Hands on: HP Pavilion dv2 laptop

What Laptop | News | 07/04/2009 13:04pm

This afternoon we were lucky enough to get a brief hands on with HP’s forthcoming Pavilion dv2 laptop. Aimed at those after a machine with the portability of a netbook and the power of a laptop, we were keen to see what the dv2 had to offer.

It certainly looks the part. Glossy dark plastics meet shiny metals and the laptop feels strong and well-built, and yet the dv2 isn’t heavy, weighing only 1.8kg. The 92% full size keyboard is surprisingly firm to type on and the 12.1-inch LED screen is extremely bright – although suffers the reflections that all Super-TFT coated screens do.

Internally the dv2 boasts an Athlon Neo processor which AMD has developed alongside HP specifically for the laptop. The representatives from both companies were keen that we understood the collaboration had focused on providing what the public want, in other words portability and power, and that the processor, chipset and ATi graphics cards had been specifically designed with this in mind. However, no benchmarking data was available so we’ll have to see if their performance promises go fulfilled.

HP Pavilion dv2

Nevertheless, the dv2 does feature some multimedia orientated features which suggest that the machine packs some punch in the power department. The laptop boasts an HDMI out port and also the option of upgrading the external DVD drive, which comes with every machine, to Blu-ray.

Three models will be available, starting at £499, with dedicated graphics cards and up to 4GB of DDR2 memory available in the higher end models. Make sure you pick up the June issue of What Laptop where we’ll be putting the dv2 through its paces.

HP Pavilion dv2