HP Pavilion dv2 Ultra Portable

On the software side, you get almost the entire suite of HP utilities bundled with their notebooks which is both good and bad. The good things are HP’s utilities to check the battery, write to light scribe and perform system restore. The bad side is Norton- I still don’t like it and prefer something like NOD32 over it. Lets take a look at the performance posted by dv2. We compared it to an Atom 1.6GHz based netback as well as the ASUS F6V which has a full fledged Core 2 Duo CPU.

Vantage: Communications

Product

Score

Higher is better

Difference

ASUS F6V

1,649

+14%

HP Pavilion dv2

1,444

Intel Atom 1.6GHz Netbook

1,062

-26%

Vantage: Communications

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Vantage: Productivity

Product

Score

Higher is better

Difference

HP Pavilion dv2

1,540

ASUS F6V

1,360

-12%

Intel Atom 1.6GHz Netbook

1,095

-29%

Vantage: Productivity

Vantage: TV & Movies

Product

Score

Higher is better

Difference

ASUS F6V

1,452

+49%

HP Pavilion dv2

977

Intel Atom 1.6GHz Netbook

782

-20%

Vantage: TV & Movies

As you can see, the dv2 is considerably faster than a netbook scoring almost 20-30% higher. It is, in fact, very comparable to a low-end Core 2 Duo notebook. Performance certainly favors the dv2 but where it does lack is battery life. We got about two to two and a half hours of battery from it which is a bit on the lower side. Netbooks nowadays offer almost five to seven hours while notebook tend to post above three hours as well.

Overall, the dv2 is a decent machine but it really depends on what you want to use it for. If you’re a casual user who like to check their email, do a bit of blogging or surfing the web, then a netbook with a much better battery life makes more sense. If you want a bit more power and performance then the slightly cramped keyboard and smaller screen doesn’t make the dv2 ideal for extended use.

Where HP does get it right is the price. The dv2 starts at AED 2699 which makes it a pretty attractive buy for someone look
ing at ultra portables that can cost three times as much. Although I’m not a big fan of ultra-portables, if that is what you like best then you definitely cannot go wrong with the Pavilion dv2.