Full Review

The HP Pavilion dm3-1005AX is a 13-inch thin and light laptop part of HP's 'Thinspiration' range launched in India late last year. It features the AMD Athlon Neo X2 processor, weighs under 2-kg, sports the looks and style of a premium laptop, and performs admirably well.

The first thing you notice of the HP Pavilion dm3 is its rich design. Its screen lid is of fingerprint-resistant brushed aluminum that feels elegant and premium when touched. This effect extends to the Pavilion dm3's palmrest and the area surrounding its keyboard; it even has a metal chassis all along its edge. The Pavilion dm3 is less than an inch thick, with its lid closed, and has very good build quality--closely comparable to the Dell Vostro V13. The notebook weighs 1.8-kg (considerably lesser than some of our mainstream laptop recommendations) and is comfortable to lug around. Placement of input-output ports is well thought out on the Pavilion dm3-1005AX. Its onboard Altec Lansing speakers are placed under the front lip, and there's a Wi-Fi on-off toggle button on its right edge.

The Pavilion dm3-1005AX's 13.3-inch LED-backlit screen is capable of supporting a maximum screen resolution of 1366x768 pixels, with a 16:9 aspect ratio (ideal for watching HD content). The screen is glossy in nature, evenly lit, and has good brightness and contrast levels. Watching movies and reading text went smoothly on the Pavilion dm3's 13-inch screen. The 1.3MP webcam (and microphone) grooved into its top screen bezel is good for video chats. The Pavilion dm3 sports an isolated, chiclet-styled keyboard similar to the one we saw on the Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T or the Sony VAIO CW laptops--which is equally good. Typing on the keyboard is very comfortable as all the keys are well-spaced and provide no flex whatsoever. The HP Pavilion dm3's touchpad is underwhelming, however, and takes some getting used to. It's reflective, very smooth, and provides poor tactile feedback. The touchpad has a nifty on-off toggle button above it for those spurts of uninterrupted typing. Its twin mouse buttons are no problem, however--they're nice and solid.

No problems whatsoever with the Pavilion dm3's internal hardware, despite being a thin and light notebook. An AMD Athlon Neo X2 dual-core 1.6-GHz processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 4330 graphics card are pretty decent building blocks for any self-respecting thin and light laptop. Processor and onboard graphics of the Pavilion dm3-1005AX is definitely not as great as the Intel-based Pavilion dm3, but better than some recently reviewed thin and light laptops from the likes of MSI, Dell, Lenovo and Acer.

The Pavilion dm3 doesn't integrate a DVD writer in its chassis but comes with a sleek external USB DVD writer. The Pavilion dm3-1005AX has four USB ports, a multicard reader, audio ports, and VGA-out splashed along its chassis' edge. Apart from these, it also bundles in an HDMI port, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g wireless connectivity, and Bluetooth 2.1--but disappointingly no Gigabit ethernet or Wi-Fi 802.11n connectivity, which is surprising. The Pavilion dm3-1005AX comes with 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.

The HP Pavilion dm3 is a decent thin and light laptop in terms of performance. It posted a WorldBench 6 score of over 72 and had good PC Mark 05 and PC Mark Vantage numbers. Its ATI Radeon HD 4330 graphics card is not really meant for gaming. Besides daily tasks, watching movies is a good experience on the Pavilion dm3-1005AX's decent screen accompanied by good onboard sound. HD 720p videos played smooth, stutter-free on the Pavilion dm3-1005AX's hardware, but it had trouble coping with 1080p videos.

Although it's not really an entertainment-tuned laptop, the HP Pavilion dm3-1005AX manages to pull off a rather good audio-visual experience--courtesy its LED-backlit widescreen and better-than-average onboard speakers. The included six-cell battery lasted 1 hour 12 minutes in our battery tests, at high performance preset and full-screen brightness; expect just over 3 hours of surfing the Web over Wi-Fi on a single charge at power-safe mode.

Bottom Line

The asking price of Rs. 44,990 is still little pricey for the Pavilion dm3-1005AX from a budget-conscious buyer's point of view. Sure it doesn't have a good touchpad or every feature under the sun, but if you want a thin, stylish, good looking laptop, with good performance and can't afford a full-fledged multimedia laptop, the ultraportable HP Pavilion dm3-1005AX is a worthy contender for your money.