HP HDX 18t Premium Series 18" Notebook Review
Hi, it’s Dave Altavilla for Hot Hardware. You know not all desktop replacement notebook has to be a killer gaming rig that will bleed your wallet dry and set you back several thousands of dollars. Let’s take a look at HP’s HDX18. It is a jumbo 18 inch desktop replacement machine targeted at striking a balance between multimedia performance, features and price. Let’s fire it up and take a look. HP’s HDX18 T premium series notebook is a very large machine based on an 18.4 inch LCD screen with a resolution of 1920 by 1080. It also weighs in at about 8.8 pounds, so it’s definitely what you consider a desktop replacement notebook. Our machine came pre-configured with Core 2 Duo T9600 processor, clock at 2.8 gigahertz. 4 gig of DDR2 system memory. A 320 gig Fujitsu 7200 rpm hard drive. And a combination Sony 2X Blu-ray, 24X CD, 8X DVD read/write drive. As you see it’s configured here, this machine retails for about 1600 dollars. Our test machine came with Windows Vista home premium 32 bit installed. And as you can see here, it scores a Windows Vista experience rating of 5.0, with robust processor and memory metrics. And this is due in part to the 2.8 gigahertz Core 2 Duo processor, and the DDR2 800 megahertz system memory in this machine. On the left side of the system is a Kensington lock port, VGA output port, expansion port, three docking station port, Ethernet port, HDMI, eSata, USB, mini firewire port and an express card slot. On the right side of the HDX18 is a microphone jack, a pair of headphone jacks, two more USB ports, one on each side of our combo Blu-ray CD/DVD drive, an optional TV tuner antenna jack, and a power adapter port. The HDX18 was built with a really nice high gloss highly stylized finish that, believe it or not, doesn’t show fingerprint all that prominently. On the front of the system is the 5 in 1 flash card reader, as well as a few indicator lights for things like power and hard drive status. And of course the obligatory security finger print scanner. The keyboard area of the system is nice and spacious with a full num pad. And a really nice, large touch pad area. Above the keyboard are illuminated touch sensitive buttons that control things like multimedia player functionality as well as volume and even treble and bass control for the audio output. Now incidentally, the HDX18 has probably one of the best sounding speaker systems we’ve ever heard of a notebook. And that’s courtesy of Altech Lansing speaker system with that integrated subwoofer. As well as IDT’s high definition audio chip set. As you can see we’re playing at 1080p quick time digital video clip here. And the machine has absolutely no problem with high definition digital video playback. Everything’s real fluid. It’s a really nice multimedia machine to be sure. Now further along the line of its multimedia capabilities, our HDX18 came pre-configured with a digital TV tuner, capable of receiving high definition digital TV broadcast. A terrestrial antenna and this media center remote. As you can see we’re playing a bit of recorded TV, and we’re able to navigate Windows media center functionality very easily with our remote. And we’re able to switch to live TV as well, so very capable digital TV option to consider with the HDX18. Now in terms of its gaming capabilities, the HDX18 that we tested came configured with a video GForce 9600MGT GPU for its graphics subsystem. And as you can see here, we’re playing a military Quake Wars at a resolution of 1024 by 768 with 2XAA enabled. Here we are able to pull out about 40 frames per second. Not too bad, not the most powerful gaming performance from a notebook that we’ve seen, but still a capable machine nonetheless. Probably one of the nicest features of the HP HDX18 premium series notebook is its gorgeous 18.4 inch LCD, which we found to offer good brightness, high contrast ratio, and good color uniformity, though it is a glossy panel, so there is a bit of glare from time to time. You can expect the notebook to last about 2 and a half to 3 hours on a full charge of its standard 8-cell battery. And with a list price of about 1299 for the base model, up to 1599 for the model that we tested, we think it represents a good value as a high performance multimedia desktop replacement notebook. I’m Dave Altavilla for Hot Hardware. Thanks for stopping by.