HP - ENVY TouchSmart 15.6" Touch-Screen Laptop - AMD FX-Series - 6GB Memory - 750GB Hard Drive - Natural Silver

I'm going to switch the usual review order and start with the bad on this laptop, then get to the good, since I like dispensing with short lists before tackling long ones. The bad. -When you first start using this laptop, some of the bloatware that comes pre-installed on it can make it perform slower than one would expect from a processor of this caliber. Uninstall this--though there's surprisingly little of it compared to many machines--and it will start to run like a scalded dog. -Also, the WiFi transceiver in it seems a bit on the weak side. -And, finally, the Beats Audio bit really doesn't impress me. My old Compaq Presario with its Altec Lansing speakers produced comparable sound, and the Beats Audio software seems to do some downright weird stuff to the sound, especially noticeable when using headphones. I have to wonder how much less money this laptop would've cost had it not been for the licensing fees to use the Beats Audio name. Now, for the good. -The AMD FX-7500 processor is quite a little speed demon. I'd readily compare it to an upper-midrange Core i7 processor, but with a good $200 lower price tag. -The integrated R7 GPU stomps pretty much every Intel HD integrated GPU I've used. It performs much more like a discrete GPU than an integrated one, and considering about the only way to get comparable graphics performance from an Intel-based system is for it to have a discrete AMD or GeForce GPU, the processor in this laptop makes it an even better deal, since a discrete GPU only drives up the price of Intel-based systems even more. -The styling is quite sleek. It's comparable to the MacBook pro. In fact, I'm convinced the design is an unabashed attempt to reflect the stylings of Apple's flagship laptop. And, considering this laptop costs only about 1/3 as much, yet it seems to have faster overall performance, it's easy to see why HP chose the name Envy. -Though it's just over 6 lbs, it's thinner than many laptops, because they eschewed an internal optical drive (but if you buy a USB optical drive with it, you get a decent discount on that device), and the overall heft, which still isn't too bad, seems to be a sign of its substantial build quality. It feels like it's built for the long haul and not just as a throw-away plastic thing like most less-expensive models. -The touch screen is responsive and bright. The colors are a little muted, but I've seen far worse, and laptop displays that are better cost a lot more...much more than I think they're actually worth. The display on this laptop offers great all-around performance for the price. -The track pad is just as responsive as the touch screen, and it comes with some nice features. It also clicks like the track pads on MacBooks, without separate buttons. It's roomy and offers plenty of space for multi-touch gestures. Though, I still prefer to use a mouse, so I set the track pad to automatically turn itself off when a USB pointing device is attached (also a nice feature). -The backlit keyboard is pretty. Though, its usefulness as more than just eye candy is questionable except when the display brightness is turned all the way down in the dark. Unless this is the case, the display's light seems plenty bright to make the keyboard easy to see even without the backlight on, since the keyboard is the same silver finish as the rest of the laptop, which is reflective enough to see in the display's light. But, if nothing else, the keyboard does look nice when lit up. -The battery life is about average for a machine with this laptop's specs. If you create a custom power plan for running on the battery, you should be able to squeeze out around 6 hours under light duty. I was able to get about 4.5 hours with a mix of web-browsing, video-watching and document-creation. It could be better, but it could also be worse. -The cooling fan is quiet. Though the laptop can produce a bit of heat when playing games, because all of the processors and other gadgets in it ramp up their output, the fan itself never gets above a whisper. I was impressed by this. -Built-in Bluetooth. I'm surprised this isn't standard in all laptops these days, but, alas, it's still limited to the mid-to-upper-level models. This one has it. Overall, I'd say this laptop provides everything you'd expect for a machine with its price, and perhaps a bit more. It holds its own against some of the better Core i7 processors, and it mops the floor with Intel GPUs (also holding its own against discrete third-party GPUs in Intel-based systems), and it does it for hundreds less than these comparable machines. Though it would've been all too easy for HP to put in another 2GB of RAM for pretty much the same price, 6GB seems ample for most of what you're likely to do with it (I'm a photographer and graphic designer, and it has so far handled everything I've thrown at it in this category with aplomb, and it's done so without having to switch to excruciatingly slow virtual memory). Gaming on it has so far been decent. It can handle Crysis 3 on low settings, which might sound like a disappointment, but if you've played Crysis 3 on low settings, you're familiar with just how good this game still looks even then. And it plays Tomb Raider on high settings quite well. Skyrim plays on ultra settings without issues. Though I've used laptops with even better specs (I use one at my job with an Intel Core i7-4600M with discrete AMD Radeon HD 8790M GPU), those machines cost much, much more than this one, and their build quality generally isn't even as good. For its price, I can't think of a better overall machine from both performance and style perspectives than this HP Envy. And, if HP would forego the whole Beats Audio thing, which I feel is completely overrated, it could cost even less, which would make it a downright phenomenal deal.

For the money, this system represents excellent value. The AMD FX chip provides a built in R7 graphics that is good enough for some light gaming and accelerates apps like Photoshop. I think that the performance is better than an Intel based IGP solution, common in this price range. Hard to say if the boost is from raw power or just better optimization for AMD Radeon hardware. You sacrifice a bit of battery life and CPU speed for the benefit of enhanced graphics performance, but for those wanting a more balanced range of capabilities, this is likely one of the best. I purchased this with the intention of replacing the built in hard disk with an SSD. But, I did use it in the stock configuration for several days and while the system was obviously I/O limited in most tasks, it still felt good when running applications. With the SSD installed it is much zippier. At that point you become CPU limited and the system feels very fast. For those who are interested in doing this, I highly recommend it. The HP recovery DVDs that you can create can be used to re-install the OS on your new drive. Note: I wasn't able to get the recovery disks to install on a 128GB SSD but it worked just fine on a 256. So it is possible that you need a disk at least in that range. The SSD that worked for me was a Crucial MX100 256GB. The laptop build quality is better than expected. The case feels solid and stays pretty cool. Coming from a company issued Macbook Pro ($2500) to this didn't feel like much of a downgrade, despite the price disparity. The FX is no i7 but it was hard to notice once the SSD was in there. The keyboard flexes a bit too much, but isn't a bad keyboard in terms of overall feel. While the lid and other visible parts are a nice solid metal, the underside is plastic. Both good and bad if you ask me. Access to the replaceable memory and hard drive is as simple as removing the battery and a single screw. It is a bit of a shame that there is no optical drive, since many people might not have a large enough flash drive to build the USB-stick recovery option. Two of the four USB ports are high-speed USB3. Meh. The biggest disappointment for me is actually the beats audio. The only thing about the speakers that impresses is the volume. They sure do get loud. The fidelity is poor however and the low-end is nearly non-existent. Still, it is better than the average built-ins so maybe they felt that would be enough to call them "beats". None of those lows can take away from what is still a very good value for a well-rounded machine that can handle just about anything. I've played Far Cry 3 on low settings and Endless Legend on High and felt like both played pretty well. I use the VM features (enabled through a bios option, F10) and have several VMs running while I code without slowdown. It gets five stars from me, for doing the job and not breaking the bank.

First, to note to everyone who has purchased any laptop in the past 10 years, As with any laptop you buy nowadays - (if your tech savvy enough or know someone who is) you SHOULD wipe the laptop and put a fresh installation of windows on it (free download to flash drive from microsofts website for 8.1). This made this laptop ~20-30% faster Preloaded bloat ware = lower prices for your laptop, but also a perceived "slowness" and abundance of useless "warning! your PC is not protected! blahblahblah" messages. Microsoft includes it's own basic antivirus, firewall, and malware protection - free. Pros: AMD A10 APU - FX Series - get it while you can - these are very powerful CPUs that also include a GPU. More than enough for your daily tasks. Handles moderate gaming very well (much better than similarly priced Intel counter parts) Exceptional performance for the price Daily tasks are a breeze - I'm a programmer and I am not disappointed by this machine Sleek look and feel. Keyboard is responsive and has a back light :) Cons: The touch pad is quite large. At first, I found myself accidentally bumping into it which made my cursor jump around. I've since gotten used to it Overall - A great buy. You'll be very satisfied. After a couple weeks I slapped a 240GB solid state drive in here and the thing now loads in less than 8 seconds. Truly amazing laptop. Very impressed. I'm glad I didn't spend ~30% more to get something this fast. I would recommend though, if you are planning on doing some "moderate gaming" (I usually play league of legends - runs at Max), that you buy faster RAM. These APUs LOVE fast RAM.

It's a 'good' computer but I'm not convinced that it's a 'great' computer! The touchpad seemed to be super sensitive when I first started using the computer. Just getting near it seemed to send the curser to some other area of the screen. I could not figure out how to dial it down or disable it with out calling for technical support and even then it took two people to get to the control location and disable it. This should be straight forward and simple to toggle on/off. With less than one months use I began experiencing a black out of the display while on the internet which lasted only a second however when it came back I had a "display driver failure" message. Shortly thereafter when waking it wouldn't power back on until I completely cut power from the computer. After a couple hours with the tech support people and having all the drivers reloaded the problem seems to have been resolved. However I was told that this has happened with others and on one occasion a the display board and mother board needed to be replaced. I'm not feeling very confident in my purchase but am willing to give it time. Unfortunately when the techs reloaded the drivers and did their work the touchpad was toggled back on. Still not being able to determine how to turn it off I called again and the tech I talked to this time merely decreased the sensitivity. This has helped - however there are occasions when I still have to look to see where the curser has disappeared to! I would prefer it be turned off again! Otherwise the system is functioning flawlessly and seems to be a pretty nice computer. I especially like the back lighting on the keyboard. I use the computer a quite often during the night and appreciate not having to turn on lights just to be able to see the keys, I would recommend this to any one - but with the caution that while it hasn't been the rock solid computer I had hoped for, it has been doing all that I need it to do and appears to be working as it should be. Hopefully it will continue to work properly and that I can gain some confidence with it. Then I will feel a lot more comfortable with my purchase!

I love this laptop. I had been on the shelf for a while about one to get to replace my dying Acer that was running slower than a turtle. After a lot of flip-flopping and recommendations from friends with HP laptops similar to mine, I finally bit the bullet. However, they did not have the machine I went in to purchase and when I asked about it the first sales rep to help me immediately steered me towards a $1500 machine. Really? I felt his sales technique was insulting and I didn't appreciate his attitude. I told him I'd be looking into it and wouldn't be purchasing. However, I got in contact with a friend with a similar HP model laptop and did some research and thinking and decided I really wanted this machine. The second sales rep was extremely helpful and friendly and he was the one I gave the sale to. My only complaint is not even with the system or Best Buy or in the manufacturer, but in Windows 8.1. I know it will upgrade soon, but shortly after I got my laptop, a BIOS update from HP ran and a bunch of Windows Updates ran. After that? My keyboard got a bad glitch in it where it would not recognize words with double letters. Like letter would be "leter." I contacted HP's support as the laptop is under warranty and they sent a box to me the next day. I got it back in about 8 business days and the problem was in bad updates messing with the keyboard driver where the driver had to be uninstalled and reinstalled. It was not in the hardware at all. Specs wise? This little guy performs really well for what I need it for and I really do love the Beats Audio. I'm happy with my purchase and would recommend this to anyone, but with the caution of being careful with updates etc and would steer anyone away from that first sales rep I had.

I bought the hp envy with the AMD FX-7500 APU with 6B ram & R7 graphics. As soon as I got it home I added 4Gb of ram to make it 12GB total. This laptop was an upgrade from a 15" dell with 4GB of ram and a core i3 processor. This laptop boots into windows 8.1 (came with 8.) very quickly, switches between apps smoothly and will even do gaming on medium settings (depends on game). The sound is awesome on this laptop, it's very loud and crisp. Don't expect booming lows, as this is still a laptop, but the beats audio is second to none. It runs relatively cool, unless I am running a demanding game or benchmarking, but that's to be expected. It's whisper quiet while in normal operation, which is a great thing. The screen is a little lacking however. The viewing angles aren't as good as my wifes dell 15" touchscreen w/IPS, and teh colors seem a bit washed out, but overall it's a decent experience for this price range. The touch screen is an added bonus for me, and it's very responsive and responds quickly. This laptop does not have a dvd or blu-ray drive, but that's honestly not a big deal for me as most software offers digital downloads. Windows 8.1 is different, but very fast and so far hassle free. I would give this laptop an 8.5 / 10 overall, docking points for the viewing angles of the screen and slight color misrepresentation. Features are: (stock) AMD FX-7500 quad core APU @ 2.1ghz - turboboost to 3.3ghz 6GB DDR3 Ram 750GB Sata II HD 1 GB Radeon R7 128bit - DDR3 @ 667mhz 15" touchscreen LED backlit Full backlit keyboard with numeric keypad 802.11 n wireless lan with bluetooth 2 usb 3.0 ports and 2 usb 2.0 ports HDMI out and micro card slot reader. Internal LAN Beats audio with subwoofer

I bought this laptop because I am an engineering student and I wanted to run software that was not available for Mac. I chose this computer because it had the minimal requirements needed to run the software at the best price. I will start out with what I like about the computer. touch screen is cool and I like the number pad. The main problem I had with this computer is the "hp control zone" touch pad is completely useless. The best way to describe it is it goes into seizures and starts highlighting/clicking/selecting random windows at random. the whole computer then becomes useless. I restarted that computer and same problems persisted. I took that computer back and exchanged for another. I am experiencing the exact same problems with the new one. I am messing with the settings to make it somewhat bearable but it is still bad. Even if the touch pad did work properly it is in the wrong place. It is off to the left side, and for a right handed person you are constantly touching the right side which brings up a settings menu(you have to mess with settings to change this). The next thing that makes this computer annoying is all the HP bloatware and nonsense on the computer that is constantly upgrading. I don't know what all the nonsense is for, but it is annoying. the general performance of the computer is pretty slow. I am not running a whole lot of advanced software and the computer begins to get slow when you have 4 or five things open. You then need to power off and restart. I wouldn't recommend even at the low price point. BTW I have hooked up my nice headphones to see what the beats audio is all about and I noticed no difference between my mac, tablet, phone or this computer.

I bought this laptop for school and thought that it was a really good price compared to other models for the features. I got it home and started using it and experienced a horrible lag each time I tried to open a program, or even go to the start menu. It was running slower than the laptop we bought five years ago. Someone told me it was because Windows was operating slow, but I went back to the store and tested another computer with better specs and there was no lag in processing. I literally could count 3-5 seconds in between the time I clicked on an icon and the program actually opened. Maybe it sounds petty, but to me it was pretty frustrating especially spending the money I was on a new laptop. The mouse pad also does not work very well as a lot of times it's like it couldn't even sense my fingers. I'm glad I bought a wireless mouse because I ended up having to use either that or the touchscreen most of the time. I returned this model and got a different HP laptop (2 in 1) that had the same features as this, but better specs and it was definitely worth the extra $140 to have a laptop that runs the way I expect it to. Both Best Buy and Microsoft were super helpful with getting everything switched over to the new computer, too. If you don't care about speed - this laptop has great features for the price, but if something like speed is important to you, spend the extra money and get one with better specs.