HP Pavilion g6 (2008tx) Review

HP’s Pavilion line of notebooks have been around a while and they’ve evolved in performance and also, shape and design. The existing line of Pavilion g6 uses Intel’s Sandy Bridge line of processors. These are the line of processors that were launched back in January 2011 and the g6 model we’re reviewing uses this same architecture. The Pavilion g6 model we’re looking at today is the model, 2008tx. A notebook with this sort of configuration is priced at just around the Rs. 40,000 mark, a budget that most people tend to have when they decide to spend on more than just a basic notebook. This is a trend that brands are aware of and there are quite a few options available for this price range.

Design and build quality

The Pavillion g6 at first glimpse is a decent looking notebook. It’s as most notebooks these days are, black in colour and made of plastic. There’s no sign of any fancy brushed metal panels anywhere on the notebook. The finished used for the cover as well as the insides is glossy plastic. In terms of weight, it’s not too heavy weighing at 2.47 kg - roughly the same as any other 15-inch notebook in its price range. Open up the notebook and you have the large grill that houses the speakers right in between the screen hinge and the keyboard. 

A rather slim and rounded bezel - helps with the style of the Pavilion g6

HP has put a pattern-engraved trackpad that is easy to use and doesn’t stick to your fingers if you get sweaty. The keys are of decent quality and so is the hinge for the screen. The bezel for the screen has some flex if you put some pressure on it. It’s strong but there are slightly better built laptops at this price range. In terms of aesthetics and design, it’s certainly no looker but it’s certainly not an uninspiring design. 

Features

The HP Pavilion g6-2008tx uses an Intel Sandy Bridge Core i3 2350M proessor that runs at a core speed of 2.3GHz, just a 100MHz faster than the Core i3 2330M processor, that’s used on many of the cheaper notebooks in the market. This processor has two cores and it can handle two threads per core. However, what you get in addition for the money you spend is an AMD Radeon HD7670M discrete graphics card, which should come handy should you want to do some amount of gaming on the notebook. There’s 4GB DDR3 memory, as you’d expect on most notebooks sold these days and also a 500GB hard drive. 

Compacted up-down direction key setup

This is one of the larger notebooks with a 15.6-inch screen, which supports a resolution of 1366x768, standard for most notebooks in this range. There’s an HDMI port should you want to connect the notebook to an external display such as a monitor, television or projector. The integrated graphics solution should also help with gaming at a higher resolution. Everything else about the core components is standard - you get WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, a VGA port and three USB 2.0 ports. There are no USB 3.0 ports on this particular model. The speakers onboard the Pavilion g6 are made by Altec Lansing. 

You don’t get any fancy hotkeys on this laptop. There are of course, shortcut keys to access certain features of the notebook but you won’t find any dedicated buttons for WiFi or volume controls. The Lenovo Z570 that we’ve received for review however, does have such buttons. The Pavilion g6’s keys have tiny indicators within them, for displaying status of wireless connections and if the sound on the notebook is muted or not.

Line of USB ports on one side of the notebook

The keyboard on the g6 is laid out well with chiclet style keys. The spacing between the keys could’ve been reduced but typing on the notebook doesn’t take much time getting used to. The left Ctrl key for example is placed in its default position, on the left bottom corner of the keyboard.