HP Pavilion P6230y

HP Pavilion P6230y

The $680 Pavilion P6230y is another midrange HP desktop PC that looks good on paper, but can't keep up with the competition in price and performance. It can certainly handle its own in day-to-day use, but the competing Asus Essentio CG5270-BP004 makes this Pavilion look slow and overpriced. Not a whole lot has changed on the P6230y since we reviewed its cheaper sibling, the p6110y. Most of the desktops that take a turn through our labs have a similar black, glossy case; but HP adds flashy accents like a soft-blue LED-lit power button and a sliding panel on the face of the system that conceals the media card reader and front USB 2.0 and audio ports. Aesthetically speaking, we're confident that this system will fit anywhere without causing a stir. The most glaring difference in a side-by-side comparison with the Asus Essentio CG5270-BP004 is the HP's diminutive quad-core AMD chip, which is left in the dust in performance and power efficiency tests by the Asus's quad-core Intel CPU, even despite a slightly faster clock speed. For $30 less than the HP, Asus offers more storage room to offset the lack of built-in wireless, which can be easily had thanks to the Asus' ample expansion space.