HP Pavilion dv6750ea notebook review

14 April 2008 13:00 GMT / By Stephen Patrick

HP has spent the last 2 years re-inventing its notebook offerings, especially improving the look and feel of its consumer offerings. This has paid off, with the company now selling more notebooks worldwide than any other manufacturer.

The HP Pavilion dv6750ea takes the now standard HP design, a silver and black casing with an inlaid swirl design and offers it up as a multimedia entertainment notebook.

The screen is a 15.4-inch Super-TFT panel that sits on a strange hinge that dips at the back of the casing. It's not the most secure of fixings, as we found the screen was prone to movement as we typed, which isn't great if you're planning on using it on the move.

Screen quality is stunning, with images looking sharp, and making it ideal for watching movies or playing games. At this price point you'll find a reasonable graphics card in the form of the Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS, which is fine for playing mainstream games and even helps if you're editing video.

The keyboard is a good size and sits in the centre of the main body. We found it offered reasonable quality but the keys tended to rattle as we typed, which is more of a distraction than an actual problem.

The multimedia aspect of the notebook can be seen in the little details, such as the addition of Altec Lansing speakers, which sit above the keyboard. Sound quality was well above average and we found they could be used for movies as well as listening to MP3 files without problem.

For playing movies using the built-in DVD rewriter, you'll find a row of touch-sensitive buttons above the keyboard. Offering the standard set of controls, you'll also find access to QuickPlay, which is HP's media player software that can be run without accessing the main OS, so saving on battery life.

When it comes to using this machine out and about the 2.7kg weight isn't too problematic but we found it a wide machine, so isn't ideal for using on public transport. With a battery life in excess of 3 hours from a single charge, you'll be able to get through a decent portion of the working day.

In terms of performance, this isn't the most powerful notebook on the market. Powered by an Intel 1.66GHz Core 2 Duo T5450, processor, this is very much an entry-level chip and while it's dual-core you'll find high-end tasks will start to slow the system down. With 2048MB of memory, we found every day tasks loaded and ran quickly and with the Vista Home Premium OS pre-installed, your multimedia files load and run smoothly.

The main specification is rounded out with a 160GB hard drive, which is fairly average for this price point. Extra features include a webcam and a HDMI port, so you can send HD content to a larger external screen.

Verdict

The HP Pavilion dv6750ea isn't the most powerful or feature rich of notebooks on the market and we found it handled reasonably well. The build quality isn't as high as we've seen in other HP notebooks of late, which makes this machine better suited to home use than on the move.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: HP
Price as reviewed: £599
The good: Great screen, quality speakers
The bad: Not the most firmly attached screen, rather average spec for the price
Quick verdict: A stylish notebook with plenty of features for the asking price
Score