HP Envy 15 - 15 Inches of Envy

The HP Envy 15

So what do you do when you’re the largest personal computer manufacturer in the world, and other manufacturers are nipping at your heels, waiting for you to trip? Do you quiver in fear, threaten to wind up your business and call it a day? Nope. You do what HP does, which is to get back in there, and continue to churn out products that people actually want to use. Products like the new HP Envy 15. This 15.6-inch, Core i7 notebook is one of the latest additions to the Envy line of products.

By now you should already know that the Envy line is made up of HP’s premium notebooks, and of course, the 2.63kg Envy 15 is no different. It has all the premium features and ports one can hope for in a Windows based mobile workhorse, and naming all of them would simply take up too much space. To save you the hassle, we point out the most notable aspects of the Envy 15 in this review (with the main specs lined out here). 

To differentiate themselves from the bottom-of-the-barrel type of notebooks, HP opted to build the Envy 15 (mostly) out of aluminum, a 'premium' feature for a notebook's build quality. Two basic colors, black on the lid and bottom, silver in the middle, gives the notebook a clean and classic look. While it’s basic shape (and even color and build) reminds us greatly of an Apple MacBook Pro, it may not be a bad thing. In fact if you observe close enough, it’s actually slightly curvier than a MacBook Pro, and is easier to grip like a folio.

The HP Envy 15 also has no shortage of ports and should easily satisfy the most demanding multimedia content creators who need to dabble with multiple inputs and outputs. It's got two USB 3.0 ports, a USB 2.0 port, a RJ45 LAN port, an HDMI port, and a regular sized DisplayPort. Hopefully you wouldn't mind the lack of an old school VGA port. Apart from connectivity, one of the better features implemented on the notebook that caught our attention was the side volume jog dial that is accessible even without opening the lid or using the OS volume control. It's not a lifesaver nor a deal breaker, but it just makes volume control a tad more effortless. 

On the bottom machine, the HP Envy 15 is quite featureless. All you can see are a couple of vents, and a line that reveals the existence of an aluminum cover that hides the battery. Once you pop it open, you will be able to see the unit’s massive battery, and a couple of small subwoofers. So where are the main speakers? Those have been consciously positioned upfront where it makes listening to audio much more pleasant and clear.

Full Metal Jacket

Opening the lid to access the interior is a delightful one handed affair; two small but tight metal hinges hold the screen in place. Once the notebook is opened, you will notice that the interior is devoid of attention seeking features. Besides the Beats audio button on the right, the black chiclet keys, and a large clickable trackpad in the center, there's not much else. Probably the next aspect that you may notice is a red line running around the keyboard island that complements the Beats theme.  

Upon closer inspection however, you will realize that the keyboard housing and palm rest are two separate pieces. And if you were to press down on the buttons hard enough, you can actually separate the two pieces. A design like this would usually allow dust and hair to get into the interior of the machine. However in this case, you’d need to press down on it really hard in order to make any opening large enough for dust to get through, so it’s more of an observation than a real concern.

Though the individually lit keys on the chiclet keyboard are made of plastic, typing on it is quite a comfortable experience with plenty of key travel. However, the keys do have a bit of a mushy feedback rather than a more positively reassuring tactile feedback. On the bright side, typing is quiet and definitely not annoying. Thanks to the metal housing of the keyboard island, there isn’t much flex either. There is however a curious omission of a number pad, which is something you’d normally get on notebooks of this size. For the number mashers, you would probably find the wasted space on the sides of the notebook annoying. In our opinion, HP wanted to have a neat interior design rather than cramp the numpad in for the sake of functionality. Depending on your needs and expectations, this design tradeoff may affect your buying decision for the Envy 15.

With plenty of unused real estate on the sides of the keyboard, HP instead opted to put the "Beats" dial on the right side of the machine. The big jog dial normally only controls volume, but when you click on it, the Beats branded volume control pops up. Gimmicky yes, but we're nevertheless content on the controls available to adjust the notebook's audio system.This feature is integral (or even a major selling point) to the success of the HP Envy 15 and its Beats branding. By now, many consumers would probably associate the Beats branding with high quality audio and that's certainly advantageous to the Envy 15's desirability.

To make sure that the Beats branding isn’t just for show, HP made sure that the speakers found on the machine are reasonably good too. Like we mentioned earlier, audio from the machine is loud enough to fill a good sized conference room and is further augmented with a couple of subwoofers at the base of the machine. The best part is when you crank up the volume all the way, the audio doesn’t get muddled or intolerable the way most entry-level speakers do.

