HP G60 519WM Laptop Review

HP G60-519WM Pavillion is a notebook for the budget minded buyers who are looking for decent features and performance to accomplish their everyday computing needs including surfing net, watching movie, listening to music, doing some office document management and playing some light 2D games in leisure time. This Windows 7 notebook is exclusively built for Wallmart by HP. Let’s take a closer look at the notebook and find out if it has any con that can be a deal breaker.

Design

The design of the laptop is not what you can call state of the art but it looks like a common everyday laptop though the HP Imprint finish in Black and Silver adds some glamor to it. The all plastic design is not as sturdy as those with metal alloy chassis but the overall build quality is reasonable keeping in mind its price tag. The laptop has minimal flex under pressure and it should do well if you don’t drop it from your desk. The weight of the laptop may be a concern if you are planning to use it outdoors often.

Display

The display is a nice 15.6 inch Brightview WXGA display showing 1366 X 768 pixels which has become the standard for 13-15 inch laptops these days. The display shows vibrant colors and has very good brightness and contrast. Both vertical and horizontal viewing angles are reasonably good to share the screen with a couple of your friends while watching a movie.

Performance

The system is packed with Intel Celeron 900 processor with 800 MHz FSB Speed and 1MB L2 cache. Of course, this is not the best processor available in the market and the overall performance is sluggish though it is packed with a 3GB DDR2 RAM. Multitasking with several programs will be a pain on this laptop but listening to music while typing a document or downloading a file would not be a problem. The integrated Intel 4500 MHD graphics is also underpowered to handle any 3D gaming and at best, it can handle HD movies on its decent sized display. The 250 GB SATA HDD and Lightscribe Super Multi DVD drive has very good speed and we don’t have any complain against it. Using the lightscribe technology, you can also etch custom labels onto the Lightscribe ready disks.

Audio

The budget laptops are known for their crap sound and we didn’t expect a great sound from it but it delivered satisfactory music quality with its Altec Lansing Speakers. Though any bass range sound was absent from the music but the overall sound was better than most other laptops in this price range. For audiophiles a good pair of headphones is recommended as is always.

Keyboard and TouchPad

The keyboard of this laptop is full sized and there is also a number beside the keyboard which is rare to see in laptops these days. Typing on the keyboard is comfortable though the sound of the keys while typing at full speed may be headache to some. You have to admit these things when you are looking for a cheap laptop. The touchpad has very good size but its position is a bit to the left side from the center of the laptop to account for the number pad position. The response of the touchpad was satisfactory but not that much smooth and responsive as the synaptics touchpads.

Ports

The laptop has only bare minimal ports and leaves the space to be desiring for more. It has three USB ports, a VGA output to attach an external display, an Ethernet Port and headphone/microphone jacks. I don’t know why they have an inbuilt 56K modem because we are living in the age of broadband and we are not going to move to the old school dial up connection anytime soon. Good to see that the inbuilt WiFi is in place. But however, I think that there was enough space in its sides to add at least another USB Port or a memory card reader which would not have added much to the overall cost but could have increased its usability mostly.

Battery Life

The battery life was disappointing. The system comes with a six cell lithium ion battery and it provides at most two hours runtime with heavy usage. Do not expect the system to run for more than three hours in any situation. This minimal battery life makes it unusable for the mobile professionals.

Pros

• Very Affordable Price


• Big 15 inch display with ample screen space


• No compromise on RAM and HDD space


• Full Size Keyboard with number pad

Cons

• Poor processor performance


• Weak Graphics


• No built in Webcam or Microphone

Conclusion

The price of HP G60 519WM suggests that it would be competing against the netbooks available in the market. Though it’s performance is not better than any netbook but the bigger screen size and full sized keyboard makes it a better choice for some applications. Those who have to move out with his laptop too often and in place without any power plug, the HP G60 519 is not recommended for its poor battery life and heavy build. But if you don’t have that constraint and want a decent sized laptop at budget price, you won’t find many like HP G60 519WM.