HP has formally announced the 11.6-inch HP Pavilion dm1. It’s powered by AMD’s new Fusion line, with a dual-core E-350 APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), and will be a rival to the Lenovo ThinkPad X120e with a starting price of $449 US.
One advantage it has over the X120e – it’ll be shipping next week.
While it’s not referred to directly as a netbook (and neither was the ThinkPad X120e), it definitely falls into that price and size range.
Thanks to the APU, the CPU and graphics processor are integrated into one chip, with hardware support for DirectX 11 (DX11) graphics, which is a Big Deal for laptops/ultraportables in this range. AMD refers to the graphics as a Radeon HD 6310
This dm1 features a redesign over previous Pavilions, with a “Grid Imprint” finish on the lid, as well as a redesigned touchpad (or clickpad). It does feature the same CoolSense functionality present in larger HP laptops, and the APU is placed under the keyboard instead of the palm rest which will help keep things cooler for the user. It looks like it comes standard with a 6-cell battery that provides up to 9 hours of battery life if you are not using WiFi. There is an option for a Solid State Drive (SSD) which can increase the battery life even further.
Other options include GPS and 3G/4G mobile broadband.
HP Pavilion dm1 Specifications:
– 11.6-inch display
– 1366×768 display
– AMD Fusion E-350 CPU (dual core) running at 1.6GHz
– HDMI/VGA Ports (weird)
– Full-sized keyboard
– 2GB DDR3
– HDD options from 250GB up to 750GB or SSD
– Weighs 3.5 pounds
LAPTOP Magazine has a hands-on preview: