HP Pavilion dv6000t Review

We're happy to see that while there's a new chip on the inside, HP didn't alter the design of the slick Pavilion dv6000t. The glossy piano-black finish and gray pinstriping outside (with that color scheme reversed inside) looks stunning. Even better, the dv6000t has the features and performance to complement its good looks.

This six-pound notebook features a 15.4-inch widescreen LCD with a comfortable 1280 x 800-pixel native resolution. DVDs looked great on this display, and we love HP's QuickPlay feature for launching and controlling multimedia files without booting up Windows. Viewing-angle performance was typical for this class of panel: good from side to side, but images looked washed-out when viewed from above.

The full-sized keyboard has an excellent feel, and we appreciate the touch-sensitive multimedia control buttons above the Function keys. Our only gripe: The glossy touchpad creates a lot of friction on your fingertip, making precise cursor control difficult.

Features abound, including 802.11a/b/g Wi-Fi, a 5-in-1 media card reader, two headphone jacks (ideal for sharing a DVD movie), and a built-in 1.3-megapixel webcam. In addition to the 2.16-GHz Core 2 Duo T7400 processor (the star attraction), our test configuration included 1GB of RAM, a 100GB hard drive, and a DVD-ROM/CD-RW combo drive.

The real draw, of course, is the performance. The Core 2 Duo processor helped the dv6000t deliver the best MobileMark 2005 score we've ever seen from a mainstream portable (279)--a full 50 points better than the identical machine configured with the older Core Duo CPU. Battery life was a respectable 3 hours and 39 minutes.

So for consumers and business users looking for a fast laptop, the HP Pavilion dv6000t fits the bill.

If you like this notebook, don't miss the popular review of the HP Pavilion dv9000z.

Read our Intel Core 2 Duo Test Drive article for more on Intel's new mobile chip.

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