Why You Can Trust CNET HP Pavilion dv5000 review: HP Pavilion dv5000
With the Pavilion dv5000z, HP delivers a well-designed and versatile multimedia laptop that starts at a highly affordable $679--just a few dollars less than the dv4000. It weighs a few ounces more than the dv4000 and just over a pound more than the thin-and-light dv1000. Like the dv4000, the dv5000z is chock-full of entertainment features and is quite competent at productivity and multimedia tasks. It can be configured with a few different ATI graphics cards, which give it decent, though not exceptional, gaming power. Though it still lacks the built-in TV tuner found on significantly more expensive systems, there's not much else that the Pavilion dv5000z can't handle. We think it's a very good choice for any student, home, or small-office user.
- Coauthor of Uninvested (Random House, 2015)
The HP Pavilion dv5000z is virtually identical to the Pavilion dv4000 with one major exception: where the dv4000 can be configured with Intel's Celeron or Pentium processors, the dv5000z features an AMD processor--either the Pentium-equivalent Turion or the less expensive, Celeron-equivalent Sempron.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
With the Pavilion dv5000z, HP delivers a well-designed and versatile multimedia laptop that starts at a highly affordable $679, which is a few dollars less than the dv4000. It weighs the same as the dv4000--about 6.5 pounds--and just over a pound more than the thin-and-light dv1000. Like the dv4000, the dv5000z is chock-full of entertainment features and is quite competent at productivity and multimedia tasks. It can be configured with a few different ATI graphics cards, which give it the potential for decent, though not exceptional, gaming power; for a higher-octane gaming experience, we recommend the more expensive Dell XPS M170, which has a much more powerful graphics card. Though it still lacks the built-in TV tuner found on significantly more expensive systems, there's not much else that the Pavilion dv5000z can't handle. We think it's a very good choice for any student, home, or small-office user.
Our loaded Pavilion dv5000z test unit, priced at $1,522, came outfitted with a 2.2GHz Turion 64 ML-40 processor; 1GB of DDR SDRAM (1x1,024MB); an ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress graphics card with 128MB of VRAM; a 120GB hard drive running at 4,200rpm; Windows XP Media Center; a 15.4-inch BrightView wide-screen display; a DVD burner featuring HP's neat LightScribe technology; an integrated 54g 802.11a/b/g networking card with Bluetooth; and an extended 12-cell battery. It turned in a good score on our MobileMark benchmark--almost the same score as the comparably priced Pentium-equipped dv4000 we tested last year. Equipped with an extended 12-cell battery, however, the dv5000z delivered great battery life, running for 5.5 hours; the dv4000 we tested, equipped with a standard 6-cell battery, ran for 2.4 hours. Though the extended battery adds only $40 to the price, it adds almost a pound to the system's total weight of 7.4 pounds (8.3 pounds with the small AC adapter), which makes the dv5000z a bit too heavy for regular travel. For more information about the Pavilion dv5000z's design, features, and warranty, check out our full review of the very similar Pavilion dv4000.
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
 | BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 performance rating |
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| BAPCo's MobileMark 2005 battery-life minutes |
System configurations:
HP Pavilion dv4000
Windows XP Pro; 2.13GHz Intel Pentium M 770; 1,024MB DDR2 SDRAM PC4300 533MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon X700 128MB; Toshiba MK8026GAX 80GB 5,400rpm
HP Pavilion dv5000z
Windows XP Media Center Edition; 2.2GHz Turion 64 ML-40; 1,024MB DDR SDRAM PC2700 333MHz; ATI Mobility Radeon Xpress 200 128MB; Fujitsu MHV2120AT PL 120GB 4,200rpm