Compal HGL-30 Review (pics, specs)

by Eric Murawski

Compal HGL-30 Review

Compal HGL-30 (view large image)

Overview:

Compal HGL-30 specs as reviewed:

• OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows XP Professional (installed separately)
• PROCESSOR: Intel T2500 Core Duo (2.0 GHz) with arctic silver 5
• GRAPHICS: NVIDIA Geforce Go7600 with 256 MB of discrete video memory
• SCREEN: 14.1 -inch WXGA+ (1280 x 800)
• HARD DRIVE: 100 GB 5400RPM SATA
• MEMORY: 2GB DDR2 667 PC2-5400
• OPTICAL DRIVE: DVD+/-RW

This notebook also comes with optional Bluetooth and TV tuner, neither of which I purchased. It has a standard 9 cell battery, biometric fingerprint reader, a hardware wireless on/off switch, as well as a 3 in 1 memory reader.

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Reasons for Buying:

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I purchased this notebook for college first and foremost, but my criteria for the perfect computer was not simple. I am a very demanding computer user and required adiscrete video card, but I did not want to sacrifice much battery life. My initial choice was between the Compal HEL-80 and the Asus S96J. When the rumors for the HGL-30 were confirmed and the price was announced I immediately decided that I had found the perfect computer. I was shying away from the HEL-80 and the S96J because of the weight and screen size, and so with a price point under $1600 (without OS) this was the perfect blend of battery, power, and size for my needs.

Where and How Purchased:

With extensive research I decided on powernotebooks.com as my vendor of choice. Not only did they have very competitive prices, but when I purchased the computer they were one of about 3 vendors that were carrying the HGL-30. I purchased the computer on a Friday, and 13 days laterthe computer had arrived at my doorstop for a purchase price of $1,549.00, saving myself over $37.00 with the 2.5% cash discount price. The wait time for the computer would have been less had the computer been in stock at the time of purchasing, and if I had selected to buy it with a credit card, but I choose to get the cash discount price. I purchased my copy of Windows XP Professional from NewEgg.com for $137.99, the Logitech mx610 cordless laser mouse for $41.99 also from NewEgg.com, and a neoprene case from RadioShack for $24.99. My total price when I was finished buying the computer and accessories that I considered necessary was just over $1,756.00.

Build and Design:

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The Compal HGL-30 has nothing cheap feeling to it. There is no rippling of the screen even with consistent and hard pressure on the back of the screen. The screen hinges are solid almost to a fault. The hinges take a fair amount of pressure to open the screen, and if the screen is opened too fast then the bottom of the computer will pull up from the table until the weight brings it back down. The computer is made of allplastic but in my opinion (and this is very subjective) this is a very stylish computer. The back screen is of high quality plastic with a greenish blue cover that is very hard to show with pictures, but is no doubt better looking when seen live. The palm rests and around the screen are a slightly textured sliver, with the sides and the bottom of the computer a matte black. There are no curved edges save for the area reserved for the latch on the top of the computer lending to a slightly boxy design, but does not take away from the overall beauty of the computer.

There is an air intake on the bottom right of the computer, and two exhaust vents, one on the left rear and one on the back left of the computer. These vents are very well placed in my mind for several reasons. Two exhaust vents mean more efficient cooling and the vents are placed on the left, and with the majority of the people right handed the vents do not blow warm air on hands when using a cordless mouse. There are 3 USB ports, one on the left and two on the right. The placement of these ports makes for easy addition of peripherals without having everything cluttered on one side of the computer.

Screen:

A look at the HGL30 widescreen display (view large image)

A look at the HGL30 screen from the side (view large image)

The screen is a 14.1 inch WXGA+ (1280 x 800 resolution). In my opinion this is a very good screen, but I do not have very much to compare it to. My old gateway laptop was a 12.1 inch matte screen and there is no comparison in terms of image quality and brightness. The viewing angles on this screen are unbelievable. Five people were standing in a row, me being the center person, looking at the computer and the screen was still visible. The screen is very bright at its highest setting, but even on battery power, with the lowest brightness the screen is still very visible watching a movie in sunlight outside. The screen has no faults in my mind but being a glossy screen there is always going to be the glare that has to be looked through however this is not a detriment to the overall beauty of the screen.

