Closing Thoughts
After playing with this notebook for the past several weeks, we end up with a few general impressions. First, you want to make sure you're getting an appropriate notebook for your intended use. As long as you're okay not playing games, you will generally be more than happy with the HP dv6500t. It performs pretty well and has a decent feature set. It doesn't top the performance charts in any of our tests, but it really doesn't need to. For the price, you get a relatively nice entry level/midrange notebook.
Price will likely be a major factor for a lot of people. The dv6500t can be had for as little as $950, but in the basic configuration you lose a lot of the features that make the laptop worthwhile. Memory gets cut down to 1GB, you don't get Microsoft Office, and you lose some of the extras like the webcam and fingerprint scanner. Most users will be better off spending $1400-$1500, which allows you to upgrade the memory, the operating system, the hard drive, and either the graphics card or the CPU. Unfortunately, you're still stuck with the display, and that's one of the areas we personally would really like to upgrade. We're not saying that it needs one of the best quality laptop LCDs available, but something a little better perhaps with a resolution of 1440x900 or 1680x1050 would definitely be appreciated as an option.
Even though the laptop isn't perfect, however, it still does a good job at providing everything most people are likely to want or need. By keeping out most of the high-performance options, temperatures are held in check and the laptop still manages to be somewhat lightweight. If that price is still too high, however, HP has plenty of other similar laptops. Their dv6000z for example is nearly identical but uses AMD Turion X2 processors instead of Core 2 Duo, and you can save about $200 while still getting adequate performance.
One of the items that we haven't mentioned yet is that the integrated speakers are actually quite good for a laptop. They're not going to rival a good set of earphones or any desktop speakers, but compared to most tinny sounding laptop speakers they can provide a decent listening experience and they are loud enough that they could work for doing presentations in smaller group meetings.
We've also had good experiences with HP support personnel. They answer the phone quickly and they are usually able to help us with any difficulties that we "encounter". Since HP is a large company, they provide both 24/7 support as well as on-call support without charging an arm and a leg.
At the beginning of the article, we stated that two of the more important questions in regards to a laptop are the intended market and whether or not the laptop is able to meet the needs of the target audience. For the dv6500t, HP classifies it as an entertainment notebook, and that's more or less a fair description. Depending on what sort of entertainment you want, you might need to make a few changes from the basic configuration that we reviewed -- movie buffs might want to add the HD-DVD drive option, while those who play the occasional game will probably want to upgrade the graphics.
It's obvious that HP did spend some effort trying to keep costs down, and inevitably some corners get cut. The LCD panel is definitely one of those corners in this case, and we would be inclined to do a bit more comparative shopping before spending any money on this particular notebook. Others may not be so demanding, however, and for your typical computer user the dv6500t is a good overall value. The dv6500t is like your basic minivan: it won't turn any heads and you won't set any land speed records, but it will get you where you need to go with a minimum of hassle and you might still have some lunch money left over. This may not be a laptop for enthusiasts, but their parents, friends, or other relatives will more likely than not be quite happy with it.
After playing with this notebook for the past several weeks, we end up with a few general impressions. First, you want to make sure you're getting an appropriate notebook for your intended use. As long as you're okay not playing games, you will generally be more than happy with the HP dv6500t. It performs pretty well and has a decent feature set. It doesn't top the performance charts in any of our tests, but it really doesn't need to. For the price, you get a relatively nice entry level/midrange notebook.
Price will likely be a major factor for a lot of people. The dv6500t can be had for as little as $950, but in the basic configuration you lose a lot of the features that make the laptop worthwhile. Memory gets cut down to 1GB, you don't get Microsoft Office, and you lose some of the extras like the webcam and fingerprint scanner. Most users will be better off spending $1400-$1500, which allows you to upgrade the memory, the operating system, the hard drive, and either the graphics card or the CPU. Unfortunately, you're still stuck with the display, and that's one of the areas we personally would really like to upgrade. We're not saying that it needs one of the best quality laptop LCDs available, but something a little better perhaps with a resolution of 1440x900 or 1680x1050 would definitely be appreciated as an option.
Even though the laptop isn't perfect, however, it still does a good job at providing everything most people are likely to want or need. By keeping out most of the high-performance options, temperatures are held in check and the laptop still manages to be somewhat lightweight. If that price is still too high, however, HP has plenty of other similar laptops. Their dv6000z for example is nearly identical but uses AMD Turion X2 processors instead of Core 2 Duo, and you can save about $200 while still getting adequate performance.
One of the items that we haven't mentioned yet is that the integrated speakers are actually quite good for a laptop. They're not going to rival a good set of earphones or any desktop speakers, but compared to most tinny sounding laptop speakers they can provide a decent listening experience and they are loud enough that they could work for doing presentations in smaller group meetings.
