A Product Review of HP Pavilion DV9650US 17" Laptop

The HP Pavilion is a staple of the notebook market. Recently HP has come out with a line of Pavilions marketed as "entertainment" notebooks. These notebooks are reasonably priced and have proved to be quite popular. I have gotten my hands on a 17" desktop replacement version of one of these bad boys; the HP Pavilion DV9650US. I'm going to give it a once over and let you know how well it performs.

Hardware:

Imaging: integrated webcam

Processor: 1.5 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250

Storage Space: (2) 160 GB hard drives (making for a total of 320GB of storage space)

RAM: 2 GB RAM (which can be expanded up to a 4GB maximum)

Optical Drive: A CD R/RW with integrated LightScribe dual-layer DVD +/- drive

Graphics Accelerator: the Nvidia GeForce 8600M (using up to 1023MB of available dedicated and system memory)

Dimensions and weight: 15.1" x 11.6" x 1.5" and weighs approximately 7.8lbs with the battery.

This notebook has decent performance from the 1.5 GHz Intel and plenty of hard drive space thanks to the dual drives. Since this is more of a large desktop replacement type of notebook though, I would have liked to have seen perhaps a slightly more powerful processor and sacrifice some of the 2.5 hours of battery life. The RAM is fine at 2 GB and can be upgraded to keep up with newest software. The graphics accelerator is great and allows for many games to be played. The graphics card is typically the limiting factor for most notebooks but with this notebook it turns out to be the slower processor unfortunately.

Connectivity:

Integrated Wireless

1 Ethernet port (so that this notebook can be connect to a wired network)

4 2.0 USB ports (this is a typical peripheral connection to be used to for things like input devices like keyboards and mice to digital cameras and iPods)

1 FireWire port (this is for high speed data transfer between compatible PCs and digital camcorders)

1 HDMI output (this is to be used as a video output to a high definition display)

1 VGA output (this is a typical monitor connection)

1 S-Video output (this is a connection that allows the notebook to connect to projectors or some compatible televisions)

1 ExpressCard slot (hardware can temporarily be inserted into the notebook using this slot, a bluetotoh adapter for example)

2 audio outputs / 1 mic input

5 in 1 memory card reader (to used so that the consumer can directly insert their solid state memory from mobile devices directly into the notebook)

Integrated 56K modem (to be used to dial up a network connection for this laptop)

This notebook has more connectivity than I would have expected checking out the rest of it's stats. It really has about everything but unfortunately this notebook falls a little short in the processor department. It manages to get good battery life which is really unnecessary for a notebook this size, because let's be realistic, who is going to carry this big thing around everywhere? Priced currently with an online average retail price around $1100 this notebook is on target. It isn't a great deal unfortunately, but is close.