HP - Pavilion Laptop / AMD A-Series Processor / 15.6" Display / 6GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive - Dark Umber

Felt solid out of the box. Looks good. Rich feature set and a good price when it was $649. Just take a look at the specs - this machine looks GREAT on paper. For the most part it has everything it promises. HOWEVER - I think I got a dud because the only issue / issues I have are with the display. I also get the shadow on the start up in the lower right hand corner of the screen every time I turn on or wake up this laptop as noted by another reviewer. When it was brand new, just out of the box, I got the lines going across the screen as did the other reviewer. They appear all over the screen, random placement, horizontally. That hasn't happened since I was initially setting up the computer but now I get the same shadow he does in the lower right hand corner of the screen. The screen also dims & brightens noticeably when scrolling up & down a page - most apparent when surfing the web. Completely random occurrence here again. I'm hesitant to have this issue fixed as I'd rather have the PC replaced. It seems to be a rare malfunction but if you buy one be aware of this when you get yours & look out for it. Everything else works fine. This is a lot of PC for the money. No argument there. I didn't think much of the "beatsaudio" at first when I played a CD on the PC. When I watched a movie with some earbuds the sound was pretty amazing. I took the earbuds out and adjusted the volume and this is really good sound quality from a laptop. Nothing really happened when I opened up the beatsaudio control to try & tweak the sound initially. It seemed to wake itself up when I played the movie. Weird. I was disappointed that HP's Mediasmart software suit is gone. You have to pay extra to get the features from the included software that were standard with the old Mediasmart package (the PC I bought that had it was last year's model - the hp dv6-3120us). Some people might find it "gimmicky" but the kids liked to play with "special effects" on the webcam and now I have to pay an extra $24.99 to add it to the included software on the new PC. The fingerprint reader is very nice.Sometimes it takes a few tries but its better than entering passwords. I was expecting more from the HD webcam. It's not "bad" by any means I just thought it would be better than what it is. Wireless connection worked immediately during set up. Seemed to run slow so I went into the settings and adjusted it. Seems like that is a common thing here. You have to check & adjust settings to get what you want out of the PC. Battery Life, for me, has been outstanding. Considering everything that is going on inside this laptop it is running longer than I expected. Almost 5 hours on a single charge. Since its still VERY new, & there is a lot more to explore, that is all I have for right now. I will continue to check it out until my last day for a full refund or replacement. Due to the screen issue & only due to the screen issue - I would hesitate to recommend this PC to anyone at this time. Hope this helps.

Ok, I bought this laptop for my wife last week for $750. Unfortunately, the price went down again this week for only $680. So, I lost a good $70 bucks. I didn't know that the price would go back down so soon. I used $400 dollars from the best buy credit card, and I paid the remaining $350 with my debit card. I also bought microsoft office 2010, got 6 months free of Kapersky virus protection software, and even got a free $100 gift card (because I spent at least 500? I don't remember how much it was to qualify for this free 100 gift card). Anyways, I spent that gift card on a nice swiss bookbag for this new laptop. I plan on getting a keyboard skin later as well as a cover decal. Anyways, after having 1 week's use of it, I can say that it is very smooth, has great graphics, and the beats audio is so nice. For the graphics test, I did install SCII (starcraft II) to test the graphics card and speed. It does much much better than my hp pavilion dv7 from last year. The only thing is, the processor for the game only slows down drastically when playing 4v4 on fastest map possible, but that is with maximum units on the screen with all players. Other than that test, the game runs really smooth in general and the texture is awesome and smooth with no lag. Other features, the load up time from when you start the machine is really fast with this processor and windows 7. I absolutely love the fingerprint reader. It is so convenient. You can use two different fingers. For example, there are stored usernames and passwords with my wife's index finger and using the same fingerprint reader, it stores my middle finger's usernames and passwords. So basically, we have two different hands with two different fingers and it still logs in. It's very convenient, no need for typing in usernames and passwords anymore for windows start up or most common websites. I have watched dvds (blueray) and youtube with hd and with this graphics card and sound, it's so addicting. It's actually really amazing. So, great graphics here. One final note is how nice and thin and portable this laptop is. The keyboard layout is the "chiclet" style/aka island style and looks very nice and compact when compared to my dv7 laptop. It feels nice to type on as well. It is so much lighter than my laptop and the ergonomics is just perfect for carrying around with ease. 15 inch widescreen is all you need. I have a 17 but I realized that 17 is nice but is not necessary. 15.6 inch is just perfect. So far, I really love this computer even though I bought it for my wife. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a laptop with not a big budget (500-750). It's definitely a good bang for the buck.