We've also had good experiences with HP support personnel. They answer the phone quickly and they are usually able to help us with any difficulties that we "encounter". Since HP is a large company, they provide both 24/7 support as well as on-call support without charging an arm and a leg.
At the beginning of the article, we stated that two of the more important questions in regards to a laptop are the intended market and whether or not the laptop is able to meet the needs of the target audience. For the dv6500t, HP classifies it as an entertainment notebook, and that's more or less a fair description. Depending on what sort of entertainment you want, you might need to make a few changes from the basic configuration that we reviewed -- movie buffs might want to add the HD-DVD drive option, while those who play the occasional game will probably want to upgrade the graphics.
It's obvious that HP did spend some effort trying to keep costs down, and inevitably some corners get cut. The LCD panel is definitely one of those corners in this case, and we would be inclined to do a bit more comparative shopping before spending any money on this particular notebook. Others may not be so demanding, however, and for your typical computer user the dv6500t is a good overall value. The dv6500t is like your basic minivan: it won't turn any heads and you won't set any land speed records, but it will get you where you need to go with a minimum of hassle and you might still have some lunch money left over. This may not be a laptop for enthusiasts, but their parents, friends, or other relatives will more likely than not be quite happy with it.
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JarredWalton - Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - link
Funny you should mention the E-155-C.... :DFant - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Seems HP shipped you a badly specced machine. They should have used a 5400rpm drive and the nvidia graphics chip as well as the extended 6-cell. All three would have improved your benchmarks. Out of curiousity, did you use a clean vista build or the out of the box vista build that hp supplies with loads of extras installed?JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
HP's install, minus a bunch of software that I didn't want running. Although, when I ran SYSmark 2007, I ahd to do a clean install first. (Now you know why the lack of GbE was annoying - image a HDD over 100 Mbit and I averaged 3 MB/s instead of 12 MB/s with GbE. Not sure why, but Acronis only manages to use about 25% of the Ethernet bandwidth.) Anyway, I like to make the testing close to "real world", and most people don't buy an HP, Dell, Gateway, etc. notebook only to install their own operating system. (Businesses are different story, but let's not go there.)I actually don't think that the configuration they sent was all that bad. It may not perform as well in benchmarks, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of people get way too hung up on benchmark results. Do you want a faster hard drive, or do you prefer having a bit more storage? There is no right answer, although personally I would generally go with one of the 120-160GB 7200 RPM laptop drives if possible. As for the battery, they did send me the 12-cell for testing, and the only thing I really would like to know is the capacity of the extended 6-cell. The basic 6-cell is a 47 WHr, so if they extended capacity is 65 WHr it would increase battery life by about 35-40%. I'm trying to get an answer from HP about the capacity of the other 6-cell offering.
Fant - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
I have a dv6500t with the extended 6-cell. I havent done any formal testing but I probably get just under 3 hours with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan in Vista and a bit over 3 hours when using the Power Saver Plan. I did notice that the cpu seems to stay at the lower speed with the Power Saver Plan but seems to stay at the higher speeds with the HP Recommended / Balanced Power Plan even when I am not doing much cpu intensive tasks.JarredWalton - Saturday, June 23, 2007 - link
Can you check the battery and see what the rating is? Usually it will say something like "10.8V ~= xx WHr". I want to know the Watt-Hour rating. I'm not sure why, but the notebook I have almost never runs at minimum CPU speed. Weird.hubajube - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was waiting to read on how this laptop performed when watching HD DVD's. I'm interested in buying this for my wife for her to use as a work laptop but at the same time I'd like to use it as a HTPC. Oh well guess I'll have to spend the money to find out. :(JarredWalton - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Yeah, they didn't send the HD-DVD version. I'm not sure if the 8400M GS is required for that or not - maybe X3100 can do enough to handle it (but I doubt it). Anyway, we've tested 8600 cards with HD-DVD, and I don't see why the 8400M wouldn't handle it fine. Problem is, the display is still pretty poor, especially when you consider that video overlay can have a color correction profile applied.shady3005 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I was gonna consider this laptop but was turned off by the lack of gigabit ethernet. Dint know about the horrible display at that time. So i was waiting for an upgrade to this laptop but sadly none came.Then I set my eyes on the new Macbook pro. Just 500$ higher that top dv6500t config but worth every extra penny. Amazing display , much lighter , thinner , sexier and CPU (2.2Ghz) and Graphics (8600GT M) upgrade with much better battery life.
Please review the new MacBooks with Santa Rosa ..... I would like to hear how awesome they are ..
crimson117 - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
I lol'd pretty good at this one :)
BPB - Friday, June 22, 2007 - link
Maybe I missed it, if so please excuse me, but I think you simply used the ABG wireless setup. I was wondering how well the N wireless works, and how well it talks to other N devices such as my Belkin N1. My wife's HP works quite well with the Belkin N PCMCIA and router, but for our next notebook I'd like to have the N built-in.