HP Pavilion dv6 Review: A Modestly Priced Laptop That Doesn’t Disappoint

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Pros

Same good video playback quality
First-class keyboard with a great find

Cons

DVD drive's eject push button is small
Speakers distort at high volume

Our Finding of fact

HP's dv6 is a classy-looking (though slimly bulky) laptop with a good mingle of features for its damage.

The HP Pavilion dv6 is the company's workhorse consumer laptop, with a 15.6-inch LCD panel and a nearly life-sized keyboard. When you first experience the dv6, it seems thinner than it really is. The gently curved hind surface of the LCD housing hides or s of the bulk in the rear, which is thicker than the front of the laptop. In fact, the curves of the entire shell disguise the fact that this notebook is well-nigh 1.25 inches thick in places.

Even so, at 5 pounds, 12 ounces without the power brick (and a pound heavier with information technology), the dv6's weighting is quite reasonable. At just below $800 as tried (as of July 18, 2011), the dv6 offers an Intel Core i5-2410M Sandy Bridge dual-core C.P.U., 6GB of DDR3 computer storage, and a separate Radeon HD 6490M graphics chip. Whole performance seems quite a sound for a sub-$800 system, A the dv6 attained a solid score of 117 on WorldBench 6 and lasted closely 5 hours on our battery-life-time test with the sise-cell battery.

You do give skyward or s amenities to gain that $800 price, however. The LCD jury is 1366 by 768 pixels, a native firmness of purpose that's pretty inferior for the every last-purpose laptop class. The hard ride is a 640GB Seagate worthy that spins at 5400 rpm; information technology won't win operation awards, but it offers pretty goodish capacity. The recordable-DVD ram down is relatively stilly, but its extremely tiny manual of arms eject button makes retrieving discs something of a minor chore.

The keyboard is rather good, offering excellent tactile feedback, sufficient spacing between the Chiclet-style keys, and a discrete numeric keypad. The touchpad works well, and South Korean won't pick up floating palms (a good matter). It also supports multitouch gestures, but I plant that information technology can get confused between the scrolling gesture and the exaggeration motion while in a Web browser.

Although the dv6 includes a separate nontextual matter card, it's no gambling fireball. In Far Hollo 2 in DX10 optimal mode, it managed a scant 28 frames per irregular, while in 3DMark 2011 IT achieved a low sexual conquest of just 678 on the performance test. If you program to run current-generation games happening the dv6, you'll need to make sacrifices in the detail levels and possibly the resolution to get playable frame rates.

HP didn't scrimp on ports with the dv6. For starters, it built in four USB ports, including two USB 3.0-capable ports connected the left pull; the pair of USB 2.0 connectors are on the right, next to the optical drive. 2 audio outputs and one input connective, plus VGA, HDMI, and ethernet, are altogether installed in the left side of the trounce. If you attach much of cables, the liberal go with could become a little cluttered. A face slot for SD Cards is also available. Networking is limited to gigabit ethernet and 802.11n Wi-Fi, atomic number 3 the dv6 lacks Bluetooth or 3G/4G support.

Video playback quality is quite strong. WMV high-def clips looked sharp, with nicely saturated colours. DVD upscaling to the autochthonal 1366 by 768 resolution was clean, with little visible edge sweetening or noise. The laptop ships with Intel WiDi (radiocommunication display) client software, just you'll involve to buy the box that attaches to your HDTV separately.

Audio quality is a piece of a mixed bag, though. Enabling the enclosed Beat generation Audio processing software definitely improves the sound for DVD movies, just music playback International Relations and Security Network't particularly exact, with also much middle-bass present. (Still, you can adjust equalisation in the Beatniks control panel manually, to beseem your taste.) I likewise heard fairly severe distorted shape forthcoming from the speakers with the volume pumped improving during music playback. Even though the audio quality seems a little above middling in general, you'll deprivation to use headphones for the uncomparable playback.

The software and documentation enclosed are both pretty standard, with HP edging into the online-storage commercialize with HP CloudDrive, an OEM implementation of ZumoDrive. As is typical, you undergo 2GB free, with tiered pricing for extra computer memory. Also included is Norton Net Security trialware, along with other HP tools.

Boilers suit, the Horsepower Marquee dv6 offers a pleasing parcel at $800, with a embarrassment of ports, an excellent keyboard, and a proper display. If you're willing to pay back for much options, the package scales up, with features such Eastern Samoa a sounding 1080p control panel, Blu-irradiate, and a higher-end Radeon HD 6770M discrete GPU, but those summate-ons wish ramp leading the price of the system quickly. At $800, this configuration of the dv6 seems to hit a sweet spot.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/481108/hp_pavilion_dv6.html

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