*HP Envy 13 Owners Lounge!*

Here you go.





HP ENVY 13 Specifications
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
Processor Intel Core 2 Duo Processor SL9400: 1.86 GHz, 6MB L2 Cache
Memory/RAM 3GB of DDR3 System Memory
Display 13.1” Diagonal High Definition(8) LED HP Radiance Infinity Widescreen Display(1366×768)
13.1” Diagonal High Definition LED HP Radiance Infinity Widescreen Display (1366X 768 resolution)
Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 Graphics M92LP
Hard Drive 250GB 5400 rpm SATA HD
Optical Drive External SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Battery 4-Cell Lithium-Ion Polymer battery and 6 Cell battery slice
Wireless Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN & Bluetooth
Audio/Visual High Definition Audio stereo speakers, combo stereo headphone/mic jack, Beats, HP Webcam with integrated digital microphone
Expansion Slots 2-in-1 integrated Digital Media Reader for SD cards
Ports 2x USB 2,0, HDMI, power connector
Price Starts at $1,699
Weight 5.07 pounds
Warranty Standard 1-Yr Parts and Labor, 1-Year Battery
So, any thoughts, comments, topic-related with the Envy 13, feel free to post it here. And welcome to the NBR Forums for the newcomers!​

Note: PM me with any links or other information you'd like to have included in the original post and I will update it.

 

I own it and love it so far.

It runs very cool. Battery life is good so far and the slice only helps. Screen is BEAUTIFUL. The form factor and overall sleekness makes for a very sexy machine. One of my favorite parts of my custom Envy 13 is the Intel 160gb SSD. If you can afford it, upgrade to it. Makes for once fast and quiet laptop.

That said, trackpad seems to be a little iffy. I've definitely gotten more and more use to it but it's not all that it should be.

Any other thoughts from fellow owners?

 

Anyone know if there is an extra slot to add another 2gb of memory to get to the max of 5gb cause I don't see anywhere selling a 5gb stick of memory. Also how to get to where the memory is?

 

Regarding the RAM, I'm guessing it is 1 GB built-in and then 1 slot for expansion.

I have mine on order, supposed to be built tomorrow, hooray! It should be in my hands this week I hope. I got the 1600x900 screen, SL9600 CPU, but kept the 5400 rpm HD. I figure that is an easy upgrade when SSD HD prices come down. Same with the RAM - I went for 3 GB and will upgrade to 5 when the price for 4 GB comes down.

The screen was the only option I thought hard about, as I will have to live with that. I don't want to have to squint to read text. Hopefully setting the DPI in Windows 7 works reasonably well.

I think I looked at every possible laptop when deciding on the Envy 13. I wanted a 13-14" laptop that was thin, light, durable, and could play games decently. It seems like the Envy 13 is the best balance of performance, portability, and durability. I have a MacBook Pro now and almost everything else felt cheap in comparison except for the Envy.

The top 2 contenders were the Dell Studio XPS 13 and the Sony Vaio SR. I nixed the Dell because of the heat issues and the SLI graphics was a turn off. After seeing the Vaio in person at BB, it felt flimsy and was much thicker than I expected, so I moved on to the Envy 13.

I hope it will play games decently, though I'm not expecting a gaming powerhouse. The hardest thing about my laptop search was finding something that would play games reasonably well and still be compact. It seems like there are 3 ideal factors in a 13-14" laptop - fast, small, cheap. You can have 2 of the 3. I went for fast and small.

 

If you have the slice battery on and go to pick it up. You'll see that it is more heavy than it looks. The only thing I upgraded was the screen and the faster cpu. I was planning to get a larger hard drive but just saw someone that it used a 1.8" hard drive. I haven't figured how to open it up to take a look cause the bottom doesn't have opening areas like other laptops.

I have netbook which is small light and cheap but it wasn't fast. The envy 13 is more heavy, faster and wasn't cheap but it is nice and I like it so far.

I was also looking at the dell xps13 before too but didn't like the video card it came with and no option to upgrade battery. It came with a 6cell and if you wanted the 9cell you would have to buy it. Then I saw the end and order the day it was released.

 

Ok I got mine a few comments:

NEGATIVE:

The slice battery won't fit, will have to get a replacement one, only one of the two snaps works

When in battery mode the intel GPU does some weird stuff. It changes the contrast to really high until things become really ugly then it goes back again. it cycles between the two constantly. This doesn't happen when I switch to the radeon. I wish I could disable the autocontrast or dimming but I could find no option to do it. anyone knows how to do it?

A lot of crapware took me ages to get a clean system out of this

POSITIVE

OK battery life, nice build quality, the system is very responsive

 

Hi guys, please be more specific about battery life. Im specially interested in common office/web tasks with wifi&bluetooth on. In reviews ive read there were big differences in their battery tests. Thx

 

There seems to be a lack of love in this thread. Have not many people picked up an Envy 13?

 

I didn't even notice there was a thread for the Envy 13. I'll ask the same question as I did in the Envy 15 thread

 

Not lack of love, just info.
This does look like a fantastic laptop but maybe a few benchmarks would be nice.
Wprime, 3DMark06, HDTune tests things that some people interested in this laptop could actually see some performance numbers on.
Even some basic test's like fan noise/loudness, how the temps are and screen brightness to give some info on this laptop.

