HP Envy 15? i7 meets 4830+15" screen!

finally got confirmation email YAY.

 

this is how i feel waiting for my envy to come in the mail

 

Congrats jwhit3367.
Good luck with your purchase!

 

Hahaha... rep for that pic!

 

I'm gonna go check best buy and see if they have some, maybe I'll get mine on the 22nd hehehehe.

 

For those who bought it, when are you expecting to receive it?

 

First one to post a review with pictures WINS!

 

E-mails are saying October 28. HP rep told me "possibly sooner".

 

Well to be fair the 13 inch doesn't offer a quad core processor, or as much memory expandability. But yes I'm still considering it, perhaps for black friday if HP offers the 40% off coupon again. Not sure if I would go for the 13 or the 15. Portability is key as my HDX18 is just too much to be lugging around all of the time. My main issue is having to buy an external blu-ray drive. for obvious reasons that bugs me (less portability, yet another cable and component I have to carry, etc).

Black friday works well for me though, allows me to find out more about the potential heat issues and see if they can fix the trackpad/button issues in their software. I jumped on the first iteration of the HDX18t last year and lost on the 40% they had. Luckily my machine suffered none of the issues that others had with the speakers, etc. This time I'll wait a month. hehe.

 

i hate macs as much as the next guy and think they are overpriced out the whaoo. But these envy machines seem to be way overpriced to me too. I mean you are comparing prices between the two AFTER you have gotten essentially 35% off the price on a sale that lasted ruffly two days. And you traded not having any reviews/benchmarks or even touched the the thing before dropping 1500 bux on it. I hope the envy is God's gift to laptop users, but i still think at this point they are overpriced moreso than the macbook at this point.

 

I came to conclusion a while ago that the MacBooks aren't overpriced once you factor in the form factor. The problem with apple isn't that the MacBook Pro's are too much, it's that they don't offer a 1.5" plastic version of their machines for 60% of the price. Now we are starting to see PC makers follow the trend toward thin and light, however most of the machines in that class have wimpy CULV processors and more importantly, they have really poor resolutions available. Enter the Envy. You have a (very) powerful laptop with a thin and light chassis, and a high resolution screen. What other options actually fit this class? While the SXPS 16 is a very nice machine, I don't consider it thin and light.

The Envy may turn out to be a bad choice for a lot of reasons. I decided to give it a shot knowing I have 21 days to send it back if I don't like it, and knowing that it is currently the only laptop I know of in it's class.

 

im so tired of the envy vs mac debate. different strokes for different folks. let it go

 

For anyone interested, my order is in production as of today. So I wonder if they will ship it this week, but are waiting for the Win 7 launch to finally send them out. I guess we shall see.

 

To any Canadians who are interested (i'm starting to think i'm the only Canadian who even cares about this laptop) I spoke with an HP sales rep and they said they'd be receiving Envy 15-1050 models within the next 2 weeks. w00t.

EDIT: Oh just FYI to anyone interested. The Envy 15 will be $2200 through HP Canada. The Envy 13 will be $1800 (I think that’s what she said… I wasn’t too worried about the 13 =P)

 

Do macbooks have i7 cpu,a dedicated awesome gfx card,high rez good quality screen,a changeable battery with a optional slice battery?
Most of what youre paying for with that $2000+ mac is its shiny sticker with the apple tax,even with the aluminum uni-frame thay arent that durable.

 

i cant believe im actually defending mac..BUT im not. They are both overpriced machines in my opinion. I simply replied to a user that said it was a nobrainer to buy the envy. I simply am stating that its a no brainer only after you take 35% off the price on a 48 hour cashback rebate.

I also have a hard time understanding why HP would price this thing so high when they are trying to obviously throw an elbow to apple. Seems to me that this thing at a lower price would dominate the market. I am reserving judgement until i actually touch the thing and read a review on it. I don't like the look of it really. Am I in the minority in saying that the fact that it is trying to look like a macbook is a turn off? I hate apple. But I also hate this move to external optical drives. Carrying around a yo yo to play discs is not portability.

Not that anyone asked for my opinions.....

 

I do agree with one thing....the HP Envy line is way overpriced. It's a shame too because i really want one but there is no way in hell that i am spending over $1,500.00 on a laptop.

Bestbuy has the Envy on their site now:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1&_dynSessConf=-595637433558780970&id=pcat17071&type=page&st=Hp+Envy&sc=Global&cp=1&nrp=15
&sp=&qp=&list=n&iht=y&usc=All+Categories&ks=960

The same price at Bestbuy...that makes me more sad!

 

The Envy is overpriced,but with the new i7 and all its best class specs,they would have to price higher with the demand for this notebook,while the macbook is just plain overpriced because of the apple sticker,why the external drives though,seems like they would be able to squeeze one in somehow.

 

Well, undoubtedly Macs are low powered and overpriced, but do they look good. That was their only plus as far as I am concerned and I hope Ebvy 13/15 will take that crown too.

BTW, do Envy's have a glowing logo on the display back? I saw it in other HP notebooks though.

 

I really don't think it has the best in class specs. Apart from 4830, it doesn't have anything that stands out from SXPS 16, which has RGBLED and SSD options with a cheaper price-tag.

