Detailed HP DV6 SE Review

I wanted to write a good review of my recent experience with my DV6. To be fair I did return it, but I still really liked it, and I hope my review addresses some of those questions that are not answered so often (some of the things I was still wondering about/debating when I did make my purchase). Many pictures included. Feel free to scroll down to the "verdict" and "short and sweet" for a quicker review .

It was...
DV6TSE - $1,248.29 with $400 off coupon
Intel Core-i5 580m (2.66ghz up to 3.33ghz)
ATI 5650 1gb
6gb DDR3
160gb SSD

First Impressions
I was very impressed initially. Though HP provided no details until it had left the building, it got here way faster than even the estimated build-date (common), before the estimated delivery by FedEx as well! I quickly noticed a small blemish in the case on the front top of the lid, minor enough it was hardly noticeable, but I could see why some people would be concerned by it. That being said, I have no doubt HP would have replaced it or done something to placate me had I felt it was a problem. Size wise I was not as pleased as I had hoped for, but it was better than I had anticipated. This is not an HP issue, but rather the fact that I simply found the 15.6” form to be too large. To put it in perspective, I am replacing it with a Sony Vaio Z at 13.3” which I found much more reasonable.


As you can see on the right corner, there was a small knick in the finish when delivered. Not nearly as noticiable as it is in the photo

Screen
I had read quite a few horror stories about how bad the screen was, I actually thought it was very nice. The resolution was disappointing, but the 1368 x 766 is standard so that is no surprise. But the colors came out nicely, the viewing angles were not the best, but good enough that I was able to lay down in bed with my head level with the machine and watch a movie no problem. After playing with the Vaio Z I could see the difference in a high-end screen, and standard screen, but prior to that the HP screen was more than adequate- except for the resolution. Again, not so much an HP issue, but after seeing it and spending a little time with it I realized, personally, 1368 x 766 is too small for a 15.6” screen (yet again, to put that in perspective, I replaced it with a 13.3” screen and 1600 x 900 resolution).


The screen was impressive, I had read many horror stories but did not find them to be accurate. That being said, I felt the 1368 x 766 resolution is not adequate for a 15.6" screen, but it is hard to fault HP when it is so standard

Keyboard
Here we come to the one fault that is truly HP’s completely horrible design flaw. The keyboard is really enjoyable to type on, except for one fact. That obnoxious row of buttons on the left side of the keyboard. Anyone who can touch-type knows that the bottom left is always cntrl, always has been, and always should be. Some idiot at HP woke up one day and thought, gee, the keyboard has been around for a while, and people can type really fast on it, but I think we can do better. The backlit keyboard was awesome, and I loved the quick buttons up top like for turning off wifi. Very handy. I think it would be easy to get used to the keyboard, and honestly once you have your placement you can get going just fine until you need to move your hands. I did find hitting shift and cntrl to be much more awkward though.


What idiot thought this row of buttons on the left side was a good idea?


Touchpad
Same story with the touchpad, unlike some users I found it to work great! The off feature is incredible, just double tap the upper left corner and the touchpad is disabled (shown by a tiny little orange light embedded in the touchpad). There are two problems with the touchpad. The buttons are horrible, so stiff they are really quite unpleasant to use. Note: At staples while playing with various HPs with the same touchpads, they felt looser. So maybe with time they loosen up a bit. Second issue is the size, sometimes it comes in handy, but while typing (slowly thanks to the screwed up keyboard layout) I found it easy to accidently brush the touchpad, selecting text, and then typing over it. I lost a couple very long threads I had typed up that way. Like the keyboard I feel like this issue would be easy to get used to with time.

Ports and Connectivity
I did not test Bluetooth. Wireless worked great. The ports were just fine. I would have loved to see a USB 3 port, but you cannot really fault them there as it is such a new technology still. The powered combo USB/eSata port is a nice addition. Will definitely miss that on my Vaio. No complaints here, the USB on the right side way up front was awkward, but there were other ports to use so hard to complain. Awkward just because of how close it was to the front of the laptop.




As you can see from these images, ports are aplenty

Build
I was very impressed with the build quality. As I mentioned there was a small blemish in the cover when it arrived, but it really was very tiny. The metal housing is very nice, the design was aesthetically pleasing without being obnoxiously flashy. HP light-up logo was a little overkill, but I am moving in January to Moscow and would like to do my best to not look like a good target so I was unusually concerned with it looking “plain”. Everything felt very solid. That being said, it was babied since I knew I may return it.

