HP DV-6825 or the new DV5-1010

My sister need a laptop and we intended to buy the DV-6825. But when we had to order it, we also saw the new DV5 line and got us interested.

Specs DV6825 ( only available in Europe I think)

- Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T5550
- 250 GB HDD
- 15.4 " WXGA TFT LCD 1280 x 800 Pixels
- 3072 MB Ram
- NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS 256 MB RAM

730 Euro

Specs DV5-1010ed

-AMD Athlon 64 X2 QL-60
-320 GB HDD
- 3072 MB Ram
- ATI Radeon HD 3450 256 MB Ram

700 Euro

She will be using it mainly for mailing, internet, Word and some DVD's.

The main concerns of the DV5 is the short battery life and the heat (the keyboard gets hot, as far as I understood in some forum posts). Also I was wondering how most people feel about the coated keys.

Any recommendations?

 

The coated keys are pretty good. I used to use the old style 'rough' keyboard sinilar to the one used in the dv6825 but the new ones are not bad at all. I would have to see how they stand to wear and tear but the keys are nicely spaced and typing is similar to the older ones. They are a bit noisy and have the typical clickty-clack sound to the keys.

As far as a comparison is concerned the Core 2 Duo will be faster and provide better battery life compared to the Athlon. The two GPU's should be pretty similar in terms of performance but since she isnt gaming it really doesn't matter. The only thing aganist the dv6825 is the nvidia graphics card which may or may not be affected by the issues afflicting nvidia cards these days.

 

I posted a review about the DV7t. They are fairly similar on the exterior so you can check it out.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3758514#post3758514


The DV5/7 is really sexy. However, if she is looking for long battery life then grab the DV2700T notebook. The 12 cell has up to 7 hours battery life.

 

Yeah, I already read your review . You show the differences between them (mainly differences in-/output & looks). Although it's a great comparison, you didn't really highlight the pro's and con's between them.

The DV2700T is nice, but my sister really wants a 15,4' widescreen, 14' would be simply to small.

And as last. Is there still really a great gap between AMD, even with the new Puma, and Intel in terms of power consumption and speed, Miner?

Where are the times, you only had a few laptops .

 

I am still in the process of reviewing my review lol

 

Well, depends on what you would use the laptop for. For general uses there really isnt that much of a difference. I currently use a Puma platform based system, honestly for the price I paid its perfectly fine for everyday use. If anything for outright performance the gap between Intel and AMD probably has widened. Of course, the Intels still manage better battery and run a bit cooler and probably will last longer on battery given they share similar battery specifications. The dv5 you are looking above, if it ships with the std 6 cell battery should last on average ~2hrs. It might also be less or more depending on what you are running while on battery. Similarly, the dv6825 with the same std 6 cell battery should last on average ~2:45hrs.

I would have recommended the dv6825 over the dv5 except for the uncertainty over the 8400M's long term reliability.