Few companies so consistently impress us with their high-quality, low-priced notebooks like HP (Compaq) and, at first glance, the V2656AU seems to be no exception.
The matte-black lid is arguably the only black mark against a stylish chassis. It’s also quite thin – offering little protection to the screen if it gets bashed. However, the silver chassis and grey keyboard all look very swish and are well put together: there are no rattly panels on show.
The screen has a 1280 x 768 resolution. It’s not the brightest or the sharpest, but few will find it wanting for basic, office-like applications. The glossy coating rescued undersaturated colours in our test HD movie a little, but is very reflective in return. Viewing angles in all directions are mediocre and a bit of lag was noticeable in fast moving scenes. But our main issue in the video test was slight, occasional stuttering: the low-spec components struggled to keep up with decoding. But we shouldn’t dwell too much on the screen. For most common or garden applications it’s absolutely fine.
Watching DVDs is enhanced by the decent speakers which get loud while retaining a good dynamic range. There was a little distortion with top-end treble in some songs, but they’re good compared to most laptops. The keyboard is excellent – very well weighted and comfortable to type on. The trackpad and buttons are very good too and, usefully, there’s a button to turn it off if you’re nudging it when typing.
There are few other features of note. 802.11g WiFi is included but Ethernet is only 10/100. The optical drive is a combo unit so it can only read DVDs. Two USB 2 ports are included but there’s no FireWire-compatible port at all. Expansion is only possible via a Type II PC Card slot.
The hard disk is only 40GB in size (only 30.8GB is available because of a recovery partition) and is a slow, 4200rpm model. Combined with 512MB of RAM and the low-end Sempron 3100+ processor it scored 0.61 in our benchmarks: not enough for constant encoders but perfect for most consumer applications. Gaming is out of the question.
At 2.4kg it’s not too heavy to carry all day. However, with battery scores of two hours 19 minutes and one hour 20 minutes (respectively) in our light-use and intensive tests, you can’t keep it away from the mains for too long.
HP bundles Microsoft’s Works 8, Money2005 and Encarta 2006 Standard which the target, low-end, consumer market should find useful. The warranty is only one year but it’s collect and return.
At $935 it’s very cheap, but the quality punches above its weight. It would be an alternate-choice contender on the A-List if HP’s notebooks didn’t have such short lifespans – if you want it, jump - it’ll go End Of Life soon. BenQ’s A-Listed Joybook offers more power and features for only $300 more and Toshiba’s Satellite Pro adds a bit more durability to the mix. But if you want change from $1000, you won’t go far wrong with this.
