Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion DV4-2160US 14.1-Inch Laptop (Digital Plaid)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I looked for like a month before I bought this laptop (not sure what the difference is from the laptop on this page other than the color scheme).

Pros:
14" screen.
It has an impressive amount of features, including the intel i5-430 processor. I've had it less than a week, so we'll see how it holds up.
Fast
No problems with stuck-on pixels.
Nice keyboard. The DV4 has a full sized keyboard with full sized arrow keys. It actually has LEDs next to the Caps Lock and Num Lock keys. The num lock feature almost made me re-install the OS because I didn't realize it was on, and I couldn't log in. I had just used the windows easy transfer, and rebooted, and I was unable to log in. Lessons learned here: make sure you make a password reset disk, and make sure you make a second account just in case your first one gets locked out for some reason. Also burn your DVDs for system restore.
LED backlight for battery conservation.
Looks cool. The volume control and WiFi on/off switch above the keyboard are more of a proximity sensor, and are cool.
Comes with windows 7 home premium.
Wireless works well.

Cons:
The far right corner is dim, about a square centimeter area right in the corner. If I move my head to look directly at it, it's not very dim. You might not even notice unless you move the task bar like I do.
The screen is glossy. All laptops have glossy screens except for a few Dell business laptops. HP might have one too that you can special order.
The hard drive is a little noisy (but I believe any noise is too much), and a little warm. The fan spins constantly, but you can turn it off in the BIOS (it still cycles when it needs to).

Other:
The touchpad seems like it has a lot of friction at first, but it got better, and if I use the tip of my finger with light pressure it glides just fine. The touchpad screen scroll feature works well. Has a button to turn off the touchpad if you don't want to use it.

I have had this laptop for 1 week and have had no problems. I don't find it to be any hotter than my Toshiba Satellite. The Toshiba fan vents on the side, but the battery compartment was hot from the start. The Hp vents on the bottom left rear corner, but the battery area stays relatively cool - so all in all it is about the same as the Toshiba for heat levels. My CPU usage stays in the 3% to 19% for all of the activities I have done so far (I use the "gadget" that came with the Desktop features to monitor the CPU usage). The keyboard has a nice firm touch to it and the touchpad is fine, just different - it is a smooth metal surface. The one thing that I have discovered (which is why I only gave it 4 stars) is that the internal wireless adapter - Atheros AR9285 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter - caps out at a speed of 150 Mbps. I went online to the Atheros website and read the specs, because I thought something was wrong with it initially - I was expecting a higher speed than that. I had purchased an inexpensive wireless N adapter from Amazon, for the Toshiba, that caps @ 270 Mbps and runs perfectly. I am thinking of using it with this HP, even though it is bulky, because I can see a download speed difference with large graphics. The speakers sound fine, far better than my Toshiba that stuttered everytime the fan turned on. I wish it had come with a longer life battery and a USB port in the rear. I am planning on replacing the battery with a 12 cell. I use a vendor on Ebay and have had good luck with their batteries - prices are great. The DVD drive is a little noisy so that's a minus. I really like the dedicated scroll "bar" on the side of the touchpad. I did not realize when I was first configuring the Hp that there is a button to turn on the touchpad. Mine arrived with the touchpad turned off as the default and it took me several minutes to figure out why I could not manipulate the touchpad. Operator error clearly. So far, so good. I got this laptop for $649 after the $50 rebate that is not eligible through Amazon, unfortunately. So for $649, I am very pleased.

I searched extensively for about a month before making my decision. For my price range, there was no computer that even came close to the "H.P. DV4 2160us", and i mean no computer. Whether I'm blazing around the Internet, watching or burning DVDs, labeling the DVDs there's power a plenty and it runs cooler than most. A really pleasant surprise was how well the laptop speakers sound. The new Intel processor is noticeably faster than there previous version. All in all, if your looking for a notebook, that does it all, and looks great doing it with a easy to use keyboard, look no further. I highly recommend this model. You won't find a better book for the price of this one. So make sure you check out this model before you make your final decision. You can't go wrong with this H.P.Laptop.

