The newest 15-inch notebook from HP arrives just in time to make a big impact for back-to-school shoppers in 2008. The HP Pavilion dv5z features the latest AMD dual-core processors, cutting edge graphics that slaughter the competition, and a price thats so competitive youll have a hard time coming up with reasons not to buy this notebook. Take a look at our full review and find out what makes this notebook so impressive. Our HP Pavilion dv5z has the following specifications: The pricing on the dv5z starts at around $699.99 ($599.99 with $100 instant rebate), and our configuration has a few upgrades that brought the final price to $849.99 at the time of this writing. Needless to say, this is a fabulous price point for back-to-school shoppers. The dv5z has a new and improved design, replacing the long-lasting and much-loved dv6000 series chassis design. The display cover has the durable plastic Imprint finish, which holds up quite well to minor abrasion without scratching. The body of the notebook is smooth with rounded edges, making it extremely comfortable in your hand while carrying it around. The screen also sports a latchless design, making it easy to open the notebook with one hand. Although the lid lacks any latch to keep it held shut, the hinges feel fairly strong, keeping the lid secure. Pressing firmly onto the back of the screen cover will produce some ripples on the screen ... but you must apply significant pressure to cause this. The plastic chassis is quite rigid and suffers from no flex or creaks even when twisted between my hands. Although I dont recommend tossing your notebook down a staircase, the dv5z should survive years of daily travel in a backpack or the occasional drop off a desk. Our dv5z features the "Mesh" Imprint Finish which looks the name implies: a fine gray mesh pattern over a black surface. The Imprint Finish on the dv5z is much more subtle than the previous designs weve seen on HP notebooks. I suspect most average consumers will find the mesh pattern more acceptable in workplace environments than the older generation patterns. While the dv5z still looks like an attractive consumer notebook, the Imprint Finish isnt quite as "splashy" or "busy" as it used to be. The bottom of the dv5z is quite simple with some nice heat vents located in strategic positions to help keep the laptop cool. The access panels on the bottom of the notebook make it easy to upgrade RAM, replace the hard disk drive, or replace the motherboard battery if needed. This arrangement makes it simple for the novice user to make upgrades, but more serious users will have to remove the entire base of the chassis in order to access the rest of the motherboard. Screen The 15.4-inch diagonal WSXGA+ High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1680 x 1050) is quite simply one of the best 15-inch screens Ive seen on any notebook. Detail is amazing, colors are rich with deep contrast, backlighting is even across the entire surface, and viewing angles are good. There is some color inversion when you view the screen from below ... but how often do you tilt your screen back and view it that way? Input and Output Ports The dv5z has an impressive number of ports with some nice additions you wont find on most consumer notebooks. Heres a run down of the ports: While three USB ports might not sound like enough for a 15-inch notebook, there are a couple of things to keep in mind. First, this budget notebook comes with an eSATA/USB port which allows you to connect either a USB device or an eSATA device. Although USB is still a great connection method for accessories USB cannot provide fast data transfer rates for huge amounts of data. We need a faster way to transfer files as more and more consumers start storing their family videos, digital photos, and personal media collections on 2TB and larger external hard drives. This is where eSATA comes in. Without getting too technical, an eSATA port can transfer data to and from an eSATA-equipped external storage drive six times faster than USB. The second important feature to consider on the dv5z is that HP still includes a dedicated docking station connector on their laptops for those of us who use our laptops as desktop replacements. This is far more important than most people realize. Most other notebook manufacturers have removed dedicated docking ports and now only offer USB docking stations. USB is great for connecting one or two devices at the same time, but if you are trying to transfer data, video, audio, and perhaps even your Ethernet connection over a single USB port you will suffer a major reduction in speed. The dedicated Expansion Port 3 on the dv5z can handle all of your docking station needs all at the same time with virtually no reduced performance. HP deserves serious praise for adding the eSATA port and keeping the dedicated docking port when most of the competition doesnt offer these features on consumer notebooks. While were on the subject of ports, its worth mentioning that the HDMI port also supports audio as well as video via a standard HDMI cable. Many laptops with HDMI ports only support video, but the dv5z supports both video and audio. To test this I connected the dv5z to my 1080p HDTV. As soon as I connected the HDMI cable the computer recognized the connection and asked if I wanted to extend my desktop or duplicate my desktop (I chose duplicate) and then I inserted a DVD into the notebooks drive. The dv5z upscaled the DVD movie to a full 1080p resolution and upscaled the movie to 1680 x 1050 resolution for the built-in display. The video playback was flawless with no skipped frames and the audio synched perfectly with the action on the screen (or screens). This is quite impressive and is something you just dont expect to see on a budget notebook. Performance and Benchmarks HP offers the new Pavilion dv5z with a range of AMD processors, including the older generation 1.9GHz Athlon X2 QL-60 dual-core processor. However, the big news this year is the availability of AMDs new "Puma" platform with improved processors and graphics. The new AMD Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 2.1GHz dual-core processor is an obvious evolution of AMD processor technology, but the real news is the integrated graphics. It isnt very often that we get excited about an integrated graphics processor (IGP). Every IGP on the market is painfully inferior to a dedicated graphics card and every IGP on the market struggles to handle high definition video and 3D video games. Not so with the ATI Radeon HD 3200. For the first time ever consumers have a low-cost IGP that offers flawless 1080p video playback and can even play many 3D video games at reasonable frame rates! Lets take a look at a few basic benchmarks so you can get an idea of how the dv5z stacks up. wPrime is a program that forces the processor to do recursive mathematical calculations, this processor benchmark program is multi-threaded and can use both processor cores at once, it measures the amount of time to run a set amount of calculations. wPrime comparison results (lower scores means better performance): You can see from the results in WPrime the new Turion X2 Ultra processor from AMDs new "Puma" platform provides a respectable amount of raw processing power but isnt significantly faster than the previous generation processors when it comes to basic calculations. PCMark05 measures overall notebook performance (higher scores are better): The PCMark05 score suggests the dv5z provides solid overall performance. 