The laptop packs two powerful mid level graphic cards. Instead of the intel 3000 hd graphics it uses a 6520(g) which is 25% faster than the intel 3000 hd. It also includes another graphcis card the 6750 which makes this deal even sweeter. This is a CROSSFIRE laptop, that means you can go into the settings and activate crossfire, basically you have two cards working together to improve performance. The AMD proc is sufficient for gaming. It does have quad cores and is based off their llano architecture. This means that the cpu/gpu work together to make multimedia such as BLURAY (YES THIS PC HAS A BLURAY) movies stream better. While the computer may not have a 1080p resolution the 720p is sufficient for its native resolution of 1366x768. Remember the higher resolution of the screen the more the gpu/cpu have to work thus this is a perfect resolution for this pc as if it were to have a higher resolution the gpu/cpu would not be able to handle it causing you to lower the resolution resulting in choppy image appearence. The design is very professional nothing kiddy looking... If your a casual gamer games like Starcraft 2, COD, World of Warcraft run smooth from medium to high settings. Some ultra settings are possible with antiliasing and shadows turned off. The laptop will last you 4-5 years. To enhance performance, invest in a 7200 rpm drive, upgrade the ram for another 25% boost in performance. Keep in mind adding a 7200 rpm drive may increase noise levels as this laptop barely makes a whisper... completely quite. The laptop does not get hot because of the various ventilation. Becareful not to cover the bottom of the laptop as air flows from the bottom out to the upper and left side of the pc. The audio currently in hp laptops is unmatched. The beats audio creates amazing effects and crystal clear playback. Audio coming form the laptop could have been improved however once you connect an external speaker or headphones the true beauty of beats audio shines. The laptop comes with a glossy display, while it helps bring out true blacks, you will find yourself adjusting the screen at times, as tilting the screen too back or too forward causes the image to change, thus you loose color and vibrancy. Also many people will be turned off by the high reflection of yourself, who needs a mirror? This laptop gets an 8 out of 10. This laptop is a must buy for casual gamers and college students. Photoshop Cs4 works fine. Pros: Above average build, bluray, crossfire, LLano architecture, beats audio, two graphic cards, price, biometric fingerprint, Cons: Glossy display and no back light keyboard

I have to say that this is the best laptop/computer I've ever owned. First off, the build quality of this laptop is second to none. The outer rim protecting the brains of the beast is metal and a heavy gauge at that. You would have a tough time damaging the case, even if you dropped it on to concrete. The keyboard types like a dream, and the touch pad and touch pad keys are very responsive. The aesthetics of this machine is high end especially considering that this is not a top of the line computer. The only mark against the look would have to be the boarder around the screen. It's plastic, where all of the other visible surfaces are metal. This, however, really doesn't deter from the machine. The hardware that comes with the laptop is what really sold me on this laptop. I'm a big AMD fan, and they really out did themselves on this processor. It's a quad core running at 1.5 Ghz, however it will overclock itself, when the need arises, to 2.3 Ghz. There are stronger versions in the A8 processor family, however this one is more efficient at 35W as opposed to 45W, while still sporting the AMD Radeon HD 6620G GPU, which is built into the processor. HP also placed 6 GB of RAM into this laptop which is amazing. I'm sure 6 GB is going to end up being the new 4 GB and they are just ahead of the curve. The hard drive only runs at 5400 RPM, and it would've been nice if laptop manufacturers would just start putting in 7200 RPM hard drives as standard. The screen displays 1080p very well, and the speakers are amazing, but that's only in comparison to other laptops. Regarding performance, I've underclocked this system to 800 Mhz and it runs without a problem when watching and streaming 1080p content. Also to be considered, the discrete graphics card is turned off. All of this adds to a longer battery life. I would, however, invest in a higher capacity battery down the road. The advertised 5.5 hours of battery life is a far cry from reality. With underclocking and the discrete GPU off, I would say you would only get one blu-ray movie out of this battery. But what do you want from a quad-core system with a 6620G GPU attached and running on the same processor. If you want long battery life go with a processor that will give you efficiency over performance. Back to performance, I've also used a CAD program on this laptop, and I've only seen a little slow down when the program is booting up. Other than that it runs without any issues. For this kind of task I have the processor running at 1.5 Ghz, and I have the discrete card active as well. Needless to say, this computer is plugged in the entire time. When it's not, I still get a good 1.5 to 2.0 hours of time out of the battery, so not bad. All in all, this system is extremely versatile. You can serf and stream HD content off of the web on the lowest settings, to conserve power and battery life, or you can use some demanding programs on the native settings and not notice that the program you are running is crunching some pretty serious computations. This computer can do it all, or at least what any self respecting student would use it for. If you are looking for a laptop buy this one. You will be extremely happy, and probably switch from being an Intel fan to an AMD fan. You'll be glad you did.

