HP Pavilion DV9088EA Review

Overall Rating

Everything

Nothing that I could find

I have been looking for reviews of this machine for weeks, and aside from those on Dabs, there is no clear information. I was hoping PCPro or someone would have reviewed it, but alas, it must have passed them by. I took the plunge, and I am not disappointed.

I would concur with the comments of the previous reviewer on all aspects, but I have not tested the battery, and I use a wireless mouse, so I haven't had the same negative issues. I will try to only add stuff here that wasn't mentioned.

The exterior of the HP Pavilion DV9088EA laptop is very smart. HP have made an effort with this, but they have not gone overboard. It is a subtly classic design. There are ports and sockets for just about everything you could possibly want; certainly everything I wanted and then some. It is not as chunky or heavy as I thought it might be, given all the technology inside.

Opening the machine, the design of the screen and keyboard/mousepad are also smart. The screen is highly reflective, but that is not an issue for me, as I will only use it indoors anyway.

The XP, media centre and network setup wizards are easy, and you can be up and running and connected in minutes.

I bought the computer as a desktop replacement, and I will use the machine principally for games, recording TV and watching movies in bed. The first game I loaded was Quake 4, as this is used often for 3D benchmarks, and it ran perfectly on max settings. In the interests of keeping it real, I loaded Quake 3, and on max settings, as I had expected, solid 125fps. World of Warcraft runs perfectly, again at max settings, and it looks spectacular, and loading screens and character models when zoning in or logging on are immediate.

The speakers are excellent for a laptop! There is little in terms of bass, but the quality is still amazing. I watched Kill Bill last night, and I completely forgot that I was watching it on a laptop.

I looked at a lot of laptops; mainstream companies and gaming specialist. I spent a lot of time specking machines on Dell, Evesham, Rock and even Alienware, and for the same ball park specification, I would have had to pay at least £600 more than this HP. An Acer came close, but the sleek design and the speakers of the HP were the clinchers. The things I was looking for, and have not been disappointed about, are 2Gb of RAM, a duo core CPU - approx 2ghz, DVD re-writer, TV, large hard drive (240Gb) 17" bright screen and a 512Mb dedicated graphics card. It is a middle of the range graphics card, but I really cannot fault it.

The machine is also Windows Vista ready, which will interest some people.

I would strongly recommend this laptop.