The dv7t, a heavy-duty desktop replacement, wows with its performance but falls a little short in multimedia--where you'd expect it to excel.
The Pavilion dv7t is one of HP's "entertainment powerhouse" notebooks, just one step down from the ludicrously oversize 20-inch HDX Beyond the 17-inch screen, and under the cool "liquid metal" exterior, lies Intel's new Centrino 2 processor The result: high-octane performance in an extremely shiny package.
The dv7t, with its 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo T9400 processor and 3GB of RAM, turned in a blazing score of 98 in our WorldBench 6 tests. Interestingly, MicroExpress's identically stacked all-purpose machine, the JFL9226, earned a mark of 103.
The dv7t's nVidia GeForce 9600M GT graphics card makes this laptop a better gaming rig than many other portables. It produced an impressive 152 frames per second in our Doom 3 and Far Cry tests (and a respectable 95.26 fps with antialiasing turned on).
Battery life was 3 hours, 1 minute, not bad for an 8.4-pound unit with a 17-inch screen. If only we could see the screen a little better. In a typical fluorescent-lit office, viewing the display is hard. Even when ratcheted all the way up, the huge screen was not very bright--not what you'd expect from a high-end machine. Compared with the display of a 15.4-inch HP Pavilion DV6000t, in fact, the dv7t's screen was grayish. That said, the dullness shouldn't impede enjoying a flick on the Blu-ray drive or getting work done, especially with the lights turned down low. The 1680-by-1050-pixel resolution makes mainstream applications plenty easy to work in. Be sure to keep headphones handy, though: Despite the unit's subwoofer, to me it sure didn't sound like a Blu-ray movie was playing.
On the bright side, if you like shiny things, you'll love the dv7t. The lid and lower casing are black, but inside it resembles a slab of highly polished steel topped off with a similarly finished keyboard and icy-white status lights. It's so reflective that you can see yourself in the wrist rest, quite handy for surreptitious spinach-stuck-in-teeth and makeup checks. The keys gleam like pricey flatware, and even feel cool to the touch. Maneuvering about the keyboard is just as smooth, thanks to the great layout, the wide mirrored touchpad, and the dedicated number pad. The fingerprint reader is completely and conveniently out of the way in its right-bottom-corner location.
I only wish that the rigid mouse buttons depressed a little farther into the case, and that HP's volume swipe were better behaved. Though it's always a pleasure to use HP's signature one-touch QuickPlay media button for directly launching a movie and music menu and its forward and backward controls, HP still hasn't ironed all of the kinks out of its touch-sensitive controls. Getting the mute control working took a hard punch. The cranky volume swipe would lower but not raise volume--which, unlike movie sound, is quite loud and pleasing with CDs and MP3s. (We've had the opposite problem--the volume swipe raising but not lowering sound--on other Pavilions.)
If you can overlook those little problems, the dv7t is a handsome, fast unit. For our review it was nicely configured with a 400GB hard drive, a Blu-ray drive, and Windows Vista Home Premium. And if you're looking to replace a desktop, it's a better candidate than most other big notebooks because of its proprietary left-side connection for HP's xb3000 expansion base. Though the base is an expensive add-on, it incorporates a screen stand, a third hard-drive bay, far better speakers, and a wireless keyboard and mouse for a complete desktop experience.
Forget the peripherals right now, though. Without the docking station, the dv7t slightly stumbles as an end-all, be-all entertainment unit. If you're looking for the whole package, consider Toshiba's Qosmio line of massive desktop replacement PCs. They're hardly portable, but the Qosmios (or is that Qosmii for plural?) have consistently incorporated terrific audio into their designs. That said, thanks to its beefy new CPU, HP's powerhouse sails through performance tests and whips the current competition. If speed is what matters to you, the Pavilion dv7 has it in spades.
