HP Pavilion dv6 (2012) - More Than a Refresh

More than just a refresh

In 2011, the first Sandy Bridge notebook that reached our labs was the HP Pavilion dv6 - an excellent mix in terms of affordability and power. As a multimedia machine, it does its job with nary a complaint, and it does it well. So how will this year’s dv6 improve on an already very impressive machine?

As it turns out, this year's 15.6-inch HP Pavilion dv6 was again the first notebook with Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge processor to land in our labs. In terms of styling, the 2012 edition of HP's dv6 saw some subtle changes. The overall theme here is still dark colors contrasted with a silver lining on the side of the machine. Except this time, the silver lining appears on the lid as well, and the lid is now black instead of dark brown.

The physical design of the machine is also slightly different. The material texture on its lid is very similar to the latest premium notebooks that come from HP - matte aluminum compared to the brushed aluminum on the dv6 of yesteryear. Every edge of the machine seems to be slightly sharper, as compared to the previous dv6, where the edges were more rounded. The good thing is that it doesn’t actually make the new dv6 harder to carry around.

Apart from those, this year's edition is still heavily dependent on plastics as the main build material - even the silver material that runs along the side of the machine is plastic. Fortunately because the lid is made of aluminum, along with the solid build of the machine, you don't quite feel or matter that the machine is made of plastic. However, it does still weigh a hefty 2.57kg.

Ports-wise, the 2012 dv6 is still as dependable as ever. Now that the new Intel chipsets (Intel HM77 Express) have USB 3.0 capabilities built in, we now have three of them on the machine. That means now would be a good time to start getting those USB 3.0 accessories to take advantage of their much faster transfer speeds that USB 3.0 promises. Strangely enough, the fourth USB port only supports USB 2.0 speeds, but that's probably for you to plug-in peripherals that don't require fast transfer speeds. Also available on the sides is an HDMI port, a VGA port, two headphone jacks, a microphone jack, and an RJ45 Ethernet jack.

Good for everything multimedia

When you attempt to open the notebook, you would notice that the new dv6 retains the dual-hinge design, just like those found on its predecessors. It’s still made of plastic, and it is still as robust, even though they may look fairly thin. And because the bottom of the machine is heavy enough, we didn’t encounter any issues where we had to use a single hand to pry it open.

The design of the interior is now as black as ever, if not even more so. The sea of black is only broken up by a small red "Beats" logo on the top right corner above the keyboard, and a small HP logo right under the screen.

Since the 2012 dv6 has a redesigned look, HP has also taken the liberty to move certain components around. The most obvious being the Beats Audio Quad speakers - usually found on the lower half of the machine - which have been moved to the bottom of the screen, and right above the keyboard. This is a great move because the speakers are now facing your direction when using the machine, ensuring audio is directed at you.

To accompany the speakers, a HP Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer driver is implemented at the base of the notebook. This is a pretty huge Pavilion machine and it surely has the space to accommodate extra drivers for better audio delivery.

And as if HP listened to their users and their needs, the new dv6 now comes with an anti-reflective (which is a fancy way of saying matte) screen. Sure colors on a matte screen isn’t as vibrant, but it’s definitely a trade-off we’re sure plenty of users would like to make. That’s because now the screen comes in a full HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution glory, instead of the laughable 1366 x 768 pixels resolution found on last year’s dv6.

A 1080p resolution on a big 15.6-inch screen is actually a pretty big deal because now, text and pictures look sharper. This also makes it easier for professionals or users who need all the screen real estate they can get and work more efficiently.

The next thing that makes the dv6 give off such a good impression, is the very solid chiclet keyboard. It still has a plastic housing, but luckily this time, we didn't notice any flex that might threaten to break when you apply force on it. The only real downgrade from last year's dv6 model is that the large trackpad isn’t surrounded by a glowing blue outline. It doesn't really have much of a function to it, but it’s still sad to see an attractive (but frivolous) feature removed. We were also disappointed that the dv6 didn’t get update with a large clickpad. The dv6 still has a trackpad of the same size as its predecessor, and two click buttons that admittedly provided good tactile feedback when used and felt well built.

Performance and Benchmarking

Notebooks these days are built with a huge variety of differences in components. To illustrate just where the HP Pavilion dv6 stands when compared to these other machines, we’ve extracted results from notebooks of different tiers. We’ve got the last generation dv6, the HP Envy 4, an Ultrabook with a low voltage processor with discrete graphics, as well as a pure Ultrabook - an Ivy Bridge reference platform from Intel. Before we start going into details, it will be good to note that the performance of the Intel Ivy Bridge Ultrabook is greatly enhanced due to the use of a high performance solid-state-drive (SSD).

PC Mark 7

The PC Mark 7 is a benchmark that puts the notebook through a number of typical tasks that a notebook is expected to perform these days. Such tasks include the rendering of websites, editing of documents, encoding of music and movies as well as files transfer. Here, the new Ivy Bridge based dv6 performs better than the Sandy Bridge toting dv6 of last year, but barely. That’s because the components present on both machines are extremely similar and differ only on the platform generation used. As you can see, the real winner here is the SSD packing Ivy Bridge reference Ultrabook. Even the HP Envy 4, which sports an SSD cache and 8GB of RAM manages to keep up when it comes to general performance.

3D Mark 11

The 3D Mark 11 benchmark tests the machine’s graphics rendering capabilities. It then attaches a final score based on how well the machine is able to render images and gaming physics using its integrated (Intel HD Graphics  4000) or discrete graphics, while ignoring the enhancements that an SSD introduces. Using 3D Mark 11's Entry preset, the new dv6 excelled beyond all the other machines, thanks to its vastly improved discrete Kepler GPU, the NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M. When you compare the results against those from last year’s dv6, it puts into perspective just how much difference (almost 50%) it makes to have the latest and greatest GPUs.

