HP Pavilion dv5-1235dx user reviews

4.0 stars

"Weigh the good, the bad and the price- could be the one" on December 31, 2009 by binary11

Pros: +Truly awesome screen, especially for the price
+Battery life is amazing; pretty much lives up to promises made on the box unlike other laptops
+Weight (without the battery) is great
+Reliable, dependable, tough; hasn't crashed or let me down yet.

Cons: -Keyboard is near IMPOSSIBLE to clean. Huge gaps invite debris, keys get stuck/sticky.
-Media touch keys are TOO sensitive get scuffed/scratched easy.
-Screen gets dirty, leading to glare (esp. in the sun)
-Battery is anchor-like in size & weight.

Summary: I want to caution everyone: this is the kind of laptop that will make a lot of people upset while others will swear by it's greatness.

I have owned this computer for about 6 months. The computer definitely works for me; I use is mostly at home- where I can just plug it in and remove the HUGE battery. The secondary use is travel, where the long battery life is worth the extra weight and awkward size (to me). The huge hard drive, DVD player/writer put it ahead of the others.
KEEP IN MIND THE PRICE! Cnet's list price is $879, but I got a much better deal at Best Buy- $670 ($700 with tax). If I had paid $900, I probably would't be as happy with it as I am now. For the price I paid, no other laptop I saw gives you all of these features:
*5.7 lb weight (yes, without that beast of a battery), which falls under the thin-and-light laptop category. Those laptops tend to be expensive and NOT have any of the following...
*A legit 6+ hours of battery life on regular settings...the actual 8 hours claimed is indeed possible if you put it in the most power-saving settings. Don't take that for granted; most advertised laptop battery lives are wishful thinking, bold exaggeration, or outright fiction.
*Dual core, 4 GB of RAM, expandable up to 8 GB. This is somewhat rare for this size/price, but something HP always does it. For a lot of people, this doesn't matter, but programs will always ask more and more from your computer over time. I chose to have something I could upgrade, rather than something that may be irrelevant in a few years. I think that says something about HP; they don't want you to buy a new machine every year, they really care about giving you something good that is upgradable and will last.
*One of the best screens you'll find for under $900-$1,000...Not just in SIZE,15.4 in, which is high-mid range for laptops (again, great for the price if you can get it around $700), but also QUALITY. I'll attempt to break down all the fancy terms used in the specs page in an attempt to show that they aren't just jibberish and that they translate to it being a very good screen. "TFT active matrix" basically means the best available technology in flat-panel screens (thin-film technology, active matrix vs. passive matrix which is a lower resolution). It has "Brightview" technology, which means "an electronic display with a glossy surface"...it looks gorgeous, and if you compare to a non-glossy/non-Brightview, you can definitely see the difference. It looks a whole lot better, but it is susceptible to more glare. It isn't as much of a factor if you're only using it indoors- but commuters/outdoor users beware; it is hard to see in the sun. The screen resolution is where a lot of people get confused and don't know what they're looking at, talking about or what it means. To put it in the simplest terms, the higher the resolution, the more dots or pixels on your display device, the better it looks. The maximum resolution on this laptop is 1280 x 800- this is the number of dots/pixels on the screen (try comparing it to an older computer you have to see how much better this would be) and that 1280 x 800 ratio is what computer people call WXGA, wide extended graphics array. That is about at the mid range of the spectrum
[What spectrum? This one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active-matrix_liquid_crystal_display]...while there are several levels higher than this, only 3 are common in this size of screen and ALL of them considerably drive up the cost of the machine. After doing the research, I assure you this combination of resolution, screen size and prize is very reasonable and one of the main reasons I bought it.

Enough tech talk- Here are some other little features and extras I like: It has a neat little remote that slides right into the computer. I have lost every other computer remove I've owned except this one, and it is important if your computer replaces your stereo/TV or if you want to connect it to your TV...and if you do connect it to a HD-TV, it looks great. The integrated webcam is easy to use; I've never used one before and it works all by itself.

Another great feature- the exterior. Not another standard black, or gray, or pretending-to-be-a-mac white. Its officially called bronze/chrome, I call it chocolate milk- but shiny! It is unique and attractive; both the exterior and when opened up.

Downsides, as promised: I've had it for 6 months and it does NOT look new. The screen, keyboard and touch controls get really dirty really quick. The little holes/grating for the "speakers" (which are BAD, even by laptop standards) can get clogged, and like everything else are impossible to clean. This model's battery is BIG. It sticks out, making it tough to fit it in a laptop bag, and even tougher to fit anything else with it. Keep that in mind if you plan to use it as a (very heavy) carry-on.

If none of the drawbacks are deal-breakers and you can get a good price on it, I'd recommend this laptop highly.