As a docking station it is a really useful piece of kit designed so that peripherals can be plugged into the base, instead of the laptop, meaning the laptop can be removed and replaced very quickly and easily. It is also an expansion base in that the sockets provided are in addition to those on the laptop.

The base holds the laptop securely and firmly and incorporates Harmon Kardon stereo speakers for decent quality sound output, together with a volume control and mute button.

The sockets and functions all operate via a single connection to the laptop.

The angles of viewing available and in conjunction with the wireless keyborad and mouse mean you effectively get a desktop from your laptop.

The quality is good and the base includes an additional hard drive bay to increase storage capacity of the laptop's relatively small drives.

The style and design is also good matching the Pavillion series very well.

Now the downsides!

Heavily overpriced.

Not easily available in the UK, even from HP direct.

The hard drives to fit the bay are even harder to find and are also badly overpriced.

Typical HP really, produce a reasonable product and then charge way too much for it and make it difficult to buy.