The Pavilion dm4 has a lot going for it in the looks and ergonomics department. While the lid and the palmrest have a metal finish, its bezel is made of glossy cheap plastic. Even though this is pretty much a full sized laptop, its weight is quite low – just 1.97 kg. Not bad at all.
The HP Pavilion dm4 houses a Sandy bridge processor, a generation older than the latest Ivy. In the PC Mark Vantage test, the Pavilion dm4 scored 6991 while the Sony Vaio E-series (Sandy Bridge) scored a slightly higher 7,039. The dm4 fights back in PC Mark 7 with a score of24,66, while the Sony clocked 2219.The is that despite sporting an older processor, the dm4 is by no means sluggish, giving latest laptops in its price range.
The dm4’s AMD Radeon 7470M graphics with a 3D Mark6 score of 5,643 clearly points to mid-range performance. This was verified by the 3D Mark 11 Entry mode test itself – HP scored 1135 while the Vaio scored 1881. Good, not great.
In our stressful battery benchmark test, this HP laptop’s battery lasted 190 minutes on single charge. In standard real world usage, this should be able to last around 4.5 hours without any issues at all.
Despite being on Sandy Bridge, the overall performance of the laptop is actually quite good. But the real cherry on the cake is its very good battery life, considering it isn’t an ultrabook. The light¬weight build is a bonus. Consider this if you aren’t craving only the latest hardware.
