My HP DV3500t / DV3510nr Review

I've gotten so much information from these forums, I thought I'd give back a little. Below is my review of my new HP DV3510nr. It's actually more of a collection of my disjointed thoughts (as you can see, there's a lot of subjective information below) but I tried to give it some logical order. It's not complete yet and I'll be updating this over time. I also will attach some pictures I took.

To gain some persepective, a little about me. I bought this notebook as my home PC. I want to be able to move it around the house, surf the interwebs, and some office stuff, so the 13" form factor appealed to me. In addition to that, however, I've got a 17" laptop that I take with me when I travel for work. A lot of the times I need the horsepower to do some customer demos or present a project, but when I don't have to do that, I'd much rather have something light to take with me. I'm more in it for the portability, but to be able to run some of my work software (albeit at a reduced capacity) is an added bonus. I really don't intend to do any gaming on this.

For those that don't know, HP released the DV3500 series notebooks about a month ago. This filled the 13" gap in their consumer product line. At the same time, Best Buy launched the DV3510nr as part of their Blue Label line of PC's. A few weeks later, HP removed the DV3500t from their website. Rumor has it, this PC is now exclusive to Best Buy. Save for the customizability, that's actually all fine and good for me because the DV3510nr configuration was actually about $200 CHEAPER than a similar configuration on HP's website (that included my EPP discount).

Specs
Processor - Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2.0Ghz
OS - Vista Home Premium 64 bit
RAM - 4.00GB
Screen - 13.3" LED 1280x800
HDD - 320GB, 5400rpm (mine's a Toshiba MK3252GSX)
Optical - DVD RAM of some sort
Battery - 6 cell (sits flush with the case)

Weight
Listed at 4.6lbs. It ships with a plastic bezel that you can put in place of the dvd drive, but I'm not sure how much weight that will save. It doesn't feel heavy at all when you hold it.

Dimensions
1.4"x12.6"x9" (thickness, width, depth). Per Best Buy's website.

Build Quality / Fit & Finish
It's not the highest I've seen, but it's not the lowest either. Nothing really creeks, nor does it feel like it was poorly built, however it does have a plasticy feel to it that I'm not terribly fond of. The plastic does have a nice smooth finish to it, so it does feel nice across your hands. The downside with that is that it's a fingerprint magnet. The remote that fits in the media slot doesn't sit flush in there either - it sticks out about 2-3mm.

The screen is quite thin which is pretty cool, but as a result its prone to flexing. The screen doesn't distort unless you apply an unreasonable amount of pressure. I am slightly concerned about how durable it is (because of the flexing), but I don't feel like it will be an issue if I take care of the notebook.

Screen
This is totally unscientific, but I really like it. The colors are vivid, text is nice and crisp, and it's plenty bright. In fact, in my home office I find that the brightest setting is almost too bright. I've got 3 60W bulbs overhead, one 100W floor lamp and a 75W desk lamp on. I find that with this combination of lights (it's about the average brightnesss you'd find in a normal office) I can comfortable use the screen at 3/10. 1/10 is still useable, but a little dim (I wouldn't mind it if I'm in battery saver mode). When I turn off all the lights, 1/10 is more than enough and full brightness kind of hurts.

A nice suprise for me is that even with the glossy finish, the screen was quite useable outside. With the brightness set to 10/10, it's more than readable. The really cool thing is that if you set the brightness to 1/10, it sort of looks like the backlight is off, but the sun acts as a direct light on the screen, and it's still readable. It's hard to describe it, you'd just have to see it. I'll try to get a picture of what I'm talking about later.

Battery
The battery came about 50% charged. I haven't had a chance to try using it much without being plugged in so I can't report on that yet. I'm not sure why, but for some reason Vista isn't giving me an estimated time left on the battery. Weird. It took about 30 minutes to type up this review and the battery level went from 93% to 81%. That's with WIFI and Bluetooth on, moderate surfing and MS Word going on. The screen brightness is set at 3/10. That translates into ~ 4.25 hours. If that holds true over time, I'm pretty happy!

There are 3 power profiles that come set up. Power Saver, HP Recommended, and High Performance. There's no custom settings for controlling CPU speed, Aero, or anything like that. I actually don't like the way they were configured, so I changed them all myself.

Keyboard
It's got a really nice feel to it. Keys bounce back well, it's not terribly loud It doesn't flex noticeably when I'm typing, but if you deliberately press down on the middle of the keyboard, you will see it move. Throughout writing this review, I've noticed that I do miss some keys. Unlike some Dells I've used before I don't think it's an issue with this keyboard so much as it is my not being used to it.

