*HP ENVY 14 (1XXX series) Owners Lounge, Part 1*

When I talked to the rep he said they source multiple brands of components when available, so you could likely get any 256GB SSD that is made. At least with the 160GB you know the only person making them is intel (and others rebranding them).

 

Alright, 10% student discount is enough for me.
Reading the happy owners' testimonies, I can't wait any longer
I'm ordering tonight

 

I thought zeth went with the acer instead?
(and it's Availa bilty, not availability )

 

wrong: Availabilty - Google Search

edit: ah, I see, the actual thread is a typo.. sorry

 

The other dude got the acer, bronsky i think is his name, zeth is the Californian who had the turtle meter and is waiting a bit longer for a coupon cuz the tax here sucks its 10%.

One of the SSD's are supplied by toshiba.

Also @aylafan, how are you going to compare his temps to yours when you didn't even record your ambient room temperature at the time you did your benchmarks?

 

REVIEW

Sorry for posting so late, I was watching a soccer game! ;-) Here are my first impressions.

Boxing
Stylish boxing with some "wow" effects. See yourself: HP Envy 14 - a set on Flickr

Chassis
A fine piece of craftmanship! Materials feel expensive and have perfect fitting. My E14 has not a single issue in teams of badly fitting seams etc. The chassis looks sleek and stylish. I like it clearly better than a MBP because it looks a little bit more dedicated and not too bare.

Screen
Wow, I am literally blown away. This is simply the most awesome screen I ever saw. Period. With power off, the display mirrors the surrounding pretty badly but when turned on, it is so bright that I did not saw any reflections (at least none that caught my eye). But the display plate seems to be made of plastic and not the glass we read about. Can this be?
The max angle is ok but not great. For me it works perfectly, bigger persons (>1,80m) may have issues holding the E14 on their laps.

Touchpad
I liked it from the first touch. Very few of the issues described in this thread came across my way. True, sometimes the thumb rests on the pad causing the pointy finger not to work but I learned this within a few minutes and now it works pretty well. Cool thing: clicking on the pad causes the whole pad to give a tactile response. Anyone who ever used the Blackberry storm knows what I am talking about. Gestures seem a little bit rough. Pinch zoom works but not so smooth as expected but this may also be an issue of the Windows picture viewer.

Heat
I did not run any real challenging apps or games but from what I can tell of normal work and app installation / revovery DVD burning, the device stays cool. Palm rests get not much warmer than 40 degree celsius I assume. Bottom gets a little bit warmer but not that your lap takes this as heat.

When the display is folded back fully, it is in front of the venting slots but does not cover them: There is about 5mm space between the display and the cassis which redirects airflow on the bottom of the screen. Right now this airflow is hand-warm, hard to say how this works out when the machine gets REALLY hot.

Flex
Very little flex on the display cover, nearly none on the palm rests (only with hard pressure) and the keyboard has no flex with normal typing. Hard pressure in the middle keys showed about 1mm flex, but I mean HARD pressure. This is far better than the E17.

Battery:
Cannot tell yet, but normally a battery takes 2-3 loads to reach full capacity. Ask me in a few days.

Overall
I am totally impressed with this beauty: It seems that the E14 is exactly what I hoped for: A stylish, powerful and noble device with nice craftmanship and a stunning display. So far no heat issues for me but I am not a gamer. I will run some tests tomorrow and keep you posted.

 

My room temperature was 88F when I ran the tests. My AC is broken and I am forced to use a fan to stay cool. That should be 31.1C. It gets very hot in Dallas, TX (92-100F easily) during the summer, but it has been raining the past couple of days.

 

If Toshiba is the supplier you're getting max specs through HP is as follows:
read: 250MBps
write: 180MBps

However for just a $100 more you can get,
285MBps Read
275MBps Write
get that here:
Newegg.com - OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE240G 2.5" 240GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

Thanks ademmer! +rep

So now I am just waiting to see temps under load, including the 5650. Once I see that those are good, my mind will be at ease

 

My enter key isnt gonna look like the ones on those german keyboards is it?

 

It should look normal.

 

Mine looks NORMAL! At least for Germany...
May be a strange habit, but we Germans are used to giant enter keys so it is hard to use keys half the size. I am happy that HP continued the tradition...

What I like most about the keyboard are the fullsized cursor keys. Typing on the keyboard reveals that the keys have a very short way down but have a clearly defined pressure point which makes them perfekt for quick typers. I hope they will not look glossy too soon. All my keyboards have this bad habit...

 

Thx alot!

 

Great review ademmer, now I am getting restless for this thing =(

 

Two little goodies before I go to sleep:

1. battery test

I did a little battery test while watching soccer.
Meaning I played a DVD as long as the battery would last.

WLAN off, brightness about 60%, intel iGPU, stock settings for energy saving

The DVD played for 2:40 hours before the player stopped because the battery was at 10%.
This with a brand new battery with its first full charge.

...

2. Two cooling fans are better than one

Here's the picture

 

great review so far guys! keep up the good work!

 

thanks for the review man

 

Where's the cpu/gpu in that pic?
Can you tell what brand/speed the memory is? interested to know

thanks for the review guys...awesome

 

2 fans, ATI5650, and an optical drive!? How did HP fit it all into that super thin chassis? Can't wait to see the load temps.

