HP Dv5z 1001x

HP Dv5z 1001x Review

Welcoming the latest review, and the newest Platform from AMD Hewlett Packard (HP) kindly had a review unit sent to us the Dv5z 1000 series. Sporting a healthy 2.2ghz ZM dual core processor, an ATI Radeon 3420 graphics card, Blu Ray Drive, and an amazing 1680x1050 LCD its a looker as far asnumbers go,and its not so bad on the eyes either. Our model with all the option available (minus the tremendous 320gb hard drive space) tickled the $1500 price range making this middle class for pocket change, but on the other hand, a base specification Dv5z can run as low as $900 (without incentives).

Overview

Welcoming the latest review, and the newest Platform from AMD Hewlett Packard (HP) kindly had a review unit sent to us the Dv5z 1000 series. Sporting a healthy 2.2ghz ZM dual core processor, an ATI Radeon 3420 graphics card, Blu Ray Drive, and an amazing 1680x1050 LCD its a looker as far asnumbers go,and its not so bad on the eyes either. Our model with all the option available (minus the tremendous 320gb hard drive space) tickled the $1500 price range making this middle class for pocket change, but on the other hand, a base specification Dv5z can run as low as $900 (without incentives).

Design

As HP continues its drive towards making the PC personal again it leaves little to be personalized as far as color schemes go for the Dv5z series.

Nay the aftermarket paint idea, the color tone is neutral, sporting a carbon fiber looking black lid, impressive silver chassis, and a latchless LCD screen. Two points for latch less designs! Way to go HP! Something to bear in mind with the unit on it makes the HP logo on the outer side glow and glow all the time. I found it annoying, some might find it cool, but when youre trying to sleep or keep down the ambient light for a dark presentation, or even watching a movie a huge glowing LOGO just doesnt fare well. It does fare well if youre a brand lover but, in most cases, having the option to turn this off would be most welcomed, if not albeit better battery life as well.
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The Dv5z is modest for height, and shown here with the LCD fully extended, it isimpressively thinner than some of its competition. However, the LCD is a bit on the thicker end.
Ill state it right now, whoever thought to put the fan pointing mostly downward wasnt thinking. Ill get more on that later, but keep it in mind for now.

Size & Weight
The size isnt over bearing. Our unit with the 6 cell standard battery ticked in at roughly 5 and 3/4 pounds and whilst the dimensions remain the same mostly within this category, with a non-staggering dimension layout of 14.05" x 10.2". Size is normal, weight is normal thankfully.

Keyboard

The keyboard is a silver matt, and whilst offered decent tactile, was a bit lost when it came to night typing. The high reverse contrast on the LCD with the black type made it difficult to distinguish some Fn keystrokes but with little effort, they were learned.

The second striking feature after opening the lid (after noticing the shiny chassis) would be the shiny touchpad. Even though not revolutionary, it offered decent tracking, side scrolling, click response and overall had a good feel to it.

Did it attract fingerprints and smudges like a kid to a candy store? You bet but its time to get over the fact that how things look impresses a consumer more than how it works (for the most part). Its a good thing the track pad works well, and if you dont want to use it, theres the ever so handy on/off switch right above it. Take it as you will.

Display quality
A 15.4 notebook, carrying a Blu-Ray drive, a dedicated GPU, and a LCD resolution of 1680x1050? Thats darn near close enough for most hardcore HD fans to take a great notice. Yes the display was a treat a real treat actually. Despite some slight washout on incredibly bright scenes, the color reproduction was fairly awesome, the response was there, and the resolution was definitely there. It added that tiny notch in a good direction for its multimedia capabilities, in which, is a good thing since this unit also shipped with a Tv tuner built in making HDTV broadcasts a treat. One thing however is the drivers and performance of the GPU, but thats for the next page.

Connectivity

Ok, so you take the best of the digital worlds (HD and Blu-Ray), combine them with a great digitial output? Incredible! Needless to say, finding a similar output on a 15.4 model without spending hundreds (if not close to a thousand) more dollars will be hard pressed. Yes the recently reviewed Lenovo SL400 carried this, but it did not come with a 1680x1050 display, a Blu-Ray drive, nor an E-sata port.Im getting ahead of myself. Read for the breakdown:

The front of the Dv5z is simple, albeit effective. It only houses the remotes IR sensor and the audio ports, which, are one microphone input, and two headphone outputs.

