The upside to the somewhat loud fan is cool operation. During low to moderate use the laptop’s chassis warmed only slightly in the usual spots, such as near the exhaust fan. Extended lap use is definitely an option. You’ll only become uncomfortably warm if you perform tasks that engage the discrete GPU. Doing that is a great way to keep warm in winter.
Despite being a full-size 15-inch laptop, the ports and connections on the Envy 15 are limited. Only two USB ports are offered, along with an SD card slot--no eSATA, as found on previous Envy laptops. The twin headphone jacks are a nice extra, but usually more useful on a smaller laptop, for example to share video playback while flying. Adding a Blu-ray drive, instead of the standard DVD burner is $75 more.
Is the ENVY 15 as good as the 15-inch MacBook Pro? No. But considering that for the hardware that we tested you’d have to spend nearly $2000 on an Apple machine, it doesn’t have to be. If you find yourself spending most of your computer time within the reach of HP Envy 15 power adapter, it’s tough to beat for power and media capabilities. I wish it was a little lighter and lasted a little longer, but as a desktop replacement and media consumption/creation specialist, you’d be hard-pressed to find anything with these kinds of specs, fit and finish in this price range.
The HP Envy 15 is the first redesigned model to hit the streets. Predictably, the internals feature some of the latest hardware you can buy--Intel Core-i processors along with a healthy chunk of memory, a new discrete mobile graphics chip and options for an SSD. This time round, HP is betting even more on audio quality, with more prominent Beats Audio branding that has even been integrated into the design with an analog volume dial.
A slot-loading DVD drive lives on the left side (sorry, no Blu-ray option on this model.) In terms of the layout, Hewlett-Packard did Apple one better, stacking the ports on two sides instead of one, with the two USB 3.0 sockets on the left edge, and the lone 2.0 port on the right. Alongside the Ethernet jack theres a Mini DisplayPort, HDMI and two USB 3 ports although Hewlett-Packard has omitted the suddenly fashionable Thunderbolt port for cost reasons, which seems a little parsimonious on a premium laptop such as this.
The original HP Envy 15 was ahead of its time for performance but it lacked the things most folks want in a powerful 15.6" portable: plenty of ports, an optical drive and a decent size HP Envy 15 battery. We still have the original model and it still beats quite a few current notebooks on benchmarks and plays 3D games nicely. But it's a pain to drag out the external optical drive to install all those games, and we use it like a desktop since it's always connected to AC and a USB hub.
HP’s built-in software is improving, but still manages to annoy a little. All the custom menus and stuff are thankfully gone, and the included software is pretty good: You get Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9, CyberLink PowerDVD and YouCam, Skype, and lots of Windows Live items (Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, and the like). Unfortunately, you’ll see nag notes from Norton Internet Security, which seems to go out of its way to wreck the user experience on new PCs. You’ll also encounter both the Bing Bar and the Norton Bar when you fire up the Web browser--that's two bars too many. Overall, though, the Envy 15 has a lot less “cruft” than HP’s laptops used to carry, and it's nothing that a couple minutes in the Add/Remove Programs control panel can’t fix.
Speaking of audio, one of the first things we noticed when looking at the new ENVY is a jog dial built into the side of the machine. This dial actually sticks out from the plane of the notebook's edge eeeeever so slightly. It's just enough for you to be able to spin the dial without it actually detracting from the elegant designs. While it may bring to mind Toshibas (et al.) of old, which actually used a potentiometer dial to regulate audio levels, this is strictly a software solution - it won't work outside of Windows (or presumably Linux).
With its 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5-2430M processor with 6GB of RAM, the HP Envy 15 has more than enough power to play high def-movies and handle productivity software without nary a hiccup. Our online playthrough of Plants vs. Zombies ran seamlessly while we streamed music from Spotify in the background and had eight open tabs in both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.
The HP Envy 15 has AMD Radeon HD 7690M dedicated graphics with 1 gig of DDR5 VRAM. The 7000 series GPU is new, but it's not a significant jump forward from the 6000 series, and the 7690M has much in common with the Radeon 6770M. This is a solid higher end GPU for 15" and even 17" gaming and multimedia notebooks. For gaming, the Envy 15 is a winner. We tested a variety of popular and current demanding 3D titles like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and the older but demanding FEAR 2. All tests were run at 1920 x 1080 resolution to the internal panel. The Envy handled COD 3 and FEAR 2 well on high settings, and Skyrim and Battlefield 3 did fine at medium settings. In our gaming demo video below, you can see some of these games in action, along with the settings we used in each game.
