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CNET editors' rating:
3.5 stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 reviews
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Product summary
The good: Speedy Core 2 Duo CPU; loads of memory and hard drive space; HP's Personal Media Drive slot makes it easy to back up data and take it with you.
The bad: Looks and feels cheap for such a pricey system; no high-end video card options.
The bottom line: With more extras than the comparably priced Dell XPS 410, the HP Pavilion d4600y would clearly be the better bet for mainstream users looking for a high-end PC, if not for its down-market look and limited configuration options.
Specifications: Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E6300 (1.86 GHz); RAM installed: 1 GB DDR II SDRAM; Hard drive: 160 GB Standard; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 07/26/2006
The HP Pavilion d4600y is housed in a dull, two-tone, gray chassis that won't win any design awards; the system isn't even as nice-looking as HP's uninspired but inoffensive Pavilion Media Center systems. It's cheap-feeling, especially compared to the solidly constructed Dell, but at least it won't look painfully out of place in most home office or den setups. The front panel features twin optical drives--a DVD-ROM drive and a DVD burner--along with a multiformat media card reader, S-Video and composite-video outs, and, more interestingly, a slot for HP's Personal Media Drive.
The Personal Media Drive is a portable plug-and-play hard drive from HP that connects via the built-in, oval-shape slot common to many of HP's Pavilion systems. The drives also include a USB 2.0 connection for use with other PCs. Our review unit came with a 160GB model (a $150 upgrade); you can also find them on HP's site up at up to 400GB for $350. The only real knock we have against these drives is that they're a bit on the bulky side for our tastes. But that's the trouble with having a proprietary slot in your PCs: once you commit to the form factor, it's hard to change it down the road when consumers expect a more pocket-size device.
Inside, the Pavilion d4600y offers some room for expansion, but less than we'd like to see. There's a single x16 PCI Express slot, currently filled with a midrange 256MB ATI Radeon X1600 XT graphics card, along with four PCI slots and room for two additional optical drives and two additional hard drives in addition to the twin 250GB drives (in a RAID 0 array) the system comes with. The case can also accommodate one additional optical drive and one additional 3.5-inch front-accessible drive.
Like the Dell XPS 410, the HP Pavilion d4600y uses Intel's Core 2 Duo E6600 CPU. That's right in the middle of the Core 2 Duo pack, and the performance is likewise middle-of-the-road, falling between that of the Dell XPS 700, with a Core 2 Extreme X6800, and that of the bargain-price Velocity Micro Vector GC Campus Edition, with a low-end Core 2 Duo E6300. That being said, the Pavilion d4600y performs well, easily beating a white box system with AMD's top-of-the-line Athlon 64 FX-62 on CNET Labs' Multitasking test.
The included ATI Radeon X1600 XT is a decent choice for casual gaming, and it should be able to play any current game at decent resolutions. That's currently the best video card choice HP offers on the Pavilion d4600y; we would like to see the company offer high-end cards, such as the ATI Radeon X1900 or the GeForce 7900 as options, expensive as they may be. The Dell XPS 410 easily outclasses it with an Nvidia GeForce 7900 GS.
Our review unit includes a 160GB Personal Media Drive, along with a wired HP keyboard and optical mouse set. The operating system is Windows Media Center Edition, and a dual-tuner Hauppauge NTSC TV tuner card and Media Center remote are included. Bundled software includes Microsoft Works Suite 2006 and HP's Image Zone for editing and sharing photos. A full upgrade to Microsoft Office Basic Edition will run an extra $109.
HP's one-year standard warranty is notable for including next-business-day part replacement and toll-free, 24/7 phone support. The company's support site provides real-time chat that's also available 24/7, and it promises to answer e-mail within an hour.
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Multitasking test |
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Adobe Photoshop CS2 image-processing test |
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- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 4 reviews
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