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 HP Pavilion dv4000New graphics and a peppier processor make this affordable multimedia machine the one to beat. Price:
$1,791
HP has updated its 6.5-pound Pavilion dv4000, and the new version offers a great balance of entertainment and productivity performance. You still get a crisp widescreen and instant-on DVD and music playback, but there's a handful of upgrades, including a LightScribe-enabled DVD burner, a faster processor, and a graphics processor from ATI that makes this a bona fide gaming notebook in a mainstream notebook's clothing.
The dv4000 maintains the elegant design of the previous version. It has a wide keyboard layout that's pleasing to type on. The wide silver touchpad is nice, but the mouse buttons remain a little erratic. If you push them too far down in front, it's hard to get a proper click. HP has kept the QuickPlay buttons above the keyboard, which allow you to play movies or listen to CDs or MP3s without having to boot into Windows. There's a 6-in-1 memory card reader for quickly loading pictures from your digital camera, a FireWire port, four USB ports, and VGA and S-Video outputs. At the forefront of the entertainment experience is a 15.4-inch glossy BrightView widescreen paired with a set of Altec Lansing speakers. DVDs not only looked great at all angles, but the sound is phenomenal for a notebook. The display tends to pick up reflections, but you can minimize the impact by dimming the lights. The old dv4000 relied on integrated graphics, but this version boasts ATI's Mobility Radeon X700 card and up to 128MB of dedicated video memory. The jungles of Far Cry looked clear and lush, and the gun cracks and explosions were loud enough to startle nearby co-workers. 3DMark03 gave this system a solid score of 5,774, which is close to what many entry level gaming systems achieve. Under the hood, HP ramped this system from a 1.8- to a 2.13-GHz Pentium M and added a faster 5,400-rpm hard drive. Performance was flawless. Burning discs, working in a couple of documents, and surfing the Web is no problem with this multitasker. The result was an almost 45-point jump in MobileMark, from 182 to 226. Like before, HP's DVD burner is a speedy 8X, but now it uses LightScribe technology, which enables users to create professional looking labels on the flip side of specially designed discs by way of the included Sonic Express Labeler. A small job using a smaller font was simple and took only about five minutes, but when we tried using a larger font, the 30-minute job failed both times on our preproduction version of the dv4000. HP claims that this issue will be fixed on the production version. This configuration includes the 12-cell extended battery, which provided a whopping 5 hours and 26 minutes of runtime with wireless off, and only slightly less time (5 hours) with it on. This option adds $99 to the price and 1.3 pounds to the weight, which is already only marginally travel friendly. We weren't too impressed with the dv4000's wireless performance, which rated worse than the old version. The Intel 802.11b/g signal was weak at both 5 and 50 feet from our access point (9.8 and 6 Mbps), but it's enough to get the job done. Bluetooth is still included for connecting to phones, PDAs, and other peripherals. HP includes InterVideo WinDVD, Sonic RecordNow, and Muvee AutoProducer DVD 3.5 for editing video, as well as Norton Antivirus 2005. A standard one-year limited warranty rounds out an otherwise excellent system. The HP Pavilion dv4000 is officially now one of our favorite multimedia notebooks. Enhancements have been made in all of the right places and the features that made the previous version desirable have wisely been left intact. Whether you're into video editing, gaming, or simply need a machine to handle heavy workloads, the dv4000 is well worth the price. Compare Prices | HP Pavilion dv4000 Specifications
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