The first thing you notice about the HP’s dv7 Entertainment Laptop is it’s massive screen, the 17.3” LCD screen is not only big it’s bright and clear. The LCD screen is one if the best notebook screens I have ever used, it’s crystal clear with a screen resolution of 1600×900 it is absolutely made for HD content, it’s a shame this model doesn’t come with a Bluray drive but there are other ways of getting HD content on the device. This not really meant to be a carried around with you all day, it’s a mobile entertainment device and makes a fantastic Media Center or games system.
Lets start by looking at the specifications.
The model I reviews was the dv7-4131sa which is powered by a AMD Phenom II N830 triple-core processor which gives a Windows Experience Score of 6.2 and has 4GB for RAM and and a 500GB SATA drive.
The laptop comes with a ATI Mobility Radeon 5470 graphics, with 512MB dedicated RAM which has ATI’s PowerXpress. It switches the graphics processor depending on whether the power is connected, so with the power on you get the extra graphics capabilies and without the power it has the power saving GPU so you get the best of both worlds.
As I said the best thing about the dv7 is the screen so I wanted see some HD content playing on it so I tried a Freeview HD recording streaming from my main Media Center system (recorded with Blackgolds’ BGT-3620 DVB-T2 card) and even with the power saving mode the HD playback was perfect, I am not sure the pictures I took do it justice but the HD recordings look fantastic.
The graphics gets a 6.2 from the Windows Index for gaming graphics, I tried the latest version of 3d Mark and it was getting low frame rates but got an overall score of P1306
You may have a great screen but if you want to watch movies on it you will need a good speakers, many laptops are let down by the sound but HP have Beats Audio which is a combination of audio enhancement software and integrated subwoofer, it gives you a richer sound and you can adjust the sound output with a graphics equaliser . I actually found the sound a bit tinny considering it has the sub-woofer but it’s certainly better than many laptops I have used.
Other hardware features are a VGA webcam and microphone array that for Skype I found was pretty good, there is a 5-1 card reader, Bluetooth and Lightscribe DVD drive. Plus there is the usual array of connections: VGA, HDMI, 4 USB ports, eSATA and Ethernet.
Now on to the actually design, I have to say this it’s a bit Mac like and it feels very high quality, the brushed aluminum case looks really nice and feels very solid. The keyboard is fine and the trackpad is pretty good but having got used to the really nice trackpad on my Macbook Air the dv7’s trackpad is not quiet as good.
The dv7 comes with a 6-cell Lithium-Ion battery which I found gave about 4 hours with light use which is not to bad, I think it would spend most of its life plugged in anyway.
The laptop has Windows 7 Home Premium installed and comes with a trial version of Microsoft Office installed, some HP games and HP’s Magic desktop (which is a kid friendly UI and looks like Microsoft Bob, I can’t see anyone wanting to use it). Also installed is Norton Internet Security, which I would replace with Microsoft’s Security Essentials.
There are some nice touches like the glowing HP logo on the lid which make the dv7 feel very Apple like and you can see where HP have taken some of the design cues from, but it comes without the price premium, this version of the dv7 is priced around £600. As an entertainment PC this is a great device, the screen is fantastic and the build quality is very good.
As I said this is just my first impression, I am going to continue playing with it to get a better feel for its performance, look out for a video soon.
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