This laptop looks good, is powerfull and does meet my requirements for a Win 7 performance. It is the only laptop that I have found, at that price level, that offers Intel I5 processor with 4 GB. Everyone knows that Win 7 requires power and memory. Win 7 performance on this machine is very respectable. I own a powerfull desktop and can hardly see the difference in performance. Overall I am pleased with this laptop.

I did a lot of searching for a laptop and this is what I chose. For price, features and performance, this is a good deal. I found this at a local office store on sale for $650 after a $50 mail in rebate.

Pro's:

*"N" wireless -awesome speed! I am registering 150 mbps vs. 50mbps on my old "G"
*14" screen
*i5 processor
*4 gb memory
*320 hdd
*hd output
*built in, removable remote control for the dvd player.
windows 7 - it is amazingly stable. Not a single crash since I bought this laptop 6 weeks ago!
*volume control uses a cool touch sensitive slide
*mute and antenna buttons are also cool and touch sensitive
*great plaid dark brown, almost black look
*removable cd/dvd drive reduces the weight of the computer. Also, may allow for easy blue ray upgrade?

Con's:

*battery life is fair at best. Maybe 2 hours with a full charge.
*unit is a little thicker than some of the more cooler looking thin laptops.
*Cooling vent is on the bottom. This deserves some explanation. First, I looked at this feature before buying and in my opinion, the new laptops with the newer "i" processors seem to run cooler than older models. Also, there is a vent on the top of the computer directly above the bottom vent, to the left where the base and screen are hinged. You can only see the top vent when the unit is open. It seems that when the laptop is on a pillow for example and blocking the bottom vent, the top vent takes over releasing the heat but not quite as well as the bottom when not blocked. At least it seems that way to me.
*the unit does run a bit warm when using on a pillow and I am careful to monitor the temperature since my last computer dies this way.
*hp should have put the vents on the side!

My brother bought a Dell just 2 months before I bought this and he got a pre-i5 processor and g wireless. In comparison, the hp is much better in performance and price.

Highly recommended.

Great value for a acceptable performance laptop, the only flaw I can tell is the battery, it is fully discharged after 110 minutes.

I bought two of these laptop off amazon in june '10. One for myself and one for my sister.

Pros:

1.The laptop is quite fast, and handles all the loads of regular work as well as mid level programming and software development with ease.

2. The build quality seems very solid and gives an overall good feel.

3.The preinstalled overhead softwares are not too much, thus are easily managed( removed)
4. the battery life is also quite decent, without WIFI, i get about 3 hrs+

Cons:

1. The most annoying is that it is very glossy, thus during usage, a lot finerprints etc are left on it
2. The volume and the wifi button are touch sensitive buttons, but it doesnt always work smothely.
3. Graphics card is sorely missed on this laptop.
4. The touchpad top is very close to the space bar, thus i hit it quite ofter while typing fast.(could be due to my typing style though)

Overall review:

buy it any day if you like a normal sized, good quality laptop. But if you work outdoors or have a lot of dirt etc around, i would avoid it coz of its very glossy finish.
Overall its terrific value for money, anyday..

OK, I bought this laptop to replace a Vista 64, Core2Duo laptop made by Gateway. This laptop is beautiful and has the latest line of Intel processors in it, the "I" series with Turbo Boost technology, which is why i wanted to upgrade. While the laptop seems to be quite fast, I do have a few negatives:

