HP Pavilion dv6-3065ea review

The screen is reasonably bright and colourful, although not as bright as we’d expected from a screen with LED backlighting. Vertical viewing angles are tricky, and exacerbated by the reflective finish, but as long as there aren’t any bright lights overhead the picture is sharp and has good contrast. The LED backlight also contributed towards a battery life of almost five hours in our light-use test.

Looking good is one thing, but usability is quite another. Unfortunately both the keyboard and touchpad suffer from serious problems. The touchpad is a single slab with marked areas where the buttons should be. Annoyingly, these areas are still touch sensitive, so you constantly find yourself either moving the cursor with your button finger, or triggering a multi-touch gesture.

HP has also made some frustrating decisions with the keyboard. First, short cuts are the default actions for the function. Second, a column of short cut keys to the left of the keyboard means that when you reach for the Ctrl key you often launch Calculator instead. In addition, the keys are a bit bouncy and lack bite so they don’t provide enough feedback.

While the dv6-3065ea has a generous list of features and a gorgeous design, it’s let down badly by the over-designed touchpad and the irritating keyboard. An alternative, is the MSI CX623-203UK, with its more powerful processor, similar battery life and a better display.