Super power laptop ran Crysis on full settings and didn't even blink. I've never seen Windows boot up so fast seems like just a second or two!Has pretty much everything I could want on it fingerprint reader, bluetooth, HDMI, quad processor, 6 gigs of memory .. Should last at least for a few years!
1)Fast shipping Arrived the very first day Amazon estimated
2)Price I was going to build a PC from scratch but found this laptop an excellent bargain with the parts I wanted
3)CPU speed This computer is lightning fast, and runs very cool.
4)Graphics/Gaming Epic visuals for movies and games. Powerful enough to play very demanding games without lag
5)Accessories Built in webcam right up above the monitor where it belongs. Fingerprint scanner is AWESOME. Rather than typing in passwords over and over you simply swipe a finger. You can set up multiple users, so I can save my own passwords to my fingerprint, while my brother can save his passwords to his fingerprint. You can even assign each finger a different website, so swiping that finger when on the desktop will open up that page. Built in wi-fi picks up great signal. The touch pad can be turned off just by double-tapping the corner, very handy if using a USB mouse. Clear sounding audio.
The only downside I can possibly think of is the case, a shiny metallic black, shows fingerprints if you touch it a lot. But those wipe off easy enough. Overall I'm extremely pleased with this buy. Definitely recommend it!This little laptop has everything you need to do anything you want with lightning fast speed! Hook it up to your flat-screen, and stream movies, or use the TV as a monitor! This thig is great! Excellent support through HP as well!!!Very impressed with this laptop, fast boot and shutdown times, doesn't seem to lag even when running multiple programs. If you're unsure what the beats audio part of the laptop entails, I go through it in detail on my blog: howwehear DOT blogspot DOT comI have been a long-time HP fan. I'm an IT tech and know my way around a computer. I am a Mac user now because of my job, but I like HP. I've owned an HP Pavilion DV6458se machine for the last 5 years, and it's a tank.Even with the Turion TL-60 dual core chip and Nvidia 6150 graphics and 2 GB RAM, it's quick. I upgraded to a 7200 RPM hard drive and it's even better. I used it for online school, so it was in use for hours and hours a day nonstop for 4 years. The parts that wore out were the keyboard, and I just replaced the hard drive, but it still runs great (the only glaring fault was it came with Vista...ugh).
Some friends of mine have this, and I got the chance to use it for a bit, and came away impressed. This is a very nice machine! The Dv6z Quad-Edition's whole chassis and screen lid are clad in brushed anodized aluminum that's a dark brown color that looks great. Lot's better than my MacBook Pro unibody which is very plain. It has a 15.6 inch LED-backlit screen with 1366x786 resolution (not quite HD) and a glossy surface (not matte or anti-glare). It has all current-tech, including the latest CPU from AMD with built-in (on chip) graphics processing unit (GPU). The A6-3400M Llano is a quad-core unit with 4MB of L2 cache that runs at 1.4 GHz and can throttle up to 2.3 GHz when CPU requirements increase with AMD's Turbo Core process similar to Intel's Turbo Boost. You get 6 GB DDR3 RAM (upgradeable to 16), and a 640 GB 3 GB/s SATA II HDD. The integrated Radeon graphics also works very good. You can play some pretty graphics-demanding games on this like Skyrim or Diablo 3, or even Battlefield 2 on pretty high settings no problem. The hardware in this machine makes it faster and more powerful than my MacBook with has an onboard GPU and discrete GPU.
The battery is a 6-cell lithium ion cell that is supposed to last for 5 or 6 hours. You get a Lightstribe capable DVD supermulti drive that will burn read and write just about any silver discs and HD DVD and Bluray discs. Very nice.
Other goodies include Bluetooth, B/G/N Wifi, a webcam, mini HDMI port, 2 USB 3.0 ports, VGA D-sub out, biometrics fingerprint reader, and premium Beats Audio speakers with built-in subwoofer. The OS is Windows 7 Home Premium, not the greatest OS, but fine for most users.
All this makes for a nice machine. It's pretty snappy thanks to the 6 GB RAM, and will handle just about anything you throw at it. The AMD chip does fall short of the Intel CPU's though. The Core i3 3rd Gen. is faster than this one when doing CPU intensive tasks, but unless you do a lot of audio or video encoding/decoding, image rendering in Photoshop (especially CS6 which is a graphics/CPU hog) it will be hard to notice.
The asthetics are nice. Gone are the blue-led's and in are the cool white ones, which I like better. The touchpad is multi-touch capable (pinch to zoom, rotate, flip, scroll) and has a cool glowing trim around it. The buttons are easy to press and don't require too much pressure, but enough to prevent them from being pushed accidentally. The keyboard has a nice feel to it and the keys are easy to press. It has a full 10-key pad to the right which adds to the width and offsets the touchpad, which I don't like. The biometrics works great and is easy to set up. You can program in multiple users for each user account on the machine as well, which is nice. Despite being Beats Audio, the speakers aren't fantastic like I expected. The onboard sound is nice though, even when hooked up to cheap speakers. The sound is nice a loud, but muffled at times and don't produce the sharp highs of some music. I am sure you can compensate for that with a media player that has a equalizer.
I'd give this 5 stars if it weren't for some things...First it's expensive. For almost $800-$900 you can get a superior laptop with better specs (maybe not as pretty), faster CPU, more RAM, bigger faster hard drive (even an SSD) and 17 inch HD screen. You can get it on sale though, but here it's to much. Second, the screen is good, but not great for a machine like this. I was expecting a dazzling screen but didn't get one. Third, and not really a fault of the machine itself, is it came absolutely loaded with HP-branded bloatware that will probably never get used and is hard to get rid of without possibly breaking things in the OS. You'd almost need an IT tech to clean it up. The hard drive is "only" 640 GB and 5400 RPM, and while that's a lot, it would be nice to have a faster hard drive with more storage especially if this is used for movies, games, or other media. Lastly, maybe my preference, but there's no backlighting for the keyboard.
Other than that, I really like it. The battery does last for quite a while, but plan on 4 hours or less when using it for movies or games.
So...
Pro's
Well-built, good-looking aluminum cladding
Latest AMD CPU
6 GB fast RAM upgradeable to 16
Beats Audio sound
Good battery life
Snappy performance
Can play the latest graphics demanding games great
Con's
Expensive at retail
Screen is not HD or anti-glare
Hard drive could be bigger
No backlit keyboard
Loaded with annoying bloatware
So that's the Dv6z. I like it a lot but I don't love it. I'm an IT professional and appreciate a nice machine, and this one fits the bill. If it were cheaper, I'd rate it higher, but HP shouldn't put a Quad-Edition brand on it and charge an extra $200 for it. I give it my recommendation, but there are better machines out there for the same price, or even cheaper. If you don't mind the price, or can get it on sale (I've seen them for under $700), grab it. It's a competent performer (not an i7 or i5 though) in a field littered with Ivy and Sandy-bridged machines!
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