How much do we love the HP G62t, a $599 Intel Core i3-powered laptop? Let us count the ways: it offers better performance and battery life than the competition, a cool yet understated design, and a blazing fast hard drive. We’re not fans of the single touch button, but overall, the G62t is far and away the best laptop you can get for less than $600.

Design
Taking a cue from HP’s higher-end Envy notebooks, the G62t has a sophisticated taupe color both inside and out, as well as a matte finish. Its textured pattern reminds us of the Envy 13, although it has a smooth metal lid; the G62t is made of a cheaper plastic and bears that pattern throughout. However, the brushed metal hinges make the laptop look more expensive than it is.

Other than a small power button, there are no controls in the area above the keyboard—just a discreet strip concealing the Altec Lansing speakers. HP emulates Apple’s MacBooks by adding multimedia and volume controls to the top row of the keys on the keyboard.

One of the things we like best about the G62t’s design is its light weight. At 5.4 pounds and 14.7 x 9.7 x 1.4 inches, it was easy to carry this notebook from room to room. The similarly priced Gateway NV5934u weighs 5.6 pounds, while the Toshiba Satellite L505-ES5018 weighs an even heftier 6 pounds.



Keyboard and Trackpad
The G62t’s keys adjoin each other at the base, but are terraced at the top with a soft matte finish that felt nice against the fingers. While we scored 83 words per minute on the Ten Thumbs typing test with a 0 percent error rate (not bad considering our high score is 88 wpm), we felt HP could have arranged the keys more efficiently. For instance, there’s no number pad, as there is on many other 15-inch notebooks. Worse, the right Shift key is undersized, something we noticed as we typed. Considering there’s an inch of unused space on either size of the keyboard, we see this as a missed opportunity.



We’ve given HP flack in the past for selling notebooks with high-friction touchpads, but the G62t’s was a delight to use, even if it’s largely indistinguishable from the surrounding deck. We love its spacious (2.3 x 3.5 inches), smooth, low-friction surface. Unfortunately, HP made a mistake in pairing it with a single, stiff mouse button instead of softer twin ones. We had to apply a good deal of pressure every time we wanted to press the button, though we expect it would break in over time.



Quick Specs :
Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
CPU: 2.13GHz Intel Core i3-330M
RAM/Expandable to: 4GB/8GB
Hard drive size/speed: 500GB/7,200 rpm
Optical Drive: 8X DVD-Super Multi DL
Graphics/video memory: Intel GMA HD/shared
Display size/resolution: 15.6 inches/1366 x 768