HP Pavilion dv7 2022tx notebook

Big, glossy and filled with features, HP's 17.3in Pavilion dv7 2022tx notebook is aimed at users who want a desktop replacement that can be used as home entertainment hub. It provides plenty of processing power, lots of storage and it's quite comfortable to use.

The Pavilion dv7 2022tx laptop has an Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 CPU (which runs at 2.53GHz), 4GB of DDR2 RAM, two 320GB hard drives (Western Digital WD3200BEVT) and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4530 graphics adapter with 512MB of GDDR3 memory.

The notebook performed well in our tests, scoring 97 in WorldBench 6 and recording times of 1min 11sec and 1min 3sec in the Blender 3D and iTunes MP3 encoding tests, respectively. These results indicate that it can handle any office and productivity tasks you throw its way, and it will also deal relatively quickly with music encoding and editing photos and videos.

That's just as well because the HP Pavilion dv7 2022tx is very much aimed at multimedia tasks. It has an HDMI port, so it can be easily connected to a big-screen TV in a living room (it definitely looks good enough to reside in a living room), and there is an option for a Blu-ray player. The Pavilion dv7 2022tx comes with a DVD burner by default.

If you don't want to connect the Pavilion dv7 2022tx to your TV, you can just watch movies on its 16:9 screen, which has a native resolution of 1600x900. It has a glossy coating, so you may notice some reflections from room lights depending on the angle of the screen.

HP has included almost a full range of ports on the Pavilion dv7 2022tx; you'll be able to use it for everything from Web browsing, to video editing to digitising your old media. For example, if you want to add some fast external storage you can use its external SATA port, which doubles as a USB 2.0 port when eSATA isn't required. If you have an older camcorder that you want to download footage from, you can plug it in to the FireWire port. To add a digital TV tuner and turn the notebook into a personal video recorder you can use either its ExpressCard/54 expansion slot or one of its four USB 2.0 ports.

There is a Gigabit Ethernet port so that you can connect to your home network and access the Internet, or you can use the built-in 802.11n wireless adapter (Intel Wifi Link 5100) which supports dual-band operation. If you aren't blessed with an ADSL or cable Internet connection you can use the built-in 56Kbps dial-up modem.

The HP Pavilion dv7 2022tx has two headphone ports, so you can share the same movie or music playlist with your partner or friend without disturbing others. It has a built-in infrared port that you can use in conjunction with a remote control and there are touch buttons across the top of the keyboard to start, stop and skip media files as well as change volume. It also comes with an SD card reader so you can quickly transfer all the photos from your digital camera.

Perhaps one of the most interesting features is the touchpad, which has a reflective finish and can be used with the installed SoftStylus software to input your handwriting. HP touts this feature as being useful for writing Asian characters. It is a slightly hard feature to use, as there is no cursor visible for you to start your writing at a particular point. The software is mapped to the size of the touchpad, so anywhere you place your finger on the touchpad, that is where you will draw. You can't move the mouse pointer when using the SoftStylus software.

We found the Pavilion dv7 2022tx comfortable to use and easy to type on. Because it is so big (approximately 42cm wide), it also includes a number pad, which will be useful if you are an accountant or if you have been using a desktop PC for many years and want to make the switch to a notebook. There is even a button so that you can disable the touchpad while you type.

The touch buttons for the media controls are responsive, and they are illuminated so that you can see them in the dark. The screen is bright enough for viewing in a well-lit room, but may not be bright enough if you use the notebook out in your yard or balcony during a sunny day. You can venture away from a power outlet and run the Pavilion dv7 on batteries for a comparatively long time; it lasted 2hr 28min in our video rundown test, where we set the screen brightness to maximum and enable the wireless radio.

You can play games with the Pavilion dv7 2022tx: its graphics card is a mid-range model with plenty of memory. It scored 3444 in 3DMark06, which is a good score and means you will be able to play a variety of games, albeit at medium resolution and detail settings.

If you're looking for a stylish notebook to replace your space-hogging PC, the HP Pavilion dv7 2022tx is a good choice. It looks good, it's comfortable to use, and it performed well in our tests. It also has a lot of connectivity options. We just wish it had a higher-resolution screen and that it came with physical restore discs instead of a restore partition on the hard drive (as is the case with so many notebooks).

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