HP Pavilion dv7 review

HP’s premium-priced Envy range may be catching all the headlines, but now its Pavilion range of affordable consumer laptops has gone under the knife. With an all-new design and some trickle-down technology from its luxurious stablemates, HP’s Pavilion dv7 just might be the affordable powerhouse we’ve been waiting for.

The Pavilion dv7 is entirely unrecognisable from its predecessors. Gone is the ostentatious glossy silver of previous models, replaced by an altogether more understated, stylish finish. That’s no bad thing, as the Pavilion now looks a little like a cut-price Envy 17. It has a smoothly contoured chassis, and little touches such as the subtle, textured finish on the lid and wristrest make all the difference.

The hefty 3.05kg chassis doesn’t just look good; that slick appearance goes hand in hand with fine build quality. The base is flex-free, with a wide and solid wristrest to lean on, and the lid does a great job of protecting the display within. No matter how hard we prodded and poked it, the lid stayed firm, with no sign of any showthrough on the display itself.

All the physical changes have been accompanied by tweaks under the hood. This, the range-topping dv7, now includes the Beats Audio technology, which made its debut in the Envy range. The multiple speakers dotted around the HP’s chassis reach the sort of volumes required to make games and movie soundtracks enjoyable, and there’s enough clarity that listening to music’s a pleasure rather than the usual tinny chore. They might not have the Bang & Olufsen accreditation of the fancy-pants Asus N53JN, but they’re certainly no poorer for it.

The HP’s aural finery is accompanied by an equally good display. The glossy 17.3in panel may make do with a native resolution of just 1,600 x 900 pixels – it seems a waste not to have a Full HD screen on a Blu-ray-equipped laptop such as this – but the quality is very good. Colours are rich, and even tricky skintones are handled well. There’s plenty of brightness on tap too.

You certainly couldn’t describe the Pavilion dv7 as slow, either. As with several of the desktop replacements we’ve seen recently, HP has employed one of Intel’s older quad-core Core i7 processors: the 1.6GHz Core i7-720QM. While not up with the latest Core i5 and Core i7 models, it’s a choice that gives the HP a respectable 1.49 in our application-based benchmarks and means it’s fast enough even for a touch of HD video editing.

The quad-core processor is accompanied by an ATI Radeon HD5650 graphics card, so there’s enough power to cope with modern games as well. Faced with our Crysis benchmark at 1,600 x 900 and Medium quality, the HP managed a very respectable average of 34fps.

It’s once you turn your attention to less exciting pastimes that the HP flounders a little. This is no fault of the keyboard, though. Its scrabble-tile keys each have a nice crisp feel, and apart from the cramped cursor keys, the layout is pretty much spot on.

Unfortunately, the Pavilion dv7 has inherited its touchpad from the Envy range, and it’s not entirely trouble-free. The big problem is that the buttons are integrated into the surface of the touchpad. Drag the cursor with a finger, and when you apply your thumb to either of the stiff buttons you’ll often find the cursor hopping left or right in response. Sometimes, inexplicably, it behaves itself, but at its worst it’s maddening.

A further annoyance comes from the cooling fans. With that powerful specification just begging you to tax it with gaming and heavy multitasking, it won’t be long before the HP’s noisy fans whirr into action. The speakers go loud enough to drown them out, but in quiet moments you’ll be in no doubt that the HP is working hard to stay cool. Battery life isn’t that impressive, with a result of just 3hrs 23mins in our light-usage test, but that isn’t altogether surprising given the power on tap and the size of the screen.

So it isn’t perfect, and there’s some hot competition around too: Samsung’s R780 is faster, and the Sony VAIO F-Series is more customisable. When it comes to all-round entertainment, however, the HP Pavilion dv7 has it all: great speakers, a good display and enough power to make the most of them. The trackpad is an annoyance and also enough to deny the dv7 a recommendation, but we’d be willing to cut HP’s Pavilion dv7 a little slack.

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