It’s slick, it’s sexy, and it could be yours for free!
HP has sent us a brand spanking, shiny new and fully loaded HP Envy 15 to give away to our visitors!
As much as HP probably doesn’t want to compare this to a Macbook Pro, its hard not to. An aluminum
chassis that is only one-inch thick, sleek and simple lines, a multi-touch trackpad, and extreme power under the hood makes this
laptop a definite contender.
The Case
Standing one inch thick (yes, just one), this thing is -slim-. We put it up next to an HP Mini 1000 and they're very close. But dont let the size fool you. Behind the thin aluminum chassis you'll find room for dedicated graphics, up to 16gb of ram, and two hard drive bays. The one thing you wont find though is an optical drive. It's not so much of a loss since these days with the prevalence of usb keys, isos and virtual drives, optical media is rarely ever used. We suspect anyone buying this laptop would be the sort of tech-savvy person that would'nt need to use optial media often anyway. Nevertheless not having one is a downside. Our giveaway model did come shipped with an external Blu-ray ROM/DVDDL Burner drive which is great for watching movies and the few times you'll need to burn a cd.
The screen is attached to the aluminum body with one giant monolithic hinge. We suspect that breaking this would be pretty difficult. The case surrounding the screen is quite thin and flexible. One of my favorite tests is the "coffee cup on the lid" test. I look for sturdy notebooks that when closed do not flex under the simple weight of a coffee cup, camera or whatever else you may put on your notebook. The Envy 15 sacrifices this rigid durability for the thinness of the design, so the lid flexes rather easily.
The Ports and Connectivity
All of the ports were placed on the right side of the frame. The Envy 15 features two usb ports, a displayport, a lan port, and interestingly enough a combined eSATA/USB port. For those who are right handed and looking to use a mouse with this laptop, you may find the placement of these ports intrusive and an obstacle if you ever decide to plug enything into them.
In terms of networking, the HP Envy 15 comes with an Intel Wireless-N Mini card with Bluetooth (Intel Wifi-Link 5100).
The Adornments
The case comes laser etched with a particularly unique dotted-grid-like design. This reviewer personally would have prefered no design, but HP has a history of doing so on their products these days.
The Keyboard
HP chose to go with "island" style keys with a full-size keyboard that is very similar to the Cupertino style of design. They seemed to work well and without issue, however if there was one thing we wished for it would have been the option for backlit keys. We pictured it here next to a Lenovo Thinkpad W500 for reference.
The Multi-touch Touchpad
One thing you will notice is the touchpad. it is one big touchpad with "faux" buttons underneath the area which you would be used to clicking. It is also multi-touch capable for those programs that support it.
The Screen
Compared to it's little brother the Envy 13, the Envy 15 boasts a 15.6" Widescreen Ultra Briteview LED Screen. It is powered by the ATI Mobility Radeon 4830 Discreet Graphics with 1GB of dedicated DDR3, in addition to the ability to use some of the onboard system memory to power the graphics card.
Visually, the screen looks great, however a flaw in this design is that the screen is incredibly glossy, picking up any and all reflections of light from your surroundings.
The Resolution
Another website reported that the maximum resolution of this screen was only 1366x768, but our production model supported a full 1080p resolution of 1920x1080.
Performance
In addition to having powerful graphics, the Envy 15 puts to use the new Intel Core I7 processor. Ours came with a Intel Core i7-720QM processor with 1.6ghz with Turbo Boost up to 2.8ghz, but as an upgrade can be outfitted with the i7-820 which is 1.73ghz. But wait there's more! The Envy 15 supports 4 sticks of memory, up to a total of 16GB of DDR3 Memory. But that's not all folks! Our test model came equipped with Dual 160GB Solid State Drives in a RAID 0 configuration for smoking read/write performance!
Throw all of these together and you're looking at a One-inch thin notebook that outperforms many desktops in terms of processing, graphics, hard drives, and memory. That is impressive.
The Battery
The ENVY 15 comes with one 6-cell lithim ion polymer battery and an optional 9-cell "Slim Fit Extended Life Battery" is available. This attaches directly to the bottom of your notebook for extra power.
The Price
So yeah yeah, this thing is impressive! it must cost an arm and a leg right? Well the HP Envy 15 starts at $1799.99 before any discounts or promotions. The fully loaded model that we reviewed has a list price of at least $3099.99 (and at the time of this brief preview, we couldn't select the dual SSDs that ours had, which we suspect would add anywhere from $600-800 in price!)
So this thing can be as simple or as extreme as you could desire. But its truly one of the few pcs in its league.
15.6" LED Screen, Intel 5100 Wifi/Bluetooth, 320GB SSD, BLU-Ray ROM, 1.6GHZ Core I7 with Turbo Boost to 2.8ghz, 16GB Ram, Windows 7 Pro, 6 Cell Li-ION Battery plus Slim Fit Extended Battery, ATI Mobility Radeon HD4830 with 1GB DDR3 Dedicated, Webcam
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