Product Reviews

It wasn't that long ago that 'widescreen' meant big black bars on either side of Star Wars on a small TV, but after a few years of widescreen TVs and plasma screens it's now even popping up in notebooks. It's not just a passing fashion either - everyone from Apple through to Dell is getting in on the act, with the latest addition being HP. But the nx7000 is slightly different, as it's part of HP's new Compaq range: in other words, a business notebook.

The most obvious advantage of a widescreen notebook is the huge amount of screen area. With a resolution of 1,680 x 1,050 spread across its 15.4in diagonal, the nx7000's screen offers practical space for two documents side by side. It's also bright and sharp, with decent viewing angles, although the tiny resolution can get a bit much for your eyes after a while.

Another advantage is its superior aspect ratio when watching DVD movies. HP has even integrated two reasonable-sounding JBL speakers either side of the keyboard, so sales reps really can have a mini-home cinema in their hotel room.

You can even run 3D games on the nx7000. The supplied 64MB ATi Mobility Radeon 9200 graphics chip may not fully support DirectX 9, but it's more than adequate for current games. It produced a 3DMark2001 SE score of 7,605 at 1,024 x 768 in 32-bit colour, but we recommend running it at 1,680 x 1,050, as it looks absolutely fantastic. It scored 4,594 at this resolution; while this is significantly lower, it's still enough for most games.

So you've got a notebook that offers everything for after-hours entertainment, but where does the business aspect come in? This is where HP has hit upon a stroke of genius, as the nx7000 is a notebook for everyone. For a start, it's about as wireless as it can get. It's a Centrino notebook, so you have an Intel 802.11b WLAN card, but there's also integrated Bluetooth. You can even switch off the wireless features and save battery life with a simple button at the front.

But

Power is, of course, another factor to consider, and the nx7000 is exceptionally quick. It may only have the 1.5GHz flavour of the Pentium-M, but it still managed to knock out a superb 2D benchmark result of 1.45 - we've had less from both 1.7GHz and 1.6GHz machines.

But where the nx7000 really excels is in its all-round quality. It's well built, well designed and feels reassuringly solid. The lid offers good protection to the screen and has little flex in it, and, unlike the Dell, the rest of the chassis is similarly rigid. In some cases, as with the Compaq Evo N620c (see issue 107, p68), this can make typing uncomfortable, but the nx7000 has rounded palmrests that feel exactly right when you're typing. This is also helped by the solid and responsive keyboard, which has no annoying dips and sensibly large keys.

This sensible design continues into the port layout. The wireless switch and mic and headphone jacks are mounted on the front for easy access, with an SD card slot next to them. The only slight annoyance is that the rest of the ports are round the back, and it would have made sense to have one of the three USB 2 ports on the front for easy thumbdrive hot-swapping.

These kind of grumbles seem superfluous, though, when you consider the amazing £1,229 price. The widescreen competition from Dell's Inspiron 8600 and Hi-Grade's Notino C6700-1700 (see p60) both cost £1,599 and still can't compete with the HP's superior build quality. The only things you're missing out on with the HP are a DVD writer and larger hard disk. Then again, 40GB is more than enough for business use, and the 8x DVD-ROM and 24x/10x/24x CD-RW combo drive still covers all the important removable storage bases.

There's only one word of warning, which is that this is a behemoth of a notebook. With such a large screen this goes without saying, but you soon notice its 3.05kg weight and 360mm width after you've been carrying it around for a while. Still, this is a compromise you have to accept on a widescreen, fully featured notebook, and if that's what you're looking for the HP Compaq nx7000 offers fantastic build quality and incredible value for money.