Dream HP Envy 14

If you could design, and configure the 2011 HP Envy 14 anyway you desire, What would you do?

 

I'll keep it simple and realistic.

1600 x 900 screen
Radeon 6850 (with graphics switching)
2nd Gen Corei7 quad core (dont care about which speed)
8 gigs of Ram
256gig SSD 6gb/sec
4-5 hours of battery life
Backlit Keyboard
CoolSense (and it actually works in keeping this beast cool!)
Multitouch trackpad that works smoothly (responsive 2 finger scrolling PLEASE!.. out of the box)

 

That'll be a damn good laptop. I'll buy it in a heartbeat.

 

super high resolution IPS display would be great addition too!

 

6850 would be too big for such a laptop I think, it''s more likely it'll get something like the 6550

 

even better than 4-5 hours (try like 6-7).. considering hp's 5 hour estimate is a joke.. i can barely squeeze out 2.5 hours on normal use

 

The laptop suggested would indeed have been a nice machine. About that battery life : I've read somewhere on the internet that Envy 14 has estimated 8 hour battery life!

What I'd add to already suggested:

Realistic/Possible:

*)Clickpad IS Series 3 (that's the name, right?)

Unrealistic/Not possible:

*)A port to connect 2.0 x16 PCI-E external graphics cards

 

They better add at least one USB 3.0 port. Almost every manufacturer has them standard now. And if they have a 900p screen, then it would be nice to have blu ray capability. Id like them to move the SD Card slot to the side, Make a right angle Power Adapter, add an express card slot, and make it possible to put two 1.8 in hdds/ssd or 1 2.5 in hdd. Make the HP logo optional backlit. Blu ray is possible, but not sure if i would pay much more to get it as i download most of movies or have an external to either burn or rip them. And I like the expresscard option for all of things that you can add on. And its about time that they come out with internal 4g radios.(LTE)

 

same as now but quiet

 

Biggest things I would change:

- Radiance always available.
- Improved touchpad (probably the touted Clickpad)
- Full-speed GPU, none of this undervolting, underclocking muck, and absolutely no bottom-of-the-bin parts.
- Allow multiple "custom" equalization profiles on Beats/IDT drivers

Generally, I love my Envy, but the video card's a real mess - it crashes even at its dumbed-down 450/800 clocks so that a number of 2-3 year old games aren't even playable... If the 5730 is a 5650 that tested well at higher clocks, then mine must be a 5510, and I can't get it replaced here in China...

 

This comes pretty close to my dream Envy 14..

Intel Core i7 2630QM
2x4GB RAM
AMD Radeon HD 6750M (with graphics switching)
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB
1600x900 Anti-Glare screen
USB 3.0, HDMI & Thunderbolt ports
External Blu Ray-drive (USB 3.0)
Backlit Island-style Keyboard
Synaptics ClickPad IS Series 3
Bloatware free
Lighter

 

oh yeah must have the new synaptics 3..

 

Synaptics 3 just looks like a mouse pad with buttons removed.. I had 3 finger flick, 4 finger gesture, and scrybe on my m6500.. Did I miss something?
Btw Scrybe sucks.

Touchpad is the biggest complaint? I guess...

 

I have great hope for the synaptics clickpad, and I wish they intergrate it into the HP Envy line

Just check out this video

http://blog.laptopmag.com/video-synaptics-clickpad-3-0-is-the-touchpad-weve-been-waiting-for

Keep in mind Thats a HP laptop......

 

Here is what I wrote last year on this subject, updated to match recent technology events:

I think my ENVY 14 is the best laptop I've ever owned and that's saying a lot considering my snobbish love of all things with the ThinkPad label attached. Shout out to my T60; you know i still love you.

Having said that, if their gonna do a refresh next year let's get the following included:

Loose the DVD drive (external option via usb 3 or lightpeak) and get a higher capacity battery in there while shaving off a few centimeters and making it prettier.

Let's up the screen resolution even more and loose the bright-view option. It's time to market the ENVY as a creators dream laptop (Music, Movies and Pics need Movie dimensions and a screen that can deliver those dimensions) Yeah a 14 inch laptop with that kind of resolution isn't the norm, but isn't that the point. Macs supposedly own the creative market so you have to deliver a product that pimp slaps the ish out of the MacPro 15. 1920 x 1080 is extreme for a 14 inch laptop, but the filmmakers would have the biggest grin if they saw that show up on the spec sheet. Web developers would jump for joy also.

Let's go with corner to corner glass instead of plastic with the Anti-glare coating and an IPS panel underneath. The Radiance is impressive, but you can't have a part shortage in the middle of one of your most successful selling products in the past 10 years.

The Slice battery needs to come standard. Just up the price $100, put it in the box and hit the magic 10 hour mark with 5 hours standard battery life and 10 hrs with the slice.

