Pattern Micro 32-Bit Editors'
Rating
The Compaq Presario CQ62 capabilities a delicate texture around the lid that makes it pleasing to search at and hold.
Port choice on the CQ62 is very basic. VGA, LAN, and two USB ports, together with headphone and mic jacks, are on the left.
The keyboard is roomy and, even though not pitch excellent, rather comfortable.
On the proper, you will find a modem and a single in the three USB ports. You really do not obtain a memory card reader or an HDMI connector.
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 10 Remarkably very low price; huge display screen; passable overall performance for the income; fairly beautiful design and style No memory-card slot, Webcam, or HDMI port; stiff mouse buttons; narrow LCD viewing angle; minimal availability Should you will need a very affordable laptop, the CQ62 is just not a poor wager. It is missing some capabilities,
Microsoft Office 2010 Home And Business, however it delivers good overall performance thinking about it fees under $400.
Price (at time of critique): $398 (mfr. est., as tested)
Essential Specs Processor: two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320
Memory: 3GB RAM
Storage: 250GB hard drive
Optical Generate: DVD±RW
Display: fifteen.6 inches (1,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon High definition 4250 (1GB)
Excess weight: five.five pounds
Dimensions (HWD): 1.4x9.7x14.seven inches
Running Method: Windows 7 House Premium (64-bit)
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 Evaluation Reviewed by: Jamie Bsales
Review Date: June 2010
If you have been considering a $400 netbook exclusively because it is an low-cost approach to nab a functional laptop computer, Hewlett-Packard, in combination with Wal-Mart, features a persuasive choice: a "real" laptop. The Compaq Presario CQ62 is a full-size 15.6-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 under 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 efficiency). The catch: It is lacking some attributes now common even on budget laptops, and it is available only at Wal-Mart although supplies last.
Usually, budget machines are bland and brick-like. But with its textured imprint finish, the matte-black Presario CQ62 includes a somewhat stylish look. And at 5.5 kilos and measuring just one.4 inches thick, it is notably compact given the reduced cost and significant display screen. The left and correct sides of 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 price 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. To the plus side, the optical generate is a full-featured 8x DVD burner with LightScribe disc-labeling abilities, and the Presario CQ62 also includes a 250GB seven,200rpm difficult generate and 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi wireless networking.
The Presario CQ62’s 15.6-inch screen is bright, and colors in images and video really pop. (The LCD's glossy finish helps.) The resolution is 1,366x768, which makes for extremely readable text on Web sites and the like, although more pixels would let you make better use of 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,
Microsoft Office 2010 Product Key, sound quality for music playback is a bit strident and lacking bass.
We were pleasantly surprised by the keyboard to the Presario CQ62. Many low-cost machines’ keyboards exhibit flex, but the unit on this machine incorporates a solid feel. The flat-top keys have a good amount of up-down travel, and the widely spaced keys are comfy to type on. We’re happy to see that HP has inverted the purpose in the Function ("F") keys, essentially giving you 12 hotkeys for actions such as volume, mute, screen brightness, next-track/last-track, and so on. If you need to access a function, you press a Function important combo.
Less ideal is the Presario CQ62’s touch pad. We like the clean search with 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, making mousing much less smooth. And the single-bar mouse button (you depress it on one end or the other for left and right clicks) is too narrow and stiff.
As expected, the Presario CQ62 doesn’t have cutting-edge performance components. But the 2.1GHz 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 all round 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 the mainstream class. It also manages to beat out similar budget mainstream notebooks from a year ago, which scored as reduced as 1,829. Plus, this laptop uses the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Residence 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 price.
The cracks in functionality 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 six minutes and 4 seconds, even though the Gateway finished in 4:31. (The average showing for this size of system is 4:42.) Finally, on our 32-bit version with the Cinebench 10 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 (5,448) and the class average (4,761). But keep in mind the Gateway laptop fees nearly twice as much, and the class-average price 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 High definition 4250 graphics chip in the Presario CQ62 delivered one,901 on 3DMark06 at one,024x768 resolution and an unplayable 18 frames per second at that resolution in one 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 with the average battery runtime for this class of laptop. By comparison, the Gateway NV5933u lasted only 1:36.
The Presario CQ62 delivers a serviceable variety of software for that cost. In addition to the 64-bit version of Windows seven House 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, seven-day toll-free tech support, which is typical for HP and nearly all manufacturers.
To be sure,
Windows 7 64 Bit, the Compaq Presario CQ62 just isn't 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 standard, this is a good choice at the price tag. It offers solid-enough functionality for everyday tasks, a nice big display screen,
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional Plus, and even a relatively stylish design. 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 taking into consideration buying this laptop for as a gift, like Grandpa), you’ll be happy you didn’t have to pay extra for them.
Price tag (at time of evaluation): $398 (mfr. est., as tested)
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Special Deal: HP 6-Cell Extended-Life Battery - Mu06 101.99
Compatibility: Compaq Presario CQ32,
Office 2010 Discount, 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