Hi friends..
I have been browsing through shopping portals, review sites and forums such as this and when I couldn't afford any more delay, I finally purchased this laptop HP G6-2005AX yesterday. Though I had gone to Nehru Place, Delhi with the motive of returning with a Asus K53TA/X53TA but somehow ended up with this one which was my third choice after K53SM.
K53TA has almost disappeared from the market. There were a couple of small retailers who offered the single pieces of K/X53TA left with them for Rs. 26500-27000 after some bargaining but it seemed like they might have been demo models placed in the showrooms which they wanted to dispose of. And I wouldn't have gone for anything but a seal packed one. Besides the thought of HP having a better CPU n GPU was always popping up in my mind. I went to 4 HP exclusive showrooms and in 2 of those, people were closing in deal of 2005AX which gave me some more confidence. No HP store came down from Rs. 32500 and that too after heavy bargaining and letting go the extra goodies. Finally I bought it for Rs. 31300 from a multi-brand retail showroom in NP. Came just with the bag and no extra stuff. So for about 4K extra I got newer (and hopefully better) CPU, better GPU, extra RAM, better screen (think so), genuine windows and a more visually appealing peace than X53TA. Though I can also vouch for the reliability of ASUS after having used its netbook for 1.5yrs. It just doesn't stop working no matter how bad I treat it. X53TA would have remained functional for much longer in my abusive hands
but i still decided to give HP another chance. I have used a Compaq AMD + Nvidia laptop for 3 yrs so I knew what to expect in terms of heat and all. More of the story later, let me show you some pics first:
Glossy surfaces add to the class but are fingerprint magnet.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2634.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2636.jpg
Keyboard layout is standard though I feel right shift key could have been made smaller to accommodate arrow keys in better way. Small and nonuniform arrow keys can take some time to get used to. Delete and backspace keys are also smaller than normal.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2638.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2642.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2640.jpg
I like the touchpad which is not ultra smooth and thus gives you a nice feel and response to your fingers.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2641.jpg
Now the BLUNDER as I see it.
The tiny indicator LEDs (Power On and HDD) are placed in right side near the charging socket. I don't see any reason why anyone would want to do that. There is no indicator light on the front side. I personally find it quite uncomfortable. When a application is taking some time to respond I have the habit to see the HDD led to confirm that something is happening. Now I have to rotate the laptop to see that LED. This is just not done. As a workaround I have installed the software based HDD activity indicator DiskLED which sits in tray and blinks just like the HDD LED.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2643.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/hdd.gif
Speakers are Okaish and are audible enough on full volume if there are no big noises around. My previous Compaq's Altec ones were much better.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2648.jpg
Back side has one big cover to hide the RAM, Wifi and HDD. The system comes pre-installed with Win7 Home Basic 64 Bit, Office 2010 Starter and Norton trial. There was no driver CD or any other CD in the box and all drivers were pre-installed. The drivers are available on HP site though. There is a recovery partition given if you wish to restore the system to its original status or repair your windows.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2646.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2647.jpg
The bios of this laptop is the most limited one I have even seen in a laptop or desktop. You can only change date, time, boot options, password etc. No CPU, RAM frequency-voltage etc options if you were hoping for them. And if you are a geek and planning to play around with overclocking, undervolting and stuff like that, I must tell you that no current software tools like k10stat, gpu-z etc etc work on this system. A8-4500M is not K10 and has a new CPU architecture. Its also possible that AMD might have locked the over-clocking abilities in the new design to facilitate the in-built turbo/auto-clocking features. As the CPU is a fairly new offering, it might take some time before you see some software tools which can play with it.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/cpu.gif
Shows 2 display adapters and how they work together is another mystery which I shall discuss in detail in another post.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/gpu.gif