I really like the layout. All the keys are where I think they should be. I don't have to do any hunting. Your mileage may vary, obviously.

The back lighting is a really cool feature. It's completely unobtrusive even in pitch black conditions. I'm touch typist, yet I still think it's pretty handy. I could see this coming in *VERY* handy when I'm unfortunate enough to have to take a red-eye flight and I want to get some work done while other people doze.

Touchpad
It's responsive and pointer moves pretty smoothly. The scrolling work well and tapping the touchpad works just like you think it would. Despite all that, however, I really don't care for the texture. HP decided to make the touchpad the same glossy fingerprint magnet that the rest of the computer is made out of. The problem with it is that if your finger has the slightest bit of persperation on it, it sticks to the touchpad and moving your finger across isn't as nice and smooth as on other laptops. It feels like the same sort of plastic as the rest of the notebook. Thumbs down for that. To compensate, I jacked up the sensitivity of the touchpad and try to drive it with just the very tip of my finger. That seems to work okay.

I was actually suprised to learn that this is an Alps touchpad. I've used other Alps touchpads in the past before and thought they were all garbage due to poor sensitivity and the overall jerkyness when scrolling. This particular touchpad doesn't seem to exhibit those problems. The driver included is also suprisingly robust compared to what I've seen in the past... It supports fwd/back gestures, corner taps, horizontal and vertical scrolling. That's pretty much all I care about.

Speakers
They suck. A lot. Small and tinny sound. Fortunately, the headphone controls are up front, so I really don't have to use them.

Noise
One disappointing thing is that the fan seems to run all the time, as far as I can tell. You can hear it in a perfectly quiet room, however it's not distracting. I consider myself pretty anal as far as the noise goes and it doesn't bother me.

The DVD drive is by no means quiet when it first spools up, but it's actually a LOT quieter than any other laptop drive I've ever heard (ESPECIALLY the slot loads on the Dell XPS laptops). It's got a hum when you're playing a DVD but it's not obtrusive. You'll never hear it if you've got headphones in.

The hard drive also emits a steady whine (like white noise) and you can hear it when it's being accessed. Occasionally the hum from the hard drive disappears. I'm assuming that's if it hasn't been accessed for a while.

Heat / Temperature
It's very comfortable to use on your lap. Gets slightly warm over time, but nothing that's unacceptable. I'll update this section later when I get some CPU / HDD temps.

Performance
For day-to-day tasks, it seems to be performing very well. I bought this notebook as my home PC and really only surf the internet and basic MS Office stuff as far as that's concerned. I've also used Visual Studio to test/compile 64-bit apps under Vista for work (we're still on 32-bit XP Pro). No isues with intellisense.

I've got some really computationally intensive programs that I've written that I'll be testign here on in the next few days or so. I'll definitely report back on those.

Bloatware
There really wasn't much junk software on this computer, I'm happy to report. Here's what I uninstalled:

Yahoo toolbar
HP TotalCare Advisor
Norton Internet Security - I've never used a program that was worse than what it was trying to protect you from.

Anything else isn't really obtrusive to the point where I notice, so unless it becomes a problem, it can stay.

WEI Scores
Processor - 5.3
RAM - 5.3
Graphics - 3.6
Gaming Graphics - 4.8
Primary Hard Disk - 5.5

Gaming
I really don't do an PC gaming. That's what I bought an Xbox for. I'll play X-Plane every once in a while if I can't get some IMC to try to keep the procedural stuff for my instrument rating sharp. When I get around to installing it, I'll report back.

I also have some finite element modelling software that I'll be installing for work as soon as I get updated license keys. This software is pretty dependent on OpenGL. Hopefully this performance will be decent.

Warranty
There seems to be a little confusion about this. The laptop does in fact come with a 2 year warranty, even though the bottom of the notebook says 1 year. There's a 1/2 page leaflet that comes with the notebook that explains that it's a 2 year warranty even though the sticker says 1 year. The second year warranty is exactly the same as the first.

Conclusion
After a few short days of using this computer, I have to say I'm pretty happy with it so far. It's nice and light, performance is good to better in all aspects, and it's a fantastic bang for the buck. $1099 + tax out the door. I've tried pricing out similar Dells (XPS M1330, new and refurb), Sonys (SR Series) and Lenovos (U330) and I can't come beat feature-for-feature this notebook for that price. Dell comes close, and if you're willing to go refurb and get a 5XXX CPU, it's cheaper (I've had so many problems with Dell I'm hesatant to buy from them though). Lenovo's U330 also is pretty close and I think it beats this one in that it's got DDR3 ram and switchable graphics, however the performance increase from DDR3 is debatable, the switchable graphics don't seem to be yielding battery life much longer than 3 hours, and with all the shipping delays, you can't friggin get one! When you add the 2 year warranty on top, it's really one of the best deals out there.

