HP DV6500T: Review
I’ve been in the market for a new laptop for about half a year now and I’ve finally made up my mind and purchased an HP DV6500t. I was looking for a widescreen laptop of about 15″ in diameter with a decently fast “Santa Rosa” Intel chip and a decent nVidia graphics card. I also didn’t want to spend more than $1,500 in total (including taxes). Having looked at everything from Asus to Toshiba, I finally homed in my search on an HP, and eventually the DV6500t.
BUYING EXPERIENCE
I knew for quite some time that I wanted a new laptop, and so I was able to do quite some searching for the best places to buy my new DV6500t. Trolling between various sites, along with the occasional visit to a brick and mortar store, made it quite clear that if you want a specific laptop with certain chips, cards, and features, you’ll want to make your purchase from the manufacturer directly.
Buying from HP.com was easy and quite straight forward. I had no trouble selecting what I wanted, and it was always clear what I would end up getting and paying for it. Unfortunately, buying directly from the manufacturer has one major drawback: you’ll have to wait longer to get your new machine, since the item in question won’t be built until you order it. So, after three weeks of waiting, somewhat impatiently, I finally got my DV6500t – kudos to HP and FedEx for accurately predicting the correct arrival time, though.
PACKAGING
When the doorbell rang, I hurried to the door. Upon seeing the box, it was immediately clear what HP was doing to save itself some money. There on the porch, sat a plain cardboard box with nothing on it, save for a few rather large shipping placards.
Within this rather simple box, I found my new laptop wrapped in plastic and snuggled securely between two molded Styrofoam braces. Also in the box, I found the extra 12-cell battery that I ordered and all of the paperwork – plus a few ads. Oddly enough, the regular battery was packaged safely in a bubble wrap sleeve, while the bigger, potentially more dangerous, 12-cell was wrapped in a simple, pink, plastic bag.
The important thing is, though, that the laptop arrived safely all the way from China, even though the packaging was extremely basic.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
From a visual standpoint, if you can’t get a Mac Book, this is probably the next best thing. Unfortunately, as soon as all the plastic covers are removed, you’ll see every fingerprint, dust particle, wipe and scratch. The problem is especially prevalent on the shiny, piano-lacquer lid.
Apart from the visuals, the laptop feels solid and the ergonomics are decent. All ports and media bays are conveniently located on either side of the laptop, negating the need to reach around the back of the machine to connect peripherals.
Another feature that becomes immediately apparent is the fact that the DV series doesn’t have a latch. The lid is held down in the close position by sole means of hinges, which actually works really well, and aids in giving the machine a sleeker appearance.
SCREEN
The DV6500 series features a 15.4″ glossy screen with a native resolution of only 1280 by 800 pixels. The color reproduction is decent, but the screen suffers from a rather narrow viewing angle; color will look off unless you are perfectly in front of it. The problem is especially prevalent with darker colors. Black levels aren’t great either, but the screen performs adequately if you’re not doing anything more than basic text editing. To be fair, however, for under $1,500, you can’t reasonably expect to get anything drastically better than this.
Colors and black levels aside, however, one issue I do have with this relatively cheap display is that it has a glossy finish, as opposed to a matte finish. Why the hell would anyone prefer to have a display that reflects more light than is absolutely necessary? Glossy screens are usually advertised as being capable of producing a better viewing experience, but for a laptop this simply cannot be true. Glossy screens are only nice in a darkened environment, which is not exactly the average setting for a mobile user. If you happen to be using your DV6500t in a averagely lit room, than there is a fair chance that you’ll see a sharp, almost mirror-like reflection of your environment. I can’t stand it, but I’m sure that it does appeal to some.
KEYBOARD
The keyboard is pretty nice, with good key travel and decent flex. The key layout is pretty average for a Windows laptop. The F1 through F12 keys also serve as special function keys for: help, print, Internet, output switching, sleep mode toggling, locking, increasing brightness, decreasing brightness, play/pause, stop, previous and next, respectively. The home, page up, page down, and end keys are featured along the right side of the keyboard. Typing isn’t overly noisy, producing no more noise than what I’ve come to expect from laptop keyboards. The noise shouldn’t be enough to upset anyone around you in a quiet environment.
Unfortunately, keyboard ergonomics isn’t a strong point for the DV6500t. Hand positioning could have been better, but for a value laptop it isn’t too bad I suppose. The main problem I have with it stems from the fact that the touchpad has been perfectly centered in the middle of the laptop (for additional visual appeal), but this causes problems when typing. The alphabet keys are positioned on the left hand side, causing the user to place his (or her) right hand over the touchpad. This awkward hand placement results in erratic cursor movement while typing.
TOUCHPAD
The largest benefit of the touchpad is that it can be turned off to avoid accidental tracking—but that’s really the only high-point. The touchpad also features the standard left and right click buttons under the touchpad, but, in my opinion, these two buttons have too much travel, causing them to feel a little cheap.
