HP Pavilion dv6500z Review

HP made a laptop with outstanding features at a great price under the name of Pavilion. Dv6500z model from this series has a very nice sleek design, with a beautiful glossy feel, black lid (feels quite durable, and is fairly rigid) and black keyboard surrounded by a silver cover over the palm rest. The touchpad design resambles the same design technique, only it is surrounded by a black finnish. The body has all smooth, rounded edges, making it really comfortable in your hand while carrying it around and very eyecatching – like a gaming laptop should be.

The body of the dv6500z feels pretty durable (the plastic material is of high quality), and doesn’t creak when being held, but the palm rest has some flex. The glossy display on the dv6500z is very bright and vibrant, but vertical viewing angles have the same issue like all laptops: too far forward the screen starts getting washed out, and too far back the colors darken or invert.
Speakers are located above the keyboard and provide a good quality sound in terms of laptops (this means that you should not expect to hear the bass). The two headphone jacks, however, make their job without any hiss or other forms of distortion.

The key action was very smooth, and only require only a light press. Also, you will enjoy the ctrl key placement on the far left side, with the function key just right of it. HP did not forgot to include a button for touchpad enable/disable, and, by the way, the sensitive touchpad is a pleasure to use. The combination of dual core AMD Turion TL-60 processor with the nVidia 8400m GS video card is what makes this laptop have a sufficient performance for any demanding game. This is also the reason why the machine gets a little hot but within reasonable temperatures. Noise usualy depends on how intensive it is used, but overall it’s a quiet notebok. The 6 cell battery can hold up to 3 hours and 30 minutes, while the 12-cell allows you to get 4 hours and 50 minutes.

HP Pavilion dv6500z Specifications