3DMark06 comparison results for graphics performance (higher scores are better): All of the 3DMark06 scores for all of the systems listed above were run at 1280 x 768 resolution. Bottom line: AMD is speaking truthfully when they claim that the new ATI Radeon HD 3200 IGP provides roughly three times the performance of the Intel X3100 IGP and rivals the performance of low-cost dedicated graphics cards. Just for laughs, we also ran the 3DMark06 benchmark at the full screen resolution on our dv5z (1680 x 1050) and the system returned a score of 1,131 3DMarks. Even when running a higher resolution display the integrated graphics on the dv5z provides more than double the performance of Intels current integrated graphics! In short, AMD and ATI just murdered the low-end dedicated graphics card market. Theres absolutely no reason to buy a laptop with a low-end dedicated graphics card like the NVIDIA 8400m GS because the new ATI integrated graphics solution performs just as well (if not better) at a fraction of the cost. For those of you who might be interested in the older 3DMark05 graphics benchmark, Ive included those numbers below (all tested at 1024 x 768 resolution): 3DMark05 comparison results (higher scores are better): As if this werent enough to get you excited about the new ATI graphics, AMD has also been promoting the new Hybrid Crossfire capabilities. In short, Hybrid Crossfire allows you to combine the performance of an integrated graphics processor with a dedicated graphics card (such as the ATI Raedon HD 3450) in order to provide improved graphics performance. Basically, the integrated graphics and dedicated graphics work together to produce a better visual experience. Its unclear whether the HP Pavilion dv5z with the dedicated ATI Radeon HD 3450 option will make use of Hybrid Crossfire, but its an innovative idea. HDTune storage drive performance results: Keyboard, Touchpad and Media Controls The keyboard on the Pavilion dv5z has zero flex and excellent key travel with quiet presses. I cant say with absolute certainty, but I suspect the keyboard is the same part used on the dv6700t (or at least the dv6780se we previously reviewed). The keys have a durable coating which makes the keyboard look and feel better when typing. The slight glossy texture of the keys wont develop the typical "shine" that begins to show up on keys after extended use. The dv5z also features attractive touch-sensitive media buttons that seemingly vanish behind the "liquid metal" surface when the computer is turned off, but light up when the notebook is turned on. The palm rest area features the same "Mesh" Imprint Finish used on the lid. The touchpad is nice and large and features a durable and responsive surface that is also covered in the HP Imprint Finish. The marked vertical scroll section is likewise accurate and responsive. The touchpad buttons have deep feedback and produce quiet, cushioned clicks. One of the nice features found on HP touchpads is the touchpad on/off button. If you press the small button above the touchpad you can disable it ... perfect for people using an external mouse. Although the touchpad is quite nice I would have liked to see the same style of touchpad that HP started using on the tx1000z, tx2000z, tx2500z and HDX notebooks ... perhaps on next years notebooks? The reason I mention the touchpads on the other HP notebooks is because I have mixed opinions about the glossy touchpad on the dv5z. The touchpad surface feels nice and smooth, but if you have even slightly moist fingertips your finger with stick to the touchpad and you wont be able to drag the cursor in smooth, straight movements. As long as you have extremely dry skin (or use an external mouse) this wont be a problem. Another added bonus is the inclusion of a media remote. This little remote tucks away in the ExpressCard slot and is great for moving through slide presentations or for controlling the notebook when its connected to your HDTV. Speakers The speaker quality was "above average" for a notebook without a built-in subwoofer. The speakers for the dv5z are located at the top of the keyboard area beneath the media buttons. Theres not much to write home about the Altec Lansing speakers. They get loud enough with minimal distortion and the sound isnt as "tinny" as is the case with nearly all laptop speakers. However, the speakers dont produce the kind of output that "fills a room" the way you might want if youre listening to your music collection on the built-in speakers. On the brighter side, both audio out ports delivered crystal clear audio to my earphones during the test period. Heat and Noise The Pavilion dv5z does a reasonable job keeping heat under control. The system fan and heatsinks in the notebook do a great job managing heat when the system is under load ... as we discovered when we ran multiple benchmarks back to back. Below are images with temperature readings listed in degrees Fahrenheit: Battery Life We knew it was too much to expect a budget notebook to be perfect, but we were a little disappointed by the battery life from the dv5z. The 6-cell 47WHr Li-Ion battery provides sub-par battery life for the dv5z. With Vistas power management running in "balanced" mode, screen brightness set to 50 percent and wireless on, the 6-cell battery delivered 2 hours and 22 minutes of battery life. By comparison, most budget notebooks can deliver more than two and a half hours of battery life on "high performance" mode with the screen set to maximum brightness. There is also an available high-capacity 6-cell Li-Ion battery for those users needing extended battery life. Its odd that there is no 9-cell or 12-cell battery option at the time of this writing, but that may change in the future.