The Left side features a standard VGA output, dedicated docking port, networking, HDMI, an eSATA port, USB, Mini-Firewire, ExpressCard /54 and a multi card reader! And its one that handles XD as well? Ton up!

Ok, so, not so exciting on the rearexcept if you like the hot exhaust port on the right, pointing down

The right side is also feature friendly and sports the wonderful Blu-Ray drive, 2 more USB ports, the TVTuner input, modem port, lock slot and power jack. One thing I found however, is that in pressing the Blu-Ray eject button leaves something to be desired.

The depth of which the drive is seated, the button, or some lack of connection made it not want to open on the first hit. Or second, sometimes. It was finicky, and I didn't find it impressive.

Upgrading
Memory can be configured a few ways, which can handle up to 4GB of internal memory, which is what our system shipped out with. This is the max this unit can accept, and gratefully utilized it with the Operating system being Windows Vista Ultimate the 64bit edition.

Hard drive capacity is another relative upgrade, with HPs website listing upwards of 320gb. Our model came with 160gb at 5400 rpm decent storage.

If you opt for this new Puma platform, you might get away with squeezing your pennies and purchasing the lower clocked ZM-80 chip, and upgrading later but when its there, and it doesnt break the bank, might I suggest getting the ZM-82 clocked in at 2.2ghz. Is it that much more? No, but if you want this budget consciousness to last more than 2 years, I suggest it.

With the Blu-Ray drive even though the ATI 3200 IGP is well enough for handling decoding, HP doesnt give you the option of that, and makes you upgrade to the 3420. Not a huge step, but a step in the right direction with its 256mb of dedicated graphics memory.

Features
Some excellent features on the Dv5z worth mentioning are its TvTuner capabilities. With Windows Ultimate, you have a slew of analog / digital input options that can be catered to your configuration. And while this isnt a huge display of any nature, at 15.4 it can run a nice second monitor input while at the desk. Watching Michael Phelps win in a fraction of a second in HD whilst typing on my own laptop next to it was a treat.

The speakers on the Dv5z are decent more decent when watching movies or listening to music. All the HD signals must broadcast a much lower dB rating because even at full power, they couldnt muster much over the fan being spun pretty high

And about volume, the touch sensitive dial controls at the top were finicky, after a restart they constantly made a clicking sound, and the volume bar (LED light bar) between Up and Downdont change. Youll only hear the click either louder or softer. I wish they would take the MAC idea and add an on screen display option, or rather implement it to the light bar.

Directly to the left of this is the quick launch button actually, it isnt that quick and doesnt do anything that windows media center cant do just as well. It doesnt hurt to have it there, but I didnt find it any more useful, especially with a launch button on one of two remotes it came with either. To the right are the standard media controls, forward, back, play/pause, stop.

This model DID come with a TvTuner and Remote something that, last I checked, isnt really selectable within the HP menu. Not sure why, not sure how but it came. One remote sits neatly within the expresscard slot (if not used) whilst the other is a standard media center remote channel number input capable and can also control standard mouse / cursor movements.

Blu-Ray the next gen video format makes its way onto this laptop. It is a treat, and even though not up to greatest snuff, by JUST missing TRUE HD (1080p), it gathered a respectable display. Which, can be outputted very effectively with the HDMI port! Thats right this is a 1.3 port which can output both audio and video, and whilst I didnt test the audio, I did test the video on my Blu-Ray sample disc. Outputting to my aged (but still very nice) 1080i 52 Mitsubishi was very nice. Its not 1080P, but Im only certain that it looks that much nicer.

One thing interesting to note is that this Puma configuration still retains the ATI 3200 built inside, and that a hybrid mode could possibly exist for this model making simple switched between the dedicated GPU and IGP for better battery life saving that extra horsepower for more graphically intensive tasks. Its still capable, but not released. No word yet on the street, but well keep you posted.

Performance & Conclusion

Performance

You can read about our testing methodoligy HERE
Windows Vista Experience Score

The Windows Vista Experience score is a 3.8. In comparison, the Lenovo SL400 we just reviewed was tagged in at 4.4. Interesting enough, the ATI 3420, even with its 256 of dedicated video memory isnt quite there compared to the 9300 with the same amount.