To ensure the overall multimedia experience is good, the notebook is paired with a gorgeous 15.6-inch Radiance Full HD Infinity LED-backlit display (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution). Now we don’t know what the "infinity" stands for, but what we do know is that the screen quality is definitely one of the best in this class of notebooks. Photos and videos came out looking vibrant and beautiful on its display. The only issue we have is that the screen is glossy and viewing it in a bright environment could cause a bit of frustration. On the other hand, it is also due to the glossy screen that we’re able to appreciate the rich and crisp colors. As always, it’s a give and take situation with regards to glossy screens and one has to be well aware of its advantages and limitations. Matte screen options aren't available.

Another of our favorite features on the Envy 15 is the large clickable glass trackpad. It’s shaped more rectangular than squarish, and has an outline reminding users where the left/right click-able areas are located. There is also a soft switch that turns off the trackpad for intensive typing. Usability of the trackpad is fairly comfortable, but its top corners are not as responsive to clicking as we’d like them to be. Though it's not a serious issue, some would find this irritating and we would recommend you to give it a try at the store. Otherwise you can easily solve the problem by using a mouse.

Performance and Benchmarking

Make no mistake. The HP Envy 15 while sold as a pretty package, with all the fancy trimmings and sexy aluminum body, you shouldn’t forget that it does come with a quad-core, Intel Core i7-2670QM (2.2GHz) and an AMD Radeon HD 6750M (1GB) discrete graphics under the hood. This means that the HP Envy 15 is equipped to tackle almost any workload you throw at it, be it games, or multimedia editing, making it an ideal all-rounder notebook for the family with entertainment frills to boot. While of course it isn’t strictly a FPS-crunching machine, gaming on the HP Envy 15 is still possible, though not on the highest image quality settings on the the top-brass games.

For comparison’s sake, we’ve also included scores from the Samsung Series 7 Chronos, which has similar hardware components, the Samsung RF 511, and the Toshiba Satellite P755 which sports a slightly slower processor configuration. While all of these 15-inch multimedia notebooks are each good in their own way, being a multimedia machine means you can’t be just good at one aspect, but be capable in multiple discipline. This is where the HP Envy 15 tends to stand out from what we've shown you so far, and after the specs breakdown we'll show you if it has great performance to complement it.

PCMark 7

PCMark 7, like its Vantage predecessor, is a benchmark that basically runs a variety of tests to see how well the machine copes with various real world tasks, like managing documents, rendering content on the internet browser, media encoding and many more. When it comes to all these simple (but important) day-to-day tasks, the HP Envy 15 is definitely able to keep up thanks to its fairly competent hardware. In terms of all-round performance, it didn’t exactly leave its opponents behind by a huge margin, but it still managed to secure the top spot in this roundup of multimedia machines.

It’ll be worth your while to note that a large part of the PC Mark 7 benchmark tests depend heavily on the type of processor the machine has. The HP Envy 15 runs a quad-core Core i7-2670QM (2.2GHz), while the Samsung Chronos is running a very similar quad-core Core i7-2675QM (2.2GHz). Now the difference between the two processors is in the (very) slightly higher maximum integrated GPU speed that the latter has. As you can see from the chart below, this introduces hardly any obvious benefits so you can rest easy knowing that the Envy 15 has one of the best processors available for notebooks.

The exceptional computational scores that the Envy 15 has is likely due to a variety of factors. To test computational scores, PCMark 7 forces the machine to encode video in a few ways. It could be possible that the discrete graphics drivers used across the various machines differ slightly in implementation and that caused the different in the scores. However from the overall score, you can see that while it does give the Envy 15 an edge, it’s only by a small margin.

3DMark 11

We’ve included two of the three available benchmark options in 3DMark 11 to showcase how each test machine performs in varying resolutions and image quality settings (Entry and Performance). The higher the settings, the more graphical processing power and memory the machine requires to continue pumping out polygons for your gaming pleasure. Again the top two performing machines are the HP Envy 15 and the Samsung Series 7 Chronos, with the difference between the two being ever so slight. What you can take away from this comparison however, is that when it comes to general gaming needs, the Envy 15 can definitely handle it. All you have to do is just prepare yourself for the fact that intensive gaming at really high resolutions isn’t possible on this otherwise capable machine. 

Far Cry 2

From earlier 3DMark 11 test, we could tell that the Samsung Series 7 Chronos has a very slight advantage over the HP Envy 15. But what about real world applications that matter, such as running an actual game like Far Cry 2? As it turns out, the mid-tier NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M that the Samsung RF 511 and Toshiba Satellite P755 are running, is actually superior, but only as far as running the Far Cry 2 game is concerned. This being a notebook review, we wouldn’t want to drag you into an AMD vs. NVIDIA argument, so let’s not get into how one brand of graphic card is better than the other.

