HP dv2 Laptop with BD - review

[Grubert]

HP has recently launched a new ultraportable whose demographic undoubtedly includes Blu-ray enthusiasts: the dv2. Thanks to its increased capabilities, its high-quality screen and especially its bundled Blu-ray drive, it appeals to BD enthusiasts who are looking for a portable computer. HP and Buzz Corps have kindly loaned us a unit to perform extended tests on it. This is the first instalment of that review-in-progress.

In the world of personal computing, 2008 was unquestionably the year of the netbook - those small, cheap portable computers, with equally small screens (some looked taken right out of a portable DVD player or digital photo frame), and built around Intel Atom processors. They are good for web browsing and little more, but that was enough for the general populace, who bought them by the millions.

However, the shortcomings of netbooks are apparent. They are underpowered for anything too intensive. For instance, most of them run Windows XP because they wouldn't cope with Vista. And Blu-ray playback is out of the question, of course.

That's where the HP dv2 comes in. It comes within a small form factor and light weight, yet offer enough performance to aspire to serve as a "real laptop". To that end, the dv2 uses AMD's Athlon Neo and an ATI Mobility graphics chip. There is also a lot more RAM than on your usual netbook: our test model has 4GB.

The screen also is worth mentioning: it is LED-illuminated, with a resolution of 1280x800. There is also an HDMI port to output video to a external display.

The dv2 doesn't have a built-in optical drive, but it ships with an external Blu-ray player / DVD writer. In principle, I don't like the idea, but I understand that with a portable it makes sense to put aside the disc drive for when you really need it.

We intend to do an extended review of this model, with a special emphasis on its multimedia capabilities, which are what -we think- blu-ray.com readers will be most interested in.

Our test unit was the dv2-1199, in the "Moonlight White" finishing (you can also choose the 'Espresso Black' look if you don't like your PCs to look Apple-like). It looks real classy. The casing is in magnesium alloy and feels very solid and well-built.

Startup time was rather slow, not because of the bootup itself, but because of a suite provided by HP called the "Total Care Advisor", which is supposed to serve "as a trusted guide for support, system health, and services so customers can spend less time dealing with IT issues and focus on what matters most – their businesses". That might be true, but the extra two minutes it took to run was definitely frustrating.

Video playback is done by the HP MediaSmart software that comes preinstalled. It offers access to all the main functions of BD playback.

The dv2 had no problem with PAL/50 Hz material, be it on Blu-ray or DVD, provided it is not region-locked. I put in the Metrodome edition of 'King Lear', which features an interview with Ian McKellen in 576p, and it played both the picture and audio perfectly.

I was also impressed with the quality of the screen, with one reservation. First the good stuff: resolution, color and shadow detail were excellent. Skin tones are very natural and it is totally possible to enjoy hidef movies on this screen, provided you sit at the right distance (about 25-30 inches). The main problem was the angle of vision, both horizontally and vertically. This one was pretty tricky to get right: too high and the bottom of the frame gets washed out, too low and the picture turns to negative (the typical artifact of twisted nematic screens).

Sound quality via the onboard speakers is fair for what they are. Of course, there is little to no bass, but dialog is always comprehensible and music is not too unpleasant to hear. Of course, headphones improve the results a lot. So far I haven't been able to output multichannel audio through the HDMI output, only stereo. I'll try to sort that out and keep you posted.

I also tried the external display function. Picture quality on my LCD TV was very good (outputting 720p) but I couldn't get my Sony VW50 1080p projector to sync up. I'll follow that up and post the results in a future part of this review

Battery life with Blu-ray playback was lower than I'd like. I put in a BD movie and by the time the counter showed 30 minutes, the charge indicator was at 68%. At one hour, it had dropped to 39%. By 90 minutes, the charge was down to a mere 9%. Shortly afterwards, the BD player software shut down because the battery charge was too low. Effectively, this means that you can't play a BD movie without the laptop being plugged into a wall socket or carrying a second battery. Power consumption increases about 5%-10% if you are watching PiP content, because of the simultaneous decoding of two AV streams. On the other hand, power consumption with DVD is about 25% lower than with BD and you can make it through a two-hour movie without the laptop dying on you before the end.

I still have to test the "pure" laptop functions of the dv2, especially its Wi-Fi performance.

All in all, I think this is a very interesting product for those who are looking for a very light portable computer but aren't satisfied with the current performance of netbook computers.

(To be continued...)

Our deepest thanks to HP and Buzz Corps for their cooperation, and especially to Halley Bass for taking care of the logistics and communication.