HP Pavilion Dm1-4010us Review (I)

HP Pavilion Dm1-4010us Review (I)

Jun 28

Today we have a look at the late 2011 version of the HP Pavilion dm1-4010us which came out at just $479, a lot less than those expensive ultrabooks but offering a very comfortable keyboard, good sound system and an attractive design. Instead of featuring the glossy lid of the previous dm1z model launched in the beginning of 2011, the dm1-4010us comes with a black plastic matte lid which doesn’t grab fingerprints. The rounded corners of the lid are wrapped by a plastic silver strip, while in the lower right corner you will notice the HP logo.

Once you open the laptop you’ll notice right away the same plastic black matte look found on the lid. It features a recessed black matte keyboard, while the top of the deck is sweeping up in a rather elegant incline. At the top of the deck you will have access to the buttons for the Quick Web launched and power.

The HP Pavilion dm1-4010us measures 11.5 x 8.5 x 0.3 – 1.3 inches and weighs 3.4 pounds and it should fit easily into a messenger bag or a regular backpack. This is a travel-friendly laptop that we would like to recommend to those of you that do a lot of typing since it has a superb island-style keyboard which extends from one edge to the other. It consists of medium-sized keys that are flat and are capable of providing a firm feedback, thus offering a pleasuring typing experience. You will most likely appreciate that HP has decided to reverse the function row keys which means that you’ll able to fiddle with the brightness of the screen of the audio volume without having to press the Fn key first.

While the aforementioned dm1z has an all-in-one clickpad which frankly we don’t really like, this dm1-4010us adopts a textured touchpad that packs two physical left and right mouse buttons that are a lot easier to use. This is a Synaptics touchpad that measures 3.3 x1.6 inches and has a textured finish which feels good while you drag your fingers on it. Multitouch gestures are performed nicely while the mouse buttons provide a springy feedback.

HP has installed an 11.6-inch LED-backlit display that has a native resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels. This is a vibrant display that shows vivid colors and it gets quite bright without washing out. The speakers found on this small laptop benefit from the Beats Audio technology. On the front lip of this Pavilion laptop sits the thin speaker strip which provides excellent audio quality. The user can fiddle with the settings by using the bundled Beats Audio control panel.

We end the first part by mentioning that the laptop comes with the company’s CoolSense temperature regulating software but it lacks some of the functionality found in earlier versions of the software since now the user can only toggle this function on or off.

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