It’s taken a little longer than I had hoped, but I’ve finally composed my thoughts after reviewing the HP DreamScreen. Bottom line: It’s a beautiful display with some very useful applications. If HP could guarantee additional apps, available in the near future via software download, I could imagine plunking down the $249.99 ($219.99 at Amazon) for my own 10.2″ DreamScreen. But the device does need some tweaking, and more apps, more apps, more apps. Here’s the complete lowdown.
The DreamScreen is a Wi-Fi-connected photo display with widgets that provide: clock, calendar, weather, Snapfish photos, Pandora, and Facebook functionality. You can also use the DreamScreen to play your own library of music and videos. The picture quality is stunning, and as HP describes it, the device itself is piano-black with a “flush-glass widescreen display.” There’s a touchbar at the bottom of the screen, but I found it largely useless. The best way to control the DreamScreen is with its remote. As other people have noted, the interface could use some work, but it didn’t bother me overly much. There are cases where you have to click up or down to get to the horizontal menu selection you want, and sometimes it’s difficult to backtrack if you’ve inputted something incorrectly (like a password). However, these types of annoyances are the kind I can get past pretty quickly, especially when there’s nothing better currently on the market.
Now on to the good stuff.