HP G72 review

HP's G72 laptop boasts a generous screen size, stylish design and decent specifications, but surprisingly it's also a budget desktop replacement without a steep price tag to match.

It's encased in an elephant grey chassis, and the subtle geometric pattern etched onto the surface adds visual charm, a luxury often missing from budget desktop replacements. It's only when you touch the surface of the G72 that it becomes clear the chassis is plastic rather than aluminium.

Despite the plastic casing, overall build quality feels reassuring, and although the screen displays more flex than we'd like, we're confident it would survive in a bag during transit. Tipping the scales at just shy of 3kg and with fairly chunky dimensions, it's certainly not dainty, but that's not overly heavy for the size.

Under the hood the line-up looks good too: HP has employed a low-voltage 2.27GHz Core i3-350M, at the less powerful end of the i3 line but still capable of handling most tasks with ease. In our application benchmarks it gained a score of 1.3, which is respectable, and it's backed up with 4GB of DDR3 RAM - a healthy helping that should enable you to run as many apps as you need simultaneously without impinging on responsiveness.

There's no dedicated graphics chip, and a result of just 13fps in the Low quality Crysis test shows intensive titles will be beyond the HP G72, but HD video is well within its reach. It tackled both 720p and 1080p HD video files well and we also found both YouTube HD and the demanding BBC iPlayer HD channel played smoothly on the 1,600 x 900, 17in display.