If you are from Intel background, I must tell you that AMDs are definitely a hotter sort. But its not much of a problem if the laptop manufacturer is apt enough to design good cooling mechanism inside their laptops. For this reason you won't notice much difference in heat output of a contemporary ASUS+AMD combo vs any Core i system. But HP is not that in this regard. For same AMD system, a HP laptop will produce more heat than a ASUS. I can keep my cousin's Dell i5 on bed and load it as much as possible for hours without any problems but with HP+AMD you have to make sure that you don't block the vents (which happens when you place your laptop on bed). If you keep the space around vent clear then this piece also won't cause you any issues. Today its 45C in Delhi. Without AC in the room this laptop stayed at 41C at idle. After opening 30+ webpages in Opera, the temp rose to 45C and kept fluctuating between 45-51C while I browsed through them and did other normal stuff like software installations, file copying etc.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/idle.gif
I don't have any recent 3D games at present so in order to test the system's graphic and CPU abilities, I opened 15 more tabs in opera including a 720p music video in Youtube. Then started 3 instances of VLC, 2 of them playing full HD 1080 movies and one a 720 one, all simultaneously. Everything was playing smoothly. But this was the limit. The vids started jerking when I tried to play another HD movie in 4th VLC instance
but still I could do normal work in background while all these heavy things were going on. Sorry guys I don't have any benchmarking suites or games to give you any concrete numbers. But the system is quite powerful. As far as temperatures are concerned, they rose to around 71C while I was playing all that. Giving the vent more space lowered it a bit to 68C. In AC things might run cooler than this or use a cooling pad when you do such heavyweight stuff.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/load.gif
One thing I noticed is that this laptop has a higher spec RAM than normal. A 1600 Mhz one instead of the usual 1333 Mhz. I wonder its gonna cost a bit more to upgrade the RAM to 8GB. Can anyone point me to a available identical spec 4GB module (same CAS latency ??) ?
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/ram.gif
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/system.gif
I will post more about the switchable dual GFX of this system and the confusions I have regarding it. In the mean time if you have any questions about the laptop feel free to post and I will be glad to reply back.
-Regards,
Akash
I have been browsing through shopping portals, review sites and forums such as this and when I couldn't afford any more delay, I finally purchased this laptop HP G6-2005AX yesterday. Though I had gone to Nehru Place, Delhi with the motive of returning with a Asus K53TA/X53TA but somehow ended up with this one which was my third choice after K53SM.
K53TA has almost disappeared from the market. There were a couple of small retailers who offered the single pieces of K/X53TA left with them for Rs. 26500-27000 after some bargaining but it seemed like they might have been demo models placed in the showrooms which they wanted to dispose of. And I wouldn't have gone for anything but a seal packed one. Besides the thought of HP having a better CPU n GPU was always popping up in my mind. I went to 4 HP exclusive showrooms and in 2 of those, people were closing in deal of 2005AX which gave me some more confidence. No HP store came down from Rs. 32500 and that too after heavy bargaining and letting go the extra goodies. Finally I bought it for Rs. 31300 from a multi-brand retail showroom in NP. Came just with the bag and no extra stuff. So for about 4K extra I got newer (and hopefully better) CPU, better GPU, extra RAM, better screen (think so), genuine windows and a more visually appealing peace than X53TA. Though I can also vouch for the reliability of ASUS after having used its netbook for 1.5yrs. It just doesn't stop working no matter how bad I treat it. X53TA would have remained functional for much longer in my abusive hands
but i still decided to give HP another chance. I have used a Compaq AMD + Nvidia laptop for 3 yrs so I knew what to expect in terms of heat and all. More of the story later, let me show you some pics first:Glossy surfaces add to the class but are fingerprint magnet.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2634.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2636.jpg
Keyboard layout is standard though I feel right shift key could have been made smaller to accommodate arrow keys in better way. Small and nonuniform arrow keys can take some time to get used to. Delete and backspace keys are also smaller than normal.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2638.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2642.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2640.jpg
I like the touchpad which is not ultra smooth and thus gives you a nice feel and response to your fingers.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2641.jpg
Now the BLUNDER as I see it.
