The trackpad is also impressive, considering it's just a square of textured plastic on the wristpad area. I'm usually not a fan of textured trackpads (I prefer indented ones), because they usually don't work as well as their counterparts. However, the HP g6's trackpad is extremely responsive, and the discrete mouse buttons are large and easy to press. The trackpad has no scrolling area, because HP has built in multitouch support. Unfortunately, multitouch gestures work sluggishly at best.
The HP g6's 15.6-inch LED-backlit display has a native resolution of 1366 by 768 pixels. The glossy screen is nicely bright and has good image quality, so long as you're sitting directly in front of it. Off-axis viewing is poor, and the glossy screen throws back a lot of reflections if you happen to be in direct or bright light. Speaker quality is pretty good (perhaps not as rich as you might like), and the Altec Lansing speakers are loud enough to fill a medium-sized room.
Since the g6 features a second-generation Intel processor, it also comes with integrated Intel HD graphics. Casual video playback is good on the g6, but it's not exactly a gaming computer. In our Unreal Tournament 3 graphics tests, the g6 managed an unplayable frame rate of just 16.8 frames per second (highest quality, 1024-by-768-pixel resolution). By contrast, the , which is ranked number 8 on our , is four times faster at 66.5 fps (highest quality, 1024 by 768 pixels). Of course, the U41JF also costs nearly twice as much as the g6.
The g6's WorldBench 6 score of 101 is pretty average for its category--the , which is number 4 on our top 10 list of all-purpose laptops, received exactly the same score, while the , which is ranked number 5, received a score of 95. So you're not getting a closet gaming machine, but this laptop will support everyday use just fine.
The HP Pavilion g6 is, above all things, totally average. It's definitely not a performance machine, or a sexy piece of art, but if you're just looking for a decent laptop for Web surfing, word processing, and lightweight photo editing, it's a pretty good deal. The only real drawback I see is battery life--HP says you'll get 5.5 hours, but we managed to get only 4 usable hours out of the g6's battery in our testing.