Final thoughts and rating
We like the HP Pavilion dv2 a lot. We dislike it a lot, too. Makes sense? The laptop looks absolutely fantastic and has excellent build quality to boot. It's very thin, relatively light, and the dv2-1030ea model ships with a Mobility Radeon HD 3410 512MB discrete graphics card for reasonable gaming performance. The keyboard's just lovely and the LED-backlit screen is well above average, if a little too reflective for our taste. 720p (QuickTime) movies are taken in its stride and the overall package is polished.The not-so-good list is almost equally as long, however. Place the dv2 under any sustained load and the fan(s) spin up, annoyingly so, and the chassis gets rather too warm as a result. HP's software additions to Windows Vista Premium makes the dv2 practically unusable for a minute after the operating system has loaded, and the Athlon Neo CPU's not that much more powerful than Intel Atom, whilst using significantly more power.
The negative points could have been mitigated by the good if it wasn't for the poor battery life. We barely managed an hour when looping a non-GPU-accelerated Flash clip, and that's just not good enough. The price, too, at £599 for this model, is a little on the high side.
It's difficult not to like the HP Pavilion dv2 on first glance - slim lines and gorgeous looks seduce you, but beauty is more than skin deep. Should the price of this model be dropped to, say, £499, together with a larger battery and better thermal performance, we'd be inclined to look on it favourably. As it is, it's an opportunity that's currently being missed.
HEXUS Rating
We consider any product score above '50%' as a safe buy. The higher the score, the higher the recommendation from HEXUS to buy. Simple, straightforward buying advice.
The rating is given in relation to the category the component competes in, therefore the laptop is evaluated with respect to our 'mid-range' criteria.
HP Pavilion dv2 1030-ea
HEXUS Where2Buy
The HP Pavilion dv2
1030-ea notebook is available to buy for £599.99
from HP directly.
HEXUS Right2Reply
At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.
