HP Pavilion dm3 review

HP's Envy laptops are objects of great beauty, but at more than £1,000 apiece they're out of reach for most people. If you're feeling a bit short, though, there's no need to settle for an ugly duckling. HP's Pavilion dm3 pulls of the same trick, but for much less cash.

The aluminium lid immediately draws attention to itself, and tilting it back sees the swish, metallic theme continue inside, with the brushed finish pooling around the square keys of a Scrabble-tile keyboard. It looks simply gorgeous and the amazing thing is that at a price of £451 exc VAT, you could buy three of HP's Pavilion dm3s for the price of just one Envy 13.
Keyboard
The good points don't stop at its striking looks or surprising affordability. The keyboard, for one, is excellent. Each key has a positive action at the end of each stroke and the wide channels between each key keep typos to a minimum. Even the trackpad is free from issues, the dainty button at its top edge allowing you to disable it for longer stretches of typing.

The price you pay for such a pretty face and competent ergonomics is a slightly cut down core specification. Instead of an Intel processor, HP has chosen AMD.

And here it comes in the shape of AMD's Vision platform. An Athlon Neo X2 dual-core processor takes pride of place, with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics chipset sitting alongside. Performance is no better than Intel's equivalent CULV (consumer ultra-low voltage) processors.