Tracking isn’t perfect either. While the cursor’s reaction to the finger isn’t really a problem, the touchpad feels awkward once the laptop heats up. Depending on what you are doing the laptop will generate more heat, causing the touchpad to become quite warm. Using the touchpad once it’s warm produces a really awkward sensation, which might very well be considered annoying depending on personal preference.
QUICKPLAY
Just under the Altec Lansing speakers and to the right of the power button, there is a touch sensitive control strip, lined with media control buttons. The strip is rather elegant, but for everyday use, you’ll only find yourself using three of the functions: mute, volume up and volume down. In addition to audio control buttons, the strip also features media control buttons (i.e., play, pause, stop, forwards, backwards). To the very left of the strip, there is also a DVD button, which launches HP’s playback software, which as you might have guessed isn’t that great.
ACCESSORIES
One of the advantages of ordering a machine directly from the manufacturer is that you can choose exactly what you want your new computer to come equipped with. I opted to include a variety of extras such as built-in webcam, fingerprint reader and Bluetooth.
- FINGERPRINT READER
The fingerprint reader is a neat feature and works pretty well once you get used to performing the correct wiping technique. In order to set up the fingerprint reader, you’ll have to associate your prints with the machine. The software wants a minimum of three prints, but you can choose to include as many as you want.
I know that some people might be a little hesitant about using a fingerprint scanner to log in because of a variety of concerns, most of which are actually misconceptions. First off, setting up your computer to use the fingerprint reader does not mean that you can’t still log in using your regular password. Others might be worried about the fingerprint scanner from a security standpoint; someone might steal your machine, manage to get in, steal your fingerprint, and thus steal your identity. Well, this is not a problem either, as your actual fingerprint in not actually stored on the hard drive – in fact your print isn’t stored at all. When you first swipe your finger to register it, the scanner analyses your print for identifying features, and then takes those results and hashes them to create an irreversible number. So, on all subsequent scans the same happens and then if the numbers match, you’re in.
Using a fingerprint to log in might be convenient and easy, but there are a few problems with the reader and the accompanying software. First of all, when Vista starts up you have to select the fingerprint icon before you can swipe. This is only a minor gripe, but it’s one that has surprised almost everyone who’s used my laptop. The second complaint I have is the positioning of the fingerprint reader, which on the right side, directly under the direction keys. When using the direction keys or the other buttons in that region (page up, page down, end, and home), it’s pretty easy to accidentally trigger the reader, causing the software to sound a beep and display a pop-up.
- WEBCAM
Along with the fingerprint reader and the imprint finish, HP also included a simple webcam with the laptop with the configuration I chose. The webcam, however, leaves a lot to be desired; it simply isn’t that great. In fact, the webcam included in the DV6500t is, by all quantitative measures, worse than the one in preceding models. Instead of outputting an XGA resolution (1024 by 768) like previous models, the webcam in the DV6500t is only capable of producing VGA imagery (640 by 480). The reasoning behind this decision seems to have been that most applications, especially conferencing apps, have trouble handling high-res video in real-time (due to insufficient bandwidth and latency issues). On the bright side though, some reviews have claimed that the new webcam is far better suited for low-light situations than the previous edition. Regardless of this claim though, it would have been nice to be able to choose the resolution you want to use. Oh, well…
GRAPHICS CARD
Graphical performance is another area where HP decided to go down the cheap road. My initial intention was to purchase the DV6500z, which is the AMD variant. Unfortunately, at the time the best graphics card that HP offered for this laptop was the GeForce Go 7200, which just happens to be one of the most antiquated graphics chips available. Not only is it dog slow, it’s also two generations old. Now, considering that HP is marketing the DV brand as an “Entertainment” laptop, the decision to offer nothing else but the 7200 is downright appalling. And then, to make matters even worse, the next move they made was to get rid of the 7200 and replace it with the 7150, which is even worse.
Now, in all fairness to HP, it seems that this only happened because they were trying to get rid of the 7200 in order to replace it with a better card. Unfortunately, by the time they had upgraded the AMD-based model, I had already purchased the DV6500t.
The DV6500t offers a better, far more up-to-date, graphics card, but it’s still pretty far from ideal for anyone interested in any movie editing or gaming – even casual gaming. The GeForce Go 8400M GS that HP now offers in the DV6500t (both in the Intel, as well as the AMD based versions) comes with an impressive sounding 383MB of memory. Gee, that sounds like a lot… Well, it’s not that great. Only 64MB of that 383MB is actually on the graphics card itself; the other 319MB are shared with other hardware elements. If you’d like a far more serious graphics card, like a 7600GT for instance, I’d recommend checking out some of the newer Dells.
ADDITIONAL IMAGES
