HP Pavilion dm4-2180us (Staples)

The HP Pavilion dm4-2180us ($699 list at Staples), a mainstream laptop, will last you seven hours when you're on the road. Its Core i5 and 6GB of RAM combine to make a powerful tag team; whether your work involves day-to-day office tasks or something as strenuous as photo editing?the dm4-2180us has you covered. However, the Asus U46E-BAL5 has it beat in terms of features, as the Asus laptop offers WiMAX and USB 3.0.

Design
The dm4-2180us's steel grey aluminum chassis has a brushed lid, like the Samsung QX411-W01 ($799.99 list, 4 stars). The design adds sophistication to what would otherwise be a metallic brick. The dm4-2180us weighs 4.33 pounds, which puts it on the lighter side of other 14-inch laptops. It's lighter than the U46E-BAL5 (4.9 pounds), QX411-W01 (5.11 pounds ), and Toshiba Satellite L745-S4210 ($639.99 list, 3.5 stars) (4.5 pounds).

The 14-inch widescreen has the standard 1,366-by-768 resolution, which amounts to 720p HD viewing for online videos and downloaded content. The chiclet keyboard is full-size, but there were a few alterations that had to be made, like shortening Shift key to make room for the arrow buttons. As far as typing experiences go, it's no Lenovo ThinkPad (one of the best typing experiences around), but it will satisfy. The multi-touchpad has a light textured finish, and the right and left mouse buttons were easy to click.

Features
The dm4-2180us has an impressive offering of features, considering the price. It comes with the standard ports: three USB 2.0, HDMI and VGA video, audio and mic jacks, Ethernet, and SD/MMC card reader. The standout features come in the form of a fingerprint reader, which will serve to further protect your data from possible intruders, and WiDi 2.0, which is a wireless solution you can use to stream 1080p HD content from your laptop to your HDTV (provided that you have a Netgear Push2TV receiver, a $99 option). The Asus U46E-BAL5, on the other hand, has WiDi 2.0 as well as a faster USB 3.0 port and WiMAX, a 3G mobile broadband technology that will keep road warriors connected wherever they are. The dm4-2180us does include 802.11n Wi-Fi, as well as a DVD-RW drive.

The dm4-2180us has 640GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, which is the second largest hard drive you could hope to have in this category and at this price. However, the Asus U46E-BAL5 has it beat, providing 750GB of storage space. That said, 640GB should be enough to store a music library, documents, and any other downloadable content you might want to hoard away?only the most enthusiastic downloaders will require more space.

There's some bloatware on the drive, namely a few of HP's own proprietary programs. But with the bloatware comes some useful programs, which includes a free version (i.e. with ads) of Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop Elements 9, and Adobe Premiere Elements 9.

Best Buy also has an extended warranty program, which offers customers an extra year of protection beyond the one-year warranty of most system manufacturers. There are two plans in this extended warranty program. The standard plan ($119.99) covers the system against normal wear and tear, power surge damage, and includes a "No Lemon" guarantee in which Best Buy will simply replace the computer if it requires more than 4 repairs during the coverage period. Best Buy's advanced plan ($219.99) offers all this, and also covers the system against accidental damage from drops and spills. Other special offers can be found online or in stores, like discounts on printers, software, and tech support plans which are available with any new consumer PC purchased through Best Buy.

Performance
With its 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-2430M CPU and 6GB of RAM, the dm4-2180us made quick work of media benchmark tests, like our Handbrake video encoder (1 minute 50 seconds) and Photoshop CS5 (4:02). It beat out the Asus U46E-BAL5 (1:53, 4:10) and Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5) ($750 direct, 4 stars) (1:58, 4:10) by insignificant margins in Handbrake (3 and 8 seconds, respectively) and Photoshop CS5 (8 seconds for both). I saw similar results on our PCMark 7 test of day-to-day tasks. The dm4-2180us (2,320) scored 105 points higher than the Asus U46E-BAL5 and 12 points higher than the Dell Inspiron 14z?again not a huge difference. Both systems will be able to open applications and browse the Web equally as fast.

Because the Pdm4-2180us is equipped with Intel integrated graphics, it's not going to give you much in the way of gaming performance. Its 22.5 frame per second (fps) score on Crysis (DirectX 10) alone indicates that this system isn't going to the Steam market. However, it will lend itself to some less-intensive titles, like Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft, and Limbo. If you're looking for a machine that can handle more advanced titles, you might have to go for something much more expensive and geared toward gaming, like the Alienware M11xr3 ($1,099 direct, 4 stars).

Battery performance was great; the dm4-2180us's 55Wh (6-cell) battery lasted 7 hours 52 minutes on our MobileMark 2007 test. It lasted 30 minutes more than the Asus U46E-BAL5's 74WH battery, but couldn't beat out the 8:38 garnered by the Dell Inspiron 14z (Core i5).

The HP Pavilion dm4-2180us is a great all-around performer and has added features, like a fingerprint reader and WiDi 2.0 that make it well worth its price. However, the Asus U46E-BAL5 has more to give?and not only in hard drive space. Travelers will get much needed use out of the WiMAX broadband, and USB 3.0 will help transferring data at faster speeds than USB 2.0 can offer. But if you have no use for advanced wireless features, then the Editors' Choice Dell Inspiron 14z has a backlit keyboard, USB 3.0, and its battery is hard to beat.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Pavilion dm4-2180us with several other laptops side by side.

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