HP TouchSmart tx2z

Multitouch technology in a stylish tablet




HP HAS EMPLOYED the TouchSmart desktop line's slick touch-screen capabilities for its tx2z tablet. Its MediaSmart multimedia-management applications make brilliant use of the touch screen and the tablet form factor—so much so that the TouchSmart tx2z is a good fit for anyone who wants a multimedia-savvy notebook with a twist, The TouchSmart tx2z is wrapped in a titanium Reaction Imprint finish.

At 4,6 pounds, the machine is heavy for a laptop that has only a 12.1-inch screen, and as a tablet it quickly gets tiresome in your arm. Think of it more as an on-your-lap tablet than a walking-around tablet. The beefy hinge keeps the screen stable as you type in traditional laptop mode, yet it lets you easily swivel and fold the screen flat against the keyboard for use in slate mode.

The power and Wi-Ei switches, fingerprint reader, and buttons for rotating the screen orientation and launching the Windows Mobility Center are all in the screen's bezel. When the tx2z is in tablet mode, you lose access to the dedicated volume/muteS hard keys, which are on the keyboard's deck.


Oddly, HP did not include dedicated multimedia-control keys. That's less of an issue, however, since you can control the system with the touch pad, mouse buttons, the included stylus, and your finger.

The tx2z incorporates HP's multitouch technology: The capacitive touch screen supports simple actions like tapping on a menu or dialog box and two-finger gestures for scrolling, zooming, rotating images, and even launching applications. Getting to the "X" button in the extreme upper corner to close an application may take a couple of jabs, but generally the touch screen is very accurate.

As with other Windows tablet PCs, you also can use the Tablet PC Input Panel for adding handwritten notes to an open document, converting written characters to text, and tapping out URLs and other text via the onscreen keyboard.

Best of all, HP's MediaSmart multimedia utilities make excellent use of the touch screen's abilities. You can launch the MediaSmart suite via a hard key on the screen bezel. The slick, iPhone-esque interface is optimized for the gesture-enabled touch screen, so you can scroll through photos by swiping yow finger or rotate them by spinning two fingers touched to the screen.

Text is sharp, colors are vibrant, and video playback is top-notch. We're also impressed with the Altec Lansing sound system, which puts out impressively good sound for a system this size. Our

TouchSmart tx2z came with a generous 320GB hard drive, an 8x multiformat DVD burner, 802.11a/b/Wn and Bluetooth connectivity, a Webcam, the fingerprint-reader option, an ExpressCard/34 slot, a five-format memory-card reader, and the usual connectors (three USB,VGA, Ethernet, modem, mic, and two headphone jacks).

Power comes from a 2.4GHz AMDIthion X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile ZM-86 CPU, 3GB of RAM (up to 8GB is supported), and the 64GB ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics engine.

Overall performance was average. The machine's Cinebench 10 score of 3,571 is fine for a thin-and-light. The system needed 8 minutes and 35 seconds to complete our Windows Media Encoder 9 trial and 5 minutes and 36 seconds for our illines conversion test—results that were neither stellar nor alarming. The ATI GPU has some 3D chops, managing a score of 1,692 on luturemark 3DMark06. We saw only 19.1 frames per second (fps) on Company of Heroes at 1,024x768 and a low 10.6fps at the screen's native 1,280x800 resolution.

The eight-cell battery lasted 2 hours and 35 minutes on our DVD rundown test, which is a little below average for a thin-and-light but not a major shortcoming.

The TouchSmart tx2z starts at about $1,150, and ow- test system topped out at $1,500. That's $250 more than HP's similar Pavilion tx2500z series without the TouchSmart features and about $400 more than a Dell Inspiron 13, which offers no tablet abilities at all.


So if you don't think you'll use the tablet features, this is not the machine for you. But if you like the idea of a tablet and were waiting for someone to make it more compelling, the I IP TouchSmart tx2z may be just what you want. —Jamie Bsales

Computer Shopper March 2009