 

I've seen people complain about BIOS problems with the HP Envy 15, like not throttling down the CPU if plugged when booting up, etc. Has anyone experienced any BIOS-related issues with the HP Envy 13?

 

How's the fan noise? It looks amazing....

 

If someone wants to post benchmarks for battery life, gaming performance, etc. I'll include it in the OP. Just msg me to let me know when it is posted.

 

anybody know what type of ssd hp uses in the envy, maybe post some benchmarks or something

thanks

 

anybody know what type of ssd hp uses in the envy, maybe post some benchmarks or something

thanks

 

Spend some time with Envy 13 today.

Pros: The build quality is amazing, and no doubt the main reason for the high price, it looks and feels really well, better than any other notebook I have seen in person. The keyboard and touchpad is very nice, very comfortable. For those like me who worry about noise, the Envy 13 is very quiet (unlike the Envy 15, which is very noisy).

Cons: As I have experienced before with HP, the screen colors are not correct, not as bad as my example here: [thread]106023[/thread], but pretty close, and the fonts were not sharp and clean, hard to explain, but it didn't look right, I took a look at other notebooks right after, and they didn't have this problem (specially Sony Vaio and Apple have perfect screens).

So, because of the screen I will not buy the Envy 13, if the screen had been as I hoped for I would have, the notebook is fantastic. I do suspect that the higher resolution screen (1600x900) may not have this problem, but this is not available my country.

 

I have the 1600x900 screen and have to say the screen is amazing, no problems with colors or font clarity. In fact, it is the best screen I have seen on a laptop, much better than my MacBook Pro. Vibrant colors, great viewing angles, and very bright. That's a shame it is not available in all countries. I did see the lower res screen at Best Buy and it does in fact seem of lower quality, but that might be attributed to the brighter lights in the store.

I've lived with my Envy 13 for a couple of weeks now and am extremely happy I spent the extra money to get it. It is exactly what I was looking for - a PC running Windows 7 that was of the same quality (or better) as a MacBook Pro.

The only thing I can think of that I don't like is the on-screen display for the volume control annoyingly switches you out of full-screen mode when you change the volume. I was able to disable it, but now I have no OSD for volume. Too bad HP doesn't have Envy-quality software to match the hardware. The HP software is still mostly junk, not even in the same league as iLife.

 

Anyone try any of the newer games on one yet?

 

Hi,

what about power brick size/weight? I had vaio sz and it has huge AC adaptor. On the other hand adaptor for my ulv vaio tz is supersmall.

Thx

 

May I send you a private message and test something for me? It would be very easy to know if the color accuracy is better on the high definition screen. Thanks.

 

Can I ask if the default option for the HP Envy 13 comes with the external DVD and the extra slim battery?

 

in that first pic it looks like the W7 start bar is HPised. It is completely different. It that just a W7 theme?

 

If you buy from places like BestBuy, then yes it comes with a external DVD and the slim battery. But it does not come with 1600x900.

 

Hello there cousin owners of the Envy 13 (I am a Envy 15 guy lol)
Anyways, for those wanting to run some benchmarks, I have posted the links to the most common ones on the Envy 15 Owners Lounge so that they are easy to find.

Give it a look, download them and check them (matter of minutes ]) I am truly interested in this laptops performance.

Thanks!

 

I took another look at the Envy 13 today, I was able to fix the font problems, it was Windows 7 that messed it up, now I just need to see if I can calibrate the screen, it's really a nice laptop.

 

I would consider the AC adapter to be very compact, smaller than my Thinkpad T61. I think it is smaller than the MacBook Pro too, but it is a different shape (longer and thinner instead of square).

 

Can you post the links here or the link to your Envy 15 post? I couldn't find it in the couple minutes I tried.

 

They are on the OP, but sure, no problem, let me post them:


Useful Tools to Benchmark your laptop:
Post your results here if you want, or better yet, post them and send me a copy of them so I can upload them here if you want.
CPU Z for CPU information
GPU Z for GPU information
HWMonitor for temps information
Futuremark for overall benchmarks
PC Mark Vantage gives results on the system, but offers better results on Vista.
PC Mark 05 more benchmark tools
HDTune for the HDD is a good way to measure its performance
3DMark Vantage for 3D GPU performance
Core Temp for checking your CPU temps
RMClock to be in control of you CPU
Battery Eater to test and know the maximum and minimum battery runtime.

 

I played today with both 15 and 13 model and I liked the 13 model much better. Compact and nice design. If there there are some crazy black Friday deals I'll definitely order one. At current Best Buy price of $1899 I just don't understand how can they be charging over $400 more than comparable MacBook Pro and provide less hardware... They will not be selling many of those, at least at that price point.

 

Yeah it was expensive, no doubt. I didn't want a Mac, though, I wanted a PC running Windows 7 out of the box (yeah Macs can run Windows, I know). Also, the Envy uses a discreet GPU (a rather nice one), something else I wanted (the Mac doesn't have one). If I could use Mac OS X, though, I would have taken a long look at the MBP, despite the GPU.

