Hewlett-Packard Company http://www.hp.com
The HP Pavilion HDX -9000 (Penryn), priced at $3,479 direct, is easily the best-looking 20-inch laptop on the market. But it's also understandable if you scoff at its laptop classification. It weighs over 15 pounds, and its substantial size (18.7 by 13.3 by 1.4 inches) makes fitting into any conventional bag virtually impossible. On the plus side, though, the HDX-9000 is the ultimate media hub, complete with TV capabilities, a high-end gaming card, and, in the version I tested, a built-in Blu-ray drive. Complementing these entertainment capabilities is a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500, which features Intel 's new CPU architecture, code-named Penryn. (See how we test the Penryn processor.) Essentially, Penryn is a more compact processor core that Intel promises will yield better performance and energy efficiency. Nonetheless, the price you pay for this system's enhanced features and performance parts is four times that of a typical laptop.
At a time when many manufacturers are putting their focus on increasingly smaller form factors, you almost have to admire HP's resilience in sticking with a 20-inch size. Other 20-inch giants, like the Dell XPS M2010 and the Acer Aspire 9805WKHi, aren't completely out of the picture, but they have been stagnating from more than a year of no upgrades. Many companies have given up on the idea of putting anything larger than a 17-inch screen on a clamshell—but not HP. The HDX-9000 (Penryn) sits proudly—on a firm desk—at 15.7 pounds and has the footprint of a common desktop. It's still lighter than both the XPS M2010 (18.1 pounds) and Aspire 9805WKHi (17.1 pounds), which is largely why HP dominates the 20-inch laptop market.
The overall design hasn't changed at all since I reviewed the first iteration of the HDX-9000, and it's hard to imagine that HP would spend any more money on something that generates so little revenue. The decorative patterns, so far, have worked well with the glossy black finish. HP even came up with the name "Dragon" to commemorate the design and its large proportions. Not only do the dimensions allow for a full-size keyboard and a numeric keypad, but HP manages to add a bay for a Media Center remote, which is about half the size of the one found on the HP TouchSmart IQ770 PC. The keyboard is the same tactile one found on all Pavilion laptops, whereas the perforated touchpad is found only on the HDX9000 and the HP Pavilion tx2000z.
Because of its size, the HDX-9000 (Penryn) is able to pack in more features than other laptops in HP's line. Starting from the back, the features include a hybrid TV tuner that receives HD and SD channels (though you'll need to attach a separate dongle for it); an S-Video-in port for connecting gaming consoles and your legacy VCR; and a line-out jack. Four more analog audio ports (front, side, rear, and the subwoofer, which is underneath) are unique to the HDX-9000. They support up to eight external audio channels—seven speakers and a subwoofer (not sold at HP)—for a true 7.1 surround-sound experience. With the system you get a combination of four built-in Altec Lansing speakers plus subwoofer, which sounds absolutely amazing. The 240GB capacity (dual 120GB, 7,200-rpm drives) is probably enough for your storage needs, although you can upgrade to 500GB (dual 250GB drives) for an extra $250.
Despite keeping its hands off the design, HP has periodically refreshed the processing parts. Six months ago, it was a Core 2 Duo Extreme processor. This time, with the HDX-9000, it's one of Intel's latest Penryn processors—the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300, which has a clock rating of 2.5 GHz. On an updated set of benchmark tests that includes World of Conflict, Crysis, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and CineBench 10, the HDX-9000 (Penryn) produced very respectable numbers across the board.
For comparison, Intel sent me a pair of Dell Latitude D630s with identical configurations but running different processors. The D630 (Penryn) with a 2.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T9500 was the overall performance winner, beating both the D630 (Merom)—which loaded a previous-generation, 2.6-GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7800 processor—and the HDX-9000 (Penryn). Because of a higher clock rating, the D630 (Penryn) surpassed the HDX-9000 by 10 percent on the SYSmark 2007 Preview Overall score. Interestingly enough, the D630 (Merom), using a previous-generation processor, achieved scores that were 3 percent better than the HDX-9000 (Penryn). Granted, the HDX-9000 (Penryn) does have a slower clock rate, but you'd think that better packaging and a faster core would make up for that.
The HDX-9000 (Penryn) produced similar results on our Adobe Photoshop CS3, CineBench 10, and video-encoding tests: It couldn't catch up with either of the two Dell Latitude D630s. The HP unit's scores aren't lackluster by any means, although they tell us that these Penryn processors alone are only nominally faster than the previous-generation processors. Keep in mind that this is a simple processor swap right now. When Intel rolls out its Montevina platform (sometime in the first half of 2008), updating the graphics chipset, memory controller, and front-side bus (FSB), performance numbers will begin to diverge significantly from the current Santa Rosa platform.
As for the rest of the parts, the 3GB of RAM is an enticing amount for Photoshop users. HP replaces the former graphics card with an nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS (the previous version had an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 2600XT ), so you'll see an improvement in gaming performance. That said, the HDX-9000 (Penryn) performed valiantly on 3DMark06 at low resolutions. On World in Conflict it produced respectable frame rates at both low and native resolutions (38 and 11, respectively). Crysis was able to run at its default settings, but the game would not allow me to change the resolution or play with the rest of the video options, preventing me from compiling any results.
As the benchmark charts indicate, the Dell D630 (Penryn) showed significant improvements in battery life, over 20 percent better than the D630 (Merom). Although the HDX-9000 (Penryn) is not an ideal candidate to gauge battery life using Intel's newest processors, a MobileMark score of 2 hours 31 minutes is very good for a 15-pound laptop.
Twenty-inch laptops haven't exactly flourished, which is why the resilience of the HP Pavilion HDX-9000 (Penryn) is that much more impressive. The price tag is about the only thing that will make your jaw drop, but the new 1080p screen option and the nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS graphics card are welcome additions. What matters most about this refresh, perhaps, is that this is the first of what will be many laptops to receive one of Intel's latest Penryn processors. While performance scores didn't blow me away, they're fast enough to make the HDX-9000 a formidable entertainment PC. It's easily the best 20-inch laptop on the market, despite that market being a relatively small one.
HP Pavilion HDX-9000
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