 

It's not a brick to carry around and is asthetically more pleasing. Granted, these aren't factors everyone cares about, but Envy is being targeted to those who are looking for a good looking, portible machine. 2 things i really didnt like about my SXPS16 was the size/weight, it was cumbersome to carry around in one hand... and i'm not exactly a weakling so i doubt smaller guys and women would like to lug it around. Also its battary life was crap. The thing was brand new and only lasted 2.5 hours on power saver mode (which by the way was CRAP for performance on even the simplest tasks... my 3 year old VAIO was better on PS mode).

The screen on the SXPS16 was good though and when plugged in and not on my lap it was a beast when running games and blu-ray movies. I'm still kinda iffy about this no Optical drive in the Envy business... but i'm willing to give it a try.

 

I could really care less if it looks like a brick or not,the power is very nice to have,though someone said battery life sucks,and its worth the extra $$ to have a long running notebook with a optional slice battery for 6-9 hours run time without having to plug in. But why no optical drives in the Envy's? the the gfx card and the i7 cooler take up too much room?

 

I'd like to see a cheaper version maybe with plastic case, one hard drive and an internal optical drive. Or I'd like to see hp get off there asses and make a black one with a backlit keyboard ffs.

 

You're point is moot. The SXPS 16 is the same price as the Envy 15 if you configure it with the same specs. By default the SXPS doesn't come with 6 GB Ram, nor a 1080p Screen, nor as good a gfx card, nor the same form factor... and you can't configure the form factor . It's the same price with the same features... I did a comparison a couple nights ago... so... it seems like a no brainer to me to go with the Envy 15--unless it ridiculously overheats... in which case, I'm just going to stick with a desktop + ultraportable laptop with windows live sync.

 

The SXPS 16 is comparable only in terms of the fact that they both offer an i7.

The SXPS 16 is not meant to be portable -its a 16 incher not a 15 incher. It has its perks, like the RGB full HD screen option, and the ATI 4650 will perform about as well as the ATI 4830 if they put DDR3 VRAM in there, which it looks like they did. It has a different style and a different target consumer group.

If you want a lighter/thinner machine, get the lighter thinner machine. If you want the larger/heavier machine, get the larger heavier machine. There are more factors at play than just specs here.

 

The Best Buy web site suggests a single 500 GB drive. Also, the confirmation e-mail shows "500 GB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection", but that's what it says on the hard drive configuration page, only the "Help me decide" link references the possible 2 x 250 GB configuration.

So, I just called HP and was transferred to technical support, though not the group that's going to be handling Envy tech support. The technician had to do some digging, but found that at the time of launch, the installed hard drive would be a single 500 GB drive, not 2x250.

So, first person who gets theirs needs to post whether they got one 500 GB or two 250 GB drives. Unless someone has an inside route to HP or is an HP employee who can confirm before then.

 

I completely agree. I was just pointing out to the gent who was saying the SXPS16 was the WAY better choice for the money that there were factors that differentiated it from the Envy 15 that could make it seem unattractive for some people.

 

I'm with you. The Envy 15 is way more attractive to me, not saying that there aren't people who would be more attracted to the XPS 16.

I would say though... the 4650 is really not even close to the 4830 in terms of performance, or it shouldn't be, though we don't know exactly how 4830 is going to perform exactly.

 

You can't compare the 2 cards yet.

On paper, the 4830 should be quite a bit better, but until I see some Vantage scores I would reserve judgement.

 

It's quite simply, marketing. Most users are ignorant (which isn't implicitly a negative thing, it's just that they don't know any better), and when they see a high price tag, they think it must be better. We all do it for products that we don't know enough about. For example, if you didn't know anything about home audio, why would you pay $10,000 for a home theatre speaker system? Well, it must be better than my $1,000 system. But those of us in the know, at least for computers, realize there are other options since we know the cost of the components.

I hate how HP doesn't let you configure things in Canada (at least for Elitebooks and seemingly for the Envy), plus no coupons mean you have to pay the full ridiculous amount.

 

I know people disagree with me, but I don't think the Envy is overpriced considering the features it comes with--especially if you can get it with a coupon/discount.

 

Take a deep breath and step away from the keyboard

It's a typo on the HP website; both UK models are full HD screens. For a premium product launch, it seems HP left the office monkey to post the specifications and option prices on the US an UK sites.

Personally, my interest in the Envy 15 has been put on hold for the moment. No Intel 5300 and the rather silly inclusion of an external DVD drive as standard instead of an optional BD seems strange for its premium positioning. I'll wait until DX11 cards appear.

 

@DinTuscAI, nice digging on the 500GB drive.

On the pricing question.
It is fair to compare Envy's sale price to Apple's price. I don't follow Apple's pricing closely, but the company has little interest in high volume. Their business is profit margin. I don't know that I have seen an Apple sale advertised or used as a loss leader at Best Buy etc. Apple doesn't make a lot of appearances in the hot deals section of fatwallet.

The windows/PC business for the most part runs on volume with low profit margins. For consumers this used to involve a lot of mail in rebates and coupon codes. Mail in rebates seem to be diminishing, but as others have pointed out the bing cash back is very similar rebate model.

The actual sale was 25%. The 25%+10% (EPP, Acedemic, or other discount) may be canceled as the Bing cashback site indicates for HP sales Bing cash back offers cannot be combined with other discounts.

If you pay full retail for a PC product then you paid for convenience, becuase waiting a few weeks will usaully open up a discount. For PCs you can expect decent sales on Black Friday and around Christmas. Coupons usually come out a little before quarter end to beef up revenue, units shipped numbers, move old inventory, etc.

Going to an External optical drive will be different. I personally think it is a good