Pattern Micro 32-Bit Editors'
Rating
The Compaq Presario CQ62 capabilities a delicate texture to the lid that makes it satisfying to glimpse at and maintain.
Port choice on the CQ62 is incredibly simple. VGA, LAN, and two USB ports, as well as headphone and mic jacks, are on the left.
The keyboard is roomy and, while not pitch ideal, rather comfy.
On the correct, you will find a modem and a single from the 3 USB ports. You do not obtain a memory card reader or an HDMI connector.
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 10 Remarkably very low price; large screen; passable overall performance for that money; moderately desirable layout No memory-card slot, Webcam, or HDMI port; stiff mouse buttons; narrow LCD viewing angle; limited availability In the event you require a really cheap laptop computer, the CQ62 is just not a negative bet. It is lacking some features, nonetheless it delivers respectable general efficiency thinking about it costs lower than $400.
Price (at time of review): $398 (mfr. est., as tested)
Important Specs Processor: two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320
Memory: 3GB RAM
Storage: 250GB tough drive
Optical Push: DVD±RW
Display screen: 15.6 inches (1,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 4250 (1GB)
Pounds: 5.5 pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.4x9.7x14.7 inches
Working Program: Windows 7 Home Top quality (64-bit)
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 Review Reviewed by: Jamie Bsales
Evaluation Date: June 2010
If you’ve been contemplating a $400 netbook exclusively simply because it’s an low-cost strategy to nab a functional laptop computer, Hewlett-Packard, in mixture with Wal-Mart, features a powerful choice: a "real" laptop. The Compaq Presario CQ62 is a full-size fifteen.6-inch laptop computer with an AMD dual-core processor, available at a beyond-bargain price tag of just $398 (starting this Sunday, June 13, 2010). That’s less than you’d pay for a refurbished notebook with lesser specs from those deal-a-day sites (or about what you’d pay for a netbook with a fraction of the overall performance). The catch: It is missing some functions now common even on budget laptops, and it is available only at Wal-Mart while supplies last.
Usually, budget machines are bland and brick-like. But with its textured imprint finish, the matte-black Presario CQ62 incorporates a somewhat stylish glimpse. And at five.five kilos and measuring just 1.4 inches thick, it’s notably compact given the very low value and huge display screen. The left and correct sides in the gently rounded chassis house an optical push, 3 USB ports, a VGA connector, LAN and modem ports, and headphone and mic jacks. That’s it: no flash-memory-card slot, no HDMI connector, no ExpressCard slot, no eSATA port. Also deleted to hit the under-$400 cost mark are a Webcam and a fingerprint reader. Some of those items you may be able to live without, especially if the Presario CQ62 would be a secondary machine for you or your household. But we would have preferred to see a card reader and a Webcam make the final cut. Within the plus side, the optical drive is a full-featured 8x DVD burner with LightScribe disc-labeling abilities, and the Presario CQ62 also includes a 250GB seven,200rpm challenging drive and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi wireless networking.
The Presario CQ62’s fifteen.6-inch display screen is bright, and colors in images and video really pop. (The LCD's glossy finish helps.) The resolution is 1,366x768, which helps make for quite readable text on Web sites and the like, although more pixels would let you make better use in the expansive real estate for multitasking. The panel’s viewing-angle sweet spot is also somewhat constrained: Move too far off-center, and you’ll notice a brightness shift. Within the other hand, the built-in Altec Lansing speakers deliver plenty of volume and good enough sound quality for Web audio and even movies. But as with all budget machines, sound quality for music playback is a bit strident and lacking bass.
We were pleasantly surprised by the keyboard on the Presario CQ62. Many low-cost machines’ keyboards exhibit flex,
Buy Windows 7 Professional, but the unit on this machine has a solid feel. The flat-top keys have a good amount of up-down travel, and the widely spaced keys are at ease to type on. We’re happy to see that HP has inverted the purpose in the Function ("F") keys,
Office Ultimate 2007 Product Key, essentially giving you 12 hotkeys for actions such as volume, mute, screen brightness, next-track/last-track, and so on. In case you want to access a function, you press a Function key combo.
Less ideal is the Presario CQ62’s touch pad. We like the clean search in the hidden-pad design, where the touch pad is not isolated from the surrounding palm rest, but the textured pattern (carried over from the lid) imparts too much friction on your fingers,
Office 2010 Professional Plus Product Key, making mousing a lot less smooth. And the single-bar mouse button (you depress it on a single end or the other for left and appropriate clicks) is too narrow and stiff.
