HP Pavilion Dv5t

You might call it a notebook that walks the line—several of them at once, in fact. Equipped with a Core i5 CPU, a Blu-ray drive, and copious amounts of storage, the HP Pavilion dv5t is a well-appointed notebook designed for frequent travel, yet powerful enough to handle most of your multimedia-playback needs, as well as crunch through home-productivity tasks. (It's a configurable machine, and prices start at $599.99; our tricked-out review model, as configured, will set you back a cool $948.99.) It walks the line in the sense that while it is capable of satisfying many uses, it doesn't fully excel at any one. As a result, it left us a little hazy about exactly who this notebook is best for. It manages the portability side with its reasonable size/weight and better-than-average battery life, and it can satisfy a high-definition craving with its Blu-ray drive and integrated HD graphics. But it's not quite light enough to go everywhere with you; the integrated graphics are good enough for playing video but not high-end 3D games; and without dedicated media controls, that Blu-ray drive might get less use than it would otherwise. That said, this is still a powerful laptop and a strong choice for those who value speed and versatility.

 

Smooth lines and a Champagne finish give the dv5t a touch of style.

  

HP has introduced three new color options for the Pavilion line with this model: Black Cherry, Sonoma Red, and Champagne. Our test model featured the last of the three, with a silvery lid in a subtle kaleidoscope-like pattern. A big plus for the finish on the chassis: It's impervious to fingerprint smudges. The chassis also has a bit of heft; weighing 5.2 pounds and measuring 1.4 inches thick, this notebook is heavier than Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y460, which is priced similarly and roughly the same size. It's also a bit bulkier, but it's still manageable for travel.

One reason for the extra bulk has to do with the display. The LCD panel measures 14.5 inches (diagonally), an odd size that's exclusive to HP. The screen has a maximum resolution of 1,366x768 with a 16-to-9 aspect ratio, and it's able to display high-definition video in 720p. It uses LED backlighting to produce a bright, crisp picture with very high detail. If you're likely to watch high-definition content on your laptop, you will appreciate the inclusion of a Blu-ray-reader/DVD-burner combo drive on this model. In our tests, the movie Repo Men on Blu-ray disc looked sharp, and the screen delivered vivid colors and good viewing angles. Not so spectacular, though, is the speaker system; the two speakers embedded in the lower chassis aren’t very loud and sound way too tinny when the volume is cranked up.

 

On the right is the Blu-ray/DVD±RW combo drive, two USB ports, and the power jack.

As for the keyboard, the design comprises black isolated keys (a Chiclet-style keyboard). On our test unit, it was surrounded by a roomy deck treated with the same Champagne finish found on the lid. The keyboard is firm and comfortable, and the touch pad is responsive. One big omission, though, is a set of dedicated media-playback buttons, which is surprising considering that HP claims this model is geared for entertainment and productivity use. (Heck, we’d even settle for a volume slider.) Instead, all player and volume controls are relegated to key combinations within the function-key group. Backlighting for the keyboard is a $25 option; we couldn't evaluate how it looked, though, as it was not included on our review machine.

 

The Chiclet keyboard is comfortable and easy to type on.

 

You'll find only three USB ports on the dv5t, and one of them is an eSATA/USB combo port, which allows for faster data transfers with eSATA-compliant external storage devices. The combo port is mounted on the left side of the notebook alongside HDMI and VGA video outputs, an Ethernet port, and a pair of audio jacks. On the right side is a pair of ordinary USB ports and the optical drive. Wireless connectivity comprises built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g/n) radios. Rounding out the feature set is a Webcam built into the screen bezel, and, inside the chassis on the model we looked at, a fast (7,200rpm) hard drive with 500GB of capacity.

 

Here we have VGA, Ethernet, HDMI, eSATA/USB, and headphone/microphone ports, all situated on the left side.

