HP Envy M6 review

Conveniently, the M6-1205SA has a wide selection of ports. As well as three USB3 ports and a USB2 port, it also has a Gigabit Ethernet port, VGA and HDMI video outputs, a 3.5mm headset audio jack, a multiformat card reader and a DVD re-writer. This should be more than enough for most people, even if you plan on using the M6-1205SA to replace an ageing desktop PC.

The black Chiclet-style keyboard is very easy to use thanks to full-size keys that are incredibly responsive. They don’t have very much travel, but they bounce back into place almost immediately. The M6-1205SA also a numeric keypad, with only the arrow keys slightly reduced in size to make room. Unfortunately, there’s no keyboard backlight, but we wouldn’t expect one at this price.

The touchpad’s buttons have very little travel, but still feel responsive. The touchpad itself is smooth and lets you navigate the Windows desktop quickly. All the usual multitouch gestures were recognised quickly, and we liked the option to deactivate the touchpad altogether with a double-tap to the top-left corner.

With its 1,366×768 resolution, the 15.6in display is fairly average. It’s not particularly bright, and its TN panel provides terrible viewing angles. There’s a reasonable amount of screen tilt, but we could only find a few positions where colours didn’t begin to warp. Colours are at least fairly vibrant, but it’s certainly no comparison to the displays found in HP’s more expensive Envy machines.

As we’ve come to expect from HP laptops, the twin stereo speakers are Beats branded, but the bundled software provides little more than an equalizer that emphasises bass when listening through headphones. The speakers themselves are reasonably loud, but sound tinny at high volumes.

At £600, the Envy M6-1205SA is something of a bargain. The AMD processor and graphics processor are perfectly suited to everyday work, but can also play games at reasonable detail levels. It has a surprisingly long-lasting battery, a comfortable keyboard and plenty of inputs. It’s not perfect, as the display is merely average and we don’t think the build quality justifies the Envy brand, but there are very few similarly priced machines that are quite so versatile.