First of all let me say, that this laptop meets all the praise being heaped on it. I purchased it based on all of the reviews, and the reviews were correct, this is an amazing machine for the price. The main things that set this unit apart from the rest are: 1. The Quad Core A8 Processor 2. Dedicated Video Card for Gaming 3. Blu-Ray Drive & Fingerprint Reader At this price range, your basically looking at Intel I5 processors. However with the exception of another HP 17" with dedicated graphics that was recently on sale, and the Samsung 1,100 dollar unit, and the top end ASUS, no other product that Best Buy sells has this product mix for fewer dollars. This machine is fast, the screen is bright, and it does everything that you would want it to do. Coming from a 5yr old HP DV6000 Dual Core, with dedicated video card...it's night and day. Have a 24" Imac as well for comparison, and use it for the normal type of stuff. Office, Web, Gaming, and it does it all without a hitch. Would highly recommend this laptop. You can't go wrong...only problem, sometimes finding it on display...the store had 4 in stock but none on display!

Good: Mousepad- Different than the other Hp laptop models (Like the light around it too =) ) Keypad- It's a chicklet (think that is how you spell it) keyboard. Took me awhile to get used to but I got the hang of it. Lightweight- It makes it easy to carry it around especially where I'm going back to school. I also like how its slim making more room in my laptop bag than my last one did. Beats audio- Sound quality in my opinion is good. I like how clear it is and the sound still sounds good when low. Set up- Took like a minute or two to get everything set it and it was easy. Screen- Love the size of it and the way pictures look when viewing or going on websites. Webcam- The webcam is alot better than my dell. The quality is pretty good for a laptop camera. No loud noise!- It's actually pretty quiet. The fan does go off of course but not loudly. I barely notice it. And and and it doesnt heat up. This fingerprint business- Instead of always typing in your password you can record your fingerprint and sign on like that. You have the option to sign on facebook like that too or any other site. Which I thought was pretty cool. Blu ray- Did not know it had it. I haven't used it yet and not sure if I will but it's a nice add. Bad: ..........Haven't found anything

Fast AMD A8-3500M processor that runs cool. Beautiful graphics with a brilliant bright screen that gives you accurate colour for photos and movies. Quad core APU with Radeon HD graphics. Beats Audio gives you a better than average sound. My DV6-1335dx model is a wonderful laptop so far. 6g of ram running at 1334MHz makes this laptop a real steal. The AMD A8-3500M APU gives this computer all the power you need to run beautiful graphics and sound programs. I can't believe how beautiful the screeen looks. Websites jump out with brilliant color and high definition. The blu ray player is a wonderful feature since I have a lot of blu ray movies at home. I run music software that requires lots of processing power, this computer deals with it with ease. By no means is this a high end gaming rig. If you need a computer for high intensity games look elsewhere. If you need a great computer with lots of processing power for graphics and sound this one will do well. Don't sweat a recovery disc, there is software to create your own, so you save $20 on the disc creation. HP did a really nice job on this computer. It also has two USB 3.0 ports as well and HDMI out. This is a great computer for the money. Other computers with the same features cost around $900. Once again, the graphics are really good, they dedicated 1g ram to the Radeon graphics card. You've go to see it with you own eyes.

I bought this laptop just a few days ago after deciding bang for the buck is more important than those status symbol macbook pros. For $700, I figured I get a lot more for my money vs. the $1200, 13 inch macbook pro I had been eyeing. Sure the macbook has a nicer finish, argubly a better operating system and a backlit keyboard, but this HP trumps it virtually everything else. Quad core, dual graphics, 640 Gb HDD, blu-ray player, hdmi output,15.6 inch screen, finger scanning (I almost never have to type in a password now), nicely laid out keyboard, nice touchpad (not apple trackpad good, but best I used on a pc), USB 3.0 support which is more widely used than the virtually nonexistant hence worthless(?) thunderbolt port. Granted, this HP could have a denser pixel display with anti-glare and a backlit keyboard, but other than that, you can upgrade anything else if you felt compelled to. I don't have any reason to do that yet, but nice to know I can. Battery life could be better, especially when watching blu-ray or streaming a lot of videos. Still, it was nice to watch an HD movie with this laptop hooked up to my projector in the backyard. My 2-year-old son was overwhelmed with excitement seeing "Cars" in HD on a 120 inch screen. Again, not the best laptop you will ever find, but I have been able to do everything I wanted with this laptop without any problems and I feel like I saved $500 to boot. Not bad in my opinion.