2-Gateway P-172X FX
A notebook catering to the gaming set is sure to deliver a flashy design and good horsepower. And Gateway's latest racer, the P-172X FX, doesn't disappoint. Before even jacking open the 17-inch display lid, you can't help but notice the copper-colored trim lining this portable player. From the font choices on the keys and color scheme to the glowing, backlit shortcuts atop the keyboard, this is obviously targeted at those who attempt to "pimp their rigs." The hard plastic, glossy exterior almost makes you feel like you're slipping into some racecar. Well, one that revs a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T8300 Intel CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and nVidia's GeForce Go 8800M GTS graphics board. Sure enough, in our WorldBench 6 performance tests. the P-172X FX finished right behind the powerful Micro Express IFL9025, with a score of 96. At the display's native 1920-by-1200-resolution, however, neither Crysis nor World in Conflict--two extremely demanding games--got out of first gear. Crysis ran at slide-show speed, slogging along at 11 frames per second, while World in Conflict managed 16 fps. When we ratcheted the screen resolution down to 1024 by 768 pixels, each game reached 23 fps--decent performance for a discrete notebook graphics card. This laptop also hosts a slew of useful outputs, including a FireWire port, three USB ports, and eSATA and HDMI outputs. The trayless optical drive lets you feed the disc into the slot. - but that's nothing that we haven't already seen in a MacBook Pro. Still, it's nice to see in a relatively affordable gaming machine. The P-172X FX's keys feel sturdy, are well spaced, and have good response; and the keyboard doesn't dip when you start hitting the keys (except the flimsy multimedia shortcut keys) with mounting enthusiasm. Also, Gateway seems to have treated the keys to resist spills and the stray Cheetos crumb. Even the numeric keypad is large enough to use easily. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the trackpad. Oh, sure, the pad is the "right" size and has a handy scroll zone, but something's amiss. The touchpad is positioned too far to the left side of the wrist rest. In most games the player uses the W, S, A, and D keys for movement and uses the mouse to control the camera). But the P-172X FX's configuration crams all of the essential controls into one uncomfortable zone. You're better off plugging in an external mouse. Someone say peripherals? Two words: Buy headphones! The P-172X FX has some of the lousiest audio to excrete from a desktop replacement notebook. Watching a monster take Manhattan in Cloverfield, the two top-mounted speakers sound terribly tinny. And whether listening to that symphony of destruction or Metallica's Enter Sandman, the audio sounds so hollow you might as well use an empty soup can. Battery life is another shortcoming. In our tests, the P-172X FX ran for just 2 hours, 42 minutes on a charge; the average I've battery life for laptops in this category is about 3 hours. 3-Dell Inspiron 1720 A powerful laptop does not have to be a boring laptop. Take Dell's Inspiron 1720, a robust system that also happens to be available in seven colors besides black. The 1720 is a heavyish 17-inch notebook, but its multimedia design is outstanding. Superbly crafted for a demanding home office, the 1720 has a full-size keyboard with a separate number pad. Our test machine had a single 160GB hard drive, as well as a complete contingent of connections--five USB ports, an ExpressCard/54 slot, and a memory card slot. The 1720's weight (8.7 pounds) makes it a less-than-ideal notebook for the road. When you're ready to kick back, Dell's DirectMedia button provides instant access to the full panoply of entertainment choices: DVD movies, music, photo slide shows, and videos. The stereo sound is good; a Blu-ray Disc drive is an option, albeit a costly one ($660 on top of our test unit's $2409 price). Configured with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, 2GB of RAM, and an nVidia GeForce 8600M GT graphics card, the 1720 proved an agile workhorse and gaming machine. Its WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 75 puts it in the top 10 percent of currently tested notebooks. The 1720 kicked booty in our gaming tests, producing 116 frames per second playing Far Cry at 1024 by 768 resolution. Its 3-hour, 33-minute battery life, while not great, is above average for this class. 