HP Pavilion M6 Review....Long Review...With Links!

I'm an I.T. tech, so it's probably expected that this review will be all techy-geeky and talking about overclock speeds, but at home, I'm just me, so it won't be.  I was going to say that I'm just a normal person, but, well, that'd be a lie.  ^_-  So let's jump into my only major gripe and then get to the nitty gritty.

I use my laptop mostly for two things:  music and writing.  Well, HP's latest hook is Beats Audio.  If they paid money or entered into a contract with Beats, that a stupid move on HP's part.  It always takes me awhile to get the equalizer just perfect for Windows Media Player due to the range of genres I like.  (Equalizer frequencies:  bass = 20-140hz, mid bass = 140-400 hz, mid range = 400 hz-2.66khz, upper mid = 2.6-5.2 khz, high range = 5.2-20khz - an excellent link.)  I once wrote my perfect settings in a text file...well, said text file has been lost to the ages.  You'd think I'd write them down again.  Anyway, the addition of Beats Audio complicates the matter with its ability to take over the sound options in the control panel, its own bass/treble/etc settings, and its own equalizer.  So, first, I have to say that before I got too into messing with the sound on a previously purchased HP Pavilion DV7, which was returned for being a lemon, I was not impressed with the (DV7) laptop's speakers, but I did find a decent experience by using the Beats in-ear preset with headphones.  HOWEVER, while the M6 is not the DV7, it still suffers from tinny sounding speakers, and Beats Audio muddied everything.  After some research (no links, sorry, Google it), I've learned that disabling Beats and using the player's default equalizer is the way to go (and I agree).  The thing about Beats is that it inherently turns the sound panel's bass all the way down and the treble all the way up, so when you disable it, you have to go into the Sound Panel and change this.  I also read that Beats has a way of re-enabling itself, so I disallowed applications from taking control over the device (it's a check box on the advanced tab).  I don't know if this will prevent Beats from resetting my bass and treble settings, should it re-enable itself, but it seems like it should.  Since I primarily listen through the speakers, I have not tried it with earphones.  Windows Media Player's equalizer has helped with the tinniness, but I still prefer the speakers and sound on my old HP Pavilion DV6.  My test list of mp3s included (among many others): Sail by Awolnation, Resolve by Nathan Lanier, Where the Light Gets In by Sennen, On the Nature of Daylight by Max Richter, Drive It Like You Stole & Between Two Points (Feat. Swan) by The Glitch Mob, Cryosleep by Cyberoptics, several District 78 remixes, several songs by Olafur Arnalds, Over & Believe & Add This Song by Gus Gus, and songs that I ripped off of Youtube from LowB - Compassion, Inward Outburst, Consecration, and Digital Stonehenge.

Regarding the Youtube rips - the LowB cd isn't available domestically and after an email to Andy Barlow (LowB) , I learned it is set for release in January.  I will buy it then, because it is awesome (it's available through New Zealand iTunes...but you have to live in New Zealand to download it...>_<).    Google it or check out this link - he has samples of and recording notes about the album's songs.  Also regarding the Youtube rips, the sound quality just sucks.  There's always a hollowness to them that is more or less prevalent depending on the device with which you are listening.  On the M6, with the settings I chose, it's there, but the songs do blend into the playlist better than they do in my car, where the quality difference is very noticeable.

SO - the sound is ok.  It doesn't get very loud through Windows Media Player, but Youtube videos play much louder, and songs played in Audacity are louder. There are bound to be differences in software and this is still a laptop.  I'm just contented enough with WMP to put off dabbling with other players like WinAmp.  It meets my needs (background music for my writing).

