HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx – An Attractive Back-To-School Laptop

Pros

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx has a thin body and a stylish design; the system has a respectable battery life and offers immensely fast Core i5 performance.

Cons

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx doesn’t have Blu-ray drive, which is present in some of the other similarly priced laptops and it also lacks dedicated graphics.

Introduction

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx is one of the most stylish HP midrange laptops we’ve seen, like the dm4 we saw back in June this system also comes with decent specifications. The HP Pavilion dm4 we reviewed back in June was a 14-inch thin-and-light notebook equipped with Core i5 and included a huge touch pad and an upscale design in a sharp-looking plastic-and-metal chassis.

Though, we did have one problem with dm4-1065, and that was its price tag of $979, which added comparatively less value than competitors. We got our dm4-1065dx for $799, but we think you could get slightly better specifications for the same price from some other manufacturers in market, but even this laptop is not at all a bad buy. The best thing here is that the system still is slim and stylish as ever. The bottom line here is that if you want a thin and stylish laptop offering decent battery life and powerful Core-i5 performance, look no further.

Design

Being the close cousin of HP’s 13 inch Pavilion dm3, the all new HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx has the similar metallic body. Though, instead of the brushed-metal look, that the dm3 had the dm4 features imprinted lines cutting and arcing their way athwart the lid and palm-rest of the system which adds a smooth curving line to the overall texture of the system. The keyboard of the system is surrounded by a metal area and the surface is at the back of the lid, but some other parts like the keyboard, upper lid, the bottom and parts of the hinges. The system mostly feels high-end, though the screen is covered in inset plastic rather than being edge-to-edge glass.

The system has gently curved corners that gives the dm4 a highly consumer friendly and soft look. The corners of the keyboard tray are equally curved and so is the case with the extra-large touch pad.

The keyboard on dm4-1065 is just like the ones we have seen on recent HP systems, and has the same widely spaced flat-topped keys. The keypad doesn’t have any sort of media control buttons and all your media and interchange key functions are mapped on to the row of Fn keys.

One of the major point that we noted here was that although, the keyboard was nicely laid out, but still it didn’t gave as comfortable feel as we’ve seen in the comfortable Sony Vaio EA24FM, which is yet another retail laptop.

The touchpad is similar as we’ve seen in some of HP’s high-end Envy laptops. One major disappointment here is that the system lacks Blu-ray and Bluetooth.

System Configuration

Price: $799.99
Manufacturer: HP
Part Number: dm4-1065dx
Notebook type: Thin-and-light (3-5 lbs.)
Dimensions (W x D x H): 13.4 x 9.0 x 1.3 inches
Weight: 4.4 lb
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Display Type: 14.0 in LED display
Processor: Intel Core i5 430M / 2.26 GHz
Hard Drive: 500 GB
RAM: 4 GB / 8 GB (max)
Graphics: Intel GMA HD

Graphics Processor / Vendor: Intel HD Graphics
Input device type: Keyboard & Touchpad r
Software: Microsoft Silverlight, Drivers & Utilities, CyberLink DVD Suite
Video: VGA & HDMI
Audio: microphone/headphone jacks and Stereo speakers
Optical Drive: DVD burner

Performance

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx runs  on Intel Core i5 processor, which coffers a snappy performance to the system for working on normal applications, Web-browsing and general multitasking. For most of the users the performance by the system will be more than sufficient and will offer immense functional speeds.

The system doesn’t have dedicated graphics card, which means there isn’t any significant support for mainstream gaming though, you surely can enjoy casual gaming here. The HP The Pavilion dm4-1065dx ran for around 4 hours and 8 minutes in our video playback battery draining test, with its included 6-cell battery. Now, this is really great for a 14-inch laptop, especially considering the fact that not many of the midsize laptops have offered such great performance.

Support

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx gets an industry standard one year mail-in parts-and-labor warranty from HP. The support can also be accessed through a 24×7 toll-free phone line, driver downloads and an online knowledge base. You can even get extended warranty from the retail outlets, but considering the fact that they are generally expensive, we don’t recommend them.

Word from the Experts

The HP Pavilion dm4-1065dx is a slick and powerful laptop from HP, with superb battery life, decent performance and has an eye-catching design, and all that at an attractive back-to-school laptop.