HP Envy 14 Radiance i5 arrived today

...and I can say ....

It's a damn good laptop. However, I also own an Envy 13 and usually run that with the brightness all the way day, as is the 14, but the 13 colour quality, side by side, is better. Noticeably better. Also, the speakers on the 14 are very, very poor (Installed a 128Gb Crucial SSD. Arrived with 8Gb)

I'm almost thinking of keeping the 13 but the extra speed of the 14 means that I can install a couple of games that wouldn't normally do well on the 13. All in all, if you want the extra speed for games, get the 14, but if you're after a quality machine, small amount of gaming etc, get the 13.


P.s. Loving the back lighted keyboard. Next up, fitting a UK keyboard :/

P.P.s. I've clean installed so might be missing some software. Beats?

 

Hey excalibur1814,

Sorry to hear that you're having some mixed feelings. Personally I love my Envy 14, but having not used an Envy 13 I can't speak to the differences between the two.

Many agree that the speakers on the Envy 14 aren't great, particularly that the volume is low. Many also agree, however, that the sound when using headphones is top notch. I am no audiophile, but I have no complaints.

Beats really doesn't do much in all honesty. The only software that even has anything to do with the Beats audio is the IDT High Definition Audio Codec software from HP, so if you have that installed you have it all. If you have it installed you should have a Beats icon in the overflow for your taskbar which can open up a mixer of sorts and some sound controls, but it doesn't do much.

 

Any CPU in the Envy 14 destroys any CPU in the Envy 13.. gaming isn't the only benchmark people should be looking at you know.

Not having owned an Envy 13... would you say the Envy 13 speakers are actually better?

 

Have you tried these tweaks to get more volume out of the speakers?

 

Interesting. So there is a display out there at this price point with better image quality, and it's in the same family of notebooks.

Real pity HP didn't reproduce this technology in the E14.

 

Yes, the speakers on the 13 do go quite high compared to the 14. Out of all the laptops I've owned over the years, the 14 has the lowest output of the lot. Really odd.

Yeah, I did look at the speaker tweaks but will probably just invest in some nice headphones instead.

Either way, it's not a deal breaker but I did expect the 14 to be, pretty much, the 13 but bigger

 

Is your Envy 13 the 1600x900 option or the 1366x768 ?

 

Gonna go out on a limb here, but I think radiance...

 

Referring to his Envy 13 inch, not the one on topic. The Envy 13 Displays are all Radiance, with some being lower resolution than others.

 

I would think because they were from the same manufacturer, and are basically the same technologically, the greater NIT value could be from its smaller diameter. Anyway, I would like to here more impressions as it would give me a clue what to expect.

 

LOL
and here I was thinking, this guy can't read. Apparently, I can't read...