HP Pavilion TX2130ea review

HP's Pavilion TX2130ea is a convertible laptop and Tablet PC.

You can leave it open and use the keyboard and touch pad, or fold it flat and control it with the touch screen and stylus. Using it in tablet mode is useful if you're in a confined place and there's no room to open the laptop, and is comfortable when reading documents.

In tablet mode, the screen folds flat against the keyboard and automatically switches to portrait mode. Unlike HP's previous tablets, this has an infrared sensor on each side of the display to make the touch screen more accurate. It works beautifully; the onscreen pointer accurately follows the movement of your pen, and it's easy to click on even tiny icons.

The handwriting-recognition application coped well with our messy scrawl, and it's easy to correct erroneous letters one at a time. You write letters into a pop-up box, and they're transferred automatically to any open programs. Using the stylus is fun with painting programs such as ArtRage (www.ambientdesign.com/artrage.html).

The PC works well as a normal laptop, but there are compromises. The TX2130ea's 12.1in display has a grainy texture. It's also dim even at maximum brightness, and its narrow horizontal and vertical viewing angles make it hard to share what's on the screen with others. Colours are accurate, though. The keyboard is comfortable to use, as the keys have long travel and well-judged feedback. We didn't like the touch pad's rough texture and inaccurate pointer movement, though.

Processing power comes from a dual-core AMD Turion and 2GB of RAM. It performed well in our video-encoding test with 175, but its overall score of 125 is below average, and slower than the Intel Core 2 Duo-equipped Samsung R410. It runs Windows Vista smoothly, and while its integrated graphics chipset couldn't run our Call of Duty 2 test, it copes well with Vista's Aero interface.

There are two batteries: a four-cell and an eight-cell. Battery life with the four-cell battery is poor at two hours and four minutes, but this rose to a respectable four hours and nine minutes with the larger battery fitted. The big battery doesn't add much to the laptop's dimensions, and, if you're right-handed, provides a useful handle when using it in tablet mode.

This is a niche product, as not many people need the advantages a Tablet PC offers. However, it's the best we've seen so far. The touch screen and handwriting recognition work brilliantly and the Pavilion is good value, too. If you'd like a Tablet PC but don't want to do away with a keyboard, it's a good buy.