What you can safely take away from this segment of the review is that the HP Envy 15 and its AMD graphics module can very safely run graphics intensive games, but only when you keep the resolution to a modest 1024 x 768 pixels, and with minimal graphical options. Anything higher than that, and we won’t be able to guarantee you the same butter smooth frame rates recorded here for comparison. In this case, even though the HP Envy 15 can take advantage of its full HD screen, it doesn't have the horsepower to run games at that resolution. So what can you do with the high resolution screen? Work on large excel sheets effortlessly and enjoy full HD movies of course!

Battery and Portability Index

When it comes to 15-inch notebooks, we find that they aren’t exactly very mobile, but they are are still aren't overly huge and bulky like 17-inch class notebooks. The 15.6-inch HP Envy 15 is more of a workhorse that you’d carry twice a day. To work/school, and back. Nothing more, nothing less. But of course, there might be times when you need it to be untethered from the wall for some impromptu presentations or something, so battery life does play a part in the overall performance of the HP Envy 15. For comparison, we’ve gathered the same machines we used to make performance comparisons -- the Samsung Series 7 Chronos, which has a similar battery capacity, and the Samsung RF 511 and Toshiba Satellite P755, which have similar performance, but much smaller battery capacities.

Battery Life

The machine with the best performance here, is the Samsung Series 7 Chronos, with the HP Envy 15 very close behind. This is definitely due to the two machines sporting very similar hardware specs. The only difference here is that the Samsung Series 7 Chronos has a slightly higher capacity integrated battery which can’t be easily removed like the one found in the HP Envy 15. The machines were tested by running a DVD video loop (with screen brightness and volume at 50%) to see how long it can last in this power draining task.

The HP Envy 15 managed to stay alive for a good 193 minutes, which means it can last for about 3 hours, or the equivalent of two movies which is good if you have to travel a lot. Having said that, you can expect the machine to last quite a bit longer if you are just surfing the web, or doing productivity tasks that involve nothing more than Microsoft Excel. 

Power Consumption

When it comes to prolonging battery life, it would be advantageous to understand just how much energy the machine draws when performing tasks, like the DVD loop used to gauge the battery life of the machine. In our tests, the HP Envy 15 drew about 21.9 watts of power, making it the second most efficient machine in the line-up. It’s quite impressive given how bright the HP Envy 15’s screen actually is, or how powerful the built-in speakers are, and finally that it is running a fairly powerful quad-core processor. 

Portability Index

Our unique portability index is based on a mathematical formula that indicates whether or not it is worth your time to carry the HP Envy 15 around. The better the machine scores here, the more portable it is in its class of notebooks. Elements that get rolled into this formula include the machine’s battery life, weight, volume and battery capacity. Basically the lighter the machine, the longer the battery life, the better its portability index.

Here, the HP Envy 15 has a score that is quite typical of multimedia machines. It’s somewhat behind the Samsung Series 7 Chronos only because its battery life isn’t as good, nor is it as light and compact. However, as a machine that is geared towards the family, we find its portability ratio to be acceptable (though not great). As far as home oriented multimedia machines go, there really isn't a need for that much portability. If it was your prime priority, you should have been looking at Ultrabook options. 

Family Fun Package

Multimedia machines in the home, are great for a myriad of reasons. While most of the time, they are being used for watching movies, surfing the Internet and arranging photos, there are times when a family member needs the machine to indulge in the occasional PC game. This simply means these machines have to be adept at every multimedia scenario you can think of.

One such machine, and the object of this review, is the HP Envy 15. To us, this is a notebook that can handle almost everything everyone in the family can throw at it. But of course, being able to handle all computing scenarios doesn't quite cut it anymore. These days, a notebook has to look the part while ensuring performance is great, and the HP Envy 15 would not disappoint. Constructed from an aluminum chassis with black exterior and silver/red trimming on the sides and interior, the HP Envy 15 feels solid, durable and gives off an envious feeling.

Besides looks, it also comes with a few notable features, like the retro looking Beats jog dial that acts as a button to summon a neat looking Beats audio control panel. That means consumers won’t have to jab at the traditional "+" or "-" buttons on their keyboards when they need to control the volume. Envy 15 users only need to gently, and elegantly stroke the jog dial to coax the machine to output music out at their preferred volume.

So it looks, feels and functions great, but what about its raw performance? We wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s better or worse than other multimedia machines out in the market now. Generally its performance was within expectations - not too bad, yet not stellar either but that’s fine. Other performance areas fared better such as its audio and visual subsystem along with its decent battery life.

Ultimately when you put everything together, the HP Envy 15 is actually a pretty good multimedia machine. It does what you need it to do, and does it well without any issues. For those focused on superficial aspects, it would seem to be emulating an Apple MacBook Pro, but as we've mentioned in the review, its color combination and other design elements do give it a slightly unique footprint. Its high asking price of S$1999 might tempt you to look for other options, but as with any of HP’s Envy line of premium notebooks, it's not about price and performance, but it's about the whole package that the HP Envy 15 is.

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