HP G62-435DX

HP G62-435DX

Jan 11

Last year HP launched the G62-435DX which is wearing a full plastic chassis and it’s finished in a champagne/bronze color that reminds us of the Envy and Pavilion lines. Even though it’s made from plastic, the construction seems to be rigid and it comes with a decorative pattern molded into all of the surfaces of the plastic chassis. This textured pattern which HP has named “Biscotti” manages to provide an excellent grip and it also does a good job at keeping away the smudges and fingerprints.

The laptop measures 1.4 x 14.7 x 9.7 inches (HWD) and tips the scales at 5.5 pounds. The trackpad of this model is wearing the same pattern we’ve mentioned which is a nice feature, but we don’t like that it is seamlessly molded into the laptop’s palm rest because it is impossible to distinguish by feel where the trackpad begins and the palm rest ends.

The keyboard of the HP G62-435DX adopts a traditional layout which means that you won’t find that separation that is available in chiclet-style keyboards. The good news is that like those chiclet-style keyboards, the keys on this model feature a raised square shape that improves the typing experience. You’ll find five dedicated function buttons on the left edge of the keyboard for one-key access to printing, media player, calculator, web browser and e-mail.

It comes with a 15.6-inch display that has a maximum resolution of 1,366 x 768 pixels which is the standard nowadays among budget laptops. This resolution is suitable for watching 720p videos and if you want to do this, we highly recommend buying some headphone because the internal speakers are rather average as they provide a distorted sound even when the volume level is low.

At the heart of this model is a dual core AMD Turion II P540 processor clocked at 2.40 GHz. It packs 4GB of DDR3 memory and a 320GB hard drive spinning at 5,400 rpm. The DVD burner is capable of burning dual layer discs, which is a surprisingly nice feature for such a cheap laptop. The graphics power is provided by the ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4250 which is way too slow for playing games like Crysis (10 fps) or Lost Planet 2 (8 fps).

Fitted with the standard 6-cell 47Wh lithium-ion battery, the HP G62-435DX is capable of lasting about three and a half hours, which is less than the 3h 50min of the Lenovo G560-0679AKU and the impressive five hours of the Acer Aspire AS5742-6475.

All things considered, it is pretty obvious that HP tried to offer a very affordable laptop when they launched the G62-435DX, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing if you can live with its flaws.

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