Envy 14 or 15?

I'm shopping for laptops right now and I'm pretty much stuck between these two. My main question for the 14 is will it be able to do full hd? I know
1920x1080 is a bit much to ask for on a 14.5" screen but I haven't been able to find a solid answer for this question. The 14 has more features and the internal cd drive is a plus, but not a dealbreaker for the 15 since the cd drive isn't used too much. Taking out price, which one would be a better buy?

 

the answer to that question is subjective. The Envy 15 is more powerful graphics-wise (need to get some specs on the 5660 GPU) and is actually slightly thinner and weighs just a few ounces less. But the 14's battery life will trounce the 15, and the LCD Screen quality is supposed to be amazing.

I currently have a 15 limited and a 17 on order. But if I didn't have the 15 already, I'd likely have purchased a 14 to compliment the 17. That said, if I could only have one of the 3 notebooks, I'd still have stuck with the Envy 15. Its just a great balance of screen size, weight, GPU/CPU horsepower, and coolness wrapped up into a nice looking package. DVD drives and backlit keys don't impress me that much these days.

 

Wait for the 14. I wouldn't buy a 15 right now.
to answer your question, no, there almost certainly isn't going to be a 1080p option for the 14, but at that size screen, you honestly wouldn't be able to notice a difference.

 

like i said, its subjective. like the 15, but battery is poor.

 

Do the all the ports being on the right side bother you at all? Assuming you have the 2nd gen envy 15, are temps a problem for you at all? And just to make sure, it came with usb 3.0? And finally, sorry for all the questions, but is the lack of the E2E glass bad at all? I know that dust gets onto the edges but....that seems like something that could be easily cleaned off.

 

it can be 7 hours with the external battery (which I have but it weighs it down and bulks it up by about 1/3 inch and a pound or so. If you do go the Envy 15 route and want better battery life, go with the i5 CPU (much more battery friendly) and you can also downclock the GPU with the GPU Tool, dim the display, etc. If you do stuff like that, you can get +3 hours with an Envy 15.

 

How are your temps? And just to make sure, is usb 3.0 included? Does the lack of E2E come up as an annoyance at all?

 

I have an i7-820QM in mine which gets toasty and battery life is not stellar (I can squeeze out 2+ hours barely). I originally had an i5-520m which runs much cooler and was more battery-friendly. Try the i5-540m. And no, since I had an i5 unit ordered from HP, mine didn't come with USB 3.0. E2E is nice looking but not a huge deal to me. I will say my biggest gripe against HP is the bezel is a very flimsy, very easy to scratch piece of plastic. They should have provided one made from aluminum in my opinion. So other than the bezel is plastic while everything else is nice and sturdy, don't miss the E2E.

Regarding the i7 vs. i5, I will probably be swapping my i5 coming with my Envy 17 into my Envy 15 limited edition.

 

could you comment on the battery life of the envy 15 2nd gen you owned with the i5 processor?
thanks!

 

you can get 3 hours with an i5, and again, with power saving settings on and screen dimmed down nice and low (still visible though). that was with an i5-520m