HP Pavilion HDX9320 review

The first thing that struck us about the HP Pavilion HDX932 - aptly code-named the 'Dragon' - was its sheer size.

With its hefty power supply, the HP weighs in at a whopping 8.2kg, three times as much as the average laptop, and its screen is a massive 20 inches across. So it's not a laptop in the traditional sense; you'd hardly sling it in a bag and take it on the train. Instead, the HP is designed as a desktop replacement machine, a home media centre that can be lugged around or folded up.

Its size and weight contribute to impressively solid build quality. The full size keyboard and wrist rest were comfortable, with none of the flex that laptops often suffer. The screen is hinged on an arm so that you can position it ergonomically.

Wings and scales

There's plenty more around the chassis that highlights how well suited the Dragon is to media functions. As well as the usual VGA output, there's HDMI, in case you want to play movies from the built-in Blu-ray drive on an even bigger HDTV screen. Conversely, if you want to watch TV on your HP, a DVB-T digital TV tuner is included. The only downside is that it's a single tuner, so you can't watch one channel while recording another.

The Pavilion's built-in speakers were good enough to make movies sound full and punchy, and the Blu-ray drive will play the latest HD movies, though when it comes to writing your own discs it can only burn CDs and DVDs, not Blu-ray media. It's a little bit of a shame that the screen can't quite stretch to the 1080 pixel height required for full HD playback, but at 1680x1050 any loss of quality due to scaling was barely noticeable.

Extras include a memory card reader that accepts plenty of common formats, WiFi support that caters for the latest Draft-n standard, and Bluetooth to connect to your mobile phone and wireless peripherals. There's FireWire to connect your MiniDV camcorder, and eSATA for the fastest external hard disks. With 500GB already built in, provided by two 250GB drives, you won't be rushing to upgrade, but a similarly sized eSATA drive would be the ideal backup solution.

Fire in the belly

The core specification provides plenty of power for whatever applications you have in mind. The 2.5GHz Core 2 Duo Mobile T9300 processor is one of the most capable portable chips. In our 2D (general) benchmark, it achieved a huge score of 235% - good for a desktop, amazing for a laptop. Gaming performance was just as impressive thanks to the inclusion of an nVidia GeForce 8800M GTS, one of the top mobile graphics cards. Most laptops, even those with claims to gaming ability, struggle to get near the 100% mark in our Call of Duty 2 benchmark; the Dragon hit 171%.

Lugging this gigantic machine away from your armchair seems so unlikely that we almost forgot to test the HP's battery life, but when we did, we were pleasantly surprised. In our light use test, the Dragon kept going for over three hours, and when we pushed the battery harder by playing a DVD, it still lasted just under an hour and three quarters, so watching a film between charges isn't out of the question. That's a good result for such a hefty machine.

If you can handle the bulk, the HP Pavilion HDX9320 could be the ideal home PC. It's stylish, immensely capable for work and play, and - thanks to the Blu-ray drive, decent speakers and big screen - a fantastic semi-portable media centre.It narrowly misses out on an award by being a little pricey, but if there was a prize for desirable all round systems that are a little bit different, we'd enter the Dragon.

Author: Mike Jennings