Complete HP Envy 15 (2nd Gen) Review

HP Envy 15 (2nd Gen) Complete Review by dave.ladner​

I was recently a proud new owner of an HP Envy 15 (2nd Gen) about a week ago. This was a pretty big deal to me, as not only do I live in Canada and cannot order the 2nd Generation version yet, but I bought it through Ebay so was a little skeptical. I've categorized the laptop into some sections below and made some comments based on what I have experienced so far.

Take it as you will. Questions are welcome if you have them.
*Please note: No pictures are currently attached because I am at work(oops!), but I can include them upon request if you'd like.

Appearance and Size
The Envy 15 is, for lack of a better comparison, a Macbook Pro, with a different finish. The engraved lid and casing has a sort of weird feel to it at first, but once you get over it (an hour maybe) its pretty cool. Doesn't offer anything besides looks obviously, but it holds its own on those. The laptop is also very thing, like about an inch. Not much more. It weighs in at 5.1lbs on my scale, but I'm not sure how accurate that is as its a bathroom scale.

Overall the appearance is great. I have the Antiglare finish and do not find reflections a problem ever, and i work in an office with a giant window right behind me all day so it would be with a glossy. The laptop is thing, light and portable and i have no problem lifting it up with one hand while it is open to move it somewhere, and definitely no problem carrying it in my bag.

The Touchpad is a little... 'finicky' you could say, but once you get used to it its a bit better. The problem is that the buttons (left and right click) are part of the Touchpad, so often you go to click, and it moves the mouse. I especially appreciate the automatic sensing of a USB mouse plugged in, as the laptop will disable the Touchpad when you have one plugged in. I wasn't aware of this feature and I really love it. The Chiclet keyboard has a nice feel to it, and while I did have a problem with my keyboard not being hooked in properly for some reason (Ebay shipping?), after connecting the cable it felt great to type on. What you would expect from a Chiclet keyboard. If you are interested in buying one but are worried, go type on a Macbook Pro for a few minutes, it will feel like that.

Please note I also purchased the 1920x1080 resolution screen, as I need to feel like I have a large area on my desktop to work with. I have always owned 17" laptops my entire life and so buying a 15" was a big step for me, but I have to say I do not notice the difference too much. I use an external monitor for editing things so, just games really. And once you are playing, you hardly notice the 2" difference.


Heat
This is a touchy category for some people, as I have read horror stories of this thing burning their legs off and getting extremely hot. I have had quite the opposite experience with my Envy 15 this past week. I have noticed that the laptop is warm, yes, but no warmer than any other performance laptop I've used. Much cooler than my old Sager NP5793 in fact.

I tested the Heat both gaming (CS: Source, WoW, Heroes of Newerth, Starcraft 2[yes, it runs it just fine]) and doing excessive Photoshop/3D work. Not only can it handle all of these tasks very well, but I didn't see a temperature above 80 the whole time, mind you I wasn't so much paying attention to numbers as I was the feeling of the heat. The only part that usually gets hot is the underside on the front/mid right, which I believe is where the ATI 5830 is equipped so... rightfully so.

If you are holding off on buying this laptop because of Heat complaints, unless you get a lemon/defective unit, do not worry about it.


Battery Life
This one is subject to some interpretation as what is 'good' battery life, and what is not. I realize a Macbook Pro has 7-8 hours of battery life, but this is not a MBP. And this graphics card could dance circles, take a nap, and then dance more circles around the 330M in the new MBP's, so don't even make that argument.

I average 3 hours battery life doing basic-mid tasks. This includes surfing the web, watching some Youtube clips, even extracting my (completely legal of course!) copy of CS4 Master Collection the entire time. Sometimes it was more (4ish), if I had the screen dimmed to 40% and did minimal things like talk on msn, and sometimes it was less when I wanted that 75% brightness to view some movies or watch SC2 replays.

I think considering the battery size and performance you get out of this thing that 3 hours battery life is great. This also might be biased because my NP5793, on lowest brightness, only got like an hour so... 3 is luxury to me.

Miscellaneous
Some little things I wanted to point out were HP customer service, Windows 7 and my laptops specifics so you can gauge what I am judging this review on.

The first being HP Customer Service. We know what this is going to say already, but, needless to say I was not impressed the first day. I opened my laptop and the keyboard wouldn't work. Fair enough, its bought through Ebay and had to get shipped from New Mexico. When I spoke with the lady at HP and asked if there was anything I could try, she basically treated me like a moron that didn't know anything about computers, and told me its "best I just send it in so nothing else needs to be repaired". I opened up the laptop and fixed the problem myself, called them back, and told the guy I spoke with that I just took it apart and fixed it and to not send me a box. The repair was going to take 2 weeks so I naturally didn't want to send away my brand new laptop for 2 weeks, since I waited that to get it. He kind of laughed and said he would write down that it fixed itself with luck. Either way... be careful when you buy an HP, if you don't know what you are doing to fix things yourself, you will be sending it in for long periods of time. I know this from past laptop experience as well.

