HP hit CES 2011 with vengeance and one of their stars, in fact of CES, was their all new Pavilion dm1.
The new 11-inch Pavilion dm1 has an almost identical name to the old Pavilion dm1z, But these machines couldn’t be more different. The dm1 weight in at 3.5 pounds and looks more like a miniaturized version of the 13-inch Pavilion dm3t rather than the old dm1z.
The real changes are on the inside, HP is now using AMD’s new “Fusion” technology combining the CPU and graphics processor (or GPU) into a single chip. The end result is lower cost and better graphics. So this new machine has a starting price of just $449–and better battery life. When I was meeting with AMD at CES, they were very pround of the gains they have made in battery life – both under load and at idle, which has been a weakness for AMD in the past.
One of the key feature of the AMD E-350 Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) is that the on-chip AMD Radeon graphics allow for significantly better video playback than what we’ve seen from Intel Atom based netbook in the same price range. Oh Yeah it supports DirectX 11, while Intel is only supporting DirectX 10.1.
Not only can the dm1 handle standard definition video, but excels at playing HD video. The Pavilion dm1 features a 11.6-inch glossy screen that supports 720p video playback at 1366 x 768 resolution, but the dm1 also includes a HDMI port so you can connect your laptop to an HDTV or external monitor and watch 1080p quality video. The play back was very smooth for me when I was using the machine at AMD’s pressroom during CES.
The dm1 also includes HP’s CoolSense technology, which we’ve seen on a handful of other HP laptops. It’s essentially a user-adjustable fan control, for setting your ideal system temperature.
HP promises more than 10 hours of battery life from the dm1, with options including hard drives up to 750GB in capacity, GPS, and an external Blu-ray drive. Standard is HP ProtectSmart’s hard-drive-locking capability, which is the same kind of HDD accelerometer found in many business laptops.
Key Technical Specs
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- AMD E-350 with AMD Radeon HD 6310 Graphics? (dual-core CPU at 1.6 GHz and dual DX-11 SIMDs at 500 MHz)
- 2 GB DDR3 RAM
- 320 GB SATA Hard Drive (7,200 rpm)
- Three USB 2.0 ports, VGA out, HDMI out, Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi and SDHC card reader
- 6-cell battery (More than 9 hours of battery life based on MobileMark according to HP)
Price
The dm1 starts at a MSRP of $449.