1. Not enough USB ports (there are only 2). My older Gateway, which is the same physical size, had 4.
2. BLOATWARE GALORE!! HP's bloatware is rediculous. I highly recommend reformatting the hard drive immediately when you get it and choosing HP's installation of minimum software. When you reinstall Windows using the recovery partition, you can select this option which only loads the basic software, not all the junk that is preloaded at the factory.
3. Hard Drive issue: I got a black screen on startup asking me to scan the hard disk drive for errors (check disk-chkdsk for those who know Windows). This usually occurs when their are problems with the hard disk drive-bad sectors, etc. I'm now a little concerned about the state of the hard drive, something you shouldn't experience with a week old computer.
4. FINGER PRINT MAGNET!!! While the laptop is beautiful, the thing is a total finger print magnet. I have to keep a roll of anti-static moist wipes next to the thing because it picks up every little touch. Trust me, when I bought this I thought people were over reacting when I saw comments about the computer being a finger print magnet, but it is very true. You will not be able to keep it clean.
5. The Windows Experience Index fell short of my expectations. This is due to the RAM (memory operations per second), the Graphics (desktop performance for Windows Aero), and the gaming graphics (3D business and gaming graphics performance). The total Windows Experience Rating on this machine is 4.7. My home PC running a Core2Duo (E8400) is 5.9. I'm sure this rating is because the laptop lacks a good graphics card such as my Radeon HD4850 thats in my home PC. So, long story short, this laptop is not designed for gaming or high-end graphics work like video editing, etc. I do have Photoshop on it which runs quite well, but don't buy this machine if you want to do high end graphics stuff.

Other than those few things, I'm overall happy with my purchase.

I bought this laptop because I really need one mid size laptop. This laptop is not very big, 14.1 inches, and it is easy to handle. I thought the screen was to little, but now I think it is enough. The laptop has a Intel Core i5 processor, and I think that's enough to any software I have to use. It comes with the windows 7 64-bit OS, and I like it. Sometimes I think it goes a little slow for being an Intel Core i5, but probably is just the way it is. The other features are good enough for me, 4GB RAM, 1066 Mhz bus speed, the remote control (it is a nice touch). The bay is extractable and that good also. The only thing that I do not like is that the laptop does not have a video card (Nvidia or ATI), but any way I think is a very good deal for the price. I have had some troubles with the laptop. Once, the computer didn't turn off, I closed the lid and put it in my backpack, but it did not hibernate. So when I take it out, it was really hot, I called HP and they solved the problem quickly. The other thing is the SPLASHTOP software, I think it does not work properly. It used to instantly appeared when I used to turn it on, but I was not able to connect the computer to the wireless, so I told that to HP and they download and install the old BIOS archive through the internet, and the SPLASHTOP software no longer appears when I turn the laptop on. When I talked to HP, I do not know if the knew what is SPLASHTOP, probably they know, but I didn't have it clear, and I think they didn't have a clue of why it was not working properly. The other thing is the touchpad, sometimes the pointer moves really slowly, no matter how fast I sweep my finger. Some other times the scroll bar does not function properly. I don't why this happens, but I have an old HP and the touch pad is really good. The texture of the touch pad in this laptop is not rough, and just like any other plastic part in the laptop, and I think that bad too, sometimes I think I am touching the touch pad, but I am not. Anyway I think it is very good laptop for the price (it has very good features [processor and bus speed are the most important for me]).

ADDENDUM: The keyboard is really bad. The letter or symbol wrote in each key, turns brown with the use. And there is no way to turn it white again.

The LAN card went bad after a few months. Downloads are as slow as 56k modem downloads, uploads are lightning fast. That isn't the problem really, but the problem is how HP Customer Service is handling this issue. The online reps told me to install the "HP Care Advisor" and said that should help analyze the issue. He offered no other help or explanation.

I took my laptop to 2 different HP service centers and at both centers they're telling me that my LAN card is OK but that this is a problem with the operating system. I re-installed Windows 7 two times, with all updates. I fresh-installed Vista back onto the computer + updates and STILL the problem remains. Downloads are super slow, while my uploads are super fast (normal speed).

I took my computer to ANOTHER, private service shop, and the tech told me the LAN card was bad. The HP guy says otherwise, though I don't know why he's lying.

Good luck with this laptop, and HP customer service, though I hope you don't have to deal with them.