A decently priced desktop replacement notebook.
Good: Very powerful, Can play modern games easily, Looks stylish on the outside, Easily upgradeable ram and HDD
Bad: Gets very noisy when under full load, Monitor resolution only 1366x768, Comes pre-loaded with HP bloatware, HDD only 5400rpm
Price: AED 4,599
* The price is the Suggested Retail Price at the time of review. Please call a retailer to confirm the latest price for this product.
The HP Pavilion DV6 series of notebooks have always been the go to notebook for many people who want performance close to a desktop, but don’t want to splurge out an obscene amount of money for it. Today I’ll be looking at the latest HP Pavilion DV6 notebook that promises performance on par with mid-level desktops, without hurting the wallet.
The DV6 is a completely loaded machine that comes with the 2nd generation Intel Core i7-2630QM Sandy Bridge Processor. This 4 cores and 8 threads processor runs at 2GHz, turbo boosting all the way up to 2.9GHz. Complementing this high-end CPU is 8GB of DDR3 ram and an AMD HD 6770M graphics card with it’s own 1GB of dedicated GDDR5 memory. Couple all of this with a 1TB 5400rpm HDD, and you have one hell of a notebook that’s powerful enough to go toe-to-toe with any modern desktop.
The 15.5” widescreen monitor is glossy, with a disappointingly low resolution of 1366×768. While using the DV6 for regular operations is fine at this resolution, I found photo editing and browsing multiple webpages at this resolution to be quite restrictive. The silver lining here is that the HD 6770M can really pump out some high fps in most modern games, although I’m sure an equally impressive result could’ve been had if the screen resolution was 1440×900.
While I am talking about visuals, I should mention that the new DV6 looks brilliant at first sight. Pretty much the entire unit is made of plastic, but certain patterns give it a very high-end feel. Starting from the top, the DV6’s most impressive design is the dark amber, brushed metal finish top. Inside the same material continues for the palm-rest and the area surrounding the keyboard. The keyboard itself is Chiclet styled, with comfortably distanced keys. Sadly it isn’t backlit, but at this price point I’m not going to complain. The Beats Audio speakers line the top of the keyboard, right where the monitor aligns, and on the front of the DV6. The right side hosts two USB 2.0 ports and the Blu-ray player (plus Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner). The left side is home to VGA, HDMI and LAN ports, plus another two USB 3.0 ports and the audio jacks. Under the DV6 you have the battery latch, plus a removable panel that allows access to the HDD, the memory modules and the WiFi adapter. As usual a simple memory upgrade, which I don’t think is required in this case, and an HDD upgrade (preferably to an SSD) will prolong the life of the DV6 tremendously.
