HP took the stage at IFA 2016 and showcased its Pavilion Wave, a home theater PC that most users will first mistake for a glamorous Bluetooth speaker.
The device fits perfectly in the niche of devices that completes your entertainment center, and it comes in a design that you will want to put on display.
The Pavilion Wave measures 6.81 x 6.62 x 10.29 inches and draws attention because of its triangular, rounded, cylindrical orientation. By looking at the device, it is easy to mistake it for a subwoofer or fancy over-the-top speaker.
It should be mentioned that sound comes from the top of the Wave. The lid carrying the HP logo hides both the gadget's speakers and ventilation vents.
The high-quality acoustic experience relies on the sound pouring out of Bang & Olufsen speakers, which shout out the bass and treble at 360 degrees.
Secondly, the vents are placed perfectly so that the heat of the PC to dissipate easily, because warm air has a natural tendency to go up. Owners who keep that in mind will certainly appreciate the design more, as HP takes a leaf out of previous approaches to cylindrical PCs and pushes it onward.
Looking under Wave's woven chassis, we find no less than three chambers.
The first compartment holsters the heat-generating components, the second is packing the storage of the device, while the third act as a cooling mechanism, drawing heat from the motherboard via pipes and rolling it upward and out of the hardware.
The Wave also features dual microphones integration, making it easy to tap into Cortana's conversational abilities, provided that the system has Windows 10 installed.
What's In The Box?
Despite the fact that the Pavilion Wave is easily comparable with an Apple Mac Pro, one should not expect a similar processing power.
Instead, it's better to view the Wave as a home theater PC that was built to proudly stand in the living room or cinema den. Keep that in mind and know that Wave could be used to run some 4K video and even some very resource demanding gaming.
Clients of Wave will be able to choose one of two SKUs.
HP embedded a quad-core, desktop level Intel Core i3 or i5 CPU in the device for processing power, and both configurations come with 8 GB of DDR4 RAM to support it. When looking at storage, a 128 GB SSD or 1 TB standard HDD of 7,200 rpm is available.
Both variants of the device sport connectivity thanks to one USB-C port, three USB 3.0 ports, a combo headphone/mic jack, HDMI, a traditional audio jack, a DisplayPort, a Gigabit Ethernet port and an SD card reader. As you would expect, Bluetooth 4.1 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi are default features for both configurations.
Something to take note of is that the Core i3 model is coupled with the 1 TB drive, the Core i5 version comes packed with the SSD drive.
As the device is marketed as a home theater PC, it would have been logical for the best chip to be paired with the most generous storage space, but maybe it's just us who think this way.
HP permits a high degree of customization for the device, meaning that users can purchase their device loaded with up to 16 GB of RAM, 1 TB SSD, 2 TB of spinning storage and even an Intel Core i7 chip.
Both Wave models allow users to opt in for an AMD R9 M470 GPU. This supports the idea that HP's gadget can be used for some low resource demand gaming.
At First Glance
Not only is the Wave on the cutting edge of technology, but HP crafted it in such a way that customers will want to use it beneath or beside their 4K TVs. And on top of that, the gadget easily doubles as a high-res audio system.
The price of the HP Pavilion Wave starts at $549.99 on the manufacturer's official site, and stores should see it beginning Sept. 16.
Are you excited about the futuristic yet friendly looking HP Pavilion Wave? Let us know in the comments section below.