Speakers:

The speakers are nothing torave about, being standard quiet laptop speakers. There is only a very small amount of bass but still noticeable. The speakers are quiet but are listenable and music can still be played and enjoyed, albeit in a decently quiet setting only. Listening to music can be enjoyed but the speakers can reach a maximum volume of maybe 1/4<SUP>th</SUP> the volume that my 2.1 Boston speaker system can get on my desktop. The speakers are placed on the right and left of the keyboard.

Processor and Performance:

The overall performance of the HGL-30 was very impressive with the t2500 dual core processor, NVIDIA Geforce Go7600 with 256MB of dedicated ram and 2GB of 667 MHz ram. The computer boots up decently fast seeing as I have 20 icons in the status bar. The omnipass piece of software seems to hang-up the system at the login screen however, but this is for a maximum of 20 seconds and I like the convenience, if not the "wow" factor of the fingerprint reader. I have not played any games yet on the system aside from pinball, however while running a full system virus scan I was able to work in Photoshop with multiple windows open and had no system lag at all.

Benchmarks:

The benchmark scores seem a little low to me but that could be because of the graphics card being underclocked. I think that if the card was overclocked according to Donald's tutorial that there would be a much better 3dmark score.

3DMark 05:

Notebook	3D Mark 05 Results
Compal HGL30 (2.0GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7600 256MB)	3,107 3D Marks
Asus W3J (1.83Ghz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	3,925 3D Marks
Dell Inspiron e1705 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400)	1,791 3D Marks
Acer TravelMate 8204WLMi (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	4,236 3DMarks
Alienware Aurora M-7700(AMD Dual Core FX-60, ATI X1600 256MB)	7,078 3D Marks
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,092 3D Marks
Asus V6Va (2.13 GHz Pentium M, ATI x700 128 MB)	2,530 3D Marks
Fujitsu n6410 (1.66 GHz Core Duo, ATI X1400 128MB)	2,273 3DMarks
HP Pavilion dv4000 (1.86 GHz Pentium M, ATI X700 128MB)	2,536 3D Marks
Dell XPS M1210 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7400 256MB)	2,090 3D Marks

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3DMark 06:

Notebook	3DMark 06 Results
Compal HGL30 (2.0GHz Core Duo, nVidia Go 7600 256MB)	1,872 3DMarks
Apple MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 128MB)	1,528 3DMarks
HP nc8430 (2.0GHz Core Duo, ATI X1600 256MB)	1,6943DMarks
Zepto 6214 (2.0GHz Core Duo, NvidiaGo7600 512MB)	2,2033DMarks
Dell XPS M1710 (2.16 GHz Core Duo, nVidia 7900 GTX 512MB)	4,744 3DMarks

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HD Tune:

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SuperPi:

Notebook	Time
Compal HGL30 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Asus W3H760DD (2.0 GHz Pentium M)	1m 33s
Dell Inspiron e1505 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 16s
Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.0GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Toshiba Satellite M100 (2.00GHz Core Duo)	1m 18s
Samsung X60 (1.66GHz Core Duo)	1m 29s
Dell XPS M140 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 41s
Sony VAIO FS680 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 53s
IBM ThinkPad T43 (1.86 GHz Pentium M)	1m 45s

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Heat and Noise:

The heat and noise is very minimal. There is a big fan under the right middle portion of the bottom of the case that cools both the CPU and GPU by way of copper pipes which output to two vents with aluminum fins. The two vents do a very good job dissipating the heat along with the Artic Silver 5 compound that I had put on the processor to reduce the heat. I undervolted the processor with RightMark CPU Clock Utility, further lowering the heat production and extending battery life. The fan makes almost no noise, quieter then if you blow air out of your mouth as fast as possible. The fan cannot be heard with the quiet grumble of an air conditioner in the background. In a room with any type of background noise the fan is drowned out and only in silent rooms is the fan noise audible.

The exhaust vents cycle on and off when on battery power and blow out what could be considered lukewarm air even with the processor clocked to 2.0 GHz and the hard disk spinning trying to install big files, running a virus scan and working on Photoshop. Although I haven't played any games I have used the computer multitasking heavily on battery and find nothing hot about this computer. That being said there are a few warm spots on the computer.

