Notebook Hunter

It was worth every dollar at $799, and for $699 the HP Pavilion dv6-3138tx is one of the most inexpensive fully capable low-end allrounder notebooks available. The processor is reasonably fast, the graphics card can play modern games at low settings and the overall specs show no compromises. This is all especially great value when you consider that for $699 the most you’d normally get is an Intel Core i3 basic notebook.

An Intel Core i3-370M (2.4GHz) processor may slowly be getting superseded, but it still has the sheer grunt needed for easily running a majority of productivity applications. There’s also an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5470 graphics card that is able to play modern games like Call of Duty: Black Ops at low settings; normally for notebooks at this price the best gaming performance is normally low-end casual games. This versatility may not be netbook portable, but at 2.49kg it’s on the lighter side of average. Physically it’s unremarkable, measuring 36mm thick, 245mm deep and 378mm wide.

As for the other specs, there’s a healthy 4GB of RAM to aid everything from productivity applications to gaming. While 320GB is small, normally for this price it’s either a 320GB hard drive and 4GB of RAM or 2GB of RAM and a 500GB hard drive; it’s probably better to go with more RAM, as only 2GB hampers system performance somewhat. The final touch is the 15.6in (1,366x768 resolution) screen, a fine feature that will clearly display games, productivity applications or movies.

See the HP Pavilion dv6-3138tx in the Notebook Hunter database here.

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