HP Envy 4 Ultrabook - An Envy 4 Everyone

Envy Going Mainstream?

HP's Envy range - as the name suggests - has traditionally been HP's premium line of products with its Pavilion range being the mid-tier one. However, at its Global Influencer Summit earlier this year, HP unveiled two new Envy Ultrabooks, the 14-inch Envy 4 and the 15.6-inch Envy 6, which seems to be causing those lines to blur or even confuse consumers.

For example, HP's new Pavilion DV6 notebook is equipped with a 15.6-inch 1920x1080 full HD matte display, whereas the HP Envy 4 is only available with a much more standard resolution display of 1366 x 768 pixels. The difference isn't just a matter of screen size either, the Envy 6 (essentially identical to the Envy 4, but with a 15.6-inch screen) comes with the same unflattering resolution too. 

Apart from the screen resolution rant, the Envy 4 is one of the most affordably priced Envy notebooks we've seen so far. Our review unit has an SRP of S$1299, but a lower-end SKU for s$1099 is also available. To put things in perspective, the Pavilion DV6 has an SRP of S$1699. So what are you getting for that low price point?

The Envy 4 certainly carries a premium look and feel. Its design is quite different from the usual silver MacBook clone aesthetic, with a black, brushed aluminum lid, a matching interior, and a plastic base coated in a nice soft-touch red finish. You also get a 14-inch screen, instead of the typical 13.3-inch size.

Inside, it's armed with an ultra low-voltage Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5-3317U (1.7GHz) dual-core processor, 8GB RAM, a hybrid 500GB HDD with 32GB SSD cache and discrete AMD Radeon HD 7670M GPU with 2GB DDR3. As with all recent Envy series of notebooks, it comes with Beats Audio, and, for the first time on any Ultrabook, a built-in subwoofer.

Other than the disappointing screen resolution and lack of a true SSD strorage drive option, the Envy 4 looks like quite an enticing offer, especially at its price point, but is it as good as it seems? 

N.B. The entry-level Envy 4 SKU, priced at S$1099 does not boast the discrete GPU or 32GB SSD cache, but is otherwise identical. Due to it not having the solid state cache, which is required under Intel's Ultrabook branding criteria, HP is calling this particular edition a Sleekbook.

Design

As mentioned before, the Envy 4 is one of the more interesting looking Ultrabooks out there, and we like that HP has chosen to go a different route from the all-silver MacBook template chosen by so many other wannabes. On top, it is serious and business-like, with a sleek black, brushed aluminum lid, where this design continues inside with a matching interior. Build quality is solid, and the finish looks top notch. One minor gripe is that the brushed aluminum finish is quite the fingerprint magnet.

Underneath, it's all party, with the entire baseplate covered in a vivid red, soft-touch finish. As well as feeling quite nice, the soft-touch finish also gives the notebook a bit of extra grip, which stops it from sliding around when handling it.

Keyboard & Trackpad

The chiclet-style keyboard is similar to ones we've seen on other HP notebooks, and the Envy 4 is no different as it continues to impress us with its firm response and decent key travel distance. As with other HP models, the Function keys are reversed, with their multimedia operations functioning as the default. One thing that slightly spoils the aesthetic is the use of a "keyboard well" rather than a one-piece interior, although that would have undoubtedly inched its price upwards.

The large trackpad is of the clickpad variety with the right-hand area under the line functioning the right-click duties. It shares a similarly dark finish and sports a reflective concentric design very similar to the lid of ASUS's Zenbook. The trackpad itself is fast and smooth, without any obvious deadspots. Multi-touch gestures are supported, which seemed to work a bit better than on other Ultrabooks, partially due to the larger size of the pad. Both two-finger scroll and HP's four-finger swipe (to tab between programs) were easy to execute and worked the majority of the time.

Display and Audio

The screen on the Envy 4 is satisfactory, but not outstanding. While it's relatively bright, and viewing angles are fairly good, the 1366 x 768 pixels resolution is disappointing. The display is also very glossy.

Audio on the other hand, was better than expected. The main speakers, which are located above the keyboard are fairly standard for an Ultrabook, but it's the addition of a subwoofer on the underside that makes the Envy 4 really stand out. While it's not a replacement for a true subwoofer (the ones found on some of the high-end 17-inch gaming notebooks are better), there is a marked improvement compared to other Ultrabooks, which often sound too 'thin and tinny'. Overall sound volume is also respectably loud - enough for you to annoy the neighbors when you 'drop the bass'.

As with other Envy notebooks, the Beats Audio only really works when you connect a pair of high-end headphones to the electrically shielded audio jack.

Ports and Connectivity

Connectivity on the Envy 4 is fairly good, with all of the required essentials covered from a modern sleek notebook:-

Performance and Benchmarking

Specs-wise, there aren't many that match-up directly with the HP Envy 4 since it's 14-inch Ultrabook. As such, we're pitting it against a couple of different machines that compete against it in various ways. Sony's 13.3-inch VAIO T Ultrabook utilizes the same CPU, RAM and hybrid 500GB HDD with 32GB SSD cache but is slightly smaller and uses only integrated graphics.