Next is Windows 7. I have to say, having worked with 98, XP, Vista and OSX.. I really like Win7. It's got a nice easy feel to it, I haven't run into any errors or problems yet. It's seems very adaptive. I won't go into Windows too much here as this thread is about the laptop but... not bad Microsoft. The only problem I had was with AdobeCS4, which I can't really complain about as after a few re-installs it installed fine.


Lastly the specs for my laptop:
Intel core i5-540M (2.53Ghz, 3.06Ghz Turbo)
4GB Ram
ATI 5830 GPU
640GB Toshiba HDD (5400rpm, sucks I know)
1920x1080 Antiglare Screen
Single 6-cell Battery (No slice yet)
*Also included the HP External DVD/CD Drive


There you have it folks. If you were looking to buy an Envy 15, take these things into consideration mentioned. Also, I'd recommend maybe waiting a few months as it looks like a 3rd Gen might be on the horizon. Or take a look at the 14/17 Envy.

Thanks, enjoy!

 

Whoops! ATI 5830 ;P

Nice review - I recently took my friend's off his hands because he didn't like the look of it as much and went with the MBP. I must say I am more impressed with it than not.

 

GeForce 5830...I literally spit my drink out

Couple of spelling errors but solid review overall. It would help to know the exact configuration of your machine...

 

Oh wow. Sorry was thinking of referencing my old Geforce 8800M GTX, thats why hahaha.

Also I don't have any overclocks or anything optimized right now, so this is all "out of the box" if you will.

 

Just FYI, those 2.5" 640gb 5400rpm drives actually outpace most 7200rpm notebook drives...reason being because they consist of two highly dense 320gb platters, resulting in better read/write performance. Access time is a little slower, though. Check out these benches between my WD Black 7200rpm 320gb and WD Blue 5400rpm 640gb:

 

yours have 3 hours battery life? this is impressed !

Mine only has 1.7 hour..core i5, combo ssd...<.<

 

how could you know the repair service will take 2 weeks?

I tried lenovo thinkpad repair service before, 3 ways overnight shipping and less than 5 days process times ( count from when I contacted them 0

But I also tried dell mini 10 repair service, took me like 1.2 months to get it back, probably because it was around Christmas.

I also owned e6400 before, there was 2 ways overnight and 1 way ground shipping, omg, it took like a week to reach dell repair center


I remember Envy should have some premium service ? , idk, they sent me a box by overnight shipping , I didn't check the shipping label inside whether it's overnight shipping or standrad ground shipping although i didn't use it at all( I finally ask for an exchange)

 

It takes a week or two. Sent my original Envy in to the repair depot twice and both took a while.

 

My friend has had the same experience with his second Gen envy 15. While gaming the fans are a bit loud, but it stays very cool and cools down quickly after heavy enjoy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

 

Thanks for the review, glad you like it.

 

So does the ENVY 5830 play SC2 on ultra/high? And does it do either well?

Thanks.

 

Yes, max settings at 1920x1080. Check youtube

 

how could you get like 3 hours battery life?
Mine last like 1 hour today, only used chrome with like 3-4 taps, and running with default hp windows 7

I chose Fan always on

 

Do u have the quad core i7?

 

You'll get better battery life if you do a clean install. I have an i5 and I get around 2.5 hours.

 

Yes, it should be noted that upon receiving the laptop I did a complete clean install with a Windows 7 64-bit OEM Disc.

Also, I have an i5, I think that may have something to do with the 3 hours battery life. Please note it was minimal tasks though, if I tried playing SC2 on battery Im sure id get about an hour, heh.

The repair service lady told me it would be 2 weeks, so I got her to send a box, then realized screw it, I'll do it myself, and canceled the repair.

I did notice last night while playing CSS for about 2 hours that if I have my mouse too close to the laptop on the right, where the fan output is on the side, my hand gets a little 'warm'... but shifting it an inch or 2 back solves this.

 

Selectively deleting information and posts is morally wrong and a no-no in a "public," forum. Indeed, t's not publicly owned but it is a publically accessable and serachable forum; ANYmanipulation is... poor ethics to say the least.

 

No joke, after I installed the clean win 7 with OEM, it was like a 2x increase in speed in terms of opening things.

It's a little slower now that I have a bunch of programs and my own personal junk on it now, but its still faster than the original HP boot, and I dont have 10gb of useless junk now.

 

Thank you!