As the next generation of the 13-inch HP DM3, the new HP Pavilion DM4-2140 has the same metallic container. However, instead of a metallic look of the DM3, the new model has embossed ornaments of angular lines for the wrist rest.

The smoothly rounded corners give the HP Pavilion DM4-2140 a user-friendly feel. The keyboard tray are similarly rounded, and the huge touchpad allow for precision and ease of use.

The keyboard itself is the flat and spaces out, creating no ambiguity between keys when typing. Recent HP Pavilion notebooks such as the HP Pavilion DM4-2140 are created with such designs. Even though the 14-inch keyboard would help those who use the laptop for work (especially the full-sized arrow keys), the laptop lacked dedicated media control buttons, so the user would have to utilize the Fn button whenever they need to press F5 to refresh their browser.

The matte surface of the HP Pavilion DM4-2140 touchpad is definitely superior compared to sticky mirrored touch pads in the previous generations of HP Pavilion laptops. The inventive touch pad is equipped with two click zones instead of click buttons, so that even the click zones can be used for tracking functions, while the location of the tap would determine the left-ness or right-ness of the click.

The new invention of the HP Pavilion DM4-2140 touchpad is better than many non-MacBook laptops reviewed by CNET. However, some multi-touch gestures are still difficult to use on this laptop, such as scrolling up and down. For scrolling, the user would need to adjust the fingers to line up perfectly horizontally.

The 14-inch wide-screen of the HP Pavilion DM4-2140 notebook is able to support a 1366x768-pixel native screen resolution (that's normal for a screen like this). The screen itself is glossy, so it might reflect light from behind the user, but the screen itself is bright and clear, and represent colors fairly correctly.