Far Cry 2

But of course, the best way to illustrate how well a machine performs in handling games, is to put it through an actual game. For the purposes of uniformity, we’ve opted to put the 2012 dv6 through Far Cry 2 to gauge its gaming performance. As you can see from the charts, the 40% performance increment that the new Keplar GPU isn’t particularly surprising, and is in line with what NVIDIA has promised when they introduced their new line-up of GPUs. What you can safely take away from this chart is, that if you want to play games, the Intel HD Graphics 4000 is good enough for those whose expectations are extremely low and want to conserve some energy while on the go. However when it comes down to real-world gaming, the dv6 is also ready for action.

Battery life and Portability Index

One of the biggest advantages of using a new Ivy Bridge processor, and a new Keplar GPU, is the amount of extra processing power you get while sipping less power than equivalent notebooks using last generation hardware. That translates to better power efficiency which in turn prolongs your battery life. To get an idea how much better the new generation of hardware does against the older generation, simply compare against the 2011 dv6 notebook we've pitted against. However to help you decide if pure processing power is indeed what you need, instead of just an even more prolonged battery life, you can compare the results against an ideal Ultrabook (Ivy Bridge reference Ultrabook), as well as an Ultrabook with discrete graphics (Envy 4).

Battery Life

Before we begin analysis of the results here, we’d like to point out that all of the numbers here are extracted using PowerMark. We chose the balanced setting because its test process involves running a mix of applications and yet it closely mimics the scores we got from just playing a video loop until the battery dies. The balanced setting puts the machine through a series of typical tasks such as opening browsers, and other multimedia elements such as music and video playback. We’d also like to point out that the battery life for the 2011 dv6 was derived from playing a DVD loop - a test we’re in the process of phasing out.  But since we've found the actual outcome doesn't differ much from each other, direct result comparisons are certainly possible.

As you can see from the charts, the battery life of the new 2012 dv6 triumphs over the 2011 dv6 dramatically. However thanks to their low-voltage processors, the Ultrabooks are able to get even longer up-times. What is encouraging however, is the fact that the lethal combo of an Ivy Bridge processor, as well as an NVIDIA Keplar GPU, does play an important role in conserving power. What you can take away from this test is that while battery life didn’t increase dramatically, they are well within expectations, and you can expect to use your notebook untethered from the wall for as long two and a half hours.

Power Consumption

Ultimately, the amount of energy used by the notebook is wholly dependant on the type of components used. The new 2012 dv6 for example, has an Ivy Bridge CPU (35W) and an NVIDIA Keplar GPU, both of which have been declared by their respective manufacturers to use significantly less power. As you can see from the chart, this seems to be true. However it doesn’t represent a huge decline in power draw over the older dv6. The Ultrabooks on the hand consumed almost half the power draw due to the lower power requirements of the CULV processor that power them. Also bear in mind that the 2012 dv6 has to draw enough power for a full HD display as well - which draws a lot more energy than those with smaller screens.

Portability Index

Our HardwareZone portability index, is a mathematical formula for calculating if a notebook is light and energy efficient enough to justify lugging it around. Ultrabooks would obviously be the top scorers here, but it also lets you gauge if it does better than other multimedia notebooks. As you can see from our charts, it does moderately better than its predecessor, the 2011 dv6. However we don’t think it’s significant enough for Sandy Bridge notebook owners to just dash out and buy an Ivy Bridge multimedia notebook immediately. What you can take away from this chart is that the dv6 does live up to our expectations when it comes to its portability scores - it isn’t particularly great, but it isn’t bad either.

Incremental but substantial upgrade

The 2011 HP Pavilion dv6 was one of the best performing multimedia notebooks that came through our labs last year (as seen in Tech Awards 2012). Its good mix of affordability and computing power pretty much made sure it’s the all-rounder notebook that you should be looking at. The same seems to be unfolding for this year’s dv6 (2012). It received the usual incremental upgrades with a new Ivy Bridge processor, and new NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M (Kepler) GPU. If you’ve been keeping up with Ivy Bridge and Kepler news, you’d know that they basically promise more performance while consuming less power, which is the case with the new dv6. Actual test results over the previous 2011 dv6 edition has been improved, as was the battery life.

Besides being updated with the new components, the dv6 was also updated with new aesthetics which is in line with their new Mosaic design approach. We found that the new design to be understated, yet classy with its use of aluminum, a premium material for its top lid. Granted, most parts of the machine are still made constructed from plastic, the new dv6 still manages to maintain a pretty solid built quality, which we appreciate greatly on an affordable multimedia notebook. However there are some issues we have with certain design choices that HP made with the new 2012 dv6. Firstly the chiclet keys were still sitting on a plastic panel that flexes when pressed upon hard. Flex was an issue with last year’s dv6, and it’s still present here on the 2012 model, but it's of a much lesser extent. Another nitpick we have is with the trackpad, which still isn’t a clickpad.

So there you have it. The 2012 HP Pavilion dv6 is the latest torchbearer for this series, which tries its hardest to balance affordability and power, and it shows no signs of dropping that torch. It's no game changer, but it has a lot of right aspects going for it just like its predecessor. Consumers on a decent budget looking for a powerful workhorse that also looks smart and won’t bring them any shame while working in public locations, would be quite happy with a 2012 edition of the HP Pavilion dv6. The new notebook is now going for S$1699, but there are other variants which feature a less powerful NVIDIA GeForce GT 630M (or a lower resolution screen) which go for much less. So if the dv6 design and build is something that appeals to you, you can choose a version that fits your exact budget and needs.

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