Great port selection, but let's go USB 3.0/lightpeak standard.

Let's add a fingerprint/biometric reader. Typing passwords is so 1990. If your name is ENVY, give other PC's something to be envious of. It's time to separate from the pack.

Let's add a LED light cluster to go along with that HD integrated camera so you can skype\video chat in the dark

A more powerful graphics card is a given, so lets get an automated switching option to go along with the manual software switch and how about some limited native overclocking tools out of the box so users don't feel the need to get creative and start compromising temps and processors

This is supposedly a featured Windows product, so instead of all the useless 3rd party crapware, let's get the native Security Essentials and Windows LIVE tools in there out of the box. If your gonna have crapware out of the box, let's get the fully system integrated crapware that helps deliver the best out of the box standard Windows experience possible. HP should get the Palm designers to develop a WEB OS style theme for Windows 7. Hey, who doesn't like a theme that makes the ENVY look more like a piece of art. Hell make it a contest on Deviant art if you don't want to devote the resources.

Also, it's time to have a full HP ecosystem where HP products natively sync with HP Home Servers out of the box

Oh yeah, as a useless but cool promotion, put a multicolored LED behind the HP logo for the next iteration. Time to go psychedelic man. How cool would it be if a BEATS laptop had an HP logo that Pulsed to the music your playing.

These are all fairly manageable upgrades that shouldn't compromise the price points we currently have

 

-New i7/i5 SB processors
-GPU- AMD 6750m or above, nVidia gt 540m or above (not underclocked), switchable graphics is a MUST.
-Upgrade touchpad
-Permanent radiance display option
-Coolsense technology
-Unibody design (yes, like a macbook), not plastic bottom
-Better battery life in realistic conditions, like at least 4 hours (browsing, youtube, movies, music, etc.)
AND, on top of this all, maintain a realistic base price and decent 'upgrade' prices (don't know what you call the online customization thing). We can't be turning into an Apple here.

 

new processors are a given, so;

• 17" beats version
• HP logo lit up in red instead of having the big 'b' on the cover
• blue-ray burner on all sizes
• radiance (or better) option
• usb 3.0 - get rid of the eSata port
• full HD webcam
• 5-in-1 card reader
• move the speakers from the front to the top

 

"Pulsing HP logo when your music is on"

That would be awesome!!!

 

lol, macbook pro keyboards can do that but then again i heard many comments that it broke or crack someting, either the light bulb or something else

 

Lmao that would be great

 

1. Anti-Glare option. I need this one personally. My library has windows and yes, even though I live in the gloomy weather of SF, the sun DOES STILL shine through the windows!

2. High-res, high color gamut screen. Radiance or better. Please don't skimp on this. Macbook Pros come with 1680x1050. None of this 1366x768 bull!

3. No keyboard flex.

4. True glass edge-to-edge display. Not important, but it'd be nice. Attention to detail is what distinguishes luxury from regular. Same for #3.

5. A clickpad with more gestures, higher coherence, and pixel-level scrolling. NO JOKE! Programming the touchpad to move at mouse wheel-level scrolling is a farkin joke. My scrolling is always so awkward and imprecise. The new Macbook Pros have had perfect touchpads for YEARS. Inertial scrolling is a good start. Better two-finger scrolling is another. A 4-finger swipe that brings up Aero peek would be even better. PLEASE HP, put extra pressure on Synaptics to perform!!!!! [Note: I appreciate HP's efforts in working closely with Synaptics to get the ball rolling on getting the touchpad from being downright bad to just ok. But just ok is not enough!]

6. Sandy Bridge CPUs. Need I say more?

7. Upgraded GPU. Sorry, but even at low settings, Batman Arkham asylum lags when I'm taking on Bane! I know I'm asking for a lot, but this is 2011. I'm seeing smartphone CPU/GPU packages catching up rapidly. I'm sure they could churn out more performance from an upgraded GPU without adding too much heat!!

8. Improved battery life. I don't care if HP has to introduce proprietary bloatware to get the job done. If the 17" Macbook Pro can pull off at least 7 hours, HP needs to raise the bar EVEN IF their machines run Windows!

9. USB 3.0/Thunderbolt ports. I was forgiving last time. But I'm not forgiving this time around. I don't mind that they didn't include USB 3.0 on the 1st generation Envy 14s. But this time, Apple has set the standard and it makes sense for HP to have to follow or even beat it!

10. Coolsense. Keep 'em innards cool.

11. Get rid of the DVD drive. I know, I am probably getting laughs from the crowd. But you know what? I'm not joking. No seriously. The Envy 15 without its DVD drive weighed almost about the same as the Envy 14 even though it was 1 inch bigger. A DVD drive and the parts that are required to accommodate it only add to the weight. If we can bring this baby down another pound, that'd be friggen AWESOME.

