HP Pavilion Tablet PC TX 1016 AU

By:Frazier Barrett, Source:Techtree.com

Powerful, Good Config, Good Finish, Good Build, VISTA Home Premium.
Uncomfortable Keypad, Screen, Weight, Expensive.

About, Bundle 

It’s been almost a year since we reviewed a tablet PC. We have now managed to lay our hands on one from the HP stable. Being from the Pavilion series the laptop is more the power laptop than the one for the casual user. The laptop comes with VISTA Home Premium preloaded which gives it a great appeal. But can it really tackle VISTA and smoothly sway through the twists and turns that a user would demand from it.

 

Bundle

 


HP Pavilion TX1016AU

4 Cell Battery

6 Cell Battery

Care Fabric

Media Centre Remote

Power Cable Adaptor

Manual Driver CD and Warranty

 

Specifications

 

AMD Turion 64 X2 Dual-Core Mobile Technology TL-60 (2.0 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache)

Windows VISTA Home Premium

2 x 1 GB DDR2 RAM (667 MHz)

NVIDIA GeForce Go 6150 (128 MB Shared)

Realtek High Definition Audio

Storage

160 GB SATA HDD (5,400 rpm)

8x Lightscribe Super Multi Dual Layer DVD Writer

I/O Devices

12.1″ WXGA HP BrightView Widescreen with Integrated Touchscreen (1280 x 800)

12-inch keypad with 84 Keys (US)

Touchpad with 2 buttons and 2 way scroll

Touchscreen via Stylus

Finger Print Scanner

8 Quick Launch Buttons

Communication

Modem: 56K Internal Modem

Ethernet LAN 10/100 Gigabyte LAN

WLAN: 802.11 a/b/g WLAN

WPAN: Integrated Bluetooth 2.0

2 Consumer IR

I/O Ports

3 x USB 2.0 Ports

Card Reader 5 in 1 (SD, MMC, MS, MS Pro, XD)

1 VGA Port

S-Video TV out Port

Expansion Port 3

1 ExpressCard/34 slot

Audio System

3D Sound Blaster Pro

Altec Lansing Speakers

Microphone

Stereo Headphone with SPDIF

Additional Stereo Headphone Jack

Power Specification

AC Adaptor: 65 W AC Power Supply

Battery: 6 Cell 4,800 mAh Battery

Dimensions

Size: 30.6 x 22.4 x 3.87 cm

Weight: 2.0 Kg

 

 

Layout

 

External

 

The TX1016 is an ultra portable laptop. It can also be used as a tablet PC, the convertible kind of tablet PC. Refer to this link for a brief on Tablet PCs. Its small size and neat design make it easy to use, both as a laptop as well as a tablet PC.

The TX1016AU has the same look and feel like the V3228AU we reviewed earlier. It has the very same glossy black finish on the cover with a dissolving design of lines in it.

Nitty-Gritty
On the right corner of the cover there are audio playback controls: 4 buttons Stop, Next track, Play/Pause, and Previous track. The front panel has the Power On/Off/Standby slider to the left side.

Pushing the slider right and holding it there for a couple of seconds powers On/Off the laptop. Just pushing it right and releasing it puts the system in Standby mode. Beside the slider is an LED which denotes the laptop being On/Off or in standby mode. In the center of the front panel are the audio jacks and the IR, a stereo audio headphone jack with SPDIF, an additional stereo headphone jack, and a Line-In/Microphone jack. On the right side of the front panel is the Wireless On/Off switch.

The left of the laptop is mainly occupied with the placement of the Lightscribe Dual Layer DVD RW. You can slide the drive out by unlocking a switch under the laptop. This way you can add an extra HDD or switch to a better burner. It is also very convenient to replace a faulty DVD-RW. Beside the DVD-RW is a 5-in-1 card reader. Below the card reader there is a 34-pin ExpressCard slot. The AC Adaptor or power point is placed at the far end on the left.

On the right side of the laptop are the external connectors. A USB port is placed closest to accessibility and next to it is the Ethernet LAN port. In the center on the right side is the HP proprietary Expansion Port 3. Further, there is the VGA port and lastly the S-Video TV-Out port.

The rear of the laptop is where the few remaining ports are placed. All these ports are easily accessible by the left hand. There are 2 USB ports placed one over the other and beside it is the Modem port. The 2 USB ports make for comfortable accessibility when the laptop is being used as a tablet PC.

 

Internal LayOut

 

The internal face of the laptop has been given a silver touch. The screen utilizes HP’s very own WXGA BrightView technology to provide a good screen contrast. The screen has a webcam at the top centre and on its either side there are inbuilt Mics. On the left of the screen is a finger print scanner that stores your passwords and helps for easy login into the PC, websites etc.

To the right bottom corner of the screen there are four buttons. Two of them are on the right while the other two are placed below the screen.

The two buttons on the right are quick launch buttons to play DVD and the other one is the QuickPlay button. The buttons placed below the screen are mainly meant for when in tablet form. One button is for changing the screen orientation, keep clicking it and it goes clockwise. The other button is a quick launch to the Windows Mobility Window. Below the screen towards the centre is where the laptops Altec Lansing speakers placed. On the left corner below the screen are three LEDs: one denotes power on, the other indicates if the power cable is plugged-in and the last stands for HDD activity.

Coming down to the base, it comprises of the keypad and the touchpad. The keypad is compressed and fit in 12-inches of space. The first row of keys which include the Esc, Function keys and Scroll keys are just too small. Add to that, they have dual functions with the combination of the ‘fn’ key which makes it quite uncomfortable. The other key that I found really uncomfortable was the shift key on the right. It’s quite small and I mostly ended up hitting the keys on either side of the shift key. At the top left corner above the keypad are volume controls.

Below the keypad in the centre is the touch-pad with two keys and scroll sides as well. The touchpad has a button over it to lock and unlock the touchpad. There is enough of wrist space on either side to comfortably place your wrist while typing. There are hinges on either side of the keypad to hold the lid down when closed or to hold the screen in one place when being used as tablet. These hinges at times pose a bit of a problem when typing.

 

Analysis

 

The TX1016AU’s performance is just about average. We didn’t receive any other laptop that came pre-loaded with Vista so we can’t compare it to any of our previous laptop reviews. The laptop works well with all simple activities. It can’t be used to do much of gaming because the 6150 chipset already has Vista to handle. Vista is the most demanding on the system as it eats 1 GB of RAM from the equation leaving just 1 GB for any other task. This laptop comes bundled with 2 GB of RAM which is why it is okay, else the system would just be a drag. Keep it to basics and this laptop/tablet PC is fine to work with.

Battery

Even though there were two batteries provided in the bundle, I believe that the laptop will mostly be used with the lighter from the two and hence the following mentioned is with regards to the same.

The backup time doubled with the larger capacity battery.
The TX1016AU has a 6 cell 4800 mAh battery. We ran the standard Battery Eater Pro to benchmark its backup time. The benchmark delivered a result of 1hr 7 min. So that roughly calculates to about 1hr 40-45min. The backup time is average, nothing outstanding. We’ll just have to wait for those SANTA ROSA laptops which claim to deliver longer backup time. Until then this will be the trend.

Conclusion

The HP Pavilion TX1016 sells for Rs. 75,000 exclusive of taxes. It seems quite an expensive deal considering the rates of other laptops but then again this is not just any ordinary laptop, it can be converted to be used as a tablet PC as well. We also have to consider that VISTA Home Premium comes installed which takes up the price by 12K. Finally, this laptop would only make sense for those who are going to utilize its functionality, otherwise there are much better deals for just a simple laptop.