CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Mediocre
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 12/02/2009
- Released on: 10/01/2009
Editors' note: This review is part of our 2009 Retail Laptop and Desktop Holiday Roundup, which covers specific fixed configurations of popular systems found in retail stores.
Yeesh. HP's Pavilion Elite has missed the mark before, but the discrepancy between this $799 Pavilion Elite E9220y and other retail PCs might be as wide as we've seen. HP is essentially asking you to pay $150 for $80 worth of features and slower performance than its competition. If you haven't already guessed, we don't recommend this desktop.
HP's Pavilion Elite chassis has been around for just over two years, and we continue to find it a mixed offering. It looks good on the outside, and for many of you that might be all that matters. Its black plastic is accented by soft, blue LED buttons. Wireless and drive activity indicator lights add a touch of functional polish. In general this system cuts a profile that strikes a balance between approachable and sophisticated.
The disconnect comes by way of the specialized bay HP includes for adding one of its proprietary Personal Media drives. HP only included one of these bays this time (we've seen two of them crammed into older Pavilion Elites), so the internal clutter and redundant functionality is reduced, but you're still faced with the Personal Media drive cage that blocks access to the standard hard-drive bays. Adding a second or third standard hard drive to this system is thus much more complicated than it should be.
| HP Pavilion Elite E9220y | Asus Essentio CG5270-BP004 | |
| Price | $799 | $649 |
| CPU | 2.6GHz AMD Phenom II X4 910 | 2.5GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q3200 |
| Memory | 8GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM | 8GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM |
| Graphics | 512MB ATI Radeon HD 4350 | 32MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip |
| Hard drives | 1TB, 7,200rpm | 1TB, 7,200rpm |
| Optical drive | dual-layer DVD burner | dual-layer DVD burner |
| Networking | Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n | Gigabit Ethernet |
| Operating system | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) | Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) |
The drive issue is familiar, and also of little consequence compared with the Pavilion Elite E9220y's larger problems. The side-by-side comparison with the $650 Asus system above only tells part of the story. Aside from the price, and the CPU, the primary differences between the two systems features-wise are that the HP has wireless networking, and also a discrete budget graphics card. Asus sticks with wired networking and integrated graphics.
Wi-Fi and better graphics are great of course, and worth paying extra for as long as the value lines up. Considering that you could add Wi-Fi and the same ATI graphics card yourself to the Asus for around $80 or so, we'd need to see more from the HP to justify its higher price tag. You can argue that it's more visually attractive than the Asus system, and also that HP's service and support is more comprehensive, but we tend to take a more practical-minded stance, and the HP's laggard performance offsets any intangible benefits that might improve its value.
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Rendering multiple CPUs | |
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The HP Pavilion Elite E9220y is plainly slower than the less expensive Asus, but we find the $799 HP's speed relative to the $679 HP Pavilion P6230y almost as problematic. That lower-end HP comes up marginally faster than the Pavilion Elite E9220y, and because it also offers wireless networking, and HP's polished aesthetics and robust support, the only thing the Pavilion Elite really has to recommend it over that model is its budget ATI graphics card, which you can find online for $40. That hardly accounts for the $120 premium HP wants for Elite over the standard Pavilion. If the Asus doesn't convince you that this HP is a dog, surely HP's own Pavilion P6230y will.
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