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.
The Envy 15 is the medium-sized member of the crew, with a 15.6-inch screen and the same overhauled design you'll find across the Envy lineup. Delightfully, too, it marks the return of HP's eye-popping Radiance display, and also comes with a generous two-year warranty and full copies of Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. And with a starting price of $1,100, it sharply undercuts the 15-inch MacBook Pro, while taking direct aim at other high-end 15-inchers, like the Dell XPS 15z and Samsung Series 7 Chronos. So how does it stack up? Meet us after the break to find out.
As a rule of thumb, saying a laptop looks like a MacBook Pro is akin to a reviewer falling back on adjectives like "cool," "fun" and "crappy": it's imprecise, and not particularly helpful to our readers. Besides, "It looks like a Mac!" is often shorthand for "it has a chiclet keyboard!" or "it's painted silver!" Usually, we're talking about overarching similarities, at most. Does the XPS 15z bear a resemblance to a now-discontinued Mac? Kind of. Would you ever mistake that keyboard lettering and embellished hinge for Jony Ive creations? No way. And until the suits over in Cupertino start suing rival PC makers for their flattery, we're going to assume Apple understands this too.
Still, it's painfully obvious where HP drew its inspiration for its newest Envy laptops. It's not because of any single design choice, like the aluminum unibody chassis, island-style keys, glowing logo or giant clickpad; it's all of the above! HP's latest 15-incher is the most flagrant Mac imitation we've seen in some time, and the resemblance is close enough that you could, at first glance, mistake the interior for an MBP. Of course, HP threw in some flourishes that keep it from being a total facsimile: the lid and underside are black, not silver, the keyboard area has a thin red ring around it and there are Beats-branded volume controls on the laptop's right side. HP also rounded the edges so that they feel more like a butter knife than a steak utensil. Even so, tacking on an analog volume dial feels like the PC-making equivalent of Honda adding wings to the Civic and calling it the Civic Type R. What we're saying is, the Envy 15 is hardly identical, but HP doesn't deserve points for originality either.
In any case, the Envy 15 is attractive, uncluttered and well-made. The hinge feels sturdy, and the metal used in the palm rest seems less vulnerable to scratches than the aluminum casing on the MacBook Pro. Thanks to HP's CoolSense technology, the laptop also does a marvelous job of shifting heat off the bottom side of the laptop, so that you can rest it on your legs for hours without fear of first-degree burns. Still, you might hear some creaking when pressing your fingers against the right side of the palm rest. This is hardly a deal-breaker, though, especially since the laptop's too unwieldy to lift with one hand anyway.
Continuing our tour around the Envy 15's imposing frame, the bottom side has a reasonably clean look, but still gives you access to the battery and hard drive. A long vent takes up the back side, with the left and right edges consumed by a wide selection of ports, including three USB ports (one 2.0 and two of the 3.0 persuasion), HDMI, DisplayPort, an Ethernet jack, a memory card reader, Kensington lock slot, a microphone port and dual headphone jacks. A slot-loading DVD drive lives on the left side (sorry, no Blu-ray option on this model.) In terms of the layout, HP 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. Good news for anyone who hates the sight of all their peripherals growing out of a tightly packed cluster of USB ports.
Keyboard and trackpad
When we first got hands-on with the Envy 15 back in the fall, we came away impressed by its deep, pillowy keys. Having used them for almost a week, though, it's clear the keyboard suffers from the same fundamental problem as a lot of its shallower brethren. Which is to say, despite having lots of travel, it feels sticky, and we got used to typing with concerted effort in order to ensure every letter registered. If, like the Engadget crew, you get paid to write thousands of words at a time, this could be an occupational hazard, but perhaps it won't be as annoying for pecking out short web searches. In the grand scheme of keyboards, it's eminently usable, but we recall a more natural typing experience on rival machines like the Dell XPS 14z / 15z.
The keys sure are pretty, at least. Like other laptops in the Envy lineup, the 15 has a backlight underneath each individual key, allowing for a brighter glow than what you'll find on most other laptops. If you'd rather save your battery power, you can press F5 to deactivate this feature, in which case only that function button will glow white -- a helpful reminder of how to turn it back on again.
While we muddled through with the keyboard, though, we never did make peace with the trackpad. For starters, the surface offers a bit too much friction, and even dragging the cursor across the screen can feel like a two-step process. Two-fingered scrolling requires a good deal of pressure, and even then, we often found ourselves pawing at the trackpad in vain. Pinch to zoom doesn't demand as much pressure, but the pad is so sensitive to this gesture that it's easy to overshoot and accidentally scale text so that it's too large or too small. Worse, the touchpad often mistook right clicks for left ones, and dumped the cursor on random spots in the page. Sometimes this happened even while we were typing, and our palms happened to graze the pad. Even if HP and Synaptics could cook up a driver update to make for a smoother experience, there would still be one lingering pain point: as with the Folio 13, the clickpad mechanism here is stiff, and difficult to press. You can avoid the button somewhat by tapping to left click, but who wants to have to re-learn how to interact with a PC?
