I've used a fair number of laptops. This one comes close to being the nicest one I've ever gotten my hands on. Let's see;1. Great video, both dedicated ATI and on-board Intel, depending on your need and power source. Watching BD's or full HD movie trailers and the like is an amazing experience.
2. Very good audio.
3. Great display full HD, LED backlit. Nicest 17 inch display I've ever seen.
4. Fast SandyBridge I7 mobile processor. 4 cores with HT. More then enough except for some gamers. Add a mouse and keyboard and you have a great desktop replacement (except for doing video imports which do better with a hardware based digitizer).
5. 2 USB 3 ports (though I don't know which ones they are yet none of the docs I've seen say which they are. Very odd.
6. Good LAN 1gbps. Works very well so far.
7. Super quiet it takes really pushing the unit hard to warm up the cores and get the fan's going (as confirmed by coretemp). And HP modified the case layout to not have most of the air suck up or down through the dirt prone bottom of the unit. HP also says essentially that this laptop is designed to avoid burning people's laps!
So what's wrong? the WIFI.
1. 2 antenna wires only. Wierd because my DV9933CL (turned in to HP under warranty) had 3.
2. A really cheap, lousy wifi card the Intel 1030. When I tested my 60mbps internet connection from Cablevision, I only got about 30. Between wifi card crashes (apparently a mobo problem), my old DV9933CL could handle the full 60mbps (with an actual connect speed to the router averaging 243mbps).
I've read numerous complaints from other 1030 users who note that when BlueTooth is active, the wifi pretty much dies, though to tell the truth it barely functions with no BT turned on. Oddly, it does not use the 5ghz band, supposedly gets 300mbps down (in real life about a quarter of the download ability of the old Intel 4965AGN card), and is supposed to get 150 mbps up.
Further research suggests that many DV6's and 7's with very low end wifi cards were shipped to many now very unhappy laptop owners. The official spec sheets don't tell you what wifi card is used and that it won't support 5ghz or the newer 450mbps routers.
When some owners looked to swap out the card, they ran into the HP BIOS white lists. Mind you, the DV7 manual shows that the Intel Advanced N 6230 is on the list of available wifi cards; BUT people who have installed a stock 6320 bought on line find it won't work because HP requires one they've 'adjusted' to be accepted by the BIOS. If one uses the part number from the manual for the card, they apparently now get a completely different ralink card (fun surprise).
As of Feb 8; HP shipped me one of their 6230's; as expected it did not work. I've asked them to update the bios to fix this since the 6230 was supposedly tested in DV7's as per Fed requirements. In the meantime, HP case management agreed to pay for my costs in buying an external Trendnet adapter which I have gotten and which overall works quite well (I am often running 450mpbs).
I have raised my rating to 4 stars with the external wifi adapter in place, because with it the unit works very well. Just understand that without it the wifi is nearly useless. But with it this is one of the finest decently priced laptops on the market today!
The longer version:
First lets talk gaming. It can play skyrim on high settings, skipping very little, and it looks beautiful. I played the entire game on this laptop and it was awesome. and that's when it was bone stock. It also did Dirt 3 on high, SimCity on high except for shadows and textures on med, batman arkham city on med-high, that's all i can recall off hand. It played everything i threw at it and i was impressed, especially considering its a laptop.
Now lets talk heat. Its absurd. I mean really absurd. When running all out it maxes out at 95 degrees C!! it then steps down to 2.5-2.4 GHz and maintains until the load drops and the temp drops. It shows the max is 102 C so I guess they thought it would be okay.. It hasn't melted down on me yet, but of course I use a laptop cooler all the time.
Battery life is good, considering how you pay for it in size. Lasts about 4.5-5 hours if you just un plug it and use it. Gaming around 1.5-2 max. and you put it on power saver and use it lightly, you can get 6-8 hours out of it or more. I used it three days camping once mostly playing music and turning the screen off after 1 min and no wifi. The battery also has a charge indicator. The AC adapter as you can imagine is big and heavy. Long cord.
It is big and that battery makes it bulky, but it gives you something to hold on you while your carrying it. Its heavy but not excruciating. Its sleek and you gotta love the matte 1080 screen. there's a ring around the trackpad that lights up. The track pad is good also, and is multi-touch and gesture capable if you dig in to the settings far enough. The buttons give you good feedback require just the right amount of pressure (or maybe to much for most people, i'm no small fry)
The speakers and beats audio are amazing. This is the best laptop i've ever heard, period. You can crank it and swear it was by Bose or something. Its not jaw dropping, but its definitely noticeable.
I HIGHLY recommend putting in an SSD to really make this thing breathe. It REALLY needs it. There are two HDD bays built in and all you need is HP 665597-001 Hard Disk Drive Hardware Kit and drop it right in. Seriously, do it! Worlds of difference!
Now for that bad part.
I've been dealing with BSODs since day one. It has to do with the graphics driver, the Radeon timing out sometimes, and switching between graphics processors. Once you go through all the updates and driver updates its gets better, but mine still does it. I have been working with HP's OTA Crash support team on the issue trying to pin point the issue and honestly it hardly happens now. HP's support is pretty good I must say, they've given me patches and updates and hotfixes that i couldn't find otherwise, and i'm pretty sure at least one was a beta and then became a stable release after i reported it worked..
So yeah, its a pretty bad a$$ laptop. I'd give it 4.5 stars. It really has everything i've ever wanted in a laptop except a backlit keyboard. I'd wish for a little stronger graphics processor (especially considering i'm writing this 4/13), and an SSD stock. But i would get an extended warranty because with out it there is no tech support.
2.2 GHz I7-2670QM
8 GB 1600 RAM (runs at 1333)
1 TB toshiba HDD
Intel Centrino N 1030 + buletooth
RADEON 6770M 2GB DDR5
Intel HD 3000
1080*1920 17" matte display
gigabit ethernet
intel WiDi
usb 3.0
dual hard drive capable
BluRay player
fingerprint scanner
card reader
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