Battery
Battery life was awesome. I was easily getting five to six or more hours without even trying. In one test I went from 92% to 46% in four hours! By my math I could have probably gotten eight or so. Note: I was using the extended battery. I recommend the extended battery, HP has an awesome deal (or did at least) to add a second battery for some tiny figure, was definitely well worth it. The extended battery does of course create a small bump, and though I prefer flat typing surfaces (I have always selected the thinnest, flattest keyboards I can find) it did not bother me too much. Also was noticeable when on my lap, but not to a point that it mattered. The extended battery has an LED display to show charge level which was nice.


The extended battery creates a small bump which is noticeable, but not painful on the lap


The extended battery has a row of LED indicators for the charge level, a nice feature


The regular battery allows the DV6 to sit nice and flat of course

HP
Though it was a short run I would easily do business with HP again. Ordering and receiving the laptop was painless, and perhaps from the unique perspective I can testify how painless the return process has been so far (just shipped it in so cannot say for sure, but I anticipate zero problems). I talked with a customer service representative online (chat) and though she obviously was doing her job in first trying to convince me to keep it, and then in suggesting an exchange… I just very politely and honestly said that I loved the laptop aside from the issues I mentioned, and I loved HP, but that unfortunately because of my desire for a higher resolution there was no way HP was going to be able to satisfy my needs. She quickly agreed to process for a full return, and I did not have to pay a penny- every cent should be on its way back to my bank, did not even pay return shipping.
I will admit, as I have mentioned in early posts, one reason I went with the HP in the first place was my confidence in their return policy, and I was not only satisfied, but very impressed.

EDIT (12-14-10): HP has returned the full amount to my credit card without any problems. I may be HP-less, but count me a big fan of HP!

Verdict
I really did love the DV6. Do not let my returning it fool you. Had my budget been set at under $1,300, I would have kept the DV6 in a heartbeat. The combination of incredible power and battery life was extraordinary. It performed flawlessly in simple tasks, and while gaming (I wish I had gotten a chance to try out some design work and Photoshop, but I would have no doubts about its performance). Had I been willing to live with a 15.6” screen at the 1366 x 768, I would have kept the DV6 in a hearbeat. The DV6 forced me to compromise on three or four areas.
1) The keyboard layout was asinine. The addition of the quick-launch buttons on the left side never should have made it past early design stages.
2) The size of the touchpad, and the firmness of the buttons was very awkward.
3) The 15.6” screen was just too large for my needs.
4) The 1366 x 768 resolution was just not high enough, particularly on such a large screen.
As you can tell, most of these are not issues with the laptop, but issues with me. Any of these by themselves and I would have loved to keep the machine. But throw these four issues together, and the fact that I was willing to up my limit, and I decided I had to return the DV6.
There is still, bar none, no way to cram such impressive stats into such an awesome package, and such an affordable price. Unless HP does something to get rid of coupons, for the past month or so you have been able to get $400 off easily, which makes an already great value, even better.

Short and Sweet
I highly recommend the DV6 to anyone looking for a 15.6” mobile desktop replacement. I hope to do business with HP again someday.

Pros
+ High build quality
+ Unbeatable power and specs, at an unbeatable price
+ Battery life, particularly considering the specs, was incredible
+ Good quality screen for its class (compared to other 15.6” 1366 x 768 resolution screens)
+ HP support (though I never had to pursue warranty coverage or such)

Cons
- Keyboard layout is horrible- extra quick-launch buttons on left is asinine
- Touchpad size and button stiffness is awkward
- Though standard in its class, the resolution was poor, would like to see an option for higher resolution screens like HP used to have.

 

Great review, its too bad that the resolution turned you off so much, probably another buyer that would have seen the value in the infamous radiance display.

 

Absolutely, unfortunately moving to Russia I was not so keen on a refurb. As it was, after purchasing the Vaio I jumped straight to SquareTrade and bought an extended (and more importantly, accidental damage) warranty.

 

Nice review. The keyboard was a big part of the deal breaker for me, the row of keys down the left hand side will drive some people crazy.

Although I do not get what is new about this one? I brought the same laptop (more or less) 6 months ago. Same finish, same mobo with 5650 and outputs.

 

Maybe...some people like it cause it cause it be mistakenly called mac book.
Which happened to me multiple times. For me, I got it really cheap for a decent battery life. And Yes, I do hate the left side of the keyboard.
I gotten used to it but I can't use a normal US keyboard pretty much almost everyone in the US.

 

Probably nothing new then?

Macbook? Wow completely different looking, in my opinion anyway!

 

Edited post to add that HP has returned my money without any problems. I am already having fun dealing with Sony. I do not anticipate any problems, but apparently their contract with Fedex is one where Fedex does not have to treat you as a customer, but rather as garbage. I have no options, they get three-failed delivery attempts, and then I can drive an hour to pick it up (no one is at my house during the day to sign for it, and I do not want to release liability).