The heat coming off of the bottom of the computer can not be considered hot, but there is warmth coming off of the bottom. Sitting in my room on a cool night I had no problem with the computer on my lap warming my legs but not to a point of annoyance. The palm rests on the computer can become warm, but again nothing terrible. The left palm rest heats up faster, and with constant usage both of the palm rests become heated. The heat is not enough to become unbearable and again could not be considered to be hot, only warm at most.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

Keyboard and touchpad view (view large image)

The touchpad is in my opinion one of the best that I have used (made by Elanech). The touchpad tracks easily and is accurate enough and not too sensitive. The touchpad can be configured to have areas for both horizontal and vertical scrolling. I find these areas to be a little too small as you have to really work the touchpad to get it to scroll. I had to put my finger touching partly off of the touchpad in order to get the scrolling to work even with it set to the maximum allowed space. Sometimes the scrolling will stop working in the middle of a scroll sequence which can be annoying.

There are several nice features also for the touchpad that make up for the minor annoyances. Single finger, double finger, and triple finger configurations can all be assigned to this touchpad. I have mine set for single finger click = left click, double finger click = middle click, and triple finger click = right click. This works flawlessly and gives me all of the functionality of a normal mouse. I find no problems with the mouse misinterpreting the amount of fingers and it takes a decent amount of pressure to have it recognize a click which is good so that when scrolling there is no accidental click when it is not meant.

The keyboard is in the upper realm of keyboards as far as I am concerned. I am typing this review right now from the keyboard and have no problem finding a key or with any discomfort. In terms of flex the keyboard can be broken into 3 parts, the left ending at the f key, the middle going from the f to the k key, and the right going from the k key to the end of the notebook.

The left third of the keyboard has no flex all and is of no concern. The middle has the slightest bit of flex, but nothing that stop me from calling it solid. The right however has some flex. The letters don't flex very much, in fact it is not noticeable during normal typing, but centered around the enter key there is a good bit of flex. This has not affected me in recommending the keyboard because outside of the enter key, the keys that do flex are rarely used and even with the flex the keys are not uncomfortable or hard to use.

Input and Output Ports:

Front of computer:

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Back of computer:

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Left side of computer:

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Right side of computer:

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There is nothing special about the ports -- most of which are standard on just about every computer. On the left hand side, starting from the front of the computer there is a PCMCIA card slot and an ExpressCard slot stacked upon each other. Behind that there is an Ethernet cable followed by a USB port . All the way at the back of the notebook there is a notebook lock port. On the back from right to left, there is a power plug, modem port, and S-video port. On the left side from the front, there is a headphone and microphone port followed by two USB ports. Following the USB port there is the optical drive and finally a VGA port. On the front of the notebook on the left side there isa 3-in-1 memory card reader.

There is one notable port missing and that is the omission of a firewire port, also known as the IEEE 1394 port. While this is not important to me because I do not do video capture this would be something that people interested in home movies would be wanting. I do not think that the omission of the firewire port is anything to worry about because almost nothing outside of video capture is ever done with the firewire and even if video capture is needed I believe that certain TV tuner cards are able to capture video.

Wireless:

The wireless on the HGL-30 is a built in "Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection." This is a very good wireless card, I am able to pick up the wireless router buried in the middle of my house fromall rooms. In my room with only one wall to go through I am able to get a very strong connection and a respectable speed to the wireless connection. The card comes with a hardware switch which is very handy when trying to save battery life because instead of having to go through menus which can get tedious, the hardware switch is positioned perfectly to allow you to turn it off with a thumb and not have to remove the entire hand from the keyboard, making it a very quick process.

Although not wireless this computer also comes with an Ethernet connection to connect to a land line and a modem. I have not tried out the modem as dial-up Internet is not very popular anymore, but the Ethernet worked perfectly connecting to both my Road Runner at home and my T1 connection at school without a problem.

Battery:

Underside and view of battery (view large image)

The battery supplied with the HGl-30 is a 9-cell lithium ion battery. The battery does stick out the back of the computer a little (3/4<SUP>th</SUP> of an inch) but I did not find it to be any type of distraction or detraction from the computer. The battery doing normal light browsing and typing gets nearly 4 hours (3:37 -- 3:53 on 99% charge) depending on the situation and the amount the processor has to throttle up. Doing more intensive tasks, like running a virus scan and working with Photoshop at the same time brought the battery life down nearly an hour to 3:03 on 93% charge. I have not gamed yet on the computer but I would expect the battery life to dip below or hover right at 2 hours with this battery.