The tiny indicator LEDs (Power On and HDD) are placed in right side near the charging socket. I don't see any reason why anyone would want to do that. There is no indicator light on the front side. I personally find it quite uncomfortable. When a application is taking some time to respond I have the habit to see the HDD led to confirm that something is happening. Now I have to rotate the laptop to see that LED. This is just not done. As a workaround I have installed the software based HDD activity indicator DiskLED which sits in tray and blinks just like the HDD LED.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2643.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/hdd.gif
Speakers are Okaish and are audible enough on full volume if there are no big noises around. My previous Compaq's Altec ones were much better.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2648.jpg
Back side has one big cover to hide the RAM, Wifi and HDD. The system comes pre-installed with Win7 Home Basic 64 Bit, Office 2010 Starter and Norton trial. There was no driver CD or any other CD in the box and all drivers were pre-installed. The drivers are available on HP site though. There is a recovery partition given if you wish to restore the system to its original status or repair your windows.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2646.jpg
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/100_2647.jpg
The bios of this laptop is the most limited one I have even seen in a laptop or desktop. You can only change date, time, boot options, password etc. No CPU, RAM frequency-voltage etc options if you were hoping for them. And if you are a geek and planning to play around with overclocking, undervolting and stuff like that, I must tell you that no current software tools like k10stat, gpu-z etc etc work on this system. A8-4500M is not K10 and has a new CPU architecture. Its also possible that AMD might have locked the over-clocking abilities in the new design to facilitate the in-built turbo/auto-clocking features. As the CPU is a fairly new offering, it might take some time before you see some software tools which can play with it.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/cpu.gif
Shows 2 display adapters and how they work together is another mystery which I shall discuss in detail in another post.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/gpu.gif
If you are from Intel background, I must tell you that AMDs are definitely a hotter sort. But its not much of a problem if the laptop manufacturer is apt enough to design good cooling mechanism inside their laptops. For this reason you won't notice much difference in heat output of a contemporary ASUS+AMD combo vs any Core i system. But HP is not that in this regard. For same AMD system, a HP laptop will produce more heat than a ASUS. I can keep my cousin's Dell i5 on bed and load it as much as possible for hours without any problems but with HP+AMD you have to make sure that you don't block the vents (which happens when you place your laptop on bed). If you keep the space around vent clear then this piece also won't cause you any issues. Today its 45C in Delhi. Without AC in the room this laptop stayed at 41C at idle. After opening 30+ webpages in Opera, the temp rose to 45C and kept fluctuating between 45-51C while I browsed through them and did other normal stuff like software installations, file copying etc.
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/idle.gif
I don't have any recent 3D games at present so in order to test the system's graphic and CPU abilities, I opened 15 more tabs in opera including a 720p music video in Youtube. Then started 3 instances of VLC, 2 of them playing full HD 1080 movies and one a 720 one, all simultaneously. Everything was playing smoothly. But this was the limit. The vids started jerking when I tried to play another HD movie in 4th VLC instance
but still I could do normal work in background while all these heavy things were going on. Sorry guys I don't have any benchmarking suites or games to give you any concrete numbers. But the system is quite powerful. As far as temperatures are concerned, they rose to around 71C while I was playing all that. Giving the vent more space lowered it a bit to 68C. In AC things might run cooler than this or use a cooling pad when you do such heavyweight stuff.*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/load.gif
One thing I noticed is that this laptop has a higher spec RAM than normal. A 1600 Mhz one instead of the usual 1333 Mhz. I wonder its gonna cost a bit more to upgrade the RAM to 8GB. Can anyone point me to a available identical spec 4GB module (same CAS latency ??) ?
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/ram.gif
*i1155.photobucket.com/albums/p546/g62005ax/system.gif
I will post more about the switchable dual GFX of this system and the confusions I have regarding it. In the mean time if you have any questions about the laptop feel free to post and I will be glad to reply back.
-Regards,
Akash