If there's one thing we took away from our jaunt at CES, it's this: consumers' appetites for mainstream laptops haven't waned all that much. Even in the Ultrabook category, Intel expects half of the models to go on sale this year will have 14- and 15-inch screens -- as strong an indicator as any that lots of folks aren't yet ready to give up their slightly larger screens, their discrete graphics, their (gasp!) optical drives. While HP recently announced its first Ultrabook for the consumer market, the Envy 14 Spectre, it's fully fleshed out its premium Envy series to include two additional models for people who crave more oomph.
At the behest of some of the commenters, I investigated the switchable graphics with respect to battery life. This necessitated going into the BIOS and setting the graphics to a manual switch, since the option doesn’t appear in any of the ENVY’s standard settings menus. (it might be possible to set this with a newer version of Catalyst Control Center, but it wasn’t accessible from the stock software.) Under the default Dynamic setting, it’s supposed to automatically switch to the Intel integrated graphics when the high-powered Radeon isn’t necessary - apparently the software wasn’t activating correctly. When the Intel integrated graphics were activated manually, I got 5 hours and 14 minutes out of the ENVY 15 running the same test. That’s not a marathon machine by any means, but it opens up a lot more options for extended portable use.
The Envy 15 also packs plenty of connectivity options and entertainment features. Along either side of the laptop you'll find connections for video and audio alike. First there are DisplayPort and HDMI ports, for connecting to an external monitor or HDTV. Dual headphone jacks let you share the sweet sounds of Beats Audio, and headphone users actually get a further boost thanks to built-in headphone amplification. If you want to enjoy the video and audio without all those cables, the Envy 15 is equipped with Intel's WiDi 2.0—a wireless alternative to HDMI (provided you have the appropriate HP Envy 15 AC adapter, like the $99 Netgear Push2TV)—and HP Wireless Audio, which streams multichannel audio to any compatible sound system or adapter without requiring a dongle for the laptop.
As a fan of the original Envy design, I have to admit I'm not quite as sold on this new look just yet. It certainly isn't ugly, but it also doesn't feel as sophisticated as HP's even newer Envy Spectre laptop, spotted at CES 2012 and coming soon in a 14-inch version. If anything, the new look of the Envy hews much closer to the MacBook Pro than before. While open, it's nearly indistinguishable from a MacBook Pro at first glance. Only the sunken keyboard and red accents give it away.
The HP TrueVision HD webcam captured stills and video in 1280 x 800p using Cyberlink YouCam 6.0 software. Under the fluorescent lights in our office, images were very dark and grainy. We were able to see ourselves better in natural light, but noticed a yellowish pall. The graininess continued during our Skype session.
On the other hand, I wish they could've lost the optical drive on the Envy 15 as they did on the last generation and added more ports, a larger HP QK641AA battery, second internal HDD bay, or even more cooling. There's so much potential for all that wasted space, and I think the first Envy 15 really recognized and addressed that quite well.
The evolution of the HP Envy line has been interesting to watch. It’s obvious that the engineers responsible for this laptop are learning as they go, improving the laptop with each version. With this new Envy 15 we see not only hardware improvements, but also a cleaner designer, a better keyboard and excellent audio. HP Envy 15 battery life is impressive, as well. This laptop is far too large and heavy to be an ultraportable, but it has battery life on par with them.
HP’s built-in software is improving, but still manages to annoy a little. All the custom menus and stuff are thankfully gone, and the included software is pretty good: You get Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Elements 9, CyberLink PowerDVD and YouCam, Skype, and lots of Windows Live items (Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Messenger, and the like). Unfortunately, you’ll see nag notes from Norton Internet Security, which seems to go out of its way to wreck the user experience on new PCs. You’ll also encounter both the Bing Bar and the Norton Bar when you fire up the Web browser--that's two bars too many. Overall, though, the Envy 15 has a lot less “cruft” than HP’s laptops used to carry, and it's nothing that a couple minutes in the Add/Remove Programs control panel can’t fix.
Although we could press anywhere on the surface, the Imagepad was somewhat stiff toward the center, though not as stiff as the pad on the Folio 13. For right- or left-clicking, we got the best results pressing down on the very bottom. The HP QK641AA battery isn't centered below the G and H keys, which could be an annoyance to touch typists. Overall, we prefer traditional touchpads with discrete mouse buttons on Windows laptops, but the Envy 15 has one of the better clickpads we've used.
Pros:
- 1.6-GHz Intel Core i7-720QM CPU
- ATI Radeon HD 4830
- Brilliant design
- Great build quality
- Excellent performance
- Vivid HD screen
- Lightweight
- Good speakers
- Windows 7 on board
Cons:
- Poor battery performance
- Gets too hot
- Uncomfortable keyboard
- No optical drive
- No VGA-out
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