HP Pavilion P6110y

Editors' note: This review is part of our 2009 Retail Laptop and Desktop Back-to-School roundup, covering specific fixed configurations of popular systems that can be found in retail stores.

HP's Pavilion p6110y is first out of the gate in our back-to-school desktop roundup for 2009. And while there's certainly nothing glaringly wrong with this spare $509 midtower, we can't help noticing that HP hasn't done a lot distinguish this PC from its competition. Next to a quad-core slim tower from Gateway or Asus' new Wi-Fi and HDMI-equipped midtower, this Pavilion's has only a FireWire port, HP's easy-to-navigate Web site, and a lightly tweaked case design to help it stand out, which earn it only a lukewarm recommendation.

The most interesting thing about the Pavilion p6110y might be its new design. There's nothing drastically different about it, but HP has moved the optical-drive eject buttons to the side of the front panel, and has also gone to an almost entirely black color palette on the trim around the case. The resulting classier look gives this system more shelf appeal, and you might find the Pavilion p6110y one of the more polished-looking midtower PCs. If aesthetics factor into your buying decision, HP might indeed persuade you with this PC's good looks.

Look deeper into the specs of the Pavilion p6110y as compared with its competition and your impression might change. It's not that HP has made any significant missteps with this configuration; it's simply that it lacks inspiration. You'll note in our comparison box that the Asus Essentio desktop offers almost the exact same hardware for $10 less than the HP. That price difference will likely change depending on the retailer, but what's probably more impactful are the graphics chip and accompanying motherboard in each system.

The HP's motherboard features only the most basic inputs and outputs, and its single FireWire 400 port is the only departure from the norm. The Asus Essentio, on the other hand, offers no FireWire, but instead includes an HDMI video output, as well as 802.11 b/g wireless networking via an add-in card. Those two features might not have the greatest utility given the Essentio's midtower form factor, but the simple fact that they're present gives the Asus system some distinction. Depending on your peripheral connection needs you might find the HP's FireWire port enough to sway you decision. For our money, we think the Asus system offers more exciting extras.

We don't find much to get excited about when we look at HP's performance, either. The standout in this price range is Gateway's SX2800-01. The lone quad-core system, and with a $510 price tag to match that of the HP, the Gateway outperforms its competition on all but our iTunes test. The Pavilion p6110y isn't far behind, and it's also neck-and-neck with the Asus on almost every test. The single exception is our multimedia multitasking test, where the HP lagged behind the Asus by about 30 seconds on our simultaneous audio- and video-encoding workload. We suspect that Asus' advantage on this test has to do with its more up-to-date motherboard chipset. As with our features comparison, the HP isn't a performance dog, but it also gives us few reasons to recommend it given the faster competition.

As a midtower PC, the Pavilion p6110y offers one key advantage over the slimtower Gateway SX2800-01: you can upgrade it with standard-size expansion cards. HP gives you room to add a full-size 3D graphics card by way of a free 16x PCI Express slot, and you also get a spare 1x PCI Express slot, along with standard PCI slot. Asus trumps HP again here, however, offering all of that as well as a second PCI slot. You can add a second hard drive to the HP, but as with its previous generation Pavilions, drive installation is hampered by an inconvenient drive cage layout.

We didn't see a lot of variation in power consumption among these budget desktops. The Pavilion p6110y is technically EnergyStar compliant, but it's close enough to the threshold that if this was a full EnergyStar Certification test, EnergyStar would measure a second sample unit. To its credit, this system is more efficient than the competing desktop from Asus, and we'd expect the HP to use roughly 30 fewer kilowatt hours of electricity over the course of a year.

HP and Asus have matching baseline service and support polices, covering parts and labor for one year. HP offers 24-7 toll-free phone help, whereas Asus phone lines are restricted to weekday business hours, and HP easily gets the nod for Web-based assistance. Asus' site doesn't even list the Essentio brand as far as we can tell. On HP.com you'll find readily available system-specific help, including drivers, manuals, as well as customer service chat, among other resources.

Find out more about how we test desktop systems.

System configurations:

Asus Essentio CM5570-AP002
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.6GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300; 6GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 32MB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 640MB 7,200rpm hard drive

Dell Inspiron 537s
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.5GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core E5200; 4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; TKMB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 640GB 7,200rpm hard drive

Gateway SX2800-01
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.3GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200; 4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; TKMB (shared) Intel GMA X4500 integrated graphics chip; 640GB 7,200rpm hard drive

HP Pavilion p6110y
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.6GHz Intel Pentium Dual-Core E5300; 6GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 128MB (shared) Intel GMA 3100 integrated graphics chip; 640MB 7,200rpm hard drive

HP Pavilion Slimline s5120y
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (64-bit); 2.7GHz AMD Athlon X2 7750 ; 4GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 128MB Nvidia Geforce 6150SE integrated graphics chip; 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive.

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