In recent years, HP has been putting a lot of efforts in their consumer laptop designs and the HDX Series can certainly be seen as the spearhead of this trend. I’ll let form your own opinion on the design from our photo gallery, but I can tell you that the finish itself is impeccable. There was a great emphasis put on using quality materials and it is quite obvious when you interact with the computer. The surface has also received an anti-scratch treatment that feels solid, although we did not torture-test this aspect of the laptops while we had our hands on them… The 16″ display is a true 16:9 (1366×768) display, which represents the latest trend as 16:10 used to rule, not so long ago. It’s a good-looking laptop, but don’t forget its 7.4 lbs weight (9 lbs for the 18″ version).
On the technical side, the HDX series is among the rare laptops that can support up to 8GB of memory, which makes them a perfect choice for a Vista64. If you choose to go for 8GB of ram, you might also want to upgrade for a faster 7200rpm hard disk drive. It has real graphics capabilities, thanks to the NVIDIA GeForce 9600GT discrete graphics chip. Finally, it uses Centrino 2, which can connect to WiFi-N networks. The 18″ version’s larger display can accommodate a native 1080p resolution, has a larger battery and has two 250GB hard drives that I imagine can be used in RAID0, which would make the throughput higher. This needs to be confirmed.
HP HDX 16
- 2.26Ghz CPU, Centrino 2 chipset
- 4GB RAM (8GB max)
- 320GB HDD
- 16:9, 16″ display (1366×768)
- HDMI out
- HP Triple Bass Subwoofer
- NVIDIA 9600GT graphics
- 6-Cell battery
- 7.4 Lbs
HP HDX 18 (main differences)
- 2x250GB HDD (5400rpm)
- 16:9, 18″ display (1920×1080, 1080p)
- 8-Cell battery
- 9 Lbs
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