4- MACBOOK PRO For people who appreciate finer laptop accoutrements such as a backlit keyboard and a slot-fed DVD drive, Apple has crafted another tasty offering in the form of the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Sleek, powerful, and able to run Windows as well as the Mac operating system, the MacBook Pro makes a strong case for becoming anyone's ultimate notebook. Equipped with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 processor, the maximum 4GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and nVidia's new top-of-the-line notebook graphics card, the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT, our $2949 test unit set new speed records (through 10/25/2007). The MacBook Pro outperformed the rest of the notebooks we tested, all of which claim Windows as their primary--nay, their only--operating system. We loaded Windows Vista Home Premium on the Apple notebook, and it snagged a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88. In games it achieved a blazing frame rate of 141 frames per second in Far Cry (with antialiasing turned off). At 6.6 pounds and just 1 inch thick, the MacBook Pro is the lightest 17-inch notebook available. But it has no memory card slots and only three USB ports, and it comes configured with an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of the more versatile ExpressCard/54 slot. Though it has Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi, built-in cellular broadband is not an option. On the other hand, video editors will be happy to have not one but two FireWire ports. Battery life was disappointing: Apple pegs it at 5.7 hours on one charge, but in our tests we got less than 2 hours, 45 minutes. 5-Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359 This big multimedia notebook is for on-the-go gamers and TV fans. The Toshiba Satellite X205-S9359 handles 3D shooters with aplomb, plus it comes bundled with an add-on TV tuner and remote control for watching shows. For work, productivity applications are also included in the laptop's $2400 (as of 10/9/07) price. Regardless of your pursuit, the big screen and twin hard drives make for very comfortable desktop computing. Just don't count on long battery life. The X205-S9359 is a preconfigured retail model distinguished by a swirly red and black "carmine flare" lid that for a gaming notebook is downright tasteful. A very similar-looking model, the X205-S9349, is $500 less but has only half the video memory and storage. That configuration might be fine for multimedia dabblers, but for full-throttle entertainment, opt for the X205-S9359. In our tests, Word and Photoshop ran quickly and 3D games looked good. Equipped with a 2-GHz Core 2 Duo T7300 processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 512MB nVidia GeForce Go 8700M GT dedicated graphics card, the laptop logged a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 76, putting it in the middle of a tightly grouped pack of similarly equipped, high-performing desktop replacements. For instance, a Fujitsu LifeBook A6030 and an Acer Aspire 5920G scored a point better at 77, but the X205-S9359 bested a Toshiba Qosmio G45 AV-680 that earned a mark of 74. Among all currently tested desktop replacements, the X205-S9359 scored one point better than the average of 75. It also aced our gaming tests with a frame rate of 84 in Doom 3 and a scorching 122 frames per second in Far Cry. Battery life was only average for a desktop replacement, though, at 2.5 hours. The design is good overall. The X205-S9359 is typically heavy at 8.7 pounds (the average among currently tested desktop replacements is 8.8 pounds), but it has two 160GB hard drives and four built-in Harman/Kardon speakers backed by a bottom subwoofer for rich, satisfying sound. The Toshiba USB HDTV Tuner and brick-like power adapter bring the weight to a chunky 11 pounds. Dropped hinges on the 17-inch screen, however, give the total package a remarkably low profile. The screen itself, a 17-inch 1680-by-1050-pixel display with Toshiba's patented TruBrite glossy finish, is reflective; I had to experiment with tilting the notebook and lowering the office shades that were behind the notebook. Otherwise, it's easy to read. The laptop is plentifully supplied with the kinds of ports, connections, and other features that you might expect of a better-than-average entertainment portable. Chief among them are an HD DVD player, a built-in Webcam, and an HDMI port for connecting a plasma screen. The generous nonmultimedia features include a gaggle of USB ports--six in all--and a keyboard with several nice extras. One is a dedicated number pad; another is Toshiba's unique dual-mode touchpad, which you can switch to a set of virtual quick-launch buttons with the tap of a finger in the upper-right corner. Microsoft Works 8.5 rounds out the offering.Power-packed desktop replacement laptop delivers good game performance but bungles sound.
Splashy laptop offers excellent entertainment options and great sound, as well as strong performance.
Lightweight 17-incher has a beautiful screen and comes loaded with useful software. It's fast, too.
Robust home portable offers great gaming with beautiful-sounding audio and a stylish striped lid.
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