Otaku Gadgets

The Hewlett-Packard Pavilion dv4-1465dx is another laptop that is focused on being a great 14-inch laptop for students. As you might already know, students demand specific things from their laptops and the recent run of student friendly laptops try to conform to those demands. This particular portable has the advantage of a really long battery life. It has a huge battery that is likely to last you all day and for real.

However, this advantage comes with a direct disadvantage. It is not the lightest of the lot. In fact, weighing in at nearly 6 pounds it is more like the heaviest of the lot. If you want something lighter, I would suggest you go for the Dell Studio S1440-022B. It is weighs less than 5 pounds, has good graphics power but lacks an optical drive. However, if battery-life is a top priority for you then the weight can easily be overlooked. Plus it has a good software bundle (almost the same as the Dell Studio S1440-022B), great special-edition design and a small Media Center remote control. Read on to find out more.

The Pavilion dv4-1465dx is a great laptop for anyone who is on the move and away from a power outlet for long stretches. It can go on for longer stretches on single charges than almost all of the modern laptops in its class. The massive 12-cell battery provides for this excellent battery life but takes away from the portability by making the laptop almost a pound heavier than its competitors.

Coming to the design, the laptop features a special metallic imprint in a plaid design made with dots that sets it apart from the crowded laptop market. The mocha brown color and glossy finish adds to the appeal of the laptop. This subtle design aspect is a special feature of HP special-edition laptops and the Pavilion dv4-1465dx is one of them. The extra large 12-cell battery on this laptop takes up some extra 1-inch of space at the bottom by forming a protrusion. It does not run the entire length of the laptop thankfully.

The glossy finish extends to the touch pad, giving it a chrome look due to its silvery color. While this looks really nice, the usability suffers from the glossy surface. Touch pads are better off with a matte finish instead of a glossy one because glossy surfaces stop your fingers from gliding over them. It also attracts a lot of smudges and fingerprints that make it look ugly in no time. The touch-pad here is of an unusual size at only 1.5 inches long by 3 inches wide. It is somewhat redeemed by the two buttons below it and the tiny toggle button above it.

The keyboard at least is a good one on the Pavilion dv4-1465dx even though the keys have a glossy finish on them. The shiny keys do add to the aesthetic appeal of the laptop but the finish is a hindrance to a good typing experience. Still, the keys do have a comfortable amount of travel and are quite silent, according to reviewers. The keyboard occupies the entire width of the laptop and makes good use of the space. There are touch sensitive buttons above the keyboard for WiFi and mute. There’s also a volume control but it has been reported as iffy by some testers. Media transport functions are present on the function keys.

Just when we were getting used to 16:9 aspect ratios on laptops, the HP Pavilion dv4-1465dx comes along with a more traditional screen with a 16:10 aspect ratio and a native resolution of 1280×800. While it may not make your movies look good, it will surely help you with other things. The most important difference will be when you are scrolling through long documents and web pages. Here a 16:10 screen works better than a 16:9 screen. The screen has a glossy coating, which is good for color but bad for viewing due to glares and such distractions.

Testers have reported that the Altec Lansing speakers on the Dv4-1465dx are average at best. They are okay for a movie or two but I would suggest you go for headphones. There are in fact two headphone ports for your convenience.

The ports on the system are fairly adequate for such a laptop. There’s the usual VGA port, 1 HDMI port, 3 USB 2.0 ports and eSata. There’s a multi-format card reader and the usual Ethernet port as well. There are two headphone ports as I mentioned earlier plus the standard microphone port. There’s also an ExpressCard/54 slot on the dv4-1465dx, which is becoming a rarity these days. It has WiFi at 802.11b/g but not the newer and faster 802.11n standard. There is no Bluetooth either but you can easily remedy that with an inexpensive Bluetooth USB dongle. It does include a DVD burner.

There is an extremely useful software bundle that comes with this laptop. You get the full Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 suite plus a 12-month subscription of the Norton Internet Security software. I should remind you here that the Dell S1440 that I mentioned earlier actually offers 15 months of protection. Possibly a byproduct of omitting the optical drive.

The HP Pavilion dv4-1465dx runs on an Intel Core 2 Duo T6500 processor clocked at 2.1Ghz. This is a midrange processor that provides decent performance but nothing spectacular. The laptop does have a good amount of memory – 4GB of DDR3 SDRAM at 800MHz. This is admittedly more than the Dell S1440.

For storage it has a 320GB SATA hard drive that spins at 5400rpm. The onboard Intel GMA 45010MHD chip handles the graphics part. This is another place where the competing Dell laptop does better with a 256MB Nvidia GeForce graphics card.

The testers have reported a good overall performance score for the laptop. The battery is expected to last you for over 7 hours with average usage.  So overall, it just depends on what your priorities are.