HP is changing it’s public image, they want to move away from being known as a maker of staid, boring laptops to creating the new hotness that laptop buyers are looking for. In May the company updated their entire laptop design to be leaner, meaner, sleeker and affordable. Last week they sent me one of their newly designed Pavilion lappies and I have to say, on first blush the machine is impressive and comes at a very reasonable price. The configuration they sent for testing retails for under $800 and features a hefty AMD Quad Core Processor.
I’m one of the people AMD is targeting with their new marketing message of “What can a laptop do vs. the Specs.” I’m through with the processor race, who can tell the benefits of one of Intel’s many chips Vs. AMD? All I want to know is can the PC Laptop I buy handle video production, be thin, light, have a large hard drive and do more than 4 hours battery powered of computing. In my initial testing the new HP DV6 is more than capable of meeting my needs, although it fails in two critical areas – pitiful Hard Drive size (320) and battery life (under 3 1/2 hours). This of course is the stock model, you can configure it just about however you want for an additional cost. “It is designed for families and students. Someone who wants performance and capabilities, we’re able to give you a nice quad core processor. AMD keeps on working on improving their processors; they have better power management and enabled us to put multi-core processors into mainstream notebooks” said Kevin Wentzel, HP Product Manager.
Hardware
This is a beautiful machine. Dare I say it? It reminds me of the Unibody design on my Macbook – only it’s made of hard plastic and not metal. For a 15.6 laptop it’s surprisingly thin and lighter than my Macbook. Unlike past HP notebooks this just looks really contemporary and stylish. As an HP Product manager told me during a debrief, “I would be proud to take this laptop to a coffee shop and be seen with it.” It includes a weird coating on the surface so it feels like my hand was rubbing across “skin.” In my limited time with the machine it didn’t seem to be a dust or fingerprint magnet.
One thing I absolutely despise about my Macbook is the complete lack of ports (2 USB ports is ridiculous!), so I always enjoy spending time in the PC World where ports are a plenty. This machine includes 3 USBs (one on one side and two on the other), eSata, Firewire, HDMI, and a SD Card Slot. SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support and Hard Drive are whisper quiet. I don’t understand why companies still insist on using a 320 GB HD as standard instead of 500 GB when HDs are so cheap.
Battery power on the standard 6 cell was really disappointing, but not unexpected. In some of my tests it seems to last about 3 – 3 1/2 hours. You can easily find a 9 Cell battery that would bump that up.
Keyboard/Trackpad
There’s not much to say about the keyboard. I love chicklit style keyboards. It’s very responsive and I didn’t feel like I had to tap hard on the keys. I’m not a huge fan of trackpads in general and HP’s new style doesn’t change that. Their new trackpads are nice, big, and centered. They include multitouch capability, so you can do certain movements like pinch and zoom, finger scrolls and other nifty stuff. What annoyed me though was I expected the center of the pad to be a button (like Macbooks) instead you have to use the two bottom buttons for mouse clicks. It was awkward and took a bit to get used to.
Multimedia
This machine is built for multimedia. The 15.6″ diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Display (1366×768) screen is nice and bright without being overly glossy or shiny. I haven’t decided yet if I’m a fan of Widescreen on laptops. Watching movies on this screen is pretty awesome. Especially considering HP doesn’t skimp on the speakers and provide really nice Altec Lansing speakers with Dolby sound. One of the nicest sounding laptops I’ve played around with.
I loaded up Batman Arkham and Transformers, both performed about as expected. On the mid range settings no issues, but once I bumped everything up to the highest settings there were some stutters and dropped frame rates.
Software/Performance
Windows 7 64-Bit is a nice operating system – but then I wasn’t someone who had an issue with Vista. This operating system is designed to work with Quad-Core processors so I didn’t notice anything wrong with Windows. I will say some of the preinstalled software, specifically Norton really does break this machine. I could barely use the web browsers because Norton crashed them so often that it caused me to do a hard boot several times. It was beyond ridiculous and frustrating.
“If you look at what’s pre-installed on here, we have a starter version of Office 2010, we have a two month subscription to Norton (I would feel bad about selling anyone a computer without anti-virus) and we have HP Entertainment Software. There isn’t much trial ware on this machine,” said Wentzel.
When explained that way, I’m not against having bloatware on machines, but if they are going to do it, at least not include intrusive stuff like Norton or MacAffee, there are other leaner, better Anti-Virus Programs you can put there. Also don’t have include two or three different external toolbars in the browser. The first thing most people are going to do when they get home is surf the web, it that’s a lousy experience it’s going to ruin the excitement.
I ran some video encoding tests with Adobe Premiere CS5 and Windows Movie Maker and the video turned out well, no stutters or hiccups – by comparison I had an Acer Core i5 and Adobe made it run away screaming. Actually, Adobe CS5 works really well on this machine, it’s one of the few times where I did notice the benefits of using a Quad Core processor. Office 2007 worked without any issues as well.
System Review Specs
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
- AMD Phenom (TM) II Quad-Core Mobile Processor P920 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
- GB DDR3
- 320GB 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection
- 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon (TM) HD 5470 switchable graphics
- 15.6″ diagonal High Definition LED HP Brightview Display (1366×768)
- SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer Support
- HP TrueVision Webcam + Digital Microphone
- Wireless 802.11b/g/n Card
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (standard)
Conclusion
HP made a slight miscalculation by focusing on getting a Sexy Quad Core into the machine for under $800 instead of trying to get a bigger Hard Drive, More Ram and longer battery life into it. The HP Pavilion dv6z is a nice, well rounded, capable, machine in a good looking package. It doesn’t set the world on fire, but for $800 you’ll at least get a tasty grill going. This is a strong first step towards remaking their image.
Final Grade B
EM Review by
Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 8.01.2010