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HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series (m9065.uk-a) review: HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series (m9065.uk-a)

HP is ploughing ahead with another family-friendly PC in the Pavilion Elite m9000 series. It's designed to be a good all-rounder, with 3GB of RAM and a 320GB of memory. It's good for any task and particularly fares well as a Media Center. Fit it into the living room and gather the family

Rory Reid
4 min read

Laptops might be outselling desktops by a factor of five, but that hasn't stopped HP ploughing ahead with yet another family-friendly PC.

7.5

HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series (m9065.uk-a)

The Good

Decent performance; USB Media Drive ports.

The Bad

Average graphics performance.

The Bottom Line

Whichever way you look at it, the HP Pavilion Elite m9000 series (m9065.uk-a) is a good PC. Better value can be had elsewhere, but its quad-core CPU, ample memory and thoughtful design helps it stand out from the crowd

The Pavilion Elite m9000 series is designed to be a good all-rounder, delivering 'outstanding entertainment and top performance' to all and sundry. Our review model, the HP Pavilion m9065.uk-a, is available from all the usual HP resellers for around £840.

Design
Not much forethought has gone into the basic shape of the m9000 series -- it looks like every other PC that came before it. Get a little closer though, and you'll likely be swayed by the modern piano black finish and the abundance of extra bits, bobs and flapdoodles to fiddle with.

The most interesting additions include the top-mounted power button. This is far easier to reach than front-facing switches, particularly when the PC lives under a desk. The top of the chassis is rubberised to make it less slippery, so external hard drives and cups of coffee don't accidentally slide off. There's even a flip-up panel that keeps USB cables tidy on their way to the four rear-facing USB ports.

The front panel of the m9000 has a few clever tricks, too. Firstly the 15-in-1 memory card reader sits near the top, making it easy to access without getting on your hands and knees. Then all flap hell breaks loose: There's a flap concealing the optical drive, a flap concealing the USB and front-facing audio ports, and flaps for hiding 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch HP removable Media Drives. Finally, there's an HP Backup button, which launches software for making copies of your most precious files.Thankfully, that's not protected by a flap.

Features
As is usual for PCs, the m9000 series is available in a couple of configurations. No matter which box you buy, they all come with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 CPU, 3GB of RAM and a mid-range Nvidia GeForce GT graphics card.

Overall, it's a well-balanced specification but there are a couple of oddities. Firstly, HP provided 3GB of RAM, not 2GB or 4GB as is more common. This is supplied across two 1GB DIMMs and two 512MB DIMMs, so all four memory slots on the Intel G33 express-based motherboard are occupied. Upgrading memory in the future will involve throwing some of the existing RAM in the dustbin.

The next oddity is in the configuration of the hard and optical drives across the two available configurations. The m9075.uk-a comes with a 320GB hard drive and an HD DVD drive for playing back high definition movies. The m9090.uk-a, on the other hand, comes with 1TB of storage -- across two 500GB hard drives -- but lacks HD DVD capability. Instead you have to settle for an ordinary dual-layer DVD rewriter. Perhaps HP thinks fans of large hard drives will steal all their movies from the Internet, whereas those with smaller disks will pay for HD DVDs.


Whatever the case, both machines are compatible with HP's Media Drives. These USB-powered backup disks come in two flavours -- a small 120GB model for £70 or a larger 320GB model for £109. These slide into dedicated ports at the front of the PC but can be connected to non-HP machines via a USB cable. Happily, HP supplies a 320GB Personal Media Drive in the box.

The m9000 series is designed to be good for any task, but it fares particularly well as a Media Center. If you can figure out some way to connect it to your living room TV without it looking out of place, you'll love the Freeview TV tuner, infrared remote control and wireless keyboard and mouse. The PC's numerous audio ports, including a couple of coaxial outputs at the rear, make it easy to connect to a set of surround sound speakers, and make the most of the enhanced sound in HD DVD movies.

Software includes Microsoft Works 8, Norton Internet Security 2007 (with 60 days of live updates) PhotoSmart Essential, Roxio Creator Basic, MyDVD Basic, Muvee AutoProducer, and of course Windows Vista Home Premium Edition. A one-year pickup and return parts and labour warranty is included.

Performance
The m9065.uk-a has a quad-core CPU, so it's no slouch, but it's not as quick as you might imagine. It scored 6,619 in PC Mark 2005, which is significantly lower than the 7,329 achieved by the Sony Vaio RM1N, and the Dell XPS 710 H2C, which scored 9,251. Don't let this put you off too much though, the HP is still faster than the vast majority of PCs on the market.

Its 3D performance was also average. It scored 3,105 in 3D Mark 2006, so gaming really isn't its forte. It'll run most games at modest resolution, but the minute you crank it up to resolutions higher than, say, 1,280x1,024 pixels, gaming frame rates fall dramatically.

Conclusion
The HP is a good-looking, well-designed and fairly quick PC. It doesn't excel in any particular area but it's a good all-round machine that should suit the needs of most of the family.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday