HP - ENVY Laptop with Intel® Core™ i7 Processor - Brushed Aluminum

CNET Editors' Review

A big brother to HP's 13-inch Envy 13, this upscale 15-inch model crams more computing power into a midsize laptop than anyone outside of Alienware's m15x. And while that system is a 10-pound monster, the Envy 15 manages to be both slim and reasonably lightweight, partially by ditching the internal optical drive--an unusual move for a larger laptop.

While the design and build quality are great, the $1,999 price is going to leave a little sticker shock, although that does include a second extended battery and an external DVD burner (a Blu-ray drive option is available if you order directly from HP).

As a svelte gaming/multimedia machine, we found a lot to like about the Envy 15, and it's certainly designed to be a bit of a status symbol. But we also ran into a few rough edges--difficulties playing back Blu-ray Discs and using certain software--that we chalk up to the difficulties of being the first generation of a new product line.

The Envy brand was originally used as part of HP's premium Voodoo line, but that Voodoo branding is now gone, leaving this a pure HP-labeled product. Like the 13-inch version of the Envy, this system features an aluminum body with a magnesium base, and the anonymous gunmetal gray lid contrasts nicely with a semi-random pattern of imprinted dots on the wrist rest.

For a 15-inch laptop, it's very slim and sexy, comparing positively to the 15-inch MacBook Pro. When you add the secondary slice battery, which is a thin flat battery that clips onto the entire bottom surface, the entire package gets thicker, and it feels more like a traditional boxy 15-inch laptop.

Also like the Envy 13, the Envy 15's interior is sparse, with a sunken keyboard made up of widely spaced, flat-topped metal-capped keys. Besides a simple power button above the keyboard, there's also a line of quick-launch buttons to the left of the keyboard for actions such as launching a Web browser or HP's MediaSmart software.

Speaking of software, the Envy 15 has a handful of issues and annoyances we encountered during our hands-on testing. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, the default Web browser, comes with a hideous HP Smart Web Printing sidebar turned on, as well as a mostly useless HP toolbar across the top. These add-ons are easily disabled if you know how, but it's annoying to force consumers to go through the motions to regain screen real estate.

We also ran into some issues with HP's included MediaSmart software that organizes and plays video, music, and photo files. The software generally works well (even if its superfluous for most tasks next to Windows Media Player or iTunes), but when we hooked up an external USB Blu-ray drive, we couldn't get the MediaSmart software to play a Blu-ray Disc--which seems like a waste of a perfectly good 1080p display. The software version number was exactly the same as found on the 13-inch Envy 13 (which played Bly-ray movies just fine), and we've had no trouble using external Blu-ray drives before, even on unusual hardware such an Apple iMac (running Windows under Boot Camp). We were, however, finally able to play a Blu-ray after installing PowerDVD, a third-party media playing app.

The Envy line, including both the 13 and 15-inch models, are branded with Beats Audio technology--the kind found in the popular Beats by Dre headphones. While the built-in speakers were surprisingly quiet, and next to useless for a cinematic experience, the headphone signal was nice and strong, and when we tried the audio paired with a set of Beats by Dre headphones, the result was excellent--we even had to turn the system volume down below 50 percent because the headphone output was so loud.

The 15.6-inch wide-screen LED display offers a 1,920x1080-pixel native resolution, which is as good as you'd find in any high-end 17-inch desktop replacement, and the perfect resolution for 1080p HD video. The screen wasn't excessively glossy, and both games and video looked great. The only thing we missed was the sharp-looking edge-to-edge glass found on the Envy 13.

Even thought it's a mid-size 15-inch laptop, the Envy 15's ports and connections are more like what one might find on an ultra-thin 13-inch laptop. Thanks in part to the slim body, there are only three USB ports and a single video output. Even the optical drive has been outsourced to an external box.

At the same time, HP manages to fit in one of the most powerful processors currently available, the 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 720QM. That gave us amazing performance, very similar (but a few seconds slower than), one of HP's other Core i7 laptops, the Pavilion dv7-3085dx. We've only seen significantly better overall benchmark scores from a handful of systems, such as the $3,000 Alienware m15x, which has a faster Core i7 920XM CPU.

Instead of a more common Nivida 200M-series GPU, the HP Envy 15 uses a 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830. For mid-to-high-end gaming, it performed well, giving us 68.4 frames per second in Unreal Tournament III at 1,440x900-pixel resolution. A dedicated gaming machine, the aforementioned Alienware m15x, with a single Nvidia GeForce GTX 260Mm, got 128 frames per second in the same test. In anecdotal testing, we were able to run the upcoming Avatar PC game smoothly at 1,920x1,080 pixels on the Envy 15.

Juice box
HP Envy 15	Average watts per hour
Off	0.46
Sleep	1.42
Idle	31.74
Load	91.65
Raw kWh Number	165.80
Annual energy cost	$18.82

The HP Envy 15 ran for 1 hour and 57 minutes on our video playback battery drain test, using the standard six-cell battery. That's disappointing for a 15-inch laptop, no matter how high-powered the components. The system also comes with a secondary slice battery (if you order the system direct from HP, you can add the second battery as an accessory). Using that battery, we got an additional 2 hours and 21 minutes of life. While we're sympathetic to the power restrictions of high-end components and a slim chassis, that's still a fairly short total working time even for those willing to lug two batteries around.

HP includes an industry-standard one-year parts-and-labor warranty with the system. Buying direct from HP allows you to upgrade to a three-year mail-in plan for $289, but a $2,000 super-premium laptop really should include a longer warranty out of the box. Envy owners get a dedicated support number to call, manned by, "Envy product experts." Online support chat is also available, and, according to HP, e-mails to its tech support team should be answered within one hour.

Unreal Tournament 3 (in frames per second)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

1,280x800, 0X AA, 8X AF*

1,440x900, 4X AA, 8X AF*

Asus G60VX-RBBX05 @ 1280x720

116.4

HP Envy 15-1050nr @ 1280x768 / 1400x1050

104.8

68.4

Sony Vaio VGN-FW560F/T @ 1280x720 / @ 16x9

82.5

49.1

HP Pavilion dv7-3085dx @ 16x9

71.1

55.1

Find out more about how we test laptops.

Asus G60VX-RBBX05
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450; 4,096MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GTX 260M; 320GB Seagate 7,200rpm

HP Envy 15-1050nr
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 720QM; 6,144MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4830; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm

Sony Vaio VGN-FW560F/T
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 2.13GHz Intel Core 2 Duo P7450; 6,144MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4650; 500GB Hitachi 5,400rpm

HP Pavilion dv7-3085dx
Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit); 1.6GHz Intel Core i7 720QM; 6,144MB DDR3 SDRAM 1066MHz; 1GB Nvidia GeForce GT 230M; 500GB Seagate 7,200rpm