HP dm4-3000ea Beats Edition
The HP dm4-3000ea Beats Edition manages to offer a stylish design without really overdoing it. The design feels solid for a 14 inch laptop, and its audio performance is just great with the aid of Beats Audio Technology.
Design and Features
While this model may seem a bit reduced in size (it’s dimensions being 338 x 225 x 32 mm), but it proved to be fairly heavy, weighing at about 2kg, which might be a bit surprising for such a small chassis. However, each and every component feels solid, not as solid as the mag-alloy chassis we’ve seen on Envy models, but still pretty well made. The board uses the same color patters as the case does and on the back, you’ll notice the Beats logo.
Normally, we see smaller keyboards as a downside when it comes to laptops; in this case however, it actually feels more natural, as it feels even better than the first keyboard offered by the dm4 Pavilion, sporting isolated chiclet keys with a fair amount of bounce. One of this model’s issues is that is that the touch tech on the track pad was a bit unresponsive, but that was a minor annoyance.
The 14 inch LED backlit BrightView screen offers a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution and performs well even in excessively bright environments since it’s not that glossy. HD vide streaming wasn’t an issue either, performing nicely. Overall, the HP dm4-3000ea Beats Edition delivered good performance in terms of multimedia tasks, so you shouldn’t encounter any difficulties.
The laptop also boasts a superior built in webcam that, with the aid of the TrueVision low light technology, did well in both high and low light environments.
In terms of specs, the laptop is equipped with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-2450M CPU, a 500GB SATA HDD as well as 4GB of RAM, with the possibility of adding two more memory sticks should you desire an upgrade in the future. The aforementioned configuration should mean that boot time would be fairly low, however, this is where HP intervenes by adding some of its own features that tend to slow things down a bit. But not all of them are useless, for example, Norton or Windows Office Starter Edition are quite handy.
Overall performance wasn’t really above average, the CPU scoring 5629 in our benchmarks, which isn’t bad, but it’s not as good as other models on the market. Graphics were just as average, with only 5622 in 3D Mark, which is enough for less demanding games, but if you want more, you might be disappointed.
Pros
The HP dm4-3000ea Beats Edition really shines when it comes to audio quality, and we were keen on the model’s screen. Build quality is overall good and performance is acceptable.
Cons
During our tests we’ve noticed that the trackpad was a little unresponsive, and the model could definitely have more grunt.
Conclusion
Overall, this model is a pretty handy, capable notebook and it might be a good choice should you be on the road a lot and are looking for a stylishly designed laptop to take along. Even though it’s not really packed with power and it’s a bit heavy, it delivers excellent audio quality which will no doubt be appealing to most. It offers solid performance that should cover your basic requirements.