 

Do you think you'll be able to do a real battery test tomorrow? As in the battery has already had a couple of cycles on it? I'd like to see one with just playing a video file off the hard drive vs the dvd...I think the dvd will drain more power.

 

Is this good or bad?

 

Depends on what brightness his screen was on when he ran the DVD test.

 

That is about average based on other benchmarks I have seen, running movies is a very battery draining thing to do.

 

Ahh you guys got me. First time poster, first time buyer... placing my order now!

 

It's okay. My dv6 gets about the same on DVD playback (2:20) and gets 4 hours when doing normal web browsing.

 

Yayyy my order dropped to the factory today! I placed the order yesterday, so does that mean its on schedule, or ahead?

 

Couldn't stop myself.

Pulled it.

Still unsure of the CPU I chose, but owell, I hope I use turbo boost XD!


So excited.
Is build date when it will hit me or when it will hit the mail?

 

Mine is still in production since monday est ship is still July 7 the wait is killing me more now after hearing the good things about this baby.

 

he said 60% brightness

Anyhow I was just asking-once again-this will be the one and only laptop I'll have for the next 10 years (or so I hope it will last that long), just can't wait to get it.

Build Date: July 8 grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr + 5 to 7 shipping days

How did people get theirs so soon?

 

Congratulations erathostenes, what a beautlful machine. The dual fan system is really interesting. I like the way that HP coupled both sinks onto the CPU. The HD5650 will run at least 10C cooler than the CPUs under stress. The one sink looks like it pulls heat from the GPU and the CPU and the other pulls off the CPU as well. This system should have no problem keeping the CPU in the 85-87C range, well below its 104C max temp and the throttle range, which looks to be around 98C or 99C.

The Idle temps look great for an I5. They run hot. Esp. in 30C background. Looks like HP has really put some thought in to this model.

So very glad to hear about the great build quality as well. I think this model will prove to manufacturers that a there is a market for a premium, portable laptop. HP is going to sell the crap out of this model. The only shame is that they might not be too tempted to offer the typical deep discounts that they have been offering on the 15 for so long.

Nice first 3dMark06. Once this thing gets set up, the HD5650 is going to post some great scores with an OC'd GPU. The GT335M score shown was at a lower resolution.

The display looks good. The jellyfish is a cool demo picture.

In all, it looks like HP has outdone itself. I had heard that they installed am I7-720QM in the DV3 with absolutely no heat issues. I was expecting the Envy to be something special.

Congratulations to all of you who ordered these sight unseen. Nice move.

Bronsky

 

I really want one now

 

What CPU was stefan using when he did his movie test, anyone know?

 

windows 7 score plz >.<

 

i5 520m i believe

 

windows 7 score is useless lol

 

Hurray for dual fans!

 

I am sooooooooooooooooooooooooooo glad this is living up to its expectations. I was holding off ordering this tom bihn sleeve but screw it I know I will keep this laptop anyway.

 

I'm sorry I haven't read all of today's posts but has anyone posted a video review yet?

 

not yet. just pictures.

 

It's past midnight here in Germany but tomorrow I will post a video with bright daylight.

Any special wishes what the video should address?

 

battery life, heat, noise, talk about the slice battery if you got it and show how far the screen tilts back

thanks

 

i'm thinking of getting an ssd, how can i clone or copy the whole entire HDD that comes with envy 14 into my new ssd?

I looked up on intel's faq for their ssd and they suggest Apricorn EZ Upgrade Universal Hard Drive Upgrade Kit (Upgrade kit - SATA and PATA 2.5" notebook drives) #EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL - eXpansys Inc that product but i'm hoping other envy owners here might know a easier method or a software that they'll be using to transfer to the ssd..

much thanks

 

I hate the fact that laptop manufacturers inflate battery numbers.One of the most commons usage is web/email so that should be a criteria by which battery life is measured. And laptop manufacturers should provide that number - truth in advertising.

 

2 hours and 40 minutes for dvd playback with 60% brightness IS AMAZING (or seems that way to me). The 4 hour normal use estimate we were getting earlier should be blown away by a true test in a few day.

StefanHT Do you see any connectors for a 2nd hard drive on the mobo anywhere? Have you taken out the HD yet? If you could check I would greatly appreciate it. If I can get dual 1.8" drives in there...

EDIT: Okay. battery life seems amazing compared to my 45 minute asus v1s. I guess those damn macbooks get 6 hours of video.

 

I can only second those observations.. Nice you also got a well crafted machine!

 

It's getting really really hard to hold out for more reviews.

 

I would like to see one of you guys do a test for non-stop web surfing with the 5650 enabled, this would show approximately how long a quad core without the integrated GPU can last. Very few people have ordered a quad core because they are afraid of the battery drain, but maybe the drain is not so bad... we will not know unless it is tested ^^

 

Just curious what resolution was the 6800 run at then? Is there a 1600x900 option on 3dmark06, I assumed the next one up was default 1280x1024 or something which is not possible on the Envy 14 unless external..

 

More about heat please...standard temps browsing the net...HWmonitor screens would be great.

OH. And a pic of the backlit keyboard in a really dark room. Interested to see if it's bright or dim.

You guys are amazing!

 

ademmer,

My request is that you do a stress test to see how hot the 5650 gets under full load.

thanks!