While the other laptops here come with Windows Vista Home Premium, the HP has Vista Business. For an explanation of the main differences, see the box on page 75. The screen is more business- than home-oriented, too, as it's the only one that doesn't have a glossy finish. This means that blacks aren't as dark and whites aren't quite as white as on the other screens, but it doesn't suffer from the strong reflections that can make the other screens hard to see when outdoors or under ceiling lights. The keyboard is firm and responsive,
ADVERTISEMENT
and the touch pad is the best here.
The Compaq 6720s has a 160GB hard disk, which is one of the largest in the group. 10GB of the disk is reserved for a restore partition, as the 6720s doesn't come with any restore discs. This is the only laptop with Bluetooth, so you can connect wirelessly to a mobile phone.
Performance
The 6720s's 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor is the fastest in the group, and gave its scores in our graphics-editing and video-encoding benchmarks a significant boost. The laptop was the fastest in the group in all our benchmarks apart from multitasking, where its 1GB of memory hampered its performance. It was still the joint-fastest in this benchmark, and easily came top overall with 151. Intel's integrated graphics don't stand a chance of running the latest 3D games, but this is hardly a factor at this price. Battery life is average for the group at two hours and 46 minutes.
Verdict
HP's Compaq 6720s isn't bursting with alluring features, but its seriously fast Windows performance and good keyboard and touch pad are impressive for the price. It's a Best Buy.
