What can $480 buy you in an ultraportable? Quiet a nice little machine, according to HP — whose Pavilion DM1 has been given the hands-on treatment over at Laptop Mag. The DM1 features AMD’s Fusion APU with a dual-core  CPU at 1.6GHz and Radeon HD 6310 GPU, 3GB of RAM (8GB max), 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, 802.11b/g/n wireless, Bluetooth 2.1, HDMI out, and an 11.6″ 1366×768 display with integrated webcam. The speedy hard drive and AMD APU combine to make the DM1 quite the compact performer — though its 3D performance lagged behind the ION2-powered Asus 1215N, the DM1 handled media transcoding tasks like a champ.

Perhaps more interesting than the DM1’s performance is the amount of time Laptop Mag squeezed out of its battery — 6 hours and 37 minutes. Pretty impressive, especially when you consider that the 1215N posted nearly an hour less in the same testing. The Dm1 also ran fairly cool, not breaking 80 degrees on the keyboard or touchpad during normal use. Laptop Mag was also impressed with the DM1’s overall design, keyboard, and its superb-quality audio. At under $500 with this kind of performance and weighing about three and a half pounds, the HP Pavilion DM1 sounds like a terrific deal.

Head on over to laptopmag.com for the full review.

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Lee Mathews

Computer tech, blogger, husband, father, and avid MSI U100 user.

14 replies on “HP Pavilion DM1 with AMD Fusion impresses in hands-on test”

  1. Somebody please help me. I currently have a HP Pavilion Dv4 1225dx laptop running Windows 7 and AMD Turion X2 Dual-Core Mobile RM-72. This is not by all means a high end laptop, it’s pretty low end I’d say but I’m completely happy with the performance of this laptop and I do a lot of high resolution graphic design work in photoshop. This computer works just fine for that. Although, im now going to school for grahpic design and the battery of this computer barely even last an hour at max and I need something that lasts longer.

    How does this HP DM1z running AMD Fusion compare? Would this one be able to keep up with my normal graphics tasks? I like everything about this and I would actually also prefer the 11″ screen so it’s more portable and the nearly 10 hour battery life is plus. But im just wondering performance.

    Thanks.

  2. Except that in true HP fashion, they manage to screw up one aspect that actually can severely condition the real-world, day to day experience of using the computer (in contrast to these abstract speculations about GPUs etc.): the system fan is too loud. Usually HP screws up the touchpads and the battery, but now they’ve branched out to other areas of upscrewing.

  3. Guys remember, the Zacate or any processor as of right using the Bobcat architecture is not in direct comparison. Now the bulldozer is something that you should be looking out for, which was said to have 6x better graphics than the Sandybridge.

    1. Won’t be a factor for notebooks till 2012, Bulldozer for now is set for desktops and by 2012 Intel will also be upgrading to Ivy Bridge.

      So I don’t expect a large difference in graphical performance for the notebook solutions from both companies.

      AMD mainly has an advantage in the low end offerings, where the Zacate will shine, and for the desktop market where they have full access to the full range of GPU solutions from their ATI branch, though they won’t bother calling it ATI anymore… While Intel only has their limited Intel GMA offerings and would rely on 3rd party discrete graphic cards to boost their graphical performance. But for desktop and higher end notebooks that’s not much of a obstacle.

      Good thing though as competition is good for the consumer 😛

  4. Gutted, was really hoping the Fusion platforms would provide a nice little bump over last year’s i3/HD offerings but it doesn’t seem to have really happened.

    Oh well, roll on Intel’s next attempt.

  5. Wow I think I am going to stay with my Asus 1215n for the long haul maybe until the Asus EP121 gets a sandy bridge i5 refresh because the graphics on the regular one suck the GPU for sandy bridge is about as good as the nvidia 310m. I am down to either Asus EP121 w/ sandy bridge or a second gen fusion tablet (hopefully with better graphics)

    1. Ivy Bridge is still a long way off and will be the 22nm update for the 32nm Sandy Bridge. Though GPU performance is expected to be improved from Sandy Bridge.

      Asus has reported been one of the companies that will come out with AMD Fusion system and the floor model demonstration looks like a 1215 chasis.

      But remember Sandy Bridge is for Intel’s higher end offerings and that means higher price. While AMD’s Zacate price lets it compete directly with systems like the 1215N and while the NG-ION may edge out Zacate in some scores, the Bobcat cores are significantly better than the D525 in the 1215N.

      1. well i am looking for a 12′ tablet for design work atm
        If the Zacate processor shows up in a 11.’6- 12′ slate with an active digitizer for 600 or less then they have my attention otherwise I am stuck waiting for the asus ep121 sandy bridge refresh.

        1. Judging by what I’ve seen from CES coverage, you will see a range form 10″ to 15″

  6. The HD6310 may have lagged a bit behind the NG-ION in the 3DMark score but that test takes advantage of the ION’s dedicated 512MB of VRAM and doesn’t show how the performance drops when it runs into the PCI 1x bottleneck that hampers the ION on the 1215N.

    So you should get more reliable overall performance from the AMD Zacate system, especially since the CPU is more powerful than the D525 and supports out of order processing, which the D525 does not.

    1. Although I love the E350 as a concept, from everything I’ve read the fact that it uses system ram for it’s frame buffer is also a limitation for that chip, sort of like the PCIe x1 lane is on the NG-ION. I like what I’m seeing so far, but it’s something that may ultimately limit how good on die GPUs are for both AMD’s Fusion product and Sandybridge.

      That said I actually want one of these. My wife stole my laptop when hers stopped working, and this is a really nice looking low cost alternative, can’t wait to see more reviews, and to play with one in person.

      1. Yes, embedded GPU solutions have their limits right now. Though Intel plans on fixing that limitation with Ivy Bridge next, memory bandwidth will be increased and it seems they will be providing dedicated memory for the GPU instead of sharing…

        The PCI bottleneck for NG-ION can be rather severe though, with performance dropping to below original ION, or basically up to 35% drop in performance for worse case.

        While AMD’s Fusion compensates quite a bit with their APU design. So performance should be significantly more consistent for Zacate, even with its own limitations.

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