HP Pavilion TX1260ea review

There's no integrated TV tuner so you'll have to populate the hard drive with movies by leeching from wired or Wi-Fi Internet connections. You can then control movie playback using the optional infrared remote control, although you'll probably want to pump the video signal to an external display using the D-Sub or S-video output ports.

Other notable features include a fingerprint reader that allows you to log in to the system without a password, twin headphone sockets so more than one person can listen without inflicting noise on the wider world and a webcam above the screen.

Performance
The TX1020ea wasn't very fast, and neither is the TX1260ea, despite its slightly faster CPU. It scored 2,704 in PCMark 2005, which is very similar to the that achieved by the TXD1020ea. It's fine for day-to-day tasks such as watching movies or doing your homework -- provided your homework isn't anything to do with video editing.

Gaming is a no-no, but it is possible to run some older titles at modest resolutions. We tried running F.E.A.R on it and got 1 frame per second, which is pretty pointless. The laptop scored 219 in 3DMark 2006, which is about the same as the TX1020ea. Battery life was 100 minutes according to our Battery Eater test, which is middle of the road.

Conclusion
The HP Pavilion TX1020ea is a nice-looking and versatile machine. We like that it can be used in tablet mode, and having Media Center courtesy of the Vista Home Premium Edition operating system is a definite bonus.

Edited by Jason Jenkins
Additional editing by Shannon Doubleday