flash, so some blur is inevitable. Hopefully, from the photos, you can see the screen is excellent.
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Speakers laptop
The inbuilt speakers are very good for a laptop. There are four speakers built into the monitor, as well as a subwoofer underneath the laptop. The speakers are made by Altec Lansing and sound superb for onboard sound. I would say that they were better than most average 2.1 external speaker setups. They are not comparable to high-end external speakers, and nor did I expect them to be. For laptop speakers though, sound is very good.
Processor and Performance laptop
The 2.20Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor is very speedy indeed. My last laptop had a Core Duo 1.66Ghz, and the difference is very noticeable when doing CPU intensive tasks such as Photoshop work or Video compression. The weak point of this laptop are the hard disks, spinning at a lowly 4200rpm. This is unfortunate, and if I had the option of configuring faster hard disks, I most certainly would have. General performance is very good, with no noticeable slowdowns during normal or even quite extensive use.
Benchmarks and Gaming laptop
Super Pi
The table below compares the HP Pavilion HDX SuperPi score with some other notebooks:
| Notebook | Time |
| HP Pavilion HDX (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500) | 0m 54s |
| Dell Latitude D830 (2.2GHz Core 2 Duo T7500, 800MHz FSB, 667MHz RAM) | 0m 53s |
| Zepto 6024W (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 with 800MHz FSB and 667MHz RAM) | 0m 59s |
| Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200 with 667MHz FSB & memory speed) | 1m 02s |
| Dell Vostro 1500 (Intel Core 2 Duo T5470 1.60GHz) | 1m 16s |
| Samsung Q35 (1.83MHz Core 2 Duo T5600 with 667MHz FSB and 533MHz RAM) | 1m 16s |
| Samsung R20 (1.73GHz T2250 with 533MHz FSB and memory speed) | 1m 23s |
| Toshiba Satellite P205-S6287 (1.73 GHz Core 2 Duo Intel T5300) | 1m 24s |
| Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo (T2300) with 533MHz memory speed) | 1m 29s |
| Sony Vaio TZ90HS (1.2GHz Core 2 Duo ULV U7600) | 1m 50s |
| HP Compaq 6515b (1.6GHz Turion 64x2 TL-52) | 2m 05s |
| Fujitsu S6120 (Pentium M 1.6GHz) | 2m 29s |
| Dell Inspiron 2650 (Pentium 4 Mobile 1.6GHz) | 4m 05s |
3DMark06 comparison results:
| Notebook | 3DMark06 Score |
| HP Pavilion HDX (2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7700, ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600 XT 256MB) | 4,205 3DMarks |
| Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) | 1,408 3DMarks |
| Samsung Q70 (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 and nVidia 8400M G GPU) | 1,069 3DMarks |
| Asus F3sv-A1 (Core 2 Duo T7300 2.0GHz, Nvidia 8600M GS 256MB) | 2,344 3DMarks |
| Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB | 2,183 3DMarks |
| Fujitsu Siemens Amilo Xi 1526 (1.66 Core Duo, nVidia 7600Go 256 MB) | 2,144 3DMarks |
| Samsung X60plus (2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200, ATI X1700 256MB) | 1,831 3DMarks |
| Asus A6J (1.83GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB) | 1,819 3DMarks |
| HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) | 827 3DMarks |
| Sony Vaio SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400) | 794 3DMarks |
| Samsung R20 (1.73GHz T2250 and ATI 1250M chipset / GPU) | 476 3DMarks |
In terms of gaming ability, I have played Stranglehold, World in Conflict, Medal of Honour Airborne, Dirt, and Call of Duty 4 demo.
I play all the games at 1280x1024 resolution, with details all set to high. World in Conflict on the whole is very playable, with only extreme slowdown when I zoom into a nuclear explosion. Generally, framerates are silky smooth. Call of Duty 4 demo runs superbly. I played Call of Duty 4 on 1680x1050 res, with most things on high with the exception of Anti Aliasing. Again, looks and runs great, with FPS feeling like its always above 30. Dirt plays well and looks great, with the FPS I feel being somewhere around 25-30. I’ve heard this is a very taxing game, so I’m happy with that. Strangehold ran great, but I got bored of the game quickly so only played the first few levels before uninstalling it. I was surprised MoHA ran as well as it did. It ran at solid good framerates, at 1280x1024 on high settings. It doesn’t let you change specifics so I don’t know what was going on in terms of AA or filtering. This is a solid gaming machine and so far, I am happy with the performance of the ATi HD2600XT. Hopefully with updated drivers, the performance will get better.
Heat and Noise
The fans on this laptop are never really audible. You can occasionally here a whisper of the fans if you sit silently next to the laptop. However, even when playing games or long periods or watching HDDVD’s, the fans never really spin to an audible extent. There is a steady stream of warm air out the back exhausts when you are playing games. Otherwise, there is no real heat output from the HDX.
Keyboard and Touchpad laptop
The full keyboard is lovely. The buttons have a great feel to them and it’s very enjoyable typing on it. It is a full keyboard so there is a numpad as you would expect. Fittingly with the HDX’s sleek design cues, the lights to indicate CAPS/NUMS lock is discretely hidden and glows blue when turned on.
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The dimpled touchpad seems to be a debate for all that have used them. Personally, I like the design and feel of the touchpad, but I usually use an external wireless mouse at home. A very nifty feature HP has incorporate here is a button above the touchpad that turns it on and off. This is very useful if you are using an external mouse and don’t want to accidently hit the touchpad while typing (a big issue on my old laptop as the keyboard was much smaller).
The backlit touch-sensative media buttons. (view large image)
The touch sensitive quickplay buttons are just fantastic. They are just so nice to use and some very useful. The mute button and volume controls being the most useful buttons. The touch sensitive buttons are not really necessary and don’t improve functionality by much, but I do love HP for using them as it makes the HDX that bit more luxurious.
A remote is included (view large image)
Input and Output Ports laptop
The HDX has the most extensive port selection I have ever seen. With the exception of PCMCIA (uses ExpressCard instead), I think it has everything. The two ports that grabbed by attention were HDMI and eSATA. eSATA is something I have never seen on a laptop, and am looking into an external drive that uses it as I understand its a lot quicker than USB2. On the back of the laptop, you’ll also find an extensive optical audio output ports. The HDX caters for 2.1 / 5.1 and 7.1 systems, so that you can take full advantage of your external speakers. Again, I have never seen such specialised audio outputs on a laptop. The laptop has a built in infrared sensor on the front, as well as coming with an IR extender to be used with remotes or connecting to a satellite set top TV box such as Sky.
Front
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On the front, we have an IR sensor, microphone input, and two headphone output ports.
Right Side
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Two USB ports, and the HD-DVD/DVDRW drive can be found on the right side.
Back
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The four ports on the right are the optical sound outputs. Used to optimise sound output for your external speakers. On the left, is the coaxial input to attach an aerial to the integrated HD-TV tuner, IR extender, S-Video.
Left Side
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2 more USB ports, RJ45 Ethernet Jack, Expansion Port 3, External Monitor, eSATA, HDMI, Firewire, MultiCard Reader, Expresscard Slot
Wireless
Being built on the Intel Santa Rosa platform, the wireless card includes support for the draft n standard. Unfortunately, I don’t have a n standard router so I can’t test this. Naturally, Bluetooth is also built in and is activated by the same wireless touch key to turn on and off.
Battery
This is something I have not yet tested as I keep the HDX plugged in. I would imagine most people buying this would do the same, you cant expect much in the way of battery life from such a large screen device with high-end components. I have heard that battery life is just under 2 hours. This drops significantly when doing computationally intense tasks such as playing games or watching HD-DVDs.
Operating System and Software laptop
Windows Vista Home Premium comes pre-installed. While HP don’t provide any recovery disks, they have quite nicely setup a recovery partition on the laptop, which contains all the needed files for a complete system recovery back to factory default. Fortunately, HP also provide instructions on how to create recovery disks if you want to make one.
Customer Support laptop
I am currently just on the standard HP warranty, although I am considering getting a three year full coverage extension. So far, HP customer service has been way below par. The laptop for some strange reason did not have the fingerprint reader software installed. When I called technical support, I was put through to some out sourced call centre, who gave me the advice of “go to the hp.co.uk/support website”. Fortunately, I am technically proficient, so I managed to find the Verisoft Installation program hidden on the laptop. It’s curious why they forgot to install it, but the so called technical support was terrible.
On a plus note, I had some issues with the HP Quickplay software (it kept telling me to activate it, and then sent me to a dead link). This time, I used the HP technical chat, which was fantastic. The HP technician quickly sent me the link to the latest version of Quickplay which works perfectly. I’m not sure why HP did not install the latest version in the first place, but I was happy the issue was quickly resolved.
