Two conceptually different hyperspherical harmonics expansions are used for the calculation of the total 4He photoabsorption cross section. Besides the well known method of CHH the recently introduced effective interaction approach for the hyperspherical formalism is applied. Semi-realistic NN potentials are employed and final state interaction is fully taken into account via the Lorentz integral transform method. The results show that the effective interaction leads to a very good convergence, while the correlation method exhibits a less rapid convergence in the giant dipole resonance region. The rather strong discrepancy with the experimental photodisintegration cross sections is confirmed by the present calculations.