Tech Blog

[#1]

Traveling with a laptop is always a bit of a challenge, especially if your flight exceeds 3 hours or so. That’s why I was rather interested when I was offered the chance to check out the 15 inch HP Envy -- especially when I was allowed to take it on my recent vacation to Hawaii.

I’m not going to go into all the details around the unit, you can drill down to all of this top-of-the-line unit’s info here at HP’s Envy page . Rather, I’m going to look at what I liked, and didn’t about the unit, from a traveller’s perspective.

In the box
The Envy, being a top-of-the-line laptop is packaged to impress; black box and packaging all designed to be kept and stored for future use or shipping, not immediately discarded. All components were packed in their own lift-out tray. In fact, the packaging reminded me of the same detail that Apple takes in packing their hardware. It leaves you with an impression of quality.

When unpacking the demo unit I received, the first thing I noticed about the Envy was the fit and finish of laptop unit. It’s got a very nice brushed metallic skin and a very cool dimple-pattern etched case that will make it noticeable at the local coffee-shop computer lab, yet not over-the-top so it wouldn’t fit into a boardroom or workplace.

Once out of the box, I realized it would fit handily in my current laptop bag, with power adaptor and all the networking accessories I insist on carrying. Not to big, not to small, just right.

I like the look
The screen is extremely sharp and bright -- something that served me well when I discovered that it was still readable, not perfect but readable, on the deck in the mid-day Maui sun.

Time for minor niggle. For me, when working in a deck chair, the screen didn’t tilt back far enough. I found myself often reaching up and trying to tilt it back just a little bit further than it was designed to go.

One final note about the screen, HP uses automatic bright/dim technology to manage screen brightness in changing conditions. Kinda neat actually and works well when partnered with the low-light capable webcam for Skype calls. The sun sets pretty quickly in Hawaii and the low-light webcam came in handy.

Multimedia time
Laptops usually rank quite poorly when it comes to audio. The Envy actually sounds pretty good in most situations; better than almost all laptops (without bass enhancement hardware) I’ve tested. I’m thinking this is due to HP’s partnership with Beats Audio .

Since the Envy doesn’t have an internal DVD drive, I had to rip my movies to the HD. Not a biggie for me but it bears mentioning as other laptops do have internal optical drives whereas the envy only has an external USB drive option.

And, since I had the 15” version, my flights twere made much more enjoyable watching my own movies on the Envy’s big screen, rather than the ones provided by the airline.

Two movies made for a shorter seeming flights. But to watch those two movies I had to have the Envy’s flat-pack battery installed. The internal battery life of the unit I demoed was just over 2 hours. The extra-flat battery pack, which is the same size as the bottom of the laptop, snaps into place and the Envy sits on top of the pack. This adds maybe a 1/4 of an inch to the thickness of the unit. The added weight is noticeable -- but a fair trade-off to get around 7 hours of computing time away from an AC outlet.

Now I didn’t have this in my vacation hideaway, but if I did have huge flatscreen HDTV, I could have easily hooked the Envy up to it using the HDMI port. Then again, I was in Maui and found better things to do than watch movies

Working with the Envy
Alas, even though it was a vacation, there were times I needed to do a bit of work. And I was glad I had a unit as powerful as the Envy.

Upon powering it up, you’re presented with the ‘instant on’ lite operating system that lets you jump on the Internet or play multimedia files without booting into a full version of Windows. And it works well, getting me up and online in about 10 seconds.

One thing I did notice early on in testing was that the fan is a bit loud on start-up, though it settles down after the OS finishes loading.  A full boot to Windows took about 40 seconds.

Given the horsepower of this unit, I could do almost any multi-media or ‘work’ type task. I didn’t feel hampered because this wasn’t my ‘big-iron desktop’ at home. In my case, the most extreme test was managing my photos.  I shot over 1000 images on this vacation and used Adobe Lightroom to move them from various cameras as well as do a bit of photo editing and uploading. Needless to say, the Envy handled this easily, even with 24mb RAW photos.  If you’re curious, you can check out some of my vacation pics

The Envy keyboard is a standard chiclet-style keyboard. Given the size of the laptop, I was kinda expecting the Envy to have a wide (keyboard + numeric pad) layout. As it is, the keyboard is nearly identical to the one on my Sony VAIO -- though there is a row of custom keys down the left side for one-button access to things like the Calculator, Printer, Browser, Email, etc. And that did cause a bit of confusion for me initially. When writing on the Envy, I often hit Calculator-C/V when trying to cut and paste -- the calculator key is right beside the Control key and my fat fingers jumped to the wrong button. Likely more sustained use with the Envy would train me up

Also, one other thing I noticed after a few hours of typing, my wrists had small grooves in them from the edge at the front of the laptop. I have kinda large hands, and resting them on the flat deck in front of the keyboard became uncomfortable after a while as  my wrist hit that front edge. Other laptops I’ve used have had similar issues, but some, like my VAIO, have a beveled edge where it hits my wrist -- no wrist grooves and I can type more comfortably for longer.

Something new for me was the multi-touch track pad. Since I don’t have a Mac with one, my experience has been limited to the standard single-touch pads. And yeah, this Multitouch pad took a bit to get used to, but once I figured it all out, I began to appreciate what Mac Powerbook users were talking about -- multi-touch trackpads are cool!

Summing up
This is a powerful laptop. Likely more powerful than many people need in a portable computer that’s just used for email, web browsing and maybe a bit of game playing. The HP Envy could easily stand in for my ‘big-iron’ desktop computer giving me all the horsepower needed to run full-up video and image editing apps such as the resource intensive Adobe Creative Suite. As such, HP’s packed a lot into the form factor, and had to leave a thing or two (like the optical drive) out.

Not for everyone, but if you need a laptop with beef, you may want to give the Envy a look. In my case, the Envy made me feel like I had all the computer I needed to do my ‘work’ on the road.

Now, where’d I leave my Mai Tai.

[#2]

Nice review!  And lucky you!  I'd love to check out an Envy.  I know they've gotten somewhat mixed reviews for the trackpad and keyboard, but it's a nice looking computer with the power to back it up.  It's just too bad they cost so much.

That said, in about another year when my current HP HDX is scheduled to pass along to another family member (and once I've been working for a while and have made some real money), I just might look at the Envy once again.  And even though it doesn't come with an optical drive, that's not a big deal... like you, I can either copy everything on while at home with my big old (and bulky) Sony external DVD drive, or I can just pick up one of the nice new portable ones that have come out since then.

Thanks Brad, and I'm glad to see you liked it, even if it was just temporary and even if there were a few minor things you didn't like as much.

[#3]

Thanks Krypto! And yeah, it's sad when a cool piece of equipment has to go back. But, the upside is that I now have a much better feel for one of the top-of-the-line laptops, so when I need to upgrade, I have a good idea what I'll be looking for.

[#4]

I'm kind of dissappointed that HP is not going to offer an upgraded Envy 13.  I once considered it but found the price tag to be steep.  Also, HP Envy laptops tend to be abnormally heavy for their size.

Great review nonetheless, I have no doubt that the Envy 15 would be a wonderful laptop for me if I could afford it.

[#5]

Thanks Credible_Chris,

Yeah, with the flatpack battery installed, the unit was a bit on the heavy side. Agreed on the Envy 13 point too!

But yes, it is a very powerful laptop, for anyone that needs a power laptop