Display
Though the base Envy 15 comes with a humdrum 1366 x 768 panel, you can upgrade to a 1080p, IPS Radiance display for an extra $150. And really, you should. Not only is the screen worth it, but we'd go so far as to say this is one of the more likely reasons you'd choose this over any of the other umpteen 15-inch laptops on the market. It's not just the 1920 x 1080 pixel count (though that's certainly welcome); it's the deep blacks, the rich colors and that bright backlighting. Not to mention, those versatile viewing angles. Whether you're pounding away at a Word document or going on a Netflix bender, you won't spend too much time futzing with the screen angle before going about your business. While the contest remains consistently balanced, though, that reflective finish can get in the way of easy viewing if you dip the lid forward, or watch a movie from an off-kilter position. It wasn't a constant annoyance, but use the machine long enough and you'll eventually catch the display at the wrong angle, in the wrong light, and find yourself staring down pockets of glare. This varies depending on the brightness level, as you'll see in the gallery below.
There's no doubt this is one of the most arresting displays you'll find in a laptop, and we're glad HP came to its senses after discontinuing the Radiance panel offered on the last-gen Envy 14. Still, it's worth noting that the VAIO SE series starts at $1,000 with a 1080p display and it has a matte finish. The XPS 15z is also offered with a 300-nit, 1920 x 1080 screen, though in all fairness we weren't enamored with the contrast or viewing angles. And though the MacBook Pro's standard 1440 x 900 display leaves room for improvement (a bump in brightness and wider viewing angles on the glossy panel top our list), it's at least offered with an anti-glare finish, giving fans of matte screens yet another option.
We should also warn you that we're hearing complaints from early adopters who say their Radiance panels are showing some inaccurate color calibration -- specifically, that shades of red appear more orange than crimson, while violet looks more blue than purple. In a statement, an HP spokesperson told us, "We are looking into this. We'll get back to our customers because we're committed to earning their satisfaction." In the meantime, then, we'll offer the gallery below as a sampling of what you'll get on the Envy 15 versus other laptops. We'll admit: the hues here skew more red-orange than red, though the pink-reds you'll see elsewhere aren't necessarily pitch-perfect either. We'd be willing to concede the color reproduction here is different, to say the least, and likely in need of some fine-tuning. We're guessing a lot of folks will notice the vibrant, saturated colors first, and the orangey reds second, if at all. Then again, once you know what to look for, it's impossible to ignore.
While we're on the subject of the Envy 15's dense, sprawling screen, the laptop comes loaded with Intel's Wireless Display technology for mirroring your desktop and streaming 1080p movies to a monitor or HDTV. To do this, you'll need to spring for an adapter like this. Once you've procured that, you'll find the setup easy and the streaming fluid. Just be sure to keep the laptop outside your peripheral vision, as playback between the laptop and monitor tends to be slightly out of sync.
Battery life
The Envy 15's eight-cell (4,780mAh) battery lasted through more than four hours of video playback in our standard rundown test, which bodes even better if you want a few hours of unplugged web surfing on the couch. All told, that's slightly better than what you'd get with the Sony VAIO SE series (sans the optional slice battery that Sony sells for $150). It's also notable that the Envy 15 manages to pull slightly longer runtime than the smaller, last-gen Envy 14.
Still, as respectable as that runtime is, we can think of a handful of similarly sized laptops that last longer. These include the Dell XPS 15z, which has a 20-minute lead; the Series 7 Chronos and Acer TimelineX AS5830T, both of which hover in the six-hour range; and the MacBook Pro, which squeezed out seven and a half hours in the same test. Of course, the trade-off to the MBP's epic battery life is that its battery is non-user-replaceable, which, as we all know, can be a pain when the capacity eventually depletes.
Software
In addition to the usual suspects (read: Norton Internet Security and Microsoft Office), the Envy 15 comes with full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements on board -- useful programs that OEMs tend not to throw in gratis. Other benign apps include CyberLink YouCam and Power2Go, and Windows Live Essentials 2011. As you might expect, though, HP's own tools comprise a fair chunk of the pre-installed software. These include utilities like HP Power Manager, Quick Launch, Setup, Support Assistant and Power Manager, as well as HP's own movie store. This time around, at least, these apps didn't get in our way as much as they have with other HP systems we've tested.
Wrap-up
Okay, time to get it out of your system. Say it with us: the Envy 15 unapologetically copies the MacBook Pro. Feel good, getting that off your chest? Excellent. Onto the business of evaluating the laptop for what it does. In some ways, the 15 improves on the notebook it so unsubtly imitates: it has a sharper (though imprecisely calibrated) display with wide viewing angles. Its speakers and miniature subwoofer produce exceptional audio for a laptop. The laptop comes with a generous two-year warranty, Intel Wireless Display and full copies of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements. It won't burn your legs, thanks to an effective heat management system. And at $1,100, it's more affordable than that other Envy.
But HP stumbles in several critical areas: the Envy 15 is heavier than other laptops in its class, and in exchange for toting that extra heft, you're rewarded with middling battery life. The keyboard's alright, but we did have to type in a deliberate way to ensure it recognized our every press. Then there are those color accuracy problems. Most importantly, though, the laptop's saddled with a finicky, stiff touchpad -- a nuisance large enough to slow down your entire workflow. A shame, since this is an otherwise speedy machine. Because of these shortcomings, the Envy 15 doesn't best the MacBook Pro, though it admirably undercuts its lofty $1,800 starting price. All told, the Envy 15 offers some compelling features for the money, but before you pull the trigger we'd suggest you also check out the Dell XPS 15z, which is lighter with a comfier keyboard / trackpad, as well as the long-lasting Samsung Series 7 Chronos. If you do go for the Envy 15, we hope you have a pretty stationary setup in mind: you'll want an outlet close by and also, a mouse.
Tags:Laptop Technolog , HP Envy 15 laptop , HP laptop batteries
, Hp 485041-003 batteries , Dell inspiron 1720 batteries
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