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The Compaq Presario CQ62 capabilities a delicate texture within the lid that makes it satisfying to look at and maintain.

Port assortment around the CQ62 is quite simple. VGA, LAN, and two USB ports, as well as headphone and mic jacks, are on the left.

The keyboard is roomy and, although not pitch excellent, relatively cozy.

On the right, you'll find a modem and one of the 3 USB ports. You really don't obtain a memory card reader or an HDMI connector.
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 ten Remarkably low value; huge display; passable performance for your income; reasonably appealing design and style No memory-card slot, Webcam, or HDMI port; stiff mouse buttons; narrow LCD viewing angle; minimal availability If you need an extremely low-cost laptop computer, the CQ62 just isn't a bad wager. It’s lacking some functions, but it delivers respectable all round functionality considering it costs below $400.
Price (at time of review): $398 (mfr. est., as examined)
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 (one,Microsoft Office Enterprise,366x768 native resolution)
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 4250 (1GB)
Pounds: 5.five pounds
Dimensions (HWD): one.4x9.7x14.seven inches
Working Program: Windows seven House Premium (64-bit)
HP Compaq Presario CQ62 Assessment Reviewed by: Jamie Bsales
Critique Date: June 2010
If you have been thinking about a $400 netbook exclusively simply because it is an low-cost way to nab a practical laptop, Hewlett-Packard, in mix with Wal-Mart, incorporates a persuasive choice: a "real" laptop computer. The Compaq Presario CQ62 is a full-size 15.6-inch laptop with an AMD dual-core processor, available at a beyond-bargain value of just $398 (starting this Sunday, June 13, 2010). That’s below 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 from the overall performance). The catch: It is lacking some attributes now common even on budget laptops, and it’s available only at Wal-Mart even though supplies last.


Usually, budget machines are bland and brick-like. But with its textured imprint finish, the matte-black Presario CQ62 has a somewhat stylish glimpse. And at 5.five pounds and measuring just 1.4 inches thick, it’s notably compact given the very low cost and big screen. The left and appropriate sides in the gently rounded chassis house an optical drive, three 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 value 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 drive is a full-featured 8x DVD burner with LightScribe disc-labeling abilities,Cheap Windows 7 Home Basic, 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 is bright, and colors in images and video really pop. (The LCD's glossy finish helps.) The resolution is 1,366x768, which can make for really 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. To 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 within the Presario CQ62. Many low-cost machines’ keyboards exhibit flex, but the unit on this machine features a solid feel. The flat-top keys have a good amount of up-down travel, and the widely spaced keys are comfortable 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. In the event you will need to access a function, you press a Function key combo.


Less ideal is the Presario CQ62’s touch pad. We like the clean search with the hidden-pad design, where the touch pad isn't isolated from the surrounding palm rest, but the textured pattern (carried over from the lid) imparts too much friction on your fingers, making mousing significantly less smooth. And the single-bar mouse button (you depress it on one particular end or the other for left and proper clicks) is too narrow and stiff.
As expected, the Presario CQ62 doesn’t have cutting-edge efficiency components. But the two.1GHz AMD Athlon II Dual-Core P320 processor and 3GB of fast DDR3 memory deliver pretty good productivity functionality for a $400 laptop computer. The machine scored 3,152 on our PCMark Vantage benchmark test, which measures overall program functionality. That’s lower than the $650 Gateway NV5933u we tested 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 low as 1,829. Plus, this laptop uses the 64-bit version of Windows seven House Premium, and it held its own around 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 the value.


The cracks in 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 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, while the Gateway finished in 4:31. (The average showing for this size of technique 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 (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 correct. The ATI Mobility Radeon Hd 4250 graphics chip in the Presario CQ62 delivered one,901 on 3DMark06 at 1,024x768 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 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 2 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 in the average battery runtime for this class of laptop computer. By comparison, the Gateway NV5933u lasted only 1:36.
The Presario CQ62 delivers a serviceable variety of software for the price. In addition to the 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home 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,Win 7, seven-day toll-free tech support, which is typical for HP and nearly all manufacturers.
To be sure,Office 2010, 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 basic, this is a good choice at the price tag. It offers solid-enough overall performance for everyday tasks, a nice big display screen, and even a relatively stylish design and style. We wish HP worked in a memory-card reader and a Webcam,Office 2007 Key, 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 considering buying this laptop computer for as a gift, like Grandpa),Office Home And Business 2010 Key Bachman writes. “, you’ll be happy you didn’t have to pay extra for them.
Price tag (at time of critique): $398 (mfr. est., as examined)

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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