HP Pavilion G6-2009TX Review

HP’s Pavilion line of notebooks has always been a good value option for first time notebook buyers. Like Dell’s Inspiron series, this line of notebooks from HP delivers basic computing along with a good mix of multimedia features for a very affordable price. Today, we review the Pavilion G6-2009TX, which is slotted in the budget range of less than Rs 40,000. 

Design and Build 

The 15.6-inch notebook is made up mostly of plastic in order to keep the cost down but still manages to feel sturdy. The G6 features a nice pattern under the red coat of paint, which makes it striking and more aesthetically appealing. The lid does flex a bit but not too much to cause damage to the screen. 

Good design and build

For connectivity, it has three USB ports, out of which two are USB 3.0 and one USB 2.0. There’s also HDMI, VGA, LAN, SD card reader, headphone and microphone jack and a DVD burner. The power and hard disk activity lights are placed at the side just behind the DVD drive. 

Opening the notebook, we are greeted by the sight of a full-sized chiclet keyboard along with a full numpad. There’s plenty of room for the palm rest area as well so typing even for long durations should not be a problem. The chiclet keys have good spacing around them and the tactile feedback is also pretty good, making them quite comfortable. They aren’t backlit, however. There are function keys for controlling media along with LEDs on the Mute, Wi-Fi and CapsLock keys to notify its toggle state. The speaker grill from Altec Lancing is placed directly above them. The trackpad is generously large, and has a Disable button adjacent to it. The mouse buttons have a nice click to them and don’t require much effort to use. 

Good set of connectors

The Pavilion G6-2009TX is not designed to be carried around but more for home use. At roughly 2.4kg, it’s slightly heavy and not very slim either. 

Features 

The HP Pavilion G6-2009TX is powered by a Core i3-2350M Sandy Bridge CPU. This dual-core CPU runs at a native speed of 2.3GHz, and features HyperThreading. There is no Turbo Boost. The rest of the components include 4GB of RAM, 500GB hard drive, and an AMD Radeon HD 7670M with 2GB of dedicated memory. Thankfully, the card supports switchable graphics. So, the battery life won’t be short either. We wish it had the slightly higher screen resolution that exists in this price range, but we have to make do with the 1366 x 768 resolution.

As is the case with most OEMs, the 2009TX comes with a lot of programs pre-installed. You get Microsoft Office 2012 Starter, Norton Internet Security, Cyberlink PowerDVD and a whole bunch or programs from HP such as CoolSense, Games, Launch Box, and Security Assistant.   

Comfortable keyboard

Performance 

Despite having a Core i3 onboard, the HP G6 is by no means a slouch. The notebook completed our 7zip 100MB file compression test in 93 seconds, which is about 10 seconds more than a Core i5 powered notebook. In our video encoding test, the HP took 121 seconds to finish, and POVRay took 50.8 seconds to ray trace our test image. The AMD Radeon HD 7670M GPU is based on the older HD 6000 architecture, but it’s powerful enough to easily handle casual games. Performance-wise, it’s slightly more powerful than Nvidia’s GT 630M graphics card. 

The G6-2009TX runs cool and silently. Even when stressed, you’ll rarely hear the exhaust fans, which makes it a quiet notebook to work with. The keyboard is very comfortable even for long typing sessions and palm rest area is roomy even for large hands. The Altec Lancing speakers are decently loud with good mids and highs. The notebook is a bit on the heavier side, so it’s not the most comfortable to place on your lap for long. 

Good multimedia performance

Battery Life 

In Battery Eater Pro, we got a battery life of 1 hour and 10 minutes by using the onboard GPU for the test. Under normal usage, the batter life is around 3 hours. This is just about average, and expected from most notebooks in this price range.

Verdict and Price in India 

At Rs 40,500, the HP Pavilion G6-2009TX offers very good value for money, as it covers all aspects of computing, and does a good job all round. It can handle heavy editing software such as Photoshop, and can easily double up as a decent entry-level gaming laptop as well. Plus, it also has good audio quality making it an ideal multimedia notebook on a budget.