Buying Choices for the HP Pavilion dv5z Customizable Notebook PC 
HP Home & Home Office Store | $599.99 
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Build and Design
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(view large image)Notebook / CPU wPrime 32M time HP Pavilion dv5z (Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80 @ 2.1GHz) 39.745s Dell Inspiron 1525 (Core 2 Duo T7250 @ 2.0GHz) 43.569s Dell XPS M1530 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.485s HP Pavilion dv6500z (Turion 64 X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz) 40.759s Sony VAIO NR (Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.5GHz) 58.233s Toshiba Tecra A9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 38.343s Toshiba Tecra M9 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.299s HP Compaq 6910p (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz) 40.965s Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 @ 1.20GHz) 76.240s Zepto 6024W (Core 2 Duo T7300 @ 2GHz) 42.385s Lenovo T61 (Core 2 Duo T7500 @ 2.2GHz) 37.705s Alienware M5750 (Core 2 Duo T7600 @ 2.33GHz) 38.327s HP Pavilion dv6000z (Turion X2 TL-60 @ 2.0GHz) 38.720s Notebook PCMark05 Score HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200) 3,994 PCMarks Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100) 4,149 PCMarks Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB) 5,412 PCMarks Dell Inspiron 1520 (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA 8600M GT) 4,616 PCMarks Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS) 4,591 PCMarks Lenovo ThinkPad X61 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 4,153 PCMarks Lenovo 3000 V200 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 3,987 PCMarks Lenovo T60 Widescreen (2.0GHz Intel T7200, ATI X1400 128MB) 4,189 PCMarks HP dv6000t (2.16GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 4,234 PCMarks Fujitsu N6410 (1.66GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400) 3,487 PCMarks Alienware M7700 (AMD Athlon FX-60, Nvidia Go 7800GTX) 5,597 PCMarks Sony VAIO SZ-110B in Speed Mode (Using Nvidia GeForce Go 7400) 3,637 PCMarks Asus V6J (1.86GHz Core Duo T2400, Nvidia Go 7400) 3,646 PCMarks Notebook 3DMark06 Score HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200) 1,599 3DMarks Dell Inspiron 1525 (2.0GHz Intel T7250, Intel X3100) 545 3DMarks HP Pavilion dv6500z (2.0GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-60, NVIDIA 8400m GS) 1,551 3DMarks Sony VAIO NR (1.5GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5250, Intel X3100) 504 3DMarks Dell XPS M1530 (2.20GHz Intel T7500, Nvidia 8600M GT 256MB) 4,332 3DMarks Dell Inspiron 1520 (2.0GHz Intel T7300, NVIDIA 8600M GT) 2,905 3DMarks Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) 1,408 3DMarks Alienware Area 51 m5550 (2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, nVidia GeForce Go 7600 256MB 2,183 3DMarks HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 827 3DMarks Notebook 3DMark05 Results HP Pavilion dv5z (2.1GHz Turion X2 Ultra ZM-80, ATI Radeon HD 3200) 2,969 3DMarks Dell XPS M1330 (2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) 3,116 3DMarks HP Compaq 6510b (2.20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, Intel X3100) 916 3DMarks HP Compaq 6515b (1.6GHz AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-52, ATI x1270) 871 3DMarks HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 2,013 3D Marks Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400) 1,791 3D Marks Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB) 4,236 3DMarks Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB) 7,078 3D Marks Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB) 2,092 3D Marks Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB) 2,530 3D Marks Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB) 2,273 3DMarks Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB) 2,090 3D Marks 
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Noise was likewise a non-issue with the fan on the dv5z. The fan moved a significant amount of hot air but the noise was reasonably quieter than what we hear on most budget notebooks. When the fan is on low it is perfectly silent. When the fan is on high (such as when the system is stressed while playing 3D video games) you can hear it running in a quiet room but its still not as loud as many budget notebooks weve reviewed. Of course, the manufacturer of the cooling fan in your notebook might be different and the dv5z will produce more heat if you configure it with a dedicated graphics card, so your mileage (or decibels) may vary.
(source http://www.notebookreview.com)
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