HP Pavilion HDX9430EA

I bought one of these just over 12 months ago, in that time I have upgraded both had drives and had it back to HP for repair (more on that in a minute).

First of this thing is huge, I mean massive, don't think its not a blot bigger than a 17" screened laptop, it is trust me its so big it doesn't fit on average sized peoples laps. Its heavy, it weights around 7kg (about 15lbs in old money I think) thats a lot, you won't be casually carrying this in one hand and your coffe in the other, it is so heavy it generates it own gravity field and sherpas are required to move it further than 15feet.

So thats the bad bits, overall its fantastic, the capabilities of this machine mean that I am running Conan: Age of Hyborea at full detail and its brilliantly smooth, the keyboard is very good and quite central with a number pad at the LH side and a remote control at the other (for the full multimedia experience). the screen is bright and clear, also running at a maximum resolution of 1900 x 1280 (I think) which is better than the original spec' a free upgrade I can live with.

This laptop feels extremely solid and doesn't flex when you pick it up, the screen hinge appears to be fabricated out of parts of a terminator, it all smacks of quality and durability. Apart from gaming and the usual 'net abuse the laptop was bought becasue I was doing a large amount of video editing and decided that this would help Premiere elements along a little, it does taking on average around 10mins to convert 10mins of video into a Flash video, makes batch processing of photographs a breeze as well. One problem that has haunted laptops for as long as I can remember is sound or lack/quality of it, not with this it has a full 5.1 surround system built in allowing connection of the usual set of home theater speakers, but it also has its own subwoofer built in (I kid you not). I usually use this when I'm watchin TV with my wife so the sound is off but on occaision I have turned up he volume and turned it in to an MP3 streamer with brilliant results, it has a fantastic sound quality best I have heard from any laptop and many desktops with wnything less than Altec or Creative speakers.

This brings me to my first problem with the laptop, hard drives, 2 x 160Gb is a little small I feel and I personally upgraded to a pair of 320Gb drives without any problem (now thinking about 500gb drives) but anyway the laptop can only handle 9.5mm height drives not the bigger 12mm drives. Also took the memory up to a full 4Gb as it is running Vista 64 it handles the extra memory well and it hasn't made any huge difference but Premiere likes it.

On the upgrade front that was it, I have recently heard that an Intel X9000 quad core chip could be installed, until it died. While backing up some files onto an external hard drive it went off, and refused to come on again. I had the blue shortcut lights accross the keyboard but nothing else, no fans no HDD. I contacted HP and after a few things to try they admitted it was really dead and arranged to take it back, 1 week and a new motherboard later its back and going strong. HP support were very helpful and they did what they said they would when they said they would.

I have also heard (apart from the CPU upgrade) that it can also be fitted out to 8Gb on RAM I cannot confirm this but may well try it in the future. (I will keep you posted)

So would I buy another in this world of ultra skinny netbooks, errrm YES! The performance of this machine dwarfs almost everything else I have seem, there are Quad core laptops on the market now but this is still cheaper. I have described this laptop as a Bentley of the laptop world, it might weight 2 tons but it will do 0-60 in 3.2 seconds and over 200mph flat out. In years to come I think I will have to keep this beast just for the sake of it, I don't think we will see more 20" laptops for some time, for me its just brilliant even with the breakdown I wouldn't replace it with a different machine.

I love the looks on peoples faces when they see it, if dwarfs everything but looks brilliant, feels brilliant and goes like the clappers. This is especially funny as my wifes laptop is an EEEPC with the 10" screen, in pink, sit them one on top of the other and it looks like the EEE should slot into the HP. My advice is if you want an all out gaming laptop with enough power to edit high quality video quickly and you can find one, buy this computer. If you want something to carry about with you and maybe is in a coffee shop to surf the net don't really, don't you will not have enough room on your table for the coffee, and the screen is large enough to block out the sun. Similarly do NOT let someone under 12 stone try to put this on their lap it will snap them, children could be squashed under it, I am over 6' 4" tall and it 'just' fits on my lap, my wife can't lift it off hers. track one down a buy it today, I have seen them for around £800 now still worth every penny.