HP Pavilion Dv6853ea Entertainment

...I had always wanted an HP laptop. Ever since I set eyes on my uncle's stunning HP laptop around two years ago, I've been in love. They're so stylish (the most stylish, in my opinion) and are extremely well-built. Every single HP laptop has a real quality, sturdy feel to it. They're also very pretty and shiny - another big attraction, since I'm a typical girl! So when I discovered an old Post Office account I held had slowly accrued around £600 since ...
...going to invest in an HP DV9820, as it seemed to be the best HP in my price range. However, I wasn't too keen on the larger 17-inch screen. I usually sit in bed or on the sofa with my laptop, so the more compact, the better! So I decided to shop around a bit more, and boy am I glad that I did! I spotted a 'Laptop Clearance' sign outside Staples and decided it would do no harm to pop in. And there was this baby sat right in front of me - going for ... more

I have owned this laptop since August 2008, therefore I reckon I can give an accurate and well-balanced view now, having thoroughly used the laptop and tried out of all its features.

First, let me get one thing clear - I am a TOTAL geek. My laptop/computer is probably my most treasured possession and not a day goes by when I don't check on it, faff with it, test it and generally admire it!

So, on with the review. I had always wanted an HP laptop. Ever since I set eyes on my uncle's stunning HP laptop around two years ago, I've been in love. They're so stylish (the most stylish, in my opinion) and are extremely well-built. Every single HP laptop has a real quality, sturdy feel to it. They're also very pretty and shiny - another big attraction, since I'm a typical girl! So when I discovered an old Post Office account I held had slowly accrued around £600 since I was a kid, I decided to empty it and treat myself a brand-spanking new laptop!

I was originally going to invest in an HP DV9820, as it seemed to be the best HP in my price range. However, I wasn't too keen on the larger 17-inch screen. I usually sit in bed or on the sofa with my laptop, so the more compact, the better! So I decided to shop around a bit more, and boy am I glad that I did! I spotted a 'Laptop Clearance' sign outside Staples and decided it would do no harm to pop in. And there was this baby sat right in front of me - going for exactly £600! Even better was that it had been reduced from £800! I instantly felt that smitten feeling wash over me - anyone else who's as passionate about computers as I am will know exactly what I'm talking about! I hastily checked it was in stock (which it was - I got the last one!) and promptly handed over my cash.

Back home, I unwrapped my new baby and I was not disappointed. OK, so I'd seen it in the shop anyway but this one was all shiny and new and it was all mine!

It seems appropriate to start with appearances, and this laptop is exceptionally stylish. It features the 'HP Imprint' finish. This is literally like a fingerprint - a very gentle, subtle swirling design that covers the entire laptop. The lid is shiny black, and features delicate silver swirls. The inside part surrounding the touchpad and keyboard is silver, and features pale silver swirls. The only part that doesn't feature the Imprint design is around the screen. Instead, the area around the screen is shiny black.

The lid is very interesting, and I have never encountered a design like it on other laptops. It does not click into place, as other laptop lids tend to do. Instead, it snaps down gently to close, and you simply lift the lid to open. No buttons to press or clasps to slide. Surprisingly, it still feels very secure when the laptop is closed. I have carried it around, ie. from one room to the other, and it certainly doesn't fall open or closed by itself. It's a very sophisticated design and adds more to the smart design of this laptop.

Inside, the laptop is just as stylish. Above the screen right in the centre is an integrated webcam. At each side of the webcam are small holes with microphone symbols next to them. There's the HP branding featured below the screen in the centre and that's about it.

The touchpad definitely deserves a mention. At first use, it feels like it won't be very smooth to use. But after a few minutes of use, it works perfectly. It is also perfectly centred, which I prefer. I'm not keen when the touchpad is off-centre. The actual pad and the buttons are silver, and they are surrounded by a black border. At the top of the touchpad is a button to turn the touchpad on or off. This is another little finishing touch that most laptops don't have. The buttons are lovely to use. They are so soft to press and extremely responsive. No cheap clicking feel to them at all. The touchpad also uses Synaptics software. This enables 'virtual scrolling', ie. stroking your finger up and down in order to scroll pages and documents. A lot of people prefer the 'Up' and 'Down' buttons but I'm a huge fan of virtual scrolling! It's so much easier if you can get used to it.

The keyboard is about as good as you can get for a laptop. It's well known that laptop keyboards can never usually rival a desktop keyboard, hence why many people prefer to use an external keyboard. This one's pretty decent. The keys are responsive and light to the touch. Unfortunately, there's no dedicated numeric keypad. You can usually only get these with the 17-inch laptops, as there's more space. But I'll gladly sacrifice that for less weight and more portability!

I've done plenty of word-processing on my keyboard since I first got this laptop, and had no problems at all. Laptop keyboards can sometimes feel 'bouncy' and this is often unavoidable, but is more common and usually worse with cheaper laptops. There is very little bounce to this keyboard. It feels pretty solid as you're typing.