If they'd refresh the Envy 14 with all these changes, I'd be stoked to follow the new thread and possibly even buy the new Envy!

XD

 

reasonable, lets hope hp can check off at least 3 out of 10 from your list. btw you are not asking a lot.. for the price point they sell the envy they need to do major refreshes like the stuff in your list..

 

1600 x 900 screen (Radiance)
Radeon 6770/6750 & GDDR5 (with *dynamic* graphics switching)
i7-2720qm
4x 1333Mhz DDR3 Slots
SATA 600 interface
Backlit Keyboard
Black Case (beats?)
USB3.0 or Thunderbolt
HDMI + DisplayPort
Optional Slice Battery

 

Mostly agree. but lose the radiance screen and put in an IPS panel like the new thinkpads and Elitebooks. 1600X 900 would be nice

Backlight keyboard I dont really care about.

and something similar to the slice battery that the new x220 is getting, running it hard on the 6 cell gets 8 hours, with slice they say over 20. even with the dedicated card we should still see great times.

 

IPS are certainly great looking, but for gamers they still have a bit too much latency and can have ghosting during fast paced scenes.

Have an HQ LCD like radiance as defaults and an IPS as option would be great.

Future IPS's may get that issue solved some day... so time will tell.

 

A refresh should have far more than just 3 of the above.

The ones I'd prioritize and/or expect to see:

1. Coolsense. Envy 17 3D has it.

2. SB CPU. Same as #1. I'll be hounding you guys here on NBR for suggestions on which one to get.

3. New GPU. Kind of expected.


I'm pretty sure we'll see these 3 in the refresh. Now onto the 3 wild cards I'd be pleased to see a surprise announcement for. . .


4. Smooth clickpad. Do want.

5. High-res, high-color gamut display. If HP has to keep prices low, make this a $150 upgrade. One can only hope...

6. Anti-glare coating. I dunno how prices fare, but making this an optin would be nice. I don't transfer files or keep my laptop unplugged too often, so this option in my mind comes out to me as the upgrade I'd find to be the most useful. USB 3.0 and longer battery would be nice, but I don't seriously need.

 

The persistent, deafening outcry against the regular BrightView lost relevance for me when I saw the Envy 14 in person. The screen is nice. It's not excellent, but it's not the "trash," "crap," and the like folks here said it was.

 

the newer ISP screens are running a 5 ms refresh time .... not much worse than a good TN

 

Correct. The ghosting issues were common, almost endemic to all IPS panels as recent as 2005.

But things have changed drastically. Not to say that desktop displays and laptop displays are equal. But my 24" HP ZR24W [S-IPS] which I bought last year has a 5ms response. Oh, and I play L4D2 on it just fine and routinely end up getting #1 or #2 spots for most infected killed. I just wish that my laptop were a lot more powerful. I placed L4D2 on high settings one time just to see what it looked like on my IPS. My brother commented that in tandem with the high settings, it looked like we were watching a movie. Everything looked just great!

 

High priority:

1. Fix the stupid battery life issue. We really should be getting 6 hours off of a 59Whr battery with integrated graphics. Acer's timelineX can easily do that with the same i5 + switchable graphics.

2. No more underclocked graphics card. Again, an $800 acer 4820TG has gotten that part down a year ago.

3. Radiance come standard. Then envy 13 had 400nit Radiance screen standard, why can't we. Also, have the 1080p panel from the Envy 15 be an option

Medium priority:

1. Ditch the optical bay, i've only used it once in the last 6 months

2. USB 3.0

3. Build quality. I've noticed that earlier models had pretty bad keyboard flex. They fixed it in later iterations, but also added .4 lbs to the total weight.

Low Priority

1. Standard slice battery

2. Pulsing beats logo, or brighter keyboard light

3. have the option to restore functions keys without booting into bios


The hp envy lines are probably some of the best windows machines I've ever owned. Let's hope they'll make it even better. Can't till their March 14th announcement.

 

HP sells notebooks at razor thin margins. I'd totally understand if HP made the Radiance display optional for $150-$200 more. In the least, it'll give others on a tight budget the option of saving a few bucks and getting the lower-res screen.

I can tell you now that if it had been HP and not Microsoft giving me cashback, they would've lost mucho money on my order. Even taking out the cost of servicing my notebook twice, I must've paid about $500 for my Envy with the i5-520M and the Radiance display. Let's face it. HP notebooks are known for offering value. It would be difficult to sell the Envy with the slice battery and Radiance standard at a price that closely mirrors Apple's. People would scream at HP for trying to overcharge as they claim Apple does.

