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HP Pavilion dv7-1000ea 17in Entertainment Notebook Review

Author	Ardjuna Seghers
Published	23rd Oct 2008
Manufacturer	HP
Price	£679.80 (Exc VAT)
as reviewed	£781.77 (Inc VAT)
Latest Price	Click here

Design
Features
Performance
Value
Overall

HP Pavilion dv7-1000ea 17in Entertainment Notebook

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HP has kept the front of its notebook fairly clean, housing only the infrared sensor and audio connections. One of those little touches you might expect from a market leader is that there are twin headphone ports as standard, ideal for watching a film with your better half without disturbing anyone. They also double as S/PDIF (digital audio out), combining with the HDMI output and the Blu-ray drive to make this the possible centre of your home entertainment system.

Internally there's an Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 is running at what might seem a lowly 2.0GHz, but this being a Centrino 2 model, it utilizes a 1,066MHz front side bus and fits in an efficient 25W thermal envelope compared to the usual 35W. This is backed by a generous 320GB 5,400RPM hard drive and a very capable 4GB of 800MHz DDR2 RAM. This amount of memory will be somewhat underused by the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Premium, but better too much than too little and you won't have to upgrade if you ever switch to a 64-bit OS.

Wi-Fi is well taken care of by an Intel Draft-N Wi-Fi module, but the Pavilion's cable-free credentials do take a bit of dent due to the baffling absence of Bluetooth. This might be acceptable on low-end budget notebooks, but it's something you'd expect to find in a notebook of this price.

Meanwhile a GeForce 9600M GT discrete graphics chip with 512MB of memory makes for a very capable entertainment machine, while not being too much of a gaming slouch either. At high detail, with 2x anti-aliasing and 4x filtering, TrackMania Nations Forever returned a score of 30.2FPS. While this is slightly lower than HP's Pavilion dv5-1011ea despite featuring exactly the same components, the test was run at a higher resolution because dv7's 17in panel is 1,440 x 900 compared the former's 1,280 x 800. This might have an effect on the settings you can run in some games, but nonetheless the dv7 is capable of playing games at reasonable settings.

Unfortunately, the resolution might have changed but nothing else has, meaning the screen is still the weakest factor of HP's Pavilion range. This is due to HP's new glossy plastic screen cover that stretches across the front of the screen, creating a seamlessly flat bezel. Though this does create a striking visual effect, it also reduces the brightness of the screen compared to other notebooks and given the choice a brighter and more legible display would be preferable. We could also complain about HP not taking the opportunity to upgrade the resolution to a Full HD compatible 1,920 x 1,200, but the advantages are icons that are easier to see and better performance in games - something that many people may appreciate - as well as the cheaper price.

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basicasic said on 24th October 2008

I've never really understood the point of these gargantuan laptops. They are too big to carry around in any practical sense and as such will spend most of their time on the de... more

stelios said on 24th October 2008

Is the screen as bad as in the dv6000/9000 series?

Chris Reed said on 12th November 2008

I have just bought one of these laptops in the netherlands (albeit a cheaper model) and I can tell you HP must have been listening to the complaints about the screen as my DV-7 111... more

os400.1 said on 20th March 2009

hows DV7's LCD screen qualiy and brightness compared to MSI EX620 ? is DV7 that bad ?

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