When it comes to handling multimedia and productivity tasks, the Pavilion dv5t is a solid performer. Our test model was fueled by Intel’s Core i5-430M processor and 4GB of memory. Its score of 5,758 on our 64-bit PCMark Vantage test, which measures overall system performance, was almost 500 points above the average score for thin-and-lights and was right behind its 14-inch sister system, the Pavilion dm4t (5,933). It couldn’t keep pace with the previously mentioned Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 (6,618), however, which, despite being roughly the same price and size, uses a more powerful processor and has a discrete GPU. (It also happens to be an Editors’ Choice winner.) The dv5t turned in a score of 5,400 on the 32-bit version of the same test, which was more than 1,700 points above average but still a bit shy of the dm4t’s score of 5,516. Overall, these scores indicate that when you're processing Microsoft Office files, removing red-eye from photos, or surfing the Web, the dv5t will not keep you waiting.

The dv5t made fast work of our iTunes encoding test, in which the tested computer converts 11 MP3 files to AAC format. (It took 3 minutes and 21 seconds to complete this task.) Performance on our Windows Media Encoder (WME) video-encoding test was similarly speedy; it took the dv5t 4 minutes and 25 seconds to finish rendering our test video, although, as with PCMark Vantage, the IdeaPad Y460 was significantly faster. On our processor-intensive 64-bit Cinebench 10 test, the dv5t’s score of 7,685 was more than 1,200 points above average but lagged behind the dm4t by 505 points and the IdeaPad Y460 by 581 points.

Results from the 32-bit version of Cinebench 10 were similar; the dv5t’s score of 6,365 was above average but trailed the Pavilion dm4t and IdeaPad Y460. (We run both 32-bit and 64-bit tests for comparison, since not all laptops come with 64-bit operating systems.) These scores indicate that processor-intensive tasks, such as converting music or video files, will be fast enough to do on a regular basis. If truly demanding tasks like video editing are the core of your profession, you'll want something more powerful, but for the average home user, this is generally impressive performance. The other two systems referenced here perform a bit faster, so if every second counts, you'll want to give them a close look.

Graphics performance was what you'd expect from a laptop with an integrated graphics accelerator. On our 3DMark06 test, which measures DirectX 9 gaming performance, we saw a score of 2,084 at 1,024x768 resolution, slightly lower than average for a thin-and-light laptop. The IdeaPad Y460 and its ATI Radeon HD 5650 graphics card, on the other hand, scored an impressive 8,004 on this test. Gaming performance was no bright spot, either. The dv5t managed just 17.5 frames per second (fps) on our real-world Company of Heroes gaming test, and that was at a low resolution (1,024x768). At its native resolution (1,366x768), it limped along at an unplayable 13.4fps. By way of contrast, the IdeaPad Y460 gave us 74.8fps. What's clear: If you’re looking for a laptop that’ll excel at 3D gaming, the dv5t is not it.

   

The smudge-free keyboard deck shares the same finish as the lid but lacks media player controls.

On the flip side, we were pleased with the dv5t’s battery endurance. On our DVD rundown test, we loop playback of a DVD movie from the laptop's optical drive until the battery dies. The dv5t endured for 3 hours and 28 minutes, more than half an hour longer than what we got from the IdeaPad Y460 and nearly 20 minutes longer than the average time for a thin-and-light notebook. The Pavilion dm4t we tested lasted almost a full hour longer, however.

The hard drive comes with Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) as well as Microsoft Works and CyberLink DVD suite. Trial versions of Office 2007, Norton Internet Security, a boatload of games, and eBay adware are, regrettably, also part of the deal. On the plus side, you get HP’s Recovery Manager utility, which makes performing a system recovery and reinstalling drivers and other software easy. HP’s QuickWeb program, which gets you onto the Internet without having to boot into Windows, is also onboard. HP covers the dv5t with an industry-standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty, which comprises round-the-clock toll-free tech support, as well as one hour of e-mail or real-time chat assistance. This last part is a nice touch, but one hour seems a little skimpy if you've got a real problem to solve.

All in all, the HP Pavilion dv5t is a capable multimedia notebook that delivers good performance in a moderately thin-and-light frame. We wish it had better 3D chops, less bloatware, and some entertainment-centric controls to go with the Blu-ray drive. If you require more graphics muscle, consider spending an extra $100 for the Lenovo IdeaPad Y460, which has a switchable GPU (so you can choose between battery life and graphics performance with the press of a button) and delivers gaming-class 3D power on demand. But if you're looking for a stylish, portable notebook that can scratch your Blu-ray itch, this is it.

John R. Delaney