 

thanks for the review!

 

HP doesn't have the dv3500 listed on their site anymore, kind of interesting. Its still at Best Buy though

 

Thank you for the review!

I am a pilot also, so I am looking forward to your update after you test X-Plane on this machine. I'm planning on running Microsoft Flight Simulator X on mine.

 

Thanks for taking your time with it.

 

Is it really not too hot? I remember my old hp dv2700 used to burn the crap out of me, and people with the same laptop agreed. I was planning to buy the 3500t until I felt how hot it could get on a dv2700. So I got a dell studio 15 instead. I love it, but kinda wish I had gotten a smaller screen. Could you like maybe compare the heat to something like say a dell?

 

I've had this laptop for almost three weeks now.

It does not get hot while running normal apps or surfin while on your lap.

It gets a little toasty when I play Portal.

The fan is very quiet even when cooling the unit down mind you my only experience with fan noise is a Qosimo (sp?) and that thing was loud

 

jus bought it today, best buy was sold out the first time i tried...

good deal, decent, portable, shiny, nothing particularly wrong with it, except the touch responsiveness for the controlls on top and the touch pad. maybe it'll take some gettin used to, but overall its neat.

 

I been eyeballing Sony Vaio SR series with P8400 3 gb ram 320gb HD 256mb ATi 3470 video card and LED screen for quite a while, its one of the most beautiful machine I have seen, and usually sony is very quiet. But at 1549 dollars.

Then I saw this 1099 at bestbuy, its not as pretty at all by any means when compared to sony, but it is 450 bucks cheaper. I'm kinda moved but not sure about the heat and noise, cause all my HP laptop before were all toasty oven, fine for winter, killer for summer. Any thoughts>? I LOVE the sony but i dont want to be a sucker and spend 450 more just cause of look and name, however there is one factor.

I have a sony card, and if I use it , until this saturday Nov 8, I get 24 month no payment no interst financing for the SR laptop.... any suggestions>?

 

I was able to purchase the HP dv3510nr from Best Buy with no interest for 2 years on the Best Buy Card. I'm not sure if this promotion is still going on, but it might be worth checking out.

 

Hey Isom. thx for reply, they have 18 months going on, but I have too many credit card, newegg card, sony card, circuit city card, if you know what i mean lol. Question, as to your DV3510NR, how is the heat and noise, lets say quiet room at night, when u dont wanna turn on ur desktop, just leave the laptop on for download and on all night near you. How is the fan noise level and heat?

I am extremely sensitive to noise and heat, and sony is the one I have confidence are always quiet, other HP I had were all good cept for the loud fan noise......

 

Re: dv3510 nr Is the mute button that's to the left of the volume slider control supposed to work by just swiping a finger across it or do you have to mute the computer by going down to the system tray and do it form there.
My mute button won't work by swiping it, but does work when I go down to the system tray to mute the comp. Could it be defective?

 

you have to sorta hold your finger down on it a bit (keep it there for a second)


on another note.... the screen flex, it is kinda worrisome as i have to take it back and forth to class everyday. Guess I'll just have to be extra careful...

 

I only have a couple of laptops that I've used more than casually to compare it to, but it's pretty quiet during normal use. Of course when you start doing more graphics-intensive things and the fan kicks on, it creates a little more noise, but not much. It does get a bit warm during gaming and high-intensive CPU tasks, but for me it's pretty manageable. It's still cooler than my girlfriend's Vaio 15.4" laptop with integrated graphics. That being said, I haven't left it on for more than a couple of hours. No big downloads yet.

So, I think in terms of the average laptop, it runs pretty cool and quiet. Hope that helps!

Anyone else have anything to add?

 

thx for this review

 

Hello guys,

Cnet's review of the dv3510nr was posted today and they made it editor's choice for November 2008!

Check it out!

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/hp-dv3510nr/4505-3121_7-33309970.html?tag=mncol;lst

 

Thanks for an honest review =)

 

Hi, thx for info.

I'm interested in the dv3510nr. But it is not available with blu-ray. Is it possible to swap out later with blu-ray drive?

Thanks!

 

Multi touch on the ALPS touch pad?
does it work?