Back to School Review: HP's DM1 Laptop is a Versatile Little 12” Beast

For as long as computers have existed there has been an eternal battle to find the perfect form factor. Many times people have argued between big and powerful and small and portable. This eternal debate has found itself in the laptop segment of the market as many people struggle to find the right combination of portability and power. Many people believed that netbooks were the answer, while others believed the traditional laptop could simply be made better. HP and AMD decided that both sides were neither right nor wrong. And as such, the HP Pavilion DM1 was born.

Today we will be reviewing the HP Pavilion DM1 12" laptop featuring AMD's new groundbreaking Fusion APU processor.

Specifications as configured at HP.com:

• A dual-core AMD Fusion processor E350*** for fast Web surfing and smooth HD video
• Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
• Fast, easy, trusted Web browsing with Windows Internet Explorer
• AMD Radeon HD 6310 discrete-class graphics and support for DX11
• 3GB of RAM
• Our CoolSense technology, which adjusts the temperature when the PC is not on a stationary surface
• An 11.6" diagonal high-definition§§ (720p) display
• A full-size island-style keyboard
• An optional external CD/DVD drive for installing software or Blu-ray drive for watching HD movies
• Support for 1080p HD content playback
• Dolby advanced audio and Altec Lansing speakers for premium sound
• A 6-cell battery that keeps you running for up to 9.5 hours (we will be testing this claim)
• 5 free HP games, already loaded on your PC
• ENERGY STAR® qualification

HP Pavilion DM1 and Fusion Technologies

The HP DM1 is one of the few mobile computers out there that doesn’t really quite ‘fit’ into a predetermined category. It almost sits in a category of its own. We say this because of two major factors that don’t quite put it in either camps of what are traditionally considered mobile computers. You’ve mostly got laptops and netbooks (in PCs). For the sake of simplifying things we’re going to forget about tablets for a little bit. The HP DM1 effectively sits between laptops and netbooks for two reasons, the size of the DM1 is not quite a laptop (most laptops are 13.3”, 14”, 15” and up) nor a netbook (most netbooks are 10.1” and smaller with a few exceptions). Secondly, the DM1 sits between the netbook and laptop categories because of its processing capability. It is able to accomplish 90% of computing tasks in ways that a netbook quite simply cannot accomplish meanwhile having a full size keyboard like a laptop. The Pavilion DM1 still sits below regular laptops in the sense that it doesn’t have nearly as much horsepower as most laptop processors do, but the Brazos platform wasn’t designed to. It was specifically designed to be power efficient and still deliver a powerful multi-media experience. As a result of this, HP has designed the entire Pavilion DM1 around the Brazos Fusion platform and keeping in mind that they are filling what has definitely been a gap in the PC space.

The DM1 uses a combination of HP and AMD technologies to improve the battery life and user experience of the laptop. First of all, since it is using a Brazos Fusion platform E-350 APU, it is able to deliver high definition video and considerable daily performance at a very reasonable battery life. This also enables the laptop to be very light and thin as less cooling is necessary to cool the processor. Furthermore, HP utilizes cool sense technology which allows the laptop to determine its usage environment (like being on a lap) and properly adjust the fan speeds and temperatures. There are also multiple power profiles from both AMD and HP which enable the user to properly and quickly choose the power savings pre-set that will fit their usage scenario the most. We personally preferred the AMD power options profiles over the HP ones as they were more in-depth, but the HP one was much more hands off.