Just above the keyboard is a row of touch-sensitive buttons. These consist of:

- Two buttons which launch the HP QuickPlay software;
- 'Back' button;
- 'Forward' button;
- 'Play/Pause' button;
- 'Stop' button;
- 'Mute' button;
- Volume control.

I have to admit that these buttons are both a blessing and a curse! With this laptop being so lovely and shiny, I am rather prone to dusting it. And it's so easy to accidentally brush the buttons, and it's usually the QuickPlay button that ends up getting pressed. No big deal, you may say, but the QuickPlay software is horrendous (I'll get to that later), and I then have to wait for it to launch, shut it down, and then wait for that too! Now, these touch buttons can be disabled but I am reluctant to do this for two reasons - firstly, they glow a lovely blue colour and are very pretty; and secondly, I use the Mute and Volume control buttons a lot. So I generally just try to be very careful while dusting! But ultimately, they can be disabled so they wouldn't be a major problem to anyone, really.

Obviously, there is a Power button. This is rectangular in shape and sits next to the touch buttons. It also has a lovely glowing blue symbol on it!

And finally, above the touch buttons are the speakers. The speakers are actually a long grid running along the width of the laptop, right below the screen. To the far right is the Altec Lansing branding.

Next, I'll get on with connectivity. And this laptop is pretty well-equipped. It features:

- three USB connections;
- 5-in-1 memory card reader;
- Bluetooth;
- HDMI port;
- two 3.5mm stereo jacks;
- and various other ports and connections that I have never used in my life and I imagine I never will!

Three USB connections is more than enough now. There was a time when USB connections were precious because we used one for the internet, one for the printer and this usually left only one or two spare. But now, almost everything is wireless! I have wireless internet, and whilst I don't (yet) have a wireless printer, I only actually connect it when I want to print something. The most I use my USB for these days is for charging and syncing my iPod.

The memory card reader is great! I have a Kodak EasyShare camera, and if it wasn't for the card reader, which reads its SD card perfectly, I would have to connect via USB and this would mean using the awful Kodak software. It's so convenient to just pop in the memory card instead! The card reader also reads all major cards - Memory Stick, Pro, Duo and Micro; MMC; and XD Picture Cards.

Bluetooth is also very useful, though it was just an added bonus for me when I bought this laptop. I primarily use it for sending stuff to my phone, ie. themes, wallpapers and music. For the odd song or picture, it's so much quicker than connecting via USB.

As for the HDMI port - never used it! But I guess it will be useful for some people!

And finally, probably the most important aspect of its appearance is the screen. And this is by far the best screen I've ever had or seen on a laptop. The brightness, colour and clarity is exceptional. This is no doubt partly down to the NVidia dedicated graphics, as it has an option called 'Digital Vibrance'. This was my first experience with NVidia, as all my previous laptops had cheaper integrated graphics, but it makes a difference. I have the Digital Vibrance set at 42 (out of 100), and it really makes the colours more vivid, but not to the point of being too glary.

The screen itself is very clear and crisp - no blurring around words or images. Black is actually black on this screen. Even very small, detailed symbols can be seen with no problems.

Also, like the majority of laptop screens today, the screen is glossy and reflective. Very reflective! This could be a problem for those working in the office or on public transport, as you will get a lot of reflections on this screen. But it causes me no problems, and I much prefer the clarity on the glossy screens than the older matte screens.

Overall for appearance, this laptop is easily a 10 out of 10! If gloss and serious style is what you're after, this laptop doesn't disappoint. Looks are just as important to me as performance, and I'm still delighted with the look of this laptop. Also, HP knew that a piece of equipment with this level of shine was bound to attract fingerprints and dust, so it even comes with a dedicated velvety duster! I largely use this to keep the screen in tip-top condition, but I occasionally whirl it over the entire laptop to remove any pesky fingerprints. One word of warning - DO NOT let your kids near this laptop, it is a magnet for fingerprints, and greasy smears all over it really won't look good!

And now for the most important part - performance. Now, this laptop has pretty high specifications and is probably more than the average user needs. Heck, it's probably more than what I need but as I mentioned before, I'm a geek!

The specs on this laptop are:

- 320GB hard-drive;
- 3GB RAM;
- 256mb dedicated NVidia graphics;
- Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 processor, clocked at 2.1GHz;
- Windows Vista Home Premium.

Right, now let's get the Vista thing out the way. I LOVE Vista! This is my third Vista laptop. My first laptop wasn't so great - it was a pretty basic Fujitsu Siemens with only 1GB of RAM. That was back in the day when no one seemed to be sure how much RAM Vista needed in order to perform decently. Well, the answer to that it is - the more, the better!

Vista seems to get a hard time because people install it on machines that are not adequately equipped to run it smoothly. I learnt from my mistakes, and swiftly upgraded to a laptop with 2GB of RAM - an Acer Aspire. That extra GB of memory made a massive difference. And this beauty has a huge 3GB of RAM! So it runs Vista perfectly without so much as a hiccup. I've never experienced a freeze-up or an unresponsive program that was related to not enough RAM.

