Full review of HP HDX 16t

As a 16″ HTPC, the HP HDX 16 sports all the features you’d want in a multimedia powerhouse. The 16″ display is a flush glass 16:9 1920×1080 1080p HD ready spectacle of an LCD. Aside from that, the unit is stuffed with a P7350 Intel Core 2 Dup 2.0GHz, a 512MB Nvidia GeForce 9600M GPU, 4GB RAM, a 250GB HDD and of course a Blu-ray player. All this going along with an attractive titanium liquid metallic design means the HDX won’t be the least expensive laptop on the block, but the price is reasonable for the feature set.

Design, Keyboard and Mouse

The HDX is stylishly designed with silver and charcoal lines streaking across the charcoal lid and palmrest, even racing right across the trackpad. Above the keyboard are a number of pale glowing multimedia touch-buttons and sliders. The sliders unfortunately don’t work as well as the buttons, but it creates an altogether attractive look. The keyboard is full sized and includes a number pad (although the num pad is somewhat shrunken), and it is relatively quiet and comfortable to type on. The trackpad was a joy to use, as the smooth surface never gave our fingers that sticky feeling at the end of a long scroll which we’ve felt on other trackpads.

Connectivity

The HDX comes with some noteworthy features, most of which are packed onto the left side of the unit. It comes with HDMI, eSATA, FireWire, VGA, ExpressCard 34/54, Ethernet, 4USB (1 shared with eSATA), a multicard reader, 2 audio out and audio in. HDMI is essential for any multimedia notebook and the second audio out is a nice thought – now you and your friend can both watch that movie on the airplane without splitting up your earbuds.

Multimedia Power

Aside from the gorgeous, glossy, flush glass 1080p 16″ display, the HDX offers a number of other multimedia features. The unit sports an integrated remote which can be used to watch movies or listen to music from a distance, and there is preinstalled HP MediaSmart software to help your organize and enjoy your media. The Blu-ray player displays beautifully on the LCD and a TV tuner is an available option for those who want it.

Performance and Conclusion

The HDX scored an 80 on worldbench, a 3320 on PCMark Vantage, and a 1225 on 3DMark Vantage. Translating those numbers a bit, you’ll find you have a computer that fares well on general performance and puts up average gaming numbers, although it’s clearly not designed for it. Perhaps the weakest number revealed in our testing was the 80 minutes of battery life during Blu-ray playback, which is barely enough to watch an entire film, although regular use battery life almost doubles to 156 minutes. The laptop is a little on the bulky side, but on the whole this laptop is an excellent and beautiful multimedia powerhouse that you can take with you when you need to.

HP HDX 16t Technical Specifications

• Processor 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7350
• Memory 2GB
• Harddrive 250GB
• OS Windows Vista Home Premium
• Weight 7.3 lbs
• Screen 16.0 in
• Screen resolution 1920×1080
• Graphic Card Nvidia 9600M GT
• Battery Life 156 minutes

Pros

• Beautiful LCD
• Beautiful lid/palmrest design
• Blu-ray + integrated remote
• Reasonably powerful

Cons

• Heavy
• Size is thick
• Runs somewhat warm

Full review of Lenovo Idea Pad S10

Seeing that a majority of net books are based on the Intel Atom N270 CPU, GMA950 graphics, and Windows XP Home as the operating system (the s10 being no exception), you have to look at what other features it brings to the table. Besides the eye-pleasing and Mac Book-like design, the base model of Lenovo’s S10 is actually not that well equipped compared to similar net books. It has an 80GB hard drive and only 512MB of RAM, although most buyers will probably throw in an extra $50 and get the 160GB hard drive and 1GB RAM.

Keyboard and Trackpad

After testing the keyboard/track pad combination on the S10 for a while, we found that the track pad provided a nice and consistent experience, although the buttons where a bit loud when depressed. Also, the keyboard felt somewhat cramped like it does on most net books, but some odd-sized keys like a minimal tab key made it feel even more so on the S10 than most other 10″ net books that we’ve tested.

Connectivity

Looking at the connectivity, the S10 has a nice set of features: Two USB ports, VGA out, headphone, microphone, LAN, multi-card reader, Bluetooth and Express Card. A big plus and a gold star to Lenovo for the last two items on the list – having Bluetooth is a must for some users, and an express card slot is also nice to see on a net book. Again, like most other net books it lacks support for wireless N (the fast variety).

Performance and Battery Life

In our World Bench test, the S10 delivered a score of 29, which is a slightly lower score than the competition, but this can probably be attributed to the 512MB of RAM. Upgrade to a gig of RAM and you will probably see an improvement to a score in line with other net books. According to Lenovo, you should be able to get almost 4 hours of battery life, but in the real world – with Wi-Fi on and screen brightness turn up – you’ll be lucky to get 3:30 out of the 3-cell battery. This is to be expected from a 3-cell, but it would have been nice to at least have the option to get it with a 6-cell.

All in all, the Lenovo S10 is a nice-looking net book that performs predictably. It can definitely be recommended, but I would opt for an upgrade to at least 1GB of RAM. Unlike some other net books, the S10 is also thankfully very easy to upgrade.

Lenovo Idea Pad S10 Technical Specifications

• Processor 1.6GHz Atom N270
• Memory 512MB
• Hard drive 80GB
• OS Windows XP Home
• Weight 2.4lbs
• Screen 10.2 inches
• Screen resolution 1024×600
• Graphic Card Intel GMA950
• Battery Life 3.5 Hours