At $729, it's more expensive and slower than another 15.6 inch mainstream laptop, the $499 Acer Aspire 5735-4624. With both choices having the same 16:9 display and separate number pad, it's hard to argue against saving $130 and getting better performance (and battery life) from the Acer's Intel Pentium Dual Core CPU.
Specification - Price as reviewed / Starting price $729
- Processor 2.0GHz AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core RM-70
- Memory 3GB, 667MHz DDR2
- Hard drive 250GB, 5,400rpm
- Chipset AMD RS780M
- Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G (integrated)
- Operating system Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
- Dimensions (WD) 14.9 x 9.9 inches
- Height 1.4 inches
- Screen size (diagonal) 15.6 inches
- System weight / Weight with AC adapter 6.4/7.2 pounds
- Category Mainstream
It's a sleek look, but the plastic has a bit too much finger drag there's a reason most touch pads have a distinct, matte coating. The keyboard is identical to the one you'd find on more expensive HP systems, although the keyboard tray lacks the touch sensitive media control buttons seen on the popular Pavilion line.
The 15.6 inch wide screen LCD display offers a 1.366x768 native resolution, which is standard on this screen size (and comparable with the 1.280x800 found on 16:10 models). It's readable, but most documents and Web pages will require some scrolling. We were also turned off by the overly glossy screen, which was very reflective, even in moderate lighting conditions.
