Design & Features
Afforadable ultrathins are upon us. With MSI pushing hard on its X340, and others like Acer entering the market thanks to Intel's CULV chip, HP has released a product from the other side of the fence, featuring AMD's Athlon Neo MV-40.
The DV2 is definitely of HP stock, shiny all over in piano black, an interior with pleasing graphic design, a comfortable keyboard and trackpad. The silver trim makes it look even more upper class, while the 12.1-inch screen, glossy caveats aside is bright and easy to read, at a native resolution of 1280x800.
Webcam and associated microphone are there of course, however HP has skimped on digital video out and ExpressCard. Three USB ports, microphone/headphone jacks, VGA out and an MMC/SD/MS card reader are it for the ports, bringing it in line with 10-inch netbooks for features. On the left front is an exhaust vent, likely to keep any left-handed external mouse users warm.
Apart from the single core, 1.6GHz AMD Neo processor, internally it features an ATI Radeon X1270, 2GB RAM, but still appears to be competing with the netbook crowd for everything else — a disappointing 100mbit wired connection, 802.11g instead of N, the only real standout being 250GB of storage courtesy of a Western Digital drive.
Tragically Windows Vista Home Basic, the version nobody should buy is installed, possibly as a way to increase performance by not offering the Aero interface. The trade-off isn't that noticeable — the boot up time of the operating system particularly gruelling.
As far as software is concerned, HP is still partnering with eBay to clog your desktop, AOL to clog Internet Explorer and Symantec for internet security. A Microsoft Office 2007 60 day trial is also bundled, as are the usual space-wasting game trials. HP's Total Care Advisor software toolbar sits at the top of the desktop, and while it doesn't offer anything new, it does give easy access to Windows functions for entry level PC users.
AMD's strategy to take on netbooks is ultrathin, larger notebooks which are more comfortable to use. Good in theory, but does the Neo have it where it counts — performance?
Performance
Not in the graphics stakes. The Radeon X1270 is an underperformer compared to the GMA 4500 that's bundled with newer netbooks, with 3DMark06 returning a score of 342, compared to the EeePC 1004DN's 573. Battery life wasn't favourable compared to the netbooks either, clocking in at one hour, 44 minutes and 27 seconds, playing back an XviD file with all power saving features turned off, and screen brightness/volume set to maximum. That's about full-powered, 15.4-inch notebook time right there.
While just like the netbooks the DV2 refused to run PCMark05, we wanted to get an idea of how the Neo performed compared to the Atom N280, and so ran Cinebench R10 on both the DV2 and the Eee PC 1004DN. Rendering with one CPU, the Neo decimated the Atom, at 1269CB versus 578CB. Putting the Atom's Hyperthreading to use and using the multi-CPU option in Cinebench, the gap was closed at 885CB, but it still can't touch the Neo. Unlike the Atom, the Neo will play back GameTrailers.com HD Flash video smoothly, although it still fails the HD YouTube video test, stuttering frequently.
Once you're finally into Windows the response is reasonably snappy, even if the initial load is painfully slow. We suspect Windows 7 may give the Neo the boost it needs to really counter the Atom, and if paired with the Radeon HD 3140 as it is in the States, it might make an interesting alternative.
At 12-inches though, we'd expect more grunt and features than we're getting. Netbooks we let get away with low-level performance and a sparse feature-set due to their size, but the DV2 seems to have fewer excuses. Obviously compromises need to be made to make ultrathins cheap, but we'd happily pay a little more for decent, workable oomph.
4%
1%
This machine seems to play well in the shop but is a big let down when you actually want to use it.
The good: Light, keyboard buttons in the right place.
The bad: Vista runs like a dog, 8.04, 8.10 and 9.04 versions of ubuntu all have various issues ranging from no audio to not resuming from sleep. Windows XP runs like a dream, but having trouble finding ANY network drivers which might leave me back in vista basic :( Trackpad is either not sensitive enough, or too sensitive. Changing the settings seems to do little to fix this. Also the smoothness of the trackpad, buttons and surrounding enclosure means that you're often trying to click using the trackpad or something else if you're not actually looking at it - it all feels the same and you can't feel the barrier between the 3 segments.