*HP ENVY 14 & Envy 14 Beats (1XXX series) Owners Lounge, Part Deux*

could anyone help me out please?

 

Staples reduced the price on the Envy 14 from $1050 to $949 today, so I stopped by and picked one up. I always prefer buying from the B&M stores and paying cash. Call me old school.

I still have an Envy i7 coming in the mail from HP. However as soon as I discovered the issues with switchable graphics I knew I'd be sending it back.

Just started the process of creating the recovery. Anyone know how large of a flash drive is needed totake the USB route?

 

Hello martin96,

I'm guessing that the primary reason no one responded to this post earlier is because it isn't quite clear exactly what you are looking for.

The Envy 14 is a very nice laptop. Capable of playing a lot of the most highly demanding games at medium settings and 30 fps (at least from what I've heard from others, I myself do not game on my Envy). As for the 1080p, if memory serves the Radiance, which is no longer offered, is ony 900p, and the Brightview is less still (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

Certainly you could build or buy a gaming desktop that would out-perform the Envy for less cost, but it really comes down to what exactly you are looking for in a laptop and/or desktop.

As far as whether the Envy will "last" you, I'm not quite sure what you mean. If you are talking about battery life, I believe that the average battery life for the Envy when set to Intel graphics (i5 only) is somewhere between 3-5 hours depending on settings and usage. If you got the slice battery that could be extended to up around 7-8 hours. Again, I haven't myself done rigorous battery testing, and I don't have the slice, but those are the numbers I seem to remember others mentioning.

If you want to clarify your questions a little more, that might help myself and/or others to better address them. Beyond that, there are a lot of good answers to the questions I tried to address in this post either answered or linked on the first post of this thread. You might find some insight there.

Good luck!

 

ya i'm not interested in 400$ headphones...

The Solo's came with the Envy... and are way more than enough for my occasional use.
Comes with two cables - one has a mic in it for handsfree or online gaming i guess...

I wondered why the notebook came in such a big box....

sku# ENVY 14-1155ca

-=c

 

random15 thanks for your response and when i said last me in school i did mean the battery life. and when i said 1080p i ment gaming on an external moniter. my 2 choices as of right now are either get an m15x and a netbook or get an hp envy 14

 

Nevermind.

 

Im trying to pick up a pair of V-MODA crossfade LP headphones here in Australia the generally price is 250 AUD which is around/same as the US price, its either those or the AIAIAI tm1 headphones. The Beats headphones are good, but there really pricey and to flashy for me. Plus some of the cheaper headphones like AIAIAI or V-MODA sound a bit better.

Im dying for a upgraded laptop for Christmas, I've been trying to hint at it to my parents for awhile. Envy 14" for 1600$ AUD with a good graphics card, that's gonna last at-least 2 years I hope.

 

Well, again I suppose it comes down to exactly what you want. If you have the resources to purchase two laptops, then you could certainly configure an m15x to be more gaming capable than an Envy 14 and get a notebook that would be more portable than an Envy 14.

I would guess, based upon some custom configurations that I've looked over, that it would likely cost you quite a bit more to go the m15x + netbook route, primarily because I'm assuming that you'd want to get some upgrades on the m15x. The most basic m15x model that I looked at has the same i3 processor as the most basic Envy 14 model but only a 512 MB graphics card compared to the Envy's 1 GB, and it costs $200 more. So the only way the Envy would cost more than the m15x + netbook would be if you decided to purchase some upgrades if you went the Envy route, but not on the m15x route.

Of course there are a lot of factors in play and I can understand the desire to have two machines which specialize in different things, seldom does one laptop encompass every feature that one is interested in, but I've got to say, the Envy comes pretty close as far as I'm concerned. That's why I purchased one. It doesn't have any of the exterior frills of the m15x, and I like that. It's no gaming powerhouse, but it can certainly hold its own. It's no king of battery longevity, but if purchased with an i5 processor it is very respectable, and the batter slice can make it even more attractive.

Trying to put myself in your shoes, if I had the money and the desire to purchase both an m15x with some upgrades and a netbook, I would look into purchasing an Envy 14 and a gaming desktop instead. Desktops that can handle the most demanding games (and probably better than the m15x unless you are really putting some money into it) are fairly cheap, and overall an Envy would certainly allow you more flexibility in what you could do on the road than would a netbook, even if you purchased it with the most basic configuration available. I haven't crunched any numbers, but if you bought a stock Envy (or even an Envy with some minor upgrades, an i5 upgrade is only $50 after all) I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you could also get a very decent gaming desktop for a similar price to that of an m15x and netbook.

