The LCD in my unit was manufactured by Quanta, and is very bright. The color saturation is excellent and when Cleartype is activated in Windows looks great. This LCD is a major improvement over the DV2000t which has a Chi Mei LCD, which was overly saturated and not very bright, the viewing angle is also improved over the previous generation.
This LCD is probably the best screen I have ever had on a laptop, the only thing I would like to see changed is the option to order a higher resolution screen, currently the only available option is a WXGA which is only at 1280 x 800, but overall it makes this unit a good basis for an Entertainment PC.
I have used HP support many times over the years and like other companies they have transferred support services to India to save money (while this should not be an issue, I am not one to get political) support has definitely suffered under this scenario, I once had a problem with my Omnibook, and the first responder at HP Support could not help me, so they put me on hold and transferred me to a real technician who knew so much about the device that he talked me through the solution without ever touching a computer (he probably did it with his eyes closed and his hands tied behind his back), you could actually tell that he was passionate about the products he supported, which was the prevailing culture at HP.
I have used HP Support a lot over the last two weeks with this Bluetooth issue and the magical disappearing act of my HP C6180 printer driver on all my computers (including the DV2500t and the DV2000t) running Windows Vista (this is not occurring with the machines using Windows XP.)
- HP 593550-001 Battery
- HP 593553-001 Battery
- HP MU06 Battery
- HP MU09 Battery
- HP Pavilion tx2500 Battery
- Compaq Presario CQ71 Battery
- HP Pavilion dv6 Battery
- HP 462889-122 Battery
- HP 462889-141 Battery
- HP 484170-002 Battery
- HP 462890-722 Battery
The 12.1″ WXGA glossy widescreen display features LED backlighting and is bright and vibrant with excellent colors for viewing images or movies. Contrast seems a little better than what we’ve seen on the larger 14-inch screens on the HP Pavilion dv4, but blacks aren’t quite as deep as we would like to see. The 1280 x 800 resolution is significantly more than what you get on the average netbook screen and is the perfect match for a 12-inch screen.
Viewing angles are average with limited vertical viewing angles that give you a sweet spot of +/- 15 degrees. Horizontal viewing angles are much better with colors staying true even out to very wide angles. Brightness levels are more than adequate for viewing in a bright office setting. Sunlight readability is limited, but as long as the sun isn’t shining directly at the glossy screen the dv2z is perfectly usable outside on a table at a coffee shop.
The dv2z was able to play Bioshock at 1280 x 800 resolution at 12-30 frames per second with detail settings at medium and at 24-40fps with detail settings at low. Likewise, the dv2 can handle Unreal Tournament III at 1280 x 800 and keep frame rates in the low to mid 30s. A newer title like Left 4 Dead only managaes an average of around 26fps, but that’s still pretty impressive. Notebooks equipped with Intel integrated graphics just can’t handle games like that.
The dv2 is at least several hundred dollars less expensive than other thin and light 12-inch notebooks that offer similar or superior processor performance and lower quality graphics, so it’s hard to find serious fault with the dv2z in the performance department.
Another important feature to consider with the dv2 is the external Lightscribe SuperMulti drive. Power and data are handled over a single USB connection so you only have to sacrifice a single USB port on the dv2 when the drive is connected. In the coming months HP will also make an identical Blu-ray drive available to consumers as well. The Blu-ray drive (which was included with our review unit) allows you to take full advantage of the the dv2′s ability to handle 1080p content over the HDMI port.
Keep in mind that the pre-configured dv2-1030us version of the dv2 only ships with a standard LightScribe SuperMulti DVD drive. The Blu-ray drive will not be available until May or June when the dv2 shows up on the custom order page on the HP website. The cost of the Blu-ray drive is not known at the time of this writing.
In terms of noise, our review unit of the dv2 remained quiet during the testing period … even during the synthetic benchmark tests. When the system was stressed during our review the internal cooling fan kicked into high gear, but the fan noise was barely noticeable.
Battery
Under normal use, backlight at 50 percent and using wireless for web browsing and Vista set to “Power Saver” mode, the 6-cell battery managed to deliver four hours and 12 minutes of battery life. This is pretty good for a $750 ultra-portable notebook, but the ASUS Eee PC 1000HE netbook was able to deliver almost nine and a half hours of battery life with similar settings. If you switch to the “High Performance” mode in Windows Vista and boost the screen brightness to maximum then the battery life of the HP Pavilion dv2 drops to a modest two hours and 24 minutes.
Conclusion
I started this review with an important question, “at a price of $750, will consumers buy this instead of a $300 netbook?” The answer is, yes … or at least I hope so.
The HP Pavilion dv2 satisfies an important need that low-cost netbooks never could. When netbooks originally hit the market at the end of 2007 every notebook industry analyst was certain that netbook sales would cannibalize the notebook market. Why would consumers buy a regular laptop if they can buy a $300 netbook? What ended up happening is that 95% of consumers who purchased a netbook purchased a netbook in addition to a notebook. Netbooks are great for travel but just don’t have the performance and features needed to replace a regular laptop for most consumers.
The screen on my particular model is not a BrightView, but rather is a 17” widescreen WSXGA (1680 x 1050) matte finish LCD. I work in an office with an overhead light, so a glossy screen would not have worked well because of the glare.
- HP 484171-001 Battery
- HP 485041-001 Battery
- HP 485041-003 Battery
- HP 497694-001 Battery
- HP 498482-001 Battery
- HP 511872-001 Battery
- HP 511883-001 Battery
- HP EV06 Battery
- HP HSTNN-DB72 Battery
- HP HSTNN-DB73 Battery
- HP HSTNN-IB72 Battery
The screen shows rich colors at all available brightness levels. There are zero dead pixels and I haven’t noticed the slightest bit of light leakage. To check and confirm that, I ran a little app that floods the screen with varying solid colors. It’s one of many dead pixel testers you can find with a simple Google search.
The touchpad also works well as intended. I love using the biometric fingerprint scanner to login to my system, and setting it up to recognize my fingerprints was a breeze with the included instructions. The touchpad also includes a scroll field on the right side for quick vertical scrolling, but it does have its problems. It will only vertical scroll so long as there is a selected frame. You may be thinking “so what?” What that means, though, is that you not only have to start up IE or Firefox, but you also have to click somewhere on the page (avoiding hyperlinks) to select the frame in order to scroll. If you switch between tabs or use a searchbar, you have to select the page frame again in order to scroll with the touchpad. I really don’t view this as too much of a problem even though it is a hassle, because I rarely use the touchpad. When I do use the touchpad, I have hardly ever used a scroll field anyway, so it still doesn’t bother me too much.
There are seven other HP Quick Launch keys included above the keyboard. These keys are for the HP Info Center, the Wireless Assistant, Presentation setting, Mute, Volume Down, Volume Up and Calculator. The ones I use the most are the Volume and Mute keys, the Wireless Assistant (one touch turns off wireless networking for power savings), and the calculator. The calculator key is conveniently located right above the numeric keypad.
Input and Output Ports
Included are four powered USB 2.0 ports, one FireWire port, a 7-in-1 media card reader, a Smart Card reader, one PCMCIA slot, and both VGA and S-Video out ports. When docked, the laptop also supports four more USB 2.0 ports (one powered); Digital Video, VGA, S-Video and Composite video out; audio in and out; PS-2 mouse and keyboard ports; a serial port and parallel port; and, of course, RJ-45, RJ-11 and AC power ports.