Travel Joven

Archive for December, 2010

Overview

 

Ah, how sweet it is when a computer is designed to be beautiful both inside and out.Sony VGP-BPS9 Such is the case with the HP HDX 16, which sports a stylish silver-streaks pattern on the lid and keyboard (including sending the streaks through the track pad) to go along with the 16″ flush-glass 1920×1080 16:9 HDTV ready LCD. While that’s the most stunning part of the computer, our model also came with a P7350 Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz, a 512MB nVidia GeForce 9600M GPU, 4GB RAM, a 250GB HDD and a Blu-ray player. The cost will thin your wallet a little, but for a pretty potent portable (well, semi-portable) like the HP HDX 16, we’ve seen worse.

Design

HP has given its HDX a sleek “titanium liquid metallic” look, with silver and charcoal lines racing along the charcoal lid and palmrest. The lines on the palmrest streak right through the shiny silver trackpad, the trail turning to gray for the duration. HP has harnessed the HDX16 with a number of pale purple glowing icons as well, beginning with a luminescent HP logo on the bottom left corner of the lid. Above the keyboard resides a glowing power button along with glowing touch buttons for multimedia control and wireless internet. Slightly above that is a speaker bay which spans the length of the keyboard, and after a small HP logo there is nothing above that save the LCD and integrated webcam. The surface of the lid and palmrest is glossy and smooth, matching the look, although this did leave the expected telltale fingerprints.

Size and Weight

The HDX16 is not small, weighing in at 7.3 pounds and with dimensions of 14.9 x 10.0 x 1.7 inches. Still, it is small enough to fit into standard laptop bags without issue, and light enough that you can lift it and move it around if you need to, although you won’t want to much. Although we wouldn’t mind it lighter, we found that the HDX fit comfortably on our lap, with the screen sturdy enough to avoid wobbling while typing or readjusting. The size is a little thick when you’re holding it, but not prohibitively so, and we do admit that the extra bulk gives an impression of solidity, rather than the flimsy feeling some smaller laptops give.

Keyboard

The keyboard is full size and includes a number pad, although the latter is somewhat shrunken. The keyboard was comfortable to type on and relatively quiet. Above the keyboard are the lighted touch sensitive multimedia controls along with wireless internet control, which certainly look stylish above embedded in the silver frame of the keyboard, and we’ll talk more about them later. The trackpad is placed just left of center and is smooth to the touch. Unlike other trackpads where occasionally our finger would stick uncomfortably after a long scroll, we never felt that on the HDX16. There is also a button placed directly above the trackpad which turns it on or off. While it didn’t come up often due to the limited portability, it’s an appreciated convenience to be able to easily press that off button after plugging in an external mouse.