But, as that wasn't one of your options, I'm not quite sure what I would suggest. I personally like having one laptop and that laptop being an Envy. But the m15x is a very viable machine and there are some really nice netbooks out there as well.

 

When I was shopping around for a laptop, I chose the envy over the m15x actually. The envy outperforms the alienware in terms of the money you have to spend, and you get pretty good battery life, and are able to play all games at very good settings. It's a much better all around computer, and I have had nothing but good things to say about it so far, and I've owned mine since august.

 

Does anyone know if the keys on this thing can be removed? Two of my keys are stuck.

 

I have an I7-720QM processor in my Envy.

1 -Is it worth it to upgrade to an better I7? My specs are listed below...I do a lot of 3D modeling and rendering for architecture school. I noticed this week that my current specs don't allow for as fast of a render as I would like.

2 - If so, which model would be best to upgrade to - and how easy would it be to do this?

 

LoL at people thinking the Dres are any good.

 

I've never seen the radiance display either, I thought my brightview was radiance for a little bit. I still don't know the difference I think it's just great.

 

That's really good. Guess it shows HP managed to shave off the production cost with a worthy substitute.

The only real advantage I'm hearing about just based off of hearsay is that the radiance display has higher pixel density.

Somewhat important for me because I multitask a lot a school and the alternative to E14 was the E15. The E15's 1080p display has a higher pixel density no doubt. The only problem is I couldn't pass on the edge to edge glass and the display upgrade at the time of purchase and the improved touchpad dynamics.

 

you not gonna get much more performance upgrades than that... upgrading to a better processor like 840QM wont improve your render times by a significant amount. What software do you use? Im in aerospace engineering and i use CATIA which turns out by default only uses 25% of my CPU power... so maybe same for you

 

Hi patoos, I'm in aerospace engineering too, what CPU do you have?
I'm planning to go with the i5-580m, since it has very high benchmark scores and switchable graphics.

Mobile Processors - Benchmarklist - Notebookcheck.net Tech

How is your Envy handling with Matlab/CATIA and other engineering softwares?

 

Hi, I have an HP 14-1087EO and I think it is generally a bit loud! I don't have the cycling fan problem but rather it feels a bit loud all the time, is it simply something you have to cope with when having an i7 and 5650 or is it possible to get the fan noise down in some way?

 

Mine's extremely loud too- not cycling or anything, just continuous! i5-580m though.

 

I typically use 3DSMax, Rhino, and Revit.

 

I think Envy 14 is one of the freakin loudest laptop in the world. Even if u do light stuff, theres always fan sound and if u do heavy load like gaming, the fan goes berserk and sounds like a jet engine no joke. My friends laptops like macbook, alienware, asus dont make this much sound.

 

i have the i5-520m. sometimes i wish i had a quad core for rendering images qicker but its actually very decent. matlab and catia run great! rendering is decent could get slow when things get complex but overall i think its perfect. if i was buying my laptop now i would also go for the 580m. im satisfied with it.

How complex are your models and how much time are your renders taking? because your specs should be able to run those programs with no problem it all depends on the complexity of the models. Say you had a glass pyramid with 2 light sources shining on it. What is your render time?

 

whats the highest someone has gotten on 3dmark06, with what overclocks and cpu?

 

i was able to get over 8000 overclocking my gpu to 585/925. i have a 520m. could go a bit higher probably but never tried anymore.

 

Does it make a different with or without USB devices connected? I'm changing my motherboard because of that, HP allready changed the CPU. That didn't fixed it completely. My whine can make my head feel like exploding..

 

When you OCd your gpu what program did you use? Also, how did you go about finding what your max is? Start with core clock low and max the memory first and then bring the core up?

 

It doesn't really change when I put a USB device in. I know EXACTLY what you are talking about though because it happened on a Vaio I bought back in October. Anytime the USB was plugged in, it sounded like a dog whistle was blowing. My Envy makes a very, very faint noise of high pitched buzzing that I have to tilt my head at a certain angle toward the laptop to hear. If I don't specifically listen for it, I don't notice it.

I'm just guessing that all of the i3/5/7 intel cpu's make some kind of high pitched noise, just some of them are far worse than others.

 

Wow after reading this i put my ear up to the left side of the computer (right on the slot load) and i could here a very faint like almost non existent high pitched noise.

