HP Pavilion dv4-1220us NoteBook AMD Turion X2 RM-72(2.10GHz) 14.1" Wide XGA 4GB Memory 250GB HDD 5400rpm DVD Super Multi ATI Radeon HD 3200 - Retail

Exellent laptop

Reviewed By: newbie on 4/27/2009

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Very good deal on a very good machine. Others mentioned that it runs hot so I bought a cooling pad but have yet to use it.

Cons: Everyone was right about the battery. I got about an hour and a half of simple Internet usage (no gaming or videos) out of it before I had to plug in. I've ordered a larger battery and hope that will solve that issue.

15 out of 15 people found this review helpful. Did you?

Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!

Not too shabby

Reviewed By: lol 3000 characters on 7/13/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 week to 1 month

Pros: Its a nice looking piece of hardware, gold and very light tan diamond patterns on it. 4GB of RAM (DDR2-800 running @ 6-6-6-18) came with a 64-bit OS (Vista Home Premium). Vista isnt a pro, the fact that its 64bit is. The motherboard (780G mobile with SB700) does support up to 8GB of ram. Comes with an HDMI and eSata port. The fan is quiet most of the time. It uses, im not sure what its called, but I think its Cool n Quiet from AMD, that changes the clock speed of the CPU, NB, and HT Link to keep temperatures down. The webcam is nice, comes with some nice effects and frames. It is pretty quick, I timed it (after changing msconfig a bit) on start up and it take about a minute (40 seconds or so) to be fully loaded. Flip 3D is cool looking but i rarely use it.

*Other thoughts continued...I bought it like a week before Windows decided to "giveaway" 7 with all new versions of Vista (which still makes me made). Fan right now is at like 50% and its whisper quiet which is good. Not bad at a

Cons: The touchpad does suck a little. It isnt the best in the world but it works. I dont use the touchpad so it doesnt bother me. On start up the fan spins up to 100% which makes it sound like a car vaccum (almost) then it dies down. Anytime the CPU is fully loaded it spins up. No matter what you do in terms of blowing cooler air on it, it still spins 100%. It is a fingerprint magnet but not like the black version of this. Fingerprints will show but only if the light is a certain way and HP did include a microfiber cleaning cloth which works wonders. It does come with bloatware. Mostly HP Games which are fun for the most part but you can only play them once (GRRR) but its removeable. There are no back up discs that come with it. And it comes with a recovery partition of 13GB and my formatted C: is 219GB. You can do the math. Integrated video card isnt amazing (it does support full HD) so dont expect and DX10 games to run well on that. The hard drive is kinda small i have 153GB free.

Other Thoughts: I did look at AMD Overdrive to see if it would even work with this and it does. However becuase of CPU throttling the clock speed (multiplier) kept hopping around from 2.63 to 5.25 to 10.5 when its fully loaded. So Id have to mess around in the BIOS to get it to keep from doing that. Right now its sitting at 527Mhz on both cores. The temps last time I looked were 55 centigrade (getting warm) at idle when running overdrive and nothing else. There's so much more I cant put in here >.<!!!. I can say that coming from a 2.4ghz P4 with 1GB of Ram and XP Home this thing flies. If the hard drive was 320GB and it had a dedicated video card Id give it a 4.5/5. Im taking that half egg away because of the fan noise. Id recommend this to anyone who isnt going to play GRID or Mass Effect or anything of the sort. But stuff like DX9 and older it can handle with ease. Minus an egg from the video card. Minus an egg for the hard drive and fan noise. Im not taking off for Vista because its just that way.

4 out of 4 people found this review helpful. Did you?

Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!

Good Cheap Laptop

Reviewed By: ninetynine on 8/20/2009

Tech Level: average - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: Its a great laptop for the price I got it for (six hundred, without using the mail in rebate yet), but it may be a little pricey for its current price. Its decently fast, the AMD processor doesn't quite stack up to Core 2 Duo in application usage unfortunately, seems weaker than my desktop's E6420 (bought 2 years ago). Screen, keyboard and touch buttons are all very nice as well as its Wireless N and card reader abilities (both large selling points for me). Radeon 3200 is low end, but supports HDMI output with sound, which is great. Small screen size, low weight and portability was a huge priority for me as I lug this thing around campus all day and it's great for that.

Cons: There are a few cons that come with buying such a cheap laptop though.
-Trackpad sucks a lot. Heats up with the laptop, seems to be made of a metal and when it heats up it becomes unresponsive. Its a shiny, smooth finish is inferior to textured pads, moving your fingers across it smoothly is difficult.
-Battery Life may be considered above average but still not great, with battery life saving software and little bit less than half brightness I get about 2 1/2 hours
-Not exactly a solidly built laptop, doesn't come close to those single piece aluminum bodies that you see from Apple and Sony; it's also much fatter than them. You can feel that it's a bunch of plastic pieces held together, the back of the LCD panel also has a lot of flex.
-DVD burner is very iffy so far, every large file I burn, (~4gb) has problems, from install CDs which cant read some file's to data CDs which say the file is corrupted. All in all not something I want to see from a DVD burner in terms of reliablity.

Other Thoughts: I know, super lengthy review but these were some of the things that struck me as important about this laptop. The cons aren't terrible and some of them come with the territory of buying a cheap laptop anyway so I don't detract much from the rating. The cheap price I bought it at and the portability of this laptop is what really sold it for me.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you?

Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!

Reviewed By: on 8/11/2009

Tech Level: somewhat high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: 64-bit Vista seems to run a lot smoother than 32-bit. The Radeon HD 3200 is doing a lot better than I expected in the way of gaming, very good for an integrated card in my opionion, though it is an integrated card so don't get your hopes too high. HDMI is a plus too. Despite some people saying it overheats, it has not gotten overly hot for me, even while gaming. Battery life has also been better for me than some others has written, I've gotten 2-2 1/2 hours with it. Fast computer out of the box and after a clean reinstall or at least uninstalling of hp bloat, even faster. Looks great and feels like an overall solid computer. I love it!

Cons: The power cord goes in the side of the laptop, not that big of a deal but I'd rather have it on the back. Along with that, it is already getting a little loose, hopefully the connection stays good. That may be my fault but I've treated some other laptops a lot rougher than this one and they've stayed good. No Bluetooth is also a con, but it is inexpensive to get a Dongle so...not that bid of a deal.

Other Thoughts: Screen glare, fingerprints...you're gonna deal with that on basically all laptops now.

I like how hp has two headphone outs.

Done a little audio and video editting...handled the little things I've done with ease.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you?

Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!

I am very happy with my decision.

Reviewed By: sengkenken on 7/25/2009

Tech Level: high - Ownership: 1 month to 1 year

This user purchased this item from Newegg

Pros: - 64 bit
- Card Reader
- HDMI
- Remote

Cons: - Battery
- I wish it has track ball

Other Thoughts: Well after using my P4 1.8GHz Dell for 9 years, I feel that this laptop is very fast at least fast enough for me to do my work. I use it primarily for Java development. It can multitask very well. I don't have issue with Vista 64, Netbeans 6.7 works like a charm, playing dvd looks great.

When 4gb memory's price go down, that's the first thing I will add to this laptop. Plan to install Win7 later. Battery performance is very bad, but I always plug it in to the outlet so no issue there.

For $550 (after rebate), I am very happy.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful. Did you?

Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided!