HP Pavilion dv9850ea review

HP's Pavilion dv9850ea is based on a design that's over a year old, but that's no reason to discount it. In fact, the glossy silver and black finish, coupled with the gently curved edges, make it one of the most stylish 17in laptops around.

At 3.6kg this is a laptop that will spend most of its life on a desk, but if you do want to work on the move, the battery will last around three hours.

The main benefits of buying a desktop-replacement laptop are a large screen, comfortable keyboard and good performance; the dv9850ea ticks all three boxes. Although the screen's resolution isn't as high as some, 1,440x900 is an ideal compromise between readability and working area. The glossy finish makes colours vibrant, while the even backlight and wide viewing angles make it a pleasure to use.

As laptop keyboards go, this is one of the better ones. It's a little rattly, but the layout is almost identical to a desktop PC's, even down to the number pad on the right. We were also pleased with the touch pad, which is accompanied by sizeable, easy-to-press buttons. Above the keyboard are touch-sensitive playback controls, plus quick-launch buttons for HP's media centre software.

Performance in our application benchmarks was reasonable at this price, but not exceptional. The dual-core AMD Turion processor is powerful enough for most tasks, but struggled a little in our audio-encoding tests. If gaming is important to you, there's an integrated GeForce 8600M GS graphics card, which managed 6.7fps in Call of Duty 2. Again, this is unexceptional and adequate only for older games at low detail settings.

It's good to see plenty of video outputs, including HDMI, VGA and analogue TV-out. There are also four USB2 ports, a media card reader and two headphone outputs. With Gigabit Ethernet, Draft-N WiFi, Bluetooth, infrared and a V.92 modem, you'll never be stuck for a way to connect to other devices.

The lack of a Blu-ray drive or built-in TV tuner are just about forgivable compromises at this price. At least there's a dual-layer DVD writer, a webcam and a pair of decent Altec Lansing speakers. HP's Total Care Advisor is a thoughtful touch. It gathers together system information such as the charge state and health of the battery, how much hard disk space is free and links to warranty and other information. The Pavilion is covered by a one-year collect-and-return warranty.

The dv9850ea is good desktop replacement laptop, but isn't stunning value. Asus's similarly specified F7Sr (Labs, Shopper 243) is £100 cheaper, slightly faster and suffers only from short battery life.