1) I cannot have the address changed to my work address
2) I cannot have it transfered to the FedEx warehouse 5 minutes away to p/u
3) I cannot even go to the warehouse an hour away and pick it up UNTIL they have tried to deliver it three times
4) I cannot request a specific delivery time (people are home after 2pm), let alone get an estimated delivery time

Heck, I could tell them no one will be home, but if they do not waste their time stopping here... it will not count as a failed attempt! Why would Sony work such a horrible contract?

HP through FedEx had one failed delivery, I drove right down to the FedEx warehouse five minutes away and had my laptop in my hands about three minutes after getting there! So painless!

 

Do you have neighbors you can trust??
You could have them sign it for you.

 

All the neighbors I trust work during the day as well, lol . I have just given up, will have to be patient and wait out stupid FedEx/Sony contract for my new toy .

 

Thanks for this review!

Can I know whether the screen lid itself is thick? To put it into perspective, is it thicker than the HP Envy 14 or dm4's screen?

 

I did not notice one way or the other, it seemed very similar if I recall correctly. But I bet someone can answer more definitively.

 

The horrible screen resolution is a big big negative.

A higher res screen, and a non-moronic keyboard would have made this a great laptop!

 

I'm really disappointed to hear about the touchpad and since I use it all the time, that might be reason enough to not get this laptop. Who makes a touchpad with hard-to-press buttons?

I tried out the laptop in the store and I didn't mind the extra line of keys on the left, it didn't seem to mess me up when I tested out the typing. But the touch pad I felt like I had to force down and I found the cursor jumped around the screen randomly when I used it.

 

I hate this laptop. I got dv6tse with a i5 540, 8gb ram, 500gb hd, ati 5650 1gb, and blu ray but I just hate it. I have had it for 2 months and am selling it on ebay right now haha. Glad you liked yours though. You can have mine for $750

 

What do you hate about it? Just out of curiosity...

 

sometimes it takes 5 min to get out of hibernate. i disklike the left row of keys. i absolutely hate the trackpad but i am out alot so I cant hook up a mouse. wish it had usb 3.0 for my external hdd. also I reinstall windows every year or so and i had to do this recently do to a windows file problem and it took 12 hours to reinstall windows with the disks hp gave me. i just think ill wait to get a laptop with the new synaptics touch pad 3.0 and a sandy bridge.

 

Very few laptops have USB 3.0 yet, I am surprised how slowly it is being rolled out it seems. What you were doing was reimaging to an earlier state, not reinstalling windows. That is going to be more susceptible to issues like that (though 12 hours seems excessive).

 

The disk given by HP is not to restore to an earlier state, it's the factory install state. But for 12 hours, seem like you are just restoring to an earlier state.

Hibernate times do varies by size of footprints of active application are there. For example, it would take like 5 mins to load if you hibernate with an active intensive game that consumes of 3GB of ram + 1 GB page.
If you cared about boot time of last state, why not run it on standby, it so much faster than hibernate as it loads from ram instead of harddisk.

I remembered that usb 3 isn't released quickly was due to Intel's decision to go in favor in their Light Peak Technology.

 

Factory install is an earlier state. The point is the user is not actually reinstalling windows as he had been hoping/assuming.

 

What happened was I was testing out system explorer software from microsoft which is like a replacement for the task manager but i did not like it at all. it somehow replaced my task manager so when I hit ctrl atl del nothing would happen. I looked all over but couldnt find a fix so I just figured I'd do a restore. If you hit F11 when you turn the comp on it takes you to the system recovery menu and there is an option to do a factory restore and make it like it was first turned on. it took 12 hours for some reason. and i know usb 3.0 is being rolled out at a slow pace but its a feature i could really use. i might as well get everything i want if im spend $1000

 

I have the dv6 with the i3 processor, intel hd graphics, and black cherry finish. So far it's a fantastic laptop. How is the brushed aluminum finish? Is it stain proof, scratch proof, a fingerprint magnet, easy to clean? Does it get hot with the 5650? Looks like a great laptop. An option for a black aluminum finish would have been nice also.

 

After playing with my dv6tse/i5 for a few days....I'm starting to like it. It will still go back for a quad 6 or 7....but it has made the my choice even harder.

One thing I will say...the touchpad is OK....with the exception of highlighting, right-clicking and scrolling.

Those are USELESS. I only scorll with the arrow and page-up/down buttons now. (I was working on not using the touchscreen at all to see if I would could deal with a dv7 without a mouse)

The biggest benefit of the touch-pad is the ability to right click by simply holding your finger on the screen/link for a second. That, and the ability to highlight by simply moving your finger accross what you want to highlight.