 

I agree with this one sooooo much. It is basically the reason why i returned the Envy 14 in my sig.

 

Everything everyone have said plus a thin battery sheet that'll give it even more battery life.

 

I dream that the Envy 14 will be refreshed before 2011 ends...

 

1600x900 Radiance
Sandy bridge processors
Same keyboard
New capacitive Synaptics ClickPad that doesnt suck and is glass like MBP (Biggest thing desired)
Bigger battery to achieve 6 hours of regular use (Versus 3.5-4.5)
Less sharp edges in the palm area
New less girly pattern
Higher build quality
Better fan management
Better switchable graphics; something that doesnt require the screen to turn off while switching cards like Nvidias solution last I heard.

 

upgrading from my envy 13, so curious to when the envy 14 will be getting sandy bridge? and maybe in a new graphics card like the envy 17 did ? Wish there were sites that had rumors/news/leaked hp news!

 

It's going to happen sometime around 2011, it's just a matter of when. I just hope when they do announce it, I don't have to wait another couple of months before I can even purchase it. Which HP has a tendency to do that.

 

In case someone doesn't want to wait, I'll sell mine (sig below) for $1,350, including Radiance, brand new 256 GB SSD, (just rcvd from HP, not even installed yet) mint condition. Not purchased in January madness sale; got a primo HP refurb. (I simply need the money - kills me to part with it!) Wanna save $250? Take it w/o the SSD.

 

Separate thread for sales.

 

Sexy Black Finish
6gb ram
750gb hard drive
usb 3.0
thunderbolt
hd webcam( I think the current envy laptops already have it)
Windows 7 Professional
6-7 hour battery life

As far as 720p vs 1080p goes, I would go with a 720p screen resolution. Since its only a 14in screen, I doubt i can tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. This might be unrelated, but a higher screen resolution could lead to shorter battery life.

 

Battery loss is minimal, unless you're gaming, where you'd have to push more pixels.

720P to 1080P is a world's difference. If the Envy came with a 1920x1080 screen, I'd be willing to pay 400$ for the upgrade.

I've seen a 15 inch Dell Latitude E series with a 1080P screen, and it was amazing. Incredibly sharp, blindingly bright, and sooooo much screen real estate.

 

I've already been reported and chastised by a mod. Tell me, if you desperately needed the cash, wouldn't you take every opportunity to post your sale info? Many people here really want the Radiance. Anyway, thanks for the rule reminder.

 

Other than the "Sexy Black Finish" (remember fingerprints!), the Del XPS 15 fulfills most of your wants, and then some. It has a killer 1080p B+RG LED screen (not much of a battery hit - more from size and brightness, not from pixel count) and a host of other features. I really prefer doing business with HP, but Dell hit one out of the park with this, and you can get a steal with moderate specs at around $900 or tricked out to the nines for under $1,500.

 

1920 x 1080 screen (no mediocre screen pls)
Radeon HD6850M (with switchable graphics)
2nd Gen Core i7-2720QM quad core
8GB Ram
256GB SSD SATA3
7-10 hours of battery life with 9 cell internal and 9 cell external batt
Backlit Keyboard that has even backlighting
CoolSense
Multitouch trackpad that works like Apple's

 

In order of importance to me, while still being realistic,

At least 5.5 hours of battery life under everyday use
HD+ or FHD screen options
No optical drive so it would be thinner/lighter
AMD 6570 or better w/ switchable graphics

Things like SB processors, CoolSense, and USB 3.0 are obvious.

 

Do the Dreamcolor displays only come in 15.6" and 17" varieties? I'd pay a premium to get that on my Envy.

 

I'd have 2 models based on power, both would eschew the DVD drive to improve cooling and optimise thickness / batterylife

Both 14" and slightly thinner than currently
900p radiance or similar display
SB Core-i5 lowend / SB quad highend
6630m lowend / 6750m highend graphics (or GT525m / GT555m Nvidia)
1 fan lowend / 2 fans highend (dedicated cpu / gpu fans)
Hybrid SSD/HDD options
70+ whr battery
No DVD drive - can just use external


Option for no bloatware whatsoever

 

Looks good; with the exception I'd add one of those new Glasses-free 3D screens with webcams being used to track eyes and direct the parallax effect at them (so make it 1080p too bec 3D divides it by 2). Everytime I watch a movie like Tangled, I can't help but imagine how beautiful these colors would be when popping in and out of the screen....

Oh and NO ATI.... I'd take an NVIDIA GTX 480M with Optimus please.

 

As long as the finish is black or dark blue ill buy . It seems that all hp laptops have a grey finish. The dell xps 15 looks a little bulky.

 

I wouldnt consider the heater that is the gtx 480m by any standards a good option, since the gtx 485m and the 6970m are better in every possible way.