The biggest story in laptops over the past few years has been the incredibly popular Netbook. These 10- and 11-inch (and originally 7- and 9-inch) laptops came out of nowhere to capture the attention of a public tired of paying for too much computing power. After a couple of good years, however, Netbooks are being replaced by new systems that offer a little more performance for a little more money, first in the form of dual-core premium Netbooks and now in systems such as the HP Pavilion dm1z with AMD's new Fusion platform.
HP Pavilion dm1z
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The trade-up makes sense for two reasons. First, Netbooks, though great for specific tasks such as basic Web surfing and e-mail, simply aren't suited to being full-time PCs, which is something many users discovered after buying one. Second, the PC makers who only begrudgingly released many of these Netbooks in the first place knew selling a low-power $299 laptop wasn't exactly a money-making proposition.
AMD has been promising a hybrid platform for years now, combining a workhorse CPU with better-than-integrated graphics in a single package. It's called Fusion, although confusingly, AMD doesn't play up that name or the processor model number, instead choosing to label laptops outfitted with the technology with a sticker that says "AMD Vision."
As the first of these systems to cross our desk, the $450 HP Pavilion dm1z is an interesting test case. It's an 11-inch laptop with a decent design, but one that doesn't hide its budget origins. It's about $100 more than an entry-level Netbook and $50 to $100 less than previous premium Netbooks that had AMD's previous low-end dual-core CPU.
In practice, it gets the job done, and it certainly feels a world away from Atom Netbooks. At the same time, there's no mistaking the experience of this computer for a high-end 11-inch, such as Apple's MacBook Air (except when it comes to battery life, where the Pavilion dm1z was easily one of the best performers we've seen).
The biggest needle-mover may be the AMD graphics, which aren't meant for serious gamers, but still offer a solid alternative to low-end solutions such as Nvidia's underused Ion GPU. We played some basic games and full-screen HD videos with no problems, which is something Netbooks typically can't do.
With Intel lacking a halfway point between its Atom processors and the mainstream Core-i-series (except for the too-expensive and underpowered ultralow voltage Core i3 ULV), there may finally be a spot at the table for AMD, which has been seriously underrepresented in laptops of late. Based on this one initial review unit, AMD-shy shoppers should at least give Fusion laptops such as this one a serious look.