So, this baby has no problem running Vista at all. And it can run it with all its fancy Aero transparency set at maximum eye-candy! Being a typical chick, I love the Vista Aero interface, and I make sure it looks as pretty as possible! But even if you're not into all that, and you just want to do a job and get on with it, this machine will handle whatever you throw at it.

On an average day, I'll have Office Outlook, Firefox, iTunes and all my widgets (those useful little apps that sit on your desktop) running all at once. And that's not including everything that's running in the background, ie. Windows Messenger, anti-virus, Google Desktop, and Skype. And never does it struggle to open any new programs. I also usually have several tabs open on Firefox, and I can switch between them all, then back to iTunes and then Outlook without so much as a tiny delay.

So this is a pretty speedy machine. I'm sure that's also helped by the powerful 2.1GHz dual-core processor. As far as laptop processors go, it's rather powerful and has certainly handled everything I've thrown at it. At present, Intel's Core 2 Duo is the best mobile processor available ( in my opinion). Though I'm sure it won't be long before we see laptops sporting the new quad-cores!

In terms of storage, this laptop has oodles and oodles! 320GB is a large hard-drive even for a desktop PC, let alone a laptop! I was aiming for at least 250GB, so the extra space on this laptop was a real bonus! I have plenty of programs installed, along with an 8GB iTunes library and at least 10GB of videos. And I still have 204GB free! At the moment, I'm not into downloading movies but should the fancy ever take me, at least I know I won't run out of space for a while! Hard-drives tend to be around 120GB on average for a laptop, so this hard-drive is exceptionally spacious.

Now then, in terms of gaming, I can't really comment. Don't get me wrong, I do play games...but they're more like Patience and Bubble Bash and certainly not the seriously graphics-intensive games like Crysis and World of Warcraft! They do not interest me one little bit, but from what I understand about graphics, I think this laptop could play most games available, but the more modern and demanding games would no doubt have to be played at lower or the lowest settings.

As far as laptop graphics go, 256mb of dedicated NVidia graphics is very good and definitely above average. But no laptop in the world is suitable for the serious gamer, and they should stick to desktop PC's.

In terms of booting up and shutting down, the boot-up process is the longest I've experienced with a laptop, especially following a Windows Update. But it's no big deal - after all, it has a lot of goodies to load! Shutting down is usually pretty quick.

The only real disadvantage with this laptop is the horrendous QuickPlay software that's built into all HP laptops. It's not specific to this laptop by any means. It takes absolutely ages to launch, and then ages to shut down, followed by at least 10 seconds of complete unresponsiveness. It's a complete waste of time, and I don't know why HP bothered! From what I've read, the QuickPlay software worked perfectly until Vista came along. However, HP never optimised the software to work properly with Vista, and instead continued to install it as it was in all of their Vista machines. Shame on HP for this, because it would be a very useful feature - if it worked a lot better and quicker!

Basically, the QuickPlay feature means that DVD's and CD's can be played on the laptop without having to boot into Windows. Nice idea I suppose, for people out and about who want to quickly watch a movie. But I've never used it and probably never will.

The Altec Lansing speakers also deserve a mention. Now, they're not amazing. I have heard better - on my friend's Acer laptop, as it has Dolby Digital - but they're not the usual awful, tinny speakers that most laptops have either. They're noticeably louder, for a start. I used to always have the volume set at 100 (maximum) on previous laptops. On this machine, I can easily hear even the subtle e-mail notification sound on volume 30, or even lower. And for listening to music (on days when I can't be bothered to hook up my iPod to my main music system!), volume 70 is more than enough. Crank it up to 100 and the neighbours would probably hear! There's no distortion at maximum setting either, which is good. I suppose the most noticeable thing is the lack of bass, which is unfortunately common with all laptop speakers. But the volume and clarity are more than good enough, and as far as laptop speakers go, they're very good.

Another added extra with this laptop is the HP Remote Control. And yes, it does work! However, it's only functional with Windows Media Player and Media Centre; HP QuickPlay; and Windows Photo Gallery, ie. for controlling slide presentations. I've used it once, just to have a play and a fiddle, and I was impressed as I'm sure that many people would have a use for this. I actually don't, but it's a nice touch and it works well.

Finally, an important factor with laptops for most people is battery life. Now, 95% of the time I run it off the mains. Battery life has never been a major thing for me. However, there have been times when I've taken this down to the lounge and used it on the maximum performance setting for a good hour before I get the 'Power Low' warnings. I would imagine that for people on the move, this laptop could easily last two hours on the power-save setting.

So - in conclusion finally! This laptop is everything I could want and more. So it's easily enough for most people! The look and feel is quality, the performance is second to none and I've had no problems - so far! It's solid, reliable and easily one of the sexiest laptops out there! And being an older model now means that this laptop can probably be had at some bargain prices - so anyone who's seen one and wants to do their research first should NOT be afraid to get one! Go and grab it while you can, I guarantee you won't regret it! 

...less