Operating System and Software:

There was a choice to select Windows XP Professional, Home, or nothing when buying the computer. I choose to have nothing installed and I purchased my own copy of XP Professional and installed it myself. After installation the driver CD was very easy to use, although after a restart from a driver install the CD would not autorun which got very annoying when I had to pop open the drive and shut it again to run the disk, or go through explorer to run the CD.

The drivers all installed flawlessly and there was only one driver on the CD that seemed like a waste of space on the hard drive. That driver was the smart watch dog software. The entire purpose of the piece of software was to watch a face and shut down the computer when that face leaves the webcams view after a predetermined time. To me this was just a piece of software that did not need to be included. The only other problem that I had with the software is that it put a lot of icons in the system tray. This is just a cosmetic annoyance to me and so I auto hide almost every one of the icons and then they are no longer a nuisance.

The boot times were reasonable although I did notice that after installing Omnipass the initial windows boot was slowed. Once my password was input to log into windows it was a mere 15 to 20 seconds or so before I had full functionality of the computer with over 20 icons in the system tray.

The Omnipass software worked perfectly with the fingerprint reader and with windows and makes it very simple to log into windows with the swipe of a finger. The computer came with Power DVD 5 and the Nero OEM suite, neither of which I have installed (no time to do so) so I cannot say how they work. There is also a CD for Intel's wireless notebook card driver, but it is useless as the driver on the driver CD is newer.

Customer Support:

Powernotebooks.com prides itself on the customer service that they provide. This includes lifetime 24/7 tech support that isn't outsourced. In my one occasion that I had to call so far the person was courteous and was knowledgeable and my problem was quickly and easily resolved. I also have a one year warranty with "match" shipping. This means that if I have to send in the computer to get repaired they will ship it back with the same method that I have selected to ship the notebook to the company. There were options for other warranties but I chose to stick with the standard one year.

Conclusion:

This covers all of the characteristics of theCompal HGL30 that make it such a great machine for me. To me this computer perfectly blends size (14.1 inch screen, and 5.5 lbs) with battery life (pushing 4 hours without WiFi enabled) and power with a dual core processor and dedicated graphics card.

Pros:

• Different color makes it out of the ordinary
• Above average battery life with 9-cell battery
• Bright screen with great viewing angles
• Does not get very hot
• Perfect blend of power and battery

Cons:

• No IEEE 1394 (Firewire) port
• Omnipass slows down start up
• Slight flex on left side of keyboard
• Ctrl key is not the last one on the left
• Power button doesn't always work with first click

 

Nice review! It's good to see some of the less oft noted notebooks being reviewed. I'm impressed by the battery life and the dedicated GPU.

 

Nice review, a few minor errors though:
- 1280 x 800 should be WXGA, not WXGA+ (1440 x 900)
- 3dMark06 of 1872 got posted in the table as 3106 (your 3dMark05 score) (not sure if this was a typo from NBR)...

Other than that... yeah the 3dMark scores seem a tad low, do you know what your core and mem frequencies are?

 

I noticed the 3dmark06 score of 3106... I was like that's not possible for the score to be higher than 3dmark05 .d

Great review though! Looks like a nice notebook! I still don't know why Compal underclockes their cards by so much. Take the Asus A8jm for example... It gets around 4000 stock on 05' around 4500 oc'd. And 3dmark06 of over 2k overclocked to around 2500. I would really like to know how far you can push the 7600 in your HGL-30. Lets see some OC
scores!

 

great review, makes my decision on buying a 14" laptop a little harder =)

 

Great looking laptop! Could anyone tell me how I can order one of these puppies without a credit card? Thanks!

 

So the HGL30 benches equivalently to the HEL80, despite higher GPU clocks?

 

Nice review, I've been waiting for it Interesting benchmark results though

 

Looking up some Hel80 reviews, the 3dmark05 scores seem similar (3107 vs 3046 and 3093 in two Hel80 reviews I found). However, in the only 3dmark06 test I found (Chaz's review), the Hgl30 shows some bigger gains (Chaz had 1654 vs the Murawski's 1872).

 

Good review. This notebook has a lot going for it.

 

great! i was looking forward to this review for a long time

 

Cool review, I'd been looking forward to it as well. Very impressive little laptop.

 

Fantastic job on the review, reminded me very much of the HEL80 I reviewed here.

 

great review =) makes my wait even more excruciating. can't wait till i get the tracking number from PN!