PCMark Vantage Pro

PCMark Vantage gathered a respectable 3013 it falls in line with some conclusions with this configuration, however, we were a little disappointed, especially with a similar clocked 2.26 Core2Duo readily beating its bottom with a gigabyte of RAM less.

3DMark 06, or 3Dmark Vantage

3Dmark Vantage refused to operate in anything other than Entry Level, in which, for numbers sakes generated a lowly 1552.

3dMark06 gathered a slightly healthier score of 1680. Notice the fall behind with the 9300 slapped in that SL400

Ok, another disappointment. Take my CPU upgrade to heart this platform, albeit a better option than the aging old X2 platform, simply cannot handle the stress and perform like the Intel competition. This is our first test using this new platform, and were getting luke warm results, especially at the price point this laptop falls under with all the bells and whistles added. A T8100 spanked it by nearly 20 points, the P8400 demolished it by over 30if performance numbers speak your mind, take a good look. Im not saying that the Dv5z Puma version is a slouch, not saying it wont perform on standard items or most tasks users throw at it. Its just well, its discerning to see the latest and greatest mobile platform fall so far behind something else. I just wished for over 70, but it didnt happen.

Gaming Performance

Being this is a dedicated GPU I loaded up UT3 and set it to 1024x768 and ran the benchmarking application. Lo it held alright, not too far behind the 9300 but it was obvious that anything more intensive would harbor the display a little less than lively. And it also made itself apparent on trying to run 3dMark Vantage at anything other than Entry (stated above). Will it play some games? Yes! Will it play them exceptionally well with a lot of enhancements? No. Will it knock your socks off for power? No but it IS a dedicated card, and those numbers paired with hybrid technology can make this a forerunner perhaps. Ill leave it at perhaps.

Battery Performance

Battery performance was lack luster as well for all the huff and puff for more speed and less power usage on this new Puma platform, I only gained a marginal 2 hours and 25 minutes using the unit for casual use. This was on the balanced power scheme. DVD watching was also pretty dismal 1 hour and 26 minutes just long enough for your favorite comic book movie, but anything more involved or dramatic and you better find a power plug. Oh, and it made no difference which power plan I used I turned off my wireless, set my brightness and volume to 75% and only gained 4 minutes. Not impressed.

Real-life usage:
Ok, remember, way at the top, where I mentioned whoever thought pointing the exhaust ports downward wasnt thinking straight? Well, he must have bumped his head pretty hard because this laptop runs pretty warm. Hot actually hot enough that the exhaust that was pointed down made my left leg pretty uncomfortable. Im not sure if its the thermal dynamics of the configuration, or poor design but it got hot, and got hot rather quickly.

Noise was also an issue idling (after its had its chance to cool down) wasnt as interruptive but setting the unit on High Performance and running benchmarks was sort of scary. The fan likes to scream and scream like my aging old 1029 likes to scream. It also didnt help that this happened almost indefinitely watching a Blu-Ray movie, or HD Tv obviously taxing the components to the degree it needed to feel to run like hell and cool off later.

Conclusion

Well its a good looker, if you like neutral and shiny. It does carry a lot of useful multimedia features. It has the oomph for average users and will scale well for feature sets with its eSATA, HDMI, expresscard and Blu-Ray drive options. However, this top of the line (current) cpu didnt leave me impressed, and neither did the battery life, NOR the graphics option. At this price point, its hard for me to argue for it except for the reasons just stated however, if you dont absolutely need a dedicated docking port, blu-ray drive, TvTuner, eSATA and two headphone outputsyou could look elsewhere and get a little more performance. The features rock, the performance doesnt. Other than that if youre not concerned about absolutely bleeding edge, dont mind a mini-heater most times, and need a feature rich laptop this model is a catch. If you ARE the reverse just stated, follow me and say Step up AMD, were waiting!

• Pros:
  • Nice design
  • Very Feature Rich
  • Dedicated Graphics
  • Decent display resolution for its size
  • Connectivity is adequate awesome
• Cons:
• Performance is very subjective
• Runs very warm
• Upgrade options are awkward
• Battery life could be improved upon
  

  Bottom Line:
  I liked it, didnt love it if youre looking for features and want to keep the price down get rid of Vista Ultimate and knock off 2gb of RAM. Keep the 3420, don t get the infinity display and if you don t have a mass amount of Blu-Ray movies, skip it for now. That will keep things under control for price, and will match more the pocket change for the performance this unit is capable of.