Digital Trends

HP Pavilion a6130n

July 30th, 2007 | by Jason Tomczak

Conclusion

The HP Pavilion a6130n is a great system for most, if not all, common needs. It's perfect for home use and would serve well in an office setting; It's body is larger than HP's Slimline systems, but still smaller than most desktop computers. It has plenty of high-powered hardware under the hood, however it uses on-the-fly energy saving technology to reduce the draw of electricity and keep the system running cool and quiet. All-in-all, the a6130n runs Vista smoothly. The system can double as a media PC (with external USB TV tuner), even with the stock video card. Unless you're shopping for a hard-core gaming system, the a6130n will satisfy most of your computing needs.

The only real drawbacks of the a6130n are the PS/2 keyboard (they keyboard is fine, the PS/2 connection is not), the crappy ball-mouse and the lack of included video cables. Almost every other computer manufacturer offers USB keyboard and optical mouse for the same price range, and they almost always include a VGA or DVI cable. If HP would wake up and smell the peripherals, the a6130n would be a fantastic value.


Pros:

• Strong AMD processor
• Attractive styling
• 2Ghz system bus
• SATA hard drive and DVD-RW drives
• 3GB RAM standard

Cons:

• Ultra cheap PS/2 ball mouse
• No DVI output
• No video cables included
• Weak videocard