KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
As we mentioned earlier, the Hewlett Packard DM1Z is equipped with an 11.6 inch 1366×768 resolution twisted nematic panel. For such a small screen, the resolution is very generous and the clarity is very good indeed across the full width of the screen.
The colour is vibrant, especially if viewed directly head on. Viewing at a slight angle vertically or horizontally means that the contrast will change, but this is common with a TN panel.
The colour calibration and gamma is fairly well calibrated at the factory although a minor tweak to the red channel removes a slight pink tinge, perhaps not noticeable to many, but it is there.
Text is sharp and clear and vertical and horizontal shifting is not noticeable. We would assume that Hewlett Packard have opted for a slightly higher quality screen than normally seen in this price range, to help ensure that the enhanced resolution doesn't prove to be a long term eye strain for a potential customer.
Black depth is relatively good for a screen in this class. Testing indicates around a 15% variance between the center area of the panel, with it trailing off to around 20% at the four corners. It is slightly more pronounced at the bottom left edge, although generally its not noticeable.
White purity is acceptable, with most of the panel registering around 10-15% across the width, peaking at 18% at the edges. This might seem high, but some of the recent laptops we have seen have reached around 30% at the edges which is easily noticeable. The whites aren't pure, but they are very realistic when watching a well recorded high definition movie. The screen is significantly better than others we have seen within this price range.
damn you sold that well. I can feel a little creaking coming from the credit card
That is a marvellous machine. cant believe it only 450 bucks, or is this one more expensive? Any ideas on a UK release?
450 bucks, I had heard this was going to cost almost 500 quid in the UK. why do we always get shafted here?
That really is like a mac, without the silly price tag. I can see this selling well. im tempted myself.
Only problem is I owned a HP laptop 2 years ago and the thing fell apart over time. I appreciate maybe I just got a bad one, but it does tend to put you off.
wow, that is a mega deal for what you get. are you serious though, 120wpm? you are robot or something?
Yeah I like that, but I dont like looking as if I own an apple ! I dont think its that similar, I cant see apple having a patterned panel on the front of theirs. they need the Apple logo in pride of position. tossers 🙂
hey finally a laptop reviewed here which doesnt cost 2 grand 🙂 very nice it is too
UK pricing? UK availability and announcement would be great. have a look at any UK store(amazon uk, pcworld, comet, acer UK, HP UK, lenovo UK). None of them even list fusion products in their pages. When asked, they have no idea what that is. From me alone AMD and it’s partners lost over 10 sales, as I keep promising my colleagues and friends and clients that it is coming. It has been already a month and a half since I started asking everyone to wait a bit for Fusion based products. Now I am like a complete arse to them 😀 Thanks AMD
fusion is the future, thanks AMD!
Yep. Been reading reviews here for two months now and I can’t buy anything. Amd need to sort it out, it’s a bloody mess.
I feel much better about my purchasing one. Cant wait till it gets here!
hey maxx, where did you buy it ? what spec?
That is one beautiful piece of hardware. If I hadn’t purchased a new AMD NEO series laptop less than a year ago I would be looking into this. I’m really impressed with all that this little guy can do. Oh well, looks like I have something to look forward to in the future.
Absolutely stunning.
I think this is the launch Fusion needs.
I love HP laptops, and this is ideal for me. great battery life, low power drain, cool. nice screen, great keyboard.
Count me in.
I dont know why people complain these are all over the stores here in south america. I just ordered one with 4GB of ram. great review.
Might be easy for you to get, but in the UK, you have a shitball chance in hell of even finding one listed anywhere.
Sorry dont see it. Gap from atom is no big enough. People say fusion will get updated in June. Not saying no to dm1z, it looks nice but i think wait. Buying hp fusion now is like buying ipad 1. Its btter buying the latest
zoemeson The only problem is, going on that theory you will never adopt anything. There is a new atom to be released, next generation which is meant to be better than the next generation fusion. next generation fusion is quad core for more performance, but what about the combination of battery life and power? there is always a trade off, but technology is constantly advancing so it will always be better, just aruond the corner. never a ‘best time’ to adopt. best just getting what you need, when you need it, then forgetting about it for a year or 2.
