HP Pavilion dv5-2035dx user reviews

3.0 stars

"Great keyboard, screen and weight; mediocre performance" on September 1, 2010 by urmnothanks

Pros: Great keyboard, phenomenal keyboard. Decent screen, especially for a 14.5" laptop. Nice weight, alright battery.

Cons: Trackpad is pretty terrible, but can be overcome. Mediocre performance, if you do more than Internet/email, Microsoft Office and music/video playback, consider an i3-equipped laptop for $50-$100 more.

Summary: I bought this computer against my better judgment versus an i3-equipped version of a similar HP machine. Frankly, I liked the appearance, and since I was replacing a computer that unexpectedly crashed, price was a concern. I absolutely love how it looks. It doesn't pick up many fingerprints, everything is sleek and attractive, and it doesn't look like it was designed by 15-year-old boys for other 15-year-old boys. The keyboard is phenomenal. The screen is very bright and crisp, though coming from a MacBook Pro, the resolution leaves a bit to be desired and the calibration isn't quite right. I bought it mostly for the keyboard and portability. I spend most of my time typing; whether it's Word documents or on the Internet, I type a lot and I spend a lot of time looking at the screen, so these things are important to me. Portability was also important, and I liked the 15.6" resolution on a lighter, smaller 14.5" screen. It also just FEELS thin, which is a plus, when you've got to carry it around with you to classes.

The trackpad, oh God, the trackpad. It DEFINITELY takes some getting used to. To be honest, it can be tweaked to work well, with the exception of the right click. If you are pretty comfortable using a trackpad and click to tap, then you should be fine. The left and right mouse click buttons are abysmal. The trackpad area extends over the buttons (WHY IS THIS?) so when you go to press left or right click, if you don't keep your finger perfectly still, the cursor will move away from what you were trying to click on and you'll click something else. Tap to click alleviates a lot of these problems, except of course right click. I'm looking into maybe being able to tap to left click + a modifier like CTRL to right click, so I don't have to ever actually depress the buttons. This is what I would prefer, anyhow. I also use a LOT of hotkeys, so my mouse doesn't get used as much as some people might use it.

The performance is not the greatest, though I immediately removed the Intel X-25M SSD from my MacBook Pro (fried graphics card, 4 1/2 years old), and put it into this HP, which has made everything significantly quicker, so I can't speak to how the stock performance is. If you HAVE an extra hundred dollars to spare or if performance is an issue for you (you do stuff beyond web browsing and word processing) definitely spring for an i3-equipped laptop.

Bottom line is this is a light-weight, attractive laptop, with a nice screen and an even nicer keyboard. The trackpad is terrible, though it can be made to be acceptable, if you want to fiddle with it and never need to use the left/right click buttons (like I said above, tap to click and tap to click + modifier for right click). I bought it because I like nice looking computers and performance wasn't a huge issue for me. I also had a SSD to put in it, so I wasn't terribly worried about performance.

I am writing this review because this laptop deserves more than 1/2 a star. Out of all the laptops in the Best Buy I went to, none of them were as attractive and simplistic as this laptop, and the middling performance does not warrant that poor a rating. The trackpad is the only thing that is really bad. I have not had to contact HP customer support (thankfully), though from what I hear, most of the major manufacturers can put out some pretty God-awful experiences for their customers.