As expected, the Presario CQ62 doesn’t have cutting-edge functionality components. But the two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320 processor and 3GB of fast DDR3 memory deliver pretty good productivity performance for a $400 laptop computer. The machine scored 3,152 on our PCMark Vantage benchmark test, which measures overall system efficiency. That’s lower than the $650 Gateway NV5933u we examined recently (it scored 4,493), but it's not alarmingly far off the 3,800 score that is average for that mainstream class. It also manages to beat out similar budget mainstream notebooks from a year ago, which scored as very low as 1,829. Plus, this laptop uses the 64-bit version of Windows 7 House Premium, and it held its own within the 64-bit version of PCMark Vantage, too, with a score of 3,459, just a hair below the $849 Asus UL50Vf’s score of 3,563. That's nice for that cost.
The cracks in overall performance start to show a little more, however, when it comes to multimedia-intensive work. The machine needed 8 minutes and 16 seconds to encode a video on our Windows Media Encoder test, which is more than 3 minutes longer than the Gateway NV5933u took and about 30 seconds longer than the average laptop computer in this class. On our iTunes encoding trial, in which we convert 11 standard MP3 files to AAC format, the Presario CQ62 completed the task in 6 minutes and 4 seconds, although the Gateway finished in 4:31. (The average showing for this size of method is 4:42.) Finally, on our 32-bit version in the Cinebench ten benchmark test, which taxes all the available cores of a processor, the Presario CQ62 scored 3,927. Here, the gap starts to widen between the Gateway budget entry (five,448) and the class average (4,761). But keep in mind the Gateway laptop computer charges nearly twice as much, and the class-average cost is over $1,100.
We didn’t expect much in the way of gaming abilities (beyond low-impact Web games) from this machine, and unsurprisingly, we were right. The ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 4250 graphics chip in the Presario CQ62 delivered 1,901 on 3DMark06 at one,024x768 resolution and an unplayable 18 frames per second at that resolution in a single of our standard test games, Company of Heroes. In this laptop's defense, really few budget machines deliver impressive overall performance on these tests. With scores like these, you can expect this machine to render images fine and play video, but video editing, 3D gaming, and other graphics-intensive tasks should be reserved for better-equipped laptops.
As for battery life, the Presario CQ62’s six-cell battery lasted two hours and 23 minutes on our harsh DVD rundown test (in which we loop a movie from disc until the battery conks out). That's just 3 minutes shy from the average battery runtime for this class of laptop. By comparison, the Gateway NV5933u lasted only one:36.
The Presario CQ62 delivers a serviceable selection of software for the cost. In addition to the 64-bit version of Windows seven Residence Premium, which includes the handy Media Center multimedia environment, you also get CyberLink PowerDVD 9 for movie playback and CyberLink DVD Suite for CD and DVD creation. HP also preloads 60-day trials for Norton Internet Security and
Microsoft Office 2007. The company backs the Presario CQ62 with a one-year warranty and 24-hour,
Genuine Windows 7 Key, seven-day toll-free tech support, which is typical for HP and nearly all manufacturers.
To be sure, the Compaq Presario CQ62 is not excellent, but this machine is all about the cost. If an Atom-processor-powered netbook just isn’t your speed and your computing needs are mostly simple, this is a good choice at the price. It offers solid-enough performance for everyday tasks, a nice big display, and even a relatively stylish layout. We wish HP worked in a memory-card reader and a Webcam, as photo sharing on Facebook and Skyping with family members is a likely scenario for those in the market for such a budget machine. But if those functions are lost on you (or on whomever you might be contemplating buying this laptop computer for as a gift, like Grandpa), you’ll be happy you didn’t have to pay extra for them.
Price (at time of assessment): $398 (mfr. est.,
Buy Windows 7 Key, as tested)
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Compatibility: Compaq Presario CQ32, CQ42, CQ43, CQ56, CQ62, CQ72, CQ430, CQ630; HP g4, g6, g7, G32, G42, G56, G62, G72; Pavilion dv3-4000, dm4-1000, dv5-2000, dv5-3000, dv6-3000, dv6-6000, dv7-4000, dv7-6000; HP Envy 17-1000, 17-2000 series