 

great review


still one thing confusing me is the 4hrs of battery life from a 9cell rated at 7800mah?..since the z96j is a 15.4" and hits 5hrs....oh and something i believe others will be interested in are temps at idle/load/gaming

 

I'm not sure about the 3dmark06 that was not me. I noticed my own typo when in the pros and cons i said that the keyboard flex was on the left it is on the right as i had stated above in the review.

I havnt done any temperatures outside of gaming but playing need for speed underground most wanted after two hours of constant gaming i came up with a core temperature of 48 degrees c ( using coretemp) which i think is good. the computer never really gets hot only warm

 

Excellent review! Nice system! Congratulations!

 

man only if the laptop had looks going for it then it would be perfectttt haha

 

Ahh just the review I was waiting for! Very well done. Just when I'm almost sold on the HEL80, here comes its "younger sibling" making it so much harder to choose.

I think there's a thread in the Compal forum concerning OC tests with the Go7600... That, too, would be super interesting to know. Such low 3Dmark scores are a big negative for me, but I'm sure it can be fixed somehow.

C.

 

Great review! It is a good notebook for this price. It can compeet with asus a8j without any problem

 

Congrats on your purchase. Looks superb, kinda like a poor man's W3J . I might just snag 1 for myself.

As for the synthetic benchmarks...i wouldnt be too worried. Even though they are a good indicator of 3d prowess, they are hardly reliable yardstick of actual gameplay capabilities.
If you can play Oblivion on a 7600 go GPU, it cant be all that bad.

Once again an excellent purchase.

 

Hi, can i say well done, but also you did not get 3106 on 3dmark06 with that card and set up. That has to be a typo. The 7600 in yours is a slower clocked version of the one in the zepto, and you got a much much higher score - i dont think thats possible

Other than that - excellent review

 

ah, the much anticipated hgl 30 review, great job!
i think that i will go for this notebook

 

As will I. I've been contemplating it, and finally got the cash up to afford it. Now I just need to see if I can wait for it to come with the Merom processor, or if I'm ok with just standard I'd also be really interested to see what happens if you stick a Ubuntu/Kubuntu LiveCD in it. Does it detect the wireless, all the devices, etc.? I'm planning on putting Linux on mine.

 

Good review. This review make it closer to the time whether I decide to buy this laptop.

 

gethin there is a picture of the readout that the computer showed me i would not bolster a score to try and persuade someone as a computer is a very personal and biased decision.

As for the 3dmark scores i cannot say why mine is higher, perhaps a higher processor or higher clocked RAM, but i can say without a doubt that i did not lie on the benchmarks

 

If you look at the image you have for 3dmark06 it shows a score of 1872, not the 3,106 that you have listed. You might want to change that to show the correct score. Overall, looks like a great laptop and a really good gpu for the size of the computer. Enjoy!

 

Excellent review! Thanks!

 

i hadnt realized that you were speaking of that benchmark however i have no control of the review after i submitted it. That was an admin error not one by my part as already stated...


For everyone concerned with the graphics card i overclocked it to palidin44's specs and got a 3675 on 3dmark05 which i think is much more respectable

 

Pitabred, I'm putting Kubuntu on my HGL30 when I get it on Monday, so I'll be able to tell you if it all works

murawski, that price seems a little high. I got mine for $1600 with 1.83, but with a 3 year warranty and a 120GB 7200RPM HD. Has the price gone down since you purchased yours?

 

he has the crown version. i'm assuming you have the powerpro version.

 

Yeah, the PowerPro 8:14 or whatever it is

 

Mine's in production and should ship shortly ... can't wait for the new toy to arrive!!

 

Not sure if he mentioned it or not, but when I asked him (via pm) about the stock clock speeds of the 7600, he said it was set to 350/350, same as the Hel80. Not that big of a deal, I still want one

 

Whats the difference between the crown and powerpro models? This is what I've been looking for. A "poor man's" w3j that would fit in my budget . Im alomst certain about ordering this machine. Any guides on which one, and what else I should get for it ?

 

To quote Paladin44...

Crown saves a little bit of money (~60 bucks?)

 

Hey,
Hasn't anybody noticed?
The 3DMark06 score for this laptop is 1872 according to the picture.But the number written is : 3,106 3DMarks
Which is impossible.
Mods. please fix this mistake.