 

After trying a vaio Z with the i5 520, an m11x with the i7, and two envy 14s both with i5s, all of them made the whine. I was ready to suck it up, and accept the fact that it's a common problem that Intel doesn't care about, but both my i5 and i7 macbook pros make absolutely zero noise.

FWIW, my wife's fujitsu tablet with a c2d has some pretty nasty processor whine too.

 

Ya, here's to hoping AMD gets back in the mobile game or to the next round of Intel chips not having a whine. I have definitely heard of MBP's having cpu whine but I don't think it's nearly as common a problem. My Dad's i5 MBP 15 has zero whine. It's most definitely not something anyone should just 'suck it up' on if it causes serious distraction or pain. The more laptops you RMA due to whine, the more the manufacturer will catch on.

 

I do not recall seeing a 14.5 Brightview versus 14.5 Radiance side by side so I thought I would share. I have brought up the same site to illustrate the additional resolution. And, yes, the Radiance has whiter whites and has more color saturation. I have quite a few HP laptops (Envy 14, DV5, 5310m, 8440p, 8740w) and this Envy 14 with the Radiance is my favorite.

 

Is there any solution to an ongoing, nonstop fan? Speedfan tells me that my cores are under 20C while browsing/idle, but the fan is always still on full blast...

 

There is a BIOS setting to for the fan to be always on or off when not needed. I am not sure that will change things or not for you. My system is relatively quiet.

 

Have it disabled, so it's not supposed to be always on, but it still is

 

You could maybe try to reflash or restore default settings in the BIOS to see if that maybe gets it to stop. It could also be a defective fan or thermostat.

 

i used msi afterburner first i out the core up then i started raising the memory. I used the ATI tool to test if it was stable. As well as some games when i got to the high clocks just to make sure its stable. i was able to clock up to 585/960 but wasnt as stable as i would like. good luck!

 

I've just done a fresh install of windows 7 on my envy 14 and I'm little embarrassed to say that I'm confused with the HP quick launch feature. I've installed the software and can see it in ...(x86) but I have no idea how to access it or assign functions to it. It won't even recognize the sys info combo of Fn+ESC. Should there be any additional HP software to go with this application? Any help would be great : )

 

I love my radiance too, but it does not have whiter whites; it's actually very much out of calibration (the brightview actually is more acceptable -- definitely not perfect -- out of the box). There is a significant difference when I calibrate my screen with a colorimeter.
Your camera apparently adjusted the white balance for the brighter screen. Look at the first post in this thread -- the colors of the kitchen are significantly warmer when the screen is featured.

Not calling you out or anything, just trying to provide an alternative view.

 

You used MSI Afterburner? How? When I open mine up it says its already at the max clocks of 450/800. How do you change the max?

 

Just pray nothing happens to the Radiance display or HP will try to replace your laptop with the Brightview display.

 

really?! my max was by default 585/1040 :S maybe update drivers?

 

OK I'll give that a try. Though it might be that HP locked the clocks with the newer drivers, so if updating the drivers doesnt work, I'll try to revert to an older version. If I can figure out how to do that lol. What version is your driver?

 

Agree only 1 of my 3 i5 and i7 laptops makes the whine. If you have this, RMA it or try to get a repair.

 

I have noticed a flex on the right side of the screen. Its the dust cover that is a little bit loose. Should I put some glue on it ?

 

Open C:\Program Files (x86)\MSI Afterburner\MSI Afterburner.cfg
and set
EnableUnofficialOverclocking = 1

You will need to do this with notepad opened as administrator

 

I had done the above and been overclocking since july, however upon updating a new driver and CCC 10.7 MSI afterburner acts the same way it did before editing the .cfg

What changed?

*edit* I'd rather not revert, the new driver seems to help with performance and stability.

 

Awesome! Thanks! It works perfectly now!

So what are the highest stable clocks you guys have been able to get?

 

Not sure;
I ran the newest version of Afterburner with 10.8 (current) and 10.11. Worked fine with both. Just moved back to 10.8 because of the brightness shortcuts don't work with 10.10/10.11 (and didn't see any benefit over 10.8)

 

Is 10.8 noticably faster than 10.7? Kinda sad that I was on 10.3 till last week lol.

Ill have to try to replace afterburner with something more up to date, I'll bet that's the issue.

 

Still having a this problem:

When I wake my computer up from sleep or when I first start it up the wifi is set to off and I have to push f10 to turn it on. Is there a way to have it set to on by deafult. Thanks!

 

Tried the BIOS thing to no avail. Is this a job to send back in to HP? or to get fixed at the local hardware store?