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November 25, 2008

HP HDX16 review

The HP HDX16 offers desktop replacement performance and features in an all-purpose laptop - and looks pretty slick in the process.

Sure, the HP HDX16's screen may be a little smaller than its predecessor the HP HDX18, and it comes with a smaller hard drive. But if anything, the HP HDX16 hits a sweet spot that its bigger brother can't match: a lower price.

The HP HDX16 has brawn to match its beauty. In our WorldBench 6 tests, HP's notebook scored a solid 100. It's not quite the fastest we've seen, but it's more than powerful enough to play some games as well as video.

A 2.8GHz Core2 Duo CPU (T9600), 4GB of RAM, and nVidia's 512MB GeForce 9600M GT GPU fuel our review HP HDX16. Now, we can spit out framerates of games like Doom 3 (which achieved a respectable 90 frames per second at 1280-by-1024 resolution), but what matters is that the HDX16 is capable of playing this season's big guns without much of a hitch.

We tooled around Fallout 3 and Left 4 Dead on the screen's native 1920-by-1080 resolution. Both looked good and ran fairly smoothly on the HP HDX16.

However, it didn't last quite as long as we would have liked. The HP HDX16's battery ran only 2 hours, 12 minutes in tests. That's pretty weak and not what one hopes for out of an all-purpose machine. So, if you're planning for a road trip, buy a beefier battery or just make sure that you keep the power brick close by.

A little hefty for an all-purpose, the HP HDX16 weighs 3.35kg with the power brick and measures 332/434x379x335mm. It does have a 16.4in screen - which sits it right at the border between an all-purpose notebook and a desktop replacement portable.

The glossy finish on the HP HDX16's panel ensures that you'll never be alone - you'll always see your reflection. It isn't the highly polished, highly annoying sheen that you find on many glossy panels, but it's still hard to ignore.

The important part is that everything from Blu-ray movies to the newest games come across looking great. Yep, the HP HDX16 is an all-purpose machine that manages to squeeze a BD-ROM drive into its price.

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Independent customer reviews from

HP HDX16 scored:
9.2 out of 10 100% real reviews

The 2 most helpful reviews based on 2 reviews:

30 Jul 2009 Owain, Bournemouth

10

Good Points

Screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 is amazing. The performance is truly outstanding. Able to handle very demanding games and you can really tell the difference compared to laptops with lesser screen quality, graphics cards and processor speeds - very quick.

Bad Points

I'm really trying hard to find bad points. If anything it would be: A little heavy (but this is due to the high performance components) Battery life a little short at around 2.2 hours (but again is because of the high performance components) - you can always buy a battery with a life of just over 4 hours from HP for an extra £100.

25 Aug 2009 Anonymous verified purchaser

8

Good Points

Nice design and good spec, great sound for a laptop

Bad Points

Glare on screen from light

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