HP Pavilion DV7-6101sa review

Despite their budget prices, HP’s Pavilion laptops are stylish, thanks to a clean design and tough aluminium construction. The DV7-6101sa is no different – the 17in chassis isn’t exactly compact, but its sleek appearance gives the impression of a much more expensive product.

Considering its size, we were happy with the decent range of connectivity options; as well as an internal DVD re-writer, the DV7 also includes two USB ports, a USB3 connector, VGA and HDMI video outputs, three 3.5mm audio jacks and a multi-format memory card reader.

Underneath the textured metal lid, a black keyboard with large keys and a dedicated numeric keypad contrasts nicely with the silver chassis. The keys are well spaced and have pleasant springy actions. By default, the function keys are shortcuts to multimedia functions such as media playback and volume, but if you don’t want to have to hold down the ‘Fn’ key to access keys F1 to F12 you can change the option in the laptop’s BIOS. The touchpad buttons were better than those on previous Pavilion laptops, as they were firm yet responsive in everyday use.

The DV7’s display has a glossy finish, which can reflect light sources and make the laptop hard to use in a brightly-lit room, but a very bright backlight and plenty of screen tilt go a long way towards compensating for the reflections and the screen’s fairly narrow viewing angles. The DV7’s screen also has a fairly high 1,600×900 resolution, which makes it easy to work on two documents at once or watch 720p video content.

The DV7’s 1TB hard disk and great screen make it a good multimedia laptop, but the Beats Audio-branded speakers were a disappointment. There was definite distortion at full volume, although at lower levels we could listen to MP3s and streaming internet radio happily. There was even some bass, although you’ll still need to connect a set of dedicated speakers if you want to fill a room with sound.

In everyday use, the AMD Llano processor inside the DV7 provides ample performance. The dual core A4-3310MX runs at 2.1GHz, increasing to 2.5GHz in boost mode. It’s not a powerful processor though – even paired with 6GB of RAM, it struggled with the intensive tasks of our multimedia benchmarks. An overall score of 24 puts it firmly behind similar laptops equipped with Intel’s Core i3 chips. The laptop runs Windows well and is fine when web browsing and word processing, but more intensive tasks such as video editing will be a struggle.

Graphics performance was acceptable for a budget laptop, although we were expecting more from the combined power in Crossfire mode of the processor’s integrated graphics and the laptop’s dedicated AMD graphics chip. It achieved an almost smooth 25.5fps in Dirt3 at 720p, so you’ll have to lose anti-aliasing and sacrifice detail settings on newer games to get a smooth frame rate. The laptop disables its dedicated graphics and uses the processor’s onboard graphics when 3D gaming power isn’t needed, which helps battery life – the DV7 managed almost six hours in our light-use test, so you’ll be able to use it on the move.

We’ve been impressed by many of HP’s laptops this year, and the DV7-6101sa is no exception. It’s the first laptop we’ve seen with a low-end AMD Llano processor, and although performance wasn’t mind-blowing, you still get a good balance of desktop and 3D power. If you need desktop performance rather than graphics power, an Intel-powered laptop might be a better choice, but for £540 the DV7-6101sa is still great value.