To see how the Envy 4's discrete GPU fares, we're pitting it against another 'Ultrabook' with a discrete GPU, Acer's Aspire Timeline Ultra M3. And finally, we also have a pure Ultrabook with the standard Intel specs (integrated GPU, full SSD) - an Ivy Bridge reference platform from Intel itself.

PCMark 7

The Envy 4 was somewhat underwhelming on PCMark 7, which tests a system's overall performance. However, its scores should be taken with a grain of salt as we have noticed discrepancies in the past when comparing across machines with SSD drives and integrated graphics. We've noticed that Intel's HD Graphic 4000 GPU skews the Creativity and Computation scores on PCMark 7 (as can be seen in both the Sony VAIO T and Intel Reference Ultrabook), which in turn results in a higher overall PCMark score. And systems using a true SSD storage get an even stronger boost in results. As such, it's important to decipher results from benchmarks, which in this case just means that it's accurate to compare within similarly configured systems. So from an overall perspective, the results for the HP Envy 4 notebook is reasonable for its configuration.

3DMark 11

3Dmark 11 tests a system's graphics capabilities through a series of tests using various DirectX 11 functions like tessellation, DirectCompute and multi-threading. Here, the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3's NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M was the clear winner, beating the Envy 4's AMD Radeon HD 7670M by more than 50% on both settings. This is mainly due to the GeForce GT 640M using NVIDIA's newer 28nm Kepler-architecture, whereas the HD 7670M uses an older 40nm process, and is actually based on the same chip as the Radeon HD 6650M (it's just AMD's renaming schemes at work to make it sound more relevant - more reading on this subject over here).

The Envy 4 is however, quite a bit better than either of the integrated graphics based Ultrabooks compared. To what extent can it allow you to game? We find out in the next test with a real game.

Far Cry 2

In our gaming benchmark, we again saw the Envy 4's AMD graphics fall behind the Acer M3's, which was able to double the Envy 4's frame rates. However, the Envy 4's discrete GPU was once again better than Intel's integrated HD4000 graphics, with the Envy 4 scoring roughly 30% better than the Sony VAIO T at medium graphics settings. However, the difference increased to over 60% once you tune up the graphics quality to Very High. With an average frame rate of 26, it was certainly somewhat playable as compared to the stuttering results produced by the Sony VAIO T at the same game settings.

Intel's reference notebook performed better than the VAIO T due to its SSD drive and slightly faster processor, although it was still not enough to catch up to the HP Envy 4.

Battery Performance

Due to the Envy 4's discrete GPU, it doesn't have as much space within its chassis for a larger 6-cell battery, although this is partially compensated by its higher capacity battery. Comparatively, the 15.6-inch Acer M3 is even bigger, and as such, it does have the available internal space for a large battery. We tested all devices with Powermark V1.1.1's Balanced profile benchmark, which simulates everyday usage through web browsing, word processing, video viewing and light gaming workloads.

Both the HP Envy 4 and Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 were tested using their integrated graphics option selected since these everyday workloads don't benefit much from discrete graphics and the fact that we need to compare against the Sony Vaio T and the reference notebooks that are only equipped with integrated graphics.

Despite the HP Envy's 4-cell battery, its battery life was quite respectable, reaching 3 hours and 39 minutes, more than enough for watching a movie.

Power consumption on the Envy 4 was the worst of the four, but still decent only because of its larger 14-inch screen as opposed to the comparison notebooks using a 13.3-inch screen. Furthermore, there wasn't much difference between the tested notebooks.

Portability Index

Our portability index takes specs like weight, volume and battery life into consideration and tells you just how portable a machine is. The Envy 14's slightly larger size and weight brought down its overall score compared to the other Ultrabooks on our list (except for the larger and heavier Acer M3) but it was much better than the multimedia notebooks on our chart such as HP's Pavilion DV6. Overall, it seemed to be in a decent spot considering the Sony VAIO T's position which was somewhat underwhelming for a 13.3-inch Ultrabook.

Conclusion

While the HP Envy 4 didn't blow us away in our benchmark testing, it performed above average in all categories, and showed no glaring weaknesses.

While it's not quite as premium as you might expect from an Envy notebook (the 1366 x 768 pixels screen resolution and lack of full-fledged SSD unit stick out in particular), when compared to some of the other Ultrabooks, it still offers more features than what you would normally get, such as the larger screen, subwoofer and discrete (if not particularly powerful) graphics; all while retaining a relatively sleek footprint. It also has a full array of connectivity options, including the oft-missing RJ-45 LAN port, a good keyboard and a large trackpad. 

We also liked the interesting black-black-red theme (corresponding to the unit's top, interior and bottom respectively), which should appeal equally to professionals wanting something a bit different from the homogenous silver Ultrabook design, as well as the style-conscious Beats Audio crowd. Weight might be a small contention for some because it weighs 1.8kg, but it is in fact good for a 14-inch unit as opposed to the sea of 13.3-inch Ultrabooks that are normally about 1.4kg in weight. In fact, the Sony VAIO T tips the scales at 1.6kg. From that point of view, the HP Envy 4 is definitely decent for its size.

At S$1299, which puts it on the low-side of Ultrabook pricing, the HP Envy 4 is great value, and a superb entry into the Ultrabook market. This is an Envy that everyone can afford, while still retaining enough 'envious' features to set it apart from the rest of the Ultrabooks out there.

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