Hopefully more PC makers will come out with quality laptops that can compare with the Envy, and I don't mean compare CPU and GPU, I mean build quality. That was important to me in my purchase.

 

Cool, I will try to run some of these soon, if someone doesn't beat me to it.

 

While the Envy 13 is extremely nice, I doubt it will sell well..i think a few key thing could be done

1) have i7 core in there or lower the price by 400 bucks

2) have it available in solid color, the current dotty design is not that nice

Otherwise, I think the size and weight is really a deal.

 

The latest news from my Envy:

My slice battery would not fit and had some damage (really just a pice of plastic missing) when I recieved it. I tried another one at PCworld and I saw there was definately a problem (and not just me being unable to fit the battery)

I sent the PC and battery for repairs: I got exactly the same PC and (damaged battery) back saying: It fits fine and the damage is not covered.
But I saw from scratchmarks that they had used some force or tool to actually make the battery fit somehow. It fits now but you still need a lot of force to close one of the two latches.

In addition to the annoying Intel GPU problem which I had reported here and the touchpad issues there is also another problem with the waking up from sleep mode. 1 in 3 times it will take ages to actually wake up and it is doing something on the HD.

Also I just realized that the UK version (as opposed to the US version) of the Envy 13 does not come with the HDMI to VGA adapter included so if you ever need to give a presentation this laptop is useless unless you spend another some more dosh (and HDMI to VGA transcoders are expensive).

If I take my experience with notebook and support together I can not recommend anyone to buy this laptop. For 400 pounds more than a (faster and longer lasting) Macbook Pro 13'' you get yourself too many issues.

Oh by the way now I can give you battery run times:
Included battery for web surfing: 3 hours 10 minutes
With slice battery: 6 hours 34 minutes

 

6,5 hrs with slice? Thats really poor. So its time for me to consider 13 mbp and good old Vaio Z

Thx anyway

 

That is poor battery life... I am seriously considering the Asus UL30Vt as an alternative, with similar specs but better battery life and the specs can be really good for the same price of a MBP or the HP Envy!

 

I think you are mixing up the Envy 13 and 15. The 13 has a solid color case, with only the palm rests having the design pattern. Also, a quad core in this form factor doesn't make a lot of sense, and least not today, with the energy use and heat output involved.

 

As samx1 is saying. Cramping an i7 on the Envy 13 would be insane.

Not only the i7 needs a good cooling, but the aluminum body and the very small body and space would not allow good air flow, and you would have a very toasty laptop.

I do agree, a fully featured CPU, or a SP would have been nicer. But I used this laptop for a while, and it was quite snappy I must say.

 

OK, with 20% Bing cashback today I pulled trigger and order it to try it out. I'll send it back if it has problems. 20% cashback makes it borderline acceptable machine price wise...

If you are planning to buy it today is they day to get that 20% off. Go to bing.com search for HP and click on link with Cashback symbol... You should see message saying that you'll get 20% cashback...

 

I ran some of the benchmarks. I noticed something odd though. First time I ran the tests, the 3DMark06 score was very low (1559). I then reset the HD4330 settings to the factory default, and the score doubled. So people might want to reset their GPU settings to the default for better performance.

PCMark05: 4608
3DMark06 (1280x768): 3094
Max temp during testing: 62 C

Before I fixed the GPU settings I ran PCMark Vantage, and couldn't run it again with the trial, so this result should be higher I think.
PCMark Vantage: 3957

 

BTW, the temp is the CPU temp. Also I tried to run 3DMark Vantage but the trial would only run at 1600x900 (native) resolution, so I decided not to run it.

 

cnet: HP Envy eclipses the Apple MacBook

I've been kicking tires for months - Adamo, MBP 13, Dell Studio 15, Vaio SR. In fact, I was at the Sony Style store in Dallas today and was totally underwhelmed at the everything but the Z-series models. This article along with the current Bing 20% cashback deal may finally get me off the fence.

 

a highly confused article (picture is the Envy 15 for starters)
I am not sure the author ever laid hand on a Envy13

 

I took yet another look at the Envy 13, the screen is amazing, after playing around with the color settings for a while, I got it to look very well for my needs, the screen is in fast brighter and with more depth to the colors than the Macbook 13", only problem is the price...

 

Are there any benchmarks yet?

 

Yeah Serg, I posted a few. I had some issues during testing though, so not sure how accurate these are.

PCMark05: 4608
3DMark06 (1280x768): 3094
Max temp during testing: 62 C

 

http://www.notebookjournal.de/tests/review-test-hp-envy-13-nkrt-1059/7

 

I dont get it. This is another test with imho great battery results. But in other reviews batterylife is poor. Am I missing something?

 

The European model has the extended battery included as standard.

 

THanks. Though I had to guess some...my german is too rusted and I barely understood some things...

 

Just use the translator:

http://translate.google.com/transla...nvy-13-nkrt-1059/7&sl=de&tl=en&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

As I mentioned, the review confirms what I wrote about the screen, it's probably the best 13" screen on the market right now, very bright, with excellent contrast.

I'm 95% sure now that I will buy it.