HP Pavilion 15-g009AX (G8D85PA) Laptop (APU Quad Core/4 GB/1 TB/DOS/2 GB)

Bought this laptop from Flipkart at the end of the previous month. No one offers an AMD A8(6th Gen) with 2 GB of HD8570M graphics and 1 TB HDD at this price.Plus it is coupled with 512 mb of R5 graphics card integrated with the AMD A8. The performance is really great, no lags at all. But there were a few problems in beginning. 1. You have to download the drivers for the laptop from the HP website as this doesn't come with the driver's CD. As this product has launched very recently in India there are no drivers available for this model in the Hp website. So the HP representative had solved the buyers problem by pasting as link in their forum section for the drivers of this model. But actually the webpage directs you to the drivers for another HP model, HP 15-g030au Notebook PC which is actually an Australian model having AMD A8 clocked at 2.4ghz(overclocked) and has a 500 GB HDD. There are also a few other differences between the product available on flipkart and the one I mentioned above. I would recommend you to download the drivers of the model HP-g002AX which is the same model as the g009AX but only comes preinstalled with Win 8.1. 2. The next problem I came across was with the Realtek Ethernet driver. Even after downloading an installing the driver from the HP website my laptop couldn't identify the network connection. Then I found out that the latest Realtek driver that was given in website in the Internet drivers section was only an update from the previous version and wouldn't work unless you downloaded the older version of the same driver from the website. 3. Finally I found out that the AMD catalyst driver that was given in the drivers section couldn't identify my graphics card fully. It recognized it as an HD8500 series but couldn't exactly select the model. Moreover it couldn't also recognize the inbuilt R5 graphics card.It would case the hardware to not function normally. This is because the driver is an outdated version and cann't recognize the new hardware(AMD R5) which was released globally only this January. So download the beta driver from the AMD website and install it. But be sure not to overclock your processor as your warranty would get void then. Do so only if you feel like after your warranty period is over. IMPORTANT: People who are buying this HP laptop or has bought it must know that this laptop comes with HP Redemption offers! This is not mentioned in the FIipkart webpage don't know y! This laptop comes with One year free ADP (Accidental Damage Protection) from HP and an offer to extend damage protection at a subsidized rate. This is a limited period offer and valid only for customers who bought this laptop between 1st June-31 August.Please register your laptop to avail ADP. Google for "HP get ADP". Moreover there is also an HP back to college offer with this laptop where you can avail a FREE one year McAfee Internet Security 2014 and 90 days HP video book offer and many more. Google "HP back to college offer" I hope my review will be helpful for my fellow mates who are planning to buy the product or had bought it already and didn't knew about the driver snags and the Redemption offers.

Performance : Component Subscore ---------------------------------------------- Processor 6.9 Memory (RAM) 5.9 Graphics 4.9 Gaming graphics 4.7 Primary hard disk 5.9 ---------------------------------------------- Base score 4.6 taken from chris-pc app Looks : Glossy finish , prone to dust and finger prints Processor : really good hard disk : 1TB more than enough Graphics : OK not bad, but keeps the cpu cool no heating issues even when playing games RAM : 3.5 GB usable Battery : With all drivers installed around 4 to 5 hours Key board : comfortable & Island type Wifi : 6/10 reception is not good. Win 8.1 UI: Takes some time for new users. Didint try Win7 as most of the users are not recommending it. Free Laptop Bag : Small & Good built. Saw a lot of reviews on drivers issue but no body mentioned what to download, so tried my self and the following are list of drivers to download for Win 8.1 64 Bit. HP 15 g-009ax matches with HP 15 g-030au when checked with HP auto detect. Website : h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4158&lc=en&cc=in&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=7101328#N902 Drivers : 1.a.AMD High-Definition (HD) Graphics Driver 2014-08-08 , Version13.351.1105.1005 sp67327 b..AMD Catalyst install manager (for controlling switchable graphics (Not available on HP website download from support.amd.com/en-us/download/auto-detect-tool)) 2.Realtek Local Area Network (LAN) Driver_2014-08-08 , Version1.10_sp67385 3.Qualcomm Atheros QCA9000 Series Bluetooth 4.0+HS 2014-01-10 , Version1.00 sp65049 4.HP Wireless Button Driver_2013-10-08_Version1.1.2.1_sp63752 5.Realtek High-Definition (HD) Audio Driver_2014-08-08 , Version1.10_sp67338 6.Synaptics TouchPad Driver 2014-08-08 , Version1.10 sp67379 7.Cyberlink YouCam Software 2014-04-13 , Version5.0.3.3907 sp65795 as per my experience these are the suitable drivers, plz suggest if there is anything else ....... also let me know whether i should install any driver to increase speed on USB 3.0