Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU

Full Review

The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU is a 14-inch budget home laptop that offers excellent value for money, besides good overall performance and a decent feature set.

Design
The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU laptop is a shrinked down version of the recently reviewed 15-inch Compaq Presario CQ62-105TU laptop. It has an all-black look and a 14-inch form factor that sports a cover design identical to the Compaq Presario CQ62 -- the screen lid is covered entirely in an elaborate pattern of bars, forming minuscule triangles all over the place. Although made of plastic, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU's screen lid looks elegant and feels premium -- it has Compaq Presario's characteristic 'Q' logo emblazoned at the center. The textured surface isn't just restricted to the screen lid but splashed all over the palmrest, touchpad, and the space engulfing the Compaq CQ42's black keyboard. Like the Compaq Presario CQ62, the 14-inch Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU laptop's chassis edge is covered with a smooth curved strip. The Compaq Presario CQ42's all-black looks good early on but gathers dust very easily, and between it, the Compaq Presario CQ62 and Compaq Presario CQ40-536TX we reviewed earlier, the CQ62's the best looking laptop.

If you want a very good laptop under Rs. 30,000, primarily for basic home or office use, go buy the Compaq Presario CQ42

For a budget home laptop, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU is very well built. Its 14.1-inch screen is tethered well to the rest of the chassis with two solid metal hinges. And for a 14-inch laptop, with six-cell battery, the Compaq Presario CQ62-105TU weighs just 2.2-kg -- in line with other 14-inch laptops like the Acer Aspire4740, Dell Inspiron 14R, or MSI CX420.

Usability
The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU comes with a 14.1-inch LED-backlit glossy screen which supports a maximum screen resolution of 1366x768 pixels. The CQ62's screen is evenly lit but a little less bright compared to the screens of Acer Aspire 4740 and Dell Inspiron 14-1464 laptops. However, both reading text and watching movies is handled well by the Compaq Presario CQ42's 14-inch screen. A 1.3MP webcam and microphone recessed on the laptop's top screen bezel is nice enough for video chats over Skype.

The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU's keyboard appears similar to the one that Dell Inspiron 14R has, but the keys on the Compaq Presario CQ42's keyboard are more tightly packed. The keys are well laid out, nice and springy to type on, and all the important keys (Enter, Space, Shift, Arrow Keys, etc.) are prominent in size. A column of quick-launch buttons on the Compaq Presario CQ62-105TU's keyboard's left edge isn't present on the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU -- no doubt because of its smaller form factor. The Compaq Presario CQ42's touchpad is textured like the rest of its body and a little raised above the keyboard. We like the textured touchpad surface, but we hate the fact that the touchpad doesn't have any distinguishing borders on either edge. It's very easy to move out of the touchpad area while trying to move the mouse on screen. But we like the overall feel and response of the touchpad.

Hardware Specs
The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU laptop isn't based on Intel's Arrandale platform. Instead the laptop has Intel's older DualCore Pentium T4400 2.2-GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, 320GB hard drive and onboard Intel GMA 4500M graphics. These specs aren't the best compared to most laptops featured in our Top 5 Budget Laptops listing, but they are just right for a basic home laptop. The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU doesn't feature Gigabit Ethernet, but comes with Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth wireless connectivity standards. There are three USB ports, two audio ports, DVD writer, VGA-out port, and a 5-in-1 card reader along the CQ42 laptop's edge. The laptop also comes with an HDMI port.

Like the HP ProBook 4520s, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU comes with some useful proprietary tools from HP. Although it doesn't feature ProtectTools, the CQ42 laptop comes with HP's PC Dock and HP Advisor consoles -- PC Dock sits at the top of the desktop screen, allowing you to customize it with most frequently used program shortcuts; while HP Advisor lets you launch a whole host of utilities for the CQ42 laptop, from looking up driver updates to launching its data backup tool. The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU is also very upgrade-friendly, with its RAM and hard drive compartments separately marked out on the bottom panel and easily accessible.

For an operating system, you get 32-bit Windows 7 Home Basic on the CQ42 laptop. Although we would've liked to have Gigabit Ethernet on the laptop, the Compaq Presario CQ42 doesn't really short-change you with its feature and specs.

Performance
The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU doesn't perform as well as any other budget laptop based on Intel's Core i3-330M processor. A WorldBench 6 score of 87, PC Mark 05 score of 3880, and 3D Mark 06 score of 738 are lower than most others in our Top 5 Budget Laptops list but in line with our expectations. It is very good for its intended home usage, primarily comprising of browsing the Web, working on graphics editing tools, productivity suites, and watching movies. The CQ42's lack of a dedicated graphics card effectively knocks out any hopes you had of gaming on this 14-inch laptop. But in the larger picture, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU laptop doesn't perform any better or worse than other featured budget laptops.

Watching 720p HD videos is handled very well by the Compaq Presario CQ62-115TU, but 1080p full-HD videos play with a slight stutter. Its onboard Altec Lansing speakers (situated just above the keyboard) are pretty good for a budget laptop -- they pump out clear sound even at high volume and are good enough for a small room. If you would be watching movies extensively on the Compaq Presario CQ42, you won't be disappointed by its audio.

Unlike the Compaq Presario CQ62 laptop, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU offers very good battery life. At full-screen brightness and high-performance preset, the CQ42's six-cell battery lasted 1 hour 21 minutes. Easily expect to get close to 3 hours 30 minutes of browsing the Web over Wi-Fi on a single charge on the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU. It should also hold you in good stead for a few hours of usage on the go -- just in case you decide to use the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU outside the house.

Bottom Line

For a budget laptop, the bottomline revolves around its price -- and for Rs. 28,000, the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU takes the cake with the cherry on top. It is the most inexpensive laptop in our Top 5 Budget Laptops List. The Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU laptop has a fast hard drive with enough RAM, and with an older generation processor gives nearly the same performance as other latest Intel Core i3-based budget laptops (Acer Aspire 4740, Dell Inspiron 15-1564, etc). It also offers very good battery life, and for its selling price the Compaq Presario CQ42 is the best value for money laptop right now.

If you want a very good laptop under Rs. 30,000, primarily for basic home or office use, go buy the Compaq Presario CQ42. For more information on the Compaq Presario CQ42-115TU, visit HP's India website's Compaq Presario CQ42 laptop page.