Good reading about fusion netbooks but I still want to see it in the flesh. Checked the HP site and the Fusion chip is not even an option so could take sometime
still TFT ………do the LED hurts…?!
its selling for ‘retail’ at hpdirect for 449, but there are occasional times I’ve seen the price drop to 427 USD. I ordered mine at the 449 price, but I called in and told them i needed a student price in which they asked for my .edu email address. I got 20 dollars off. Then I told them BTW I have a $30 internet coupon (SAVE30HP) that I want to use so I got the laptop for 399. Anyways a couple days later I found HP had dropped the price to 427. When I told them I wanted that price they knocked an additional 20 off. So I got my DM1Z for 379+ tax w/free shipping. Hope this helps you guys out to get a deal on this book. I’ve read somewhere else where someone told me they got it for 360 (I can’t believe it though) Mine came with bluetooth, the free 3GB ram upgrade, and the 320gig HD. GL
I have a dm1z and although I’m quite satisfied with it, I noticed three things.
1.) L4D2 is NOT playable either at the settings you mention (which gives me 17 fps when under attack by a horde) or at the lowest settings with 640×480 resolution (I get around 25fps in the scenario mentioned above. Which is not playable by my standards. I need between 30 and 40 fps at lowest, especially under heavy attack when I must react fast). That’s ok though because I can still play L4D (the first).
2.) The dm1z is NOT silent or barely noticeable. I would say it is quiet noticeable even “quietes mode” in thermal assistant, but you get used to it. Can’t use speedfan to turn the fans lower, it doesn’t support this hardware yet.
3.) Some mp3s at a certain frequency give statics, like if the sound was way too loud and clipped. Maybe it’s a bug in my system (seven x64) but I tried with foobar, vlc and media player classic. It seems to appear on drones in ambient music.
Hi Mike, L4D2 works for me at those settings, I actually had a game last night. are you running with the CPU at full speed? I noticed on battery that the default power setting would reduce the performance a little.
The noise levels are very quiet for me, I run it at the quiet thermal settings and its barely noticeable. On the highest it certainly is audible. I hear speedfan are updating the software to support it soon, for fine tuning.
Your last point, are you using headphones or through the speakers?
Well I did some more tests with L4D2 after I set the “power options” to the “high performance” plan in the control panels and the “HP thermal assisstant” to “performance optimized mode”.
I have to mention though that L4D2 doesn’t fare too well with the multi-processing of the zacate. After a few minutes into the game it just quits to desktop. L4D (the first) is ok with multi-processing though.
So I conducted my test on L4D2 with one core only. It doesn’t make any difference according to that thread : http://www.overclock.net/laptops-notebook-computers/968653-onozs-hp-pavilion-dm1z-amd-fusion-4.html
Before starting I checked in taskManager that the cpu was 99% idle. set all graphics options to low, vertical sync off and resolution 1024×600 in L4D2.
Fired up the “sugar mill” map of the “hard rain” campaign. In the safe room it was 25 fps and it got as low as 10fps during the panic event before the lift.
If that is casual-gaming then I’m not a casual gamer ;).
About fan noise… Maybe it’s just my perception then. I live in the country-side and my house is absolutely silent. Anyway if speedfan is workin’ on it, I’m happy enough.
My bad on the sound settings though. I discovered what was causing the clipping. In the enhancement panel for the speaker/headphone “loudness equalization” was ticked. I guess it clashes with the IDT settings. Everything is back to normal now.
Anyway if you’d like to help me kill a few of those zombie-bastards look-up “trufo” (my picture is the dog from up! Doug I think).
C ya
About that multi-core setting… Something was bugging me. So I resinstalled L4D2 completely on the dm1z and tried the same map (sugar-mill), solo … And it worked. No quiting to desktop.
I got 35fps in safe-room and 19fps at the panic-event before the lift, which is not too bad. I guess it’d do for a few games from time to time if my war-machine isn’t available.