On to the M6 itself then.  This is by no means an endorsement for Best Buy, but they have a decent listing for the specs.  As I said in a previous post, the M6 is replacing the DV6 - with the next generation of Intel Processors comes the next generation of HP Pavilion laptops.  Similarly, the M7 is replacing the DV7.  The biggest draw for the M6 is the 3rd Gen Intel i5 quad core processor (Ivy Bridge).  PC World reviewed the 3rd gen processors in several articles:  preview (US) & reviewed (AU).  The first preview I read (not linked) discussed the physical architecture of the processors - the transistors and number of nanometers, for instance - and the changes that make these little chips swing such a big punch had me anxious to get my hands on one.  I pushed the i5 hard last night, transferring files from my old computer over than LAN and Wireless connections, installing software, moving local files around, changing preferences, going online, etc all at once.  While I watched the CPU usage in the Task Manager and saw all four windows squiggly away, showing the quad core hard at work, I expected the system to slow down.  There was no lag whatsoever.  Granted, my DV6 is at 4 or 5 years old, but it would have been protesting.  The i5 knocked the tasks out like they were nothing.  I'm in love.

I hit a moment of disappoint when a low memory warning popped up.  Now - I don't even get those on my DV6, so I was really surprised to see it on the M6, which comes with 8gb DDR3 (you can expand it to 16gb).  At the time, I was only transferring files, so I opened the task manager and saw two HP Assistants running in the background - they had my memory usage up in the 7-8 gb range!  Needless to say, I ended the HP processes and my memory usage dropped down to around 2.6 gb range.  I have yet to decide what HP features I'm going to keep, but that was a strong motivation to start uninstalling or disabling a few more things.  On a new computer, with feature like this, it was highly disappointing to see HP's own software hogging all the resources and to that extent.

The hard drive is a regular 750 gb (this one does not come with a solid state drive or partition to aid in a faster boot) and runs at 5400rpm (I'm fine with that - 7200rpm generates more heat, even if it is faster).  Between my files and the software I've installed, I've used 152gb of the available 677 gb of allotted disk space.  20.9 gb is set aside for the recovery partition.  The boot itself takes less than 30 seconds and is actually faster straight from the box.  I've modified the BIOS to allow for extra time to hit hotkeys, should I need to.  The BIOS is very simplistic and doesn't offer many choices, unlike other laptops I've seen (such as Samsung's new ultrabook - that thing has a bevy of options in its BIOS).

It has four USB ports, three of which are USB 3.0, and two of which are charging USB ports (both on the right side).  In the aforementioned Samsung, the charging status can be disabled in the BIOS, but on the M6, I have yet to determine if this can be disabled.  If you are unfamiliar with charging USB ports, they remain power-enabled so that devices, such as a phones or MP3 players, can be charged via the USB Ports even when the laptop is turned off.  I see where this could be very useful, but I'd like a way to turn it off because anything that is plugged into those two ports will remain powered on.  For instance, I plug a chill pad into one of the right-side ports.  The chill pad stays on after the laptop is shut off.  Luckily for me, my chill pad has an on/off switch, so I'm not constantly plugging and unplugging the thing, which risks damage to the port.  Both ports on the left side are 3.0 and are non-charging ports.  Other manufacturers (such as Samsung) use blue plastic in the 3.0 ports to differentiate them from 2.0 ports.  HP does not.  The 3.0's are marked by "ss" next to the USB symbol.  The media card reader is located on the front, to the left.  There is also an HDMI port on the left side.

HP provides manuals on their website for the M6.  The User Guide is just what it is says and provides a detailed diagram of the M6's external specs.  In the event that you need or want more in-depth coverage, a Maintenance and Service Guide is also available.

The M6 comes with Bluetooth and connects easily with Bluetooth-enabled devices.  I've worked with laptops enabled with Bluetooth at work, but it's a feature that is always disabled for security reasons, so this is the first time I've gotten to play with it.  It's pretty cool - my husband and I played around with connecting his phone (we both have the Droid Razr) because he downloaded a tethering app and wanted to see how it worked.  By using Bluetooth to connect to his phone and then using the tethering app, we could be in the middle of nowhere and still access the Internet (provided we had cell service, of course).  It's nifty.  I should note that there is a spot in the myriad of the OS's preferences where you need to enable other Bluetooth devices to see the M6.  I ran into some trouble getting my PS3 to see it as a media center and I don't know if that caused interference or not (the biggest culprit was Kaspersky 2013, which comes with a built-in firewall - for any PS3 users out there who get the M6 and Kaspersky 2013, this firewall must be turned off while trying to connect to the PS3).

Every step forward in technology presents us with more OPTIONS.  The Synaptics Touchpad, once a difficult feature to find to change any settings at all (I'm not speaking ill of my current DV6, but my previous DV6), now has plenty of options for users to configure.  You can pinch zoom or rotate photos, set multi-finger gestures, choose the type of scrolling you want to use, set options for pointing, tapping, the buttons, etc.  It also comes with more power options than I had with my DV6.  Before I focused mainly on changing what happens when I close the lid and adjusting the low and critical battery levels.  The options go far beyond that and one thing I discovered is the wireless adapter power settings.  I had read reviews for other pcs where reviewers wrote about losing or having limited wireless connectivity once they pulled the plug and went on battery power.  Well - there is a setting for that and the default (on the M6 anyway) for the battery is to preserve power, not to maximize performance.  So that's something to tinker with if you find that to be a problem.  All of the battery settings are defaulted to conserve power for battery life and can be modified based on your preferences (as can the settings for when the laptop is plugged in).

Even though the M6 is only about an inch thick, it does come with an optical drive.  I would have liked a Blu-ray drive, but that wasn't an option, and neither was Light Scribe.  I use Light Scribe rarely on my DV6, so it's not a big deal to me, but it also would have been nice to have.  The M6 is lighter than my DV6 and easy to carry around. HP added a textured strip near the hinge on the lid - a nice touch aimed at preventing the laptop from slipping through your hand.  There is no lighted HP logo on the lid.

A feature growing in popularity - the backlit keyboard - is a feature of the M6, and one that can thankfully be turned off (toggle F5 or FN + F5 depending on how you have the keyboard configured).  My husband prefers backlit keys; I find them distracting when I'm trying to write in the dark or by candlelight.  The Wireless is toggled by pressing F12 or FN+ F12.  A small white light on the key indicates when it is on.  Similarly, a small white light indicates when the Caps Lock key is turned on.  The DV7 that I returned had a similar display and I noted that the lights were too bright and distracting.  I used dots of electrical tape to cover them.  On the M6, however, they are softly lit and, for the most part, unnoticeable.

I haven't played with the webcam, so I can't say anything about that.  The display is fine, if not a bit angle-sensitive on the vertical.  There is some obvious dimming when looking from a right or left angle, but when viewing too steep up or down, the screen is dim and/or faint, and what I notice most is black text against a white background appearing grey and hard to read.  So having a perfect line-of-sight viewing angle is crucial for your eyesight.  I have the M6 set up with an extended dual monitor display via VGA, with my secondary monitor being an old portrait style Samsung.  Given that my primary task is writing, I tend to use my secondary display more than the laptop display.  It may just be me, but it appears that the M6's glossy screen is less reflective than my previous DV6s.  Maybe I just haven't used it in a very reflective environment yet - but the glossy screen on my DV6 seemed to reflect everything and I have yet to notice it on the M6 (I could be used to it by now, too - who knows?).  At times I've noticed that the laptop display seems a bit washed out by comparison to my secondary display, but that's not a fair comparison (the Samsung has a matte screen and has to be nearly 10-years old, but it has a crisp display, which, again, makes it perfect for writing).  The viewing angle could have a lot do with that, as well - I can't tilt the Samsung, but I close my laptop every night, so the viewing angle is always changing from one use to another.

The M6 comes with Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit, which I upgraded to Professional for the additional computer management options and the ability to run a virtual pc, if I choose to down the road.  It comes with little actual software, other than Norton, Adobe Reader X, a ton of HP-related programs, and some bloatware.  Norton is no longer the beast it used to be to uninstall and the rest of the bloatware is easy to uninstall or delete (web-links).  The hardest part is to decide which, if any, of HP's programs you want to keep.  As I've found already, they can be quite resource intensive and I have yet to see what the pay off is in keeping them.  I did keep the HP Tune Up on my DV6, which froze my computer for a second or two every time it opened, and I rarely used it.  Many people in my shoes would most likely wipe the hdd with a fresh install of Windows 7, which was my initial intention until I saw how little there was to uninstall (HP products withstanding).  So, for now, I'm moving forward with the system as it came to me instead of a clean install.

I've been running the M6 all day now, with a chill pad, but there's only one warm spot (slightly warm) - to the left of the touchpad.  The internal fans have not kicked into high gear once during this use.  They did kick up one time when I was using the laptop in bed without adequate ventilation for the vents and fans on the underside.  Once I made an adjustment, the fan went back into normal mode and I haven't had any issues since then.  My DV6's fans come on the second Kaspersky starts a scan (it needs a RAM upgrade so badly).  But that, too, is an unfair comparison.  The 3rd gen processors are designed to run cooler, so I'm really not surprised.

I don't have many gripes, other than the sound and Beats Audio, but I don't like the keyboard.  It still has the number pad, which is awesome, but HP squished the arrow keys together.  I'm a shortcut key fanatic, so hitting ctrl+arrow over or up/down is annoying now because I'm always hitting the wrong key.  In my home office set up, I use a USB keyboard and mouse, so it's really not that big of any issue, but when I'm traveling or outside, it's annoying.  Overall, setting this pc up has been much simpler (even with more options) than previous endeavors and the file transfer went smoothly (as noted earlier, I used a cross over cat 5 cable to connect the two via the LAN port - which needs to be configured if used - and the wireless adapter via our Homegroup sharing setup).  I created a cab file for my custom theme so I could easily transfer it from the Dv6 to the M6 and copied over my roaming and local files pertinent to my installation of Microsoft office, so setting Word up was a breeze because my preferences were already mostly loaded (I had to change a few options and tweak the grammar and style checker).  The M6 comes with a trial for MS Office 2010, but you must buy the activation code separately.  I'm pretty old school when it comes to Office and am still using 2003.  It meets my needs.  I also installed a plethora of Cannon software and drivers for my Digital SLR camera, which the M6 handled with ease.  The aging DV6 didn't take these installs quite as seamlessly or as quickly.  I popped the first disc (yes, disc) in and set the install to go, and then went off to do a few things, because the installs had taken forever on the DV6.  Not so with the M6.  It took minutes to mere seconds, depending on the installation.  This thing is truly powerful.  I had all the installs off the discs and the downloaded upgrades done in less than 10-minutes.  Remarkable.

I've already used the M6 to set up a VPN connection to work, which went so much better and smoother than it does on my DV6.  I was able to backdoor my work pc with very little delay (I still have to wait on the connection and security permissions to pass) and was able to browse through my hdd files much swifter than before.  My Remote Desktop Connection also connected quicker and popped up without any lag.  I'm thrilled with this because my work pc is an HP desktop with four monitors, which can be stressful on a remote connection.  But again, the M6 handled it with ease.

I'm probably more excited about the 3rd gen i5 processor than the laptop, itself, but so far, I have no major complaints and even the miniscule ones can be swatted away as nothing once everything is worked out.  Overall, this is a solid laptop and good for the money.  It's not on the cheap end of laptops (not on the super expensive side either), and when it comes to computers, you get what you pay for.  I still believe that even though I had a negative experience with the DV7 (which had a Sandy Bridge i7 and cost a little more than what I paid for the M6).  At that time, HP Support was courteous and tried to be helpful, but since I was within the return period, I chose to return it.  I like HP computers and laptops, and have always found HP Support to a good avenue for help when needed.  For instance, my previous DV6 had a motherboard recall and was experiencing some other problems caused by a moron (not me or my husband) who tried to blow it up and blew one USB port (there were sparks and smoke), destroyed the speakers, and affected the display.  HP took really good care of me then (although I did get lucky that there was already a recall on the motherboard).

And so, now that I'm at the end of this lengthy post, I've hit a string quartet composition that sounds lovely despite my gripes about the sound.  The violins sound perfect and crisp, and I'm hearing notes to the song that I hadn't noticed before.  So maybe the speakers aren't as bad as I thought...we'll see.  Maybe my perfect equalizer settings just favor classical music.  ^_-

PS.  Please forgive any typos.  And yay!  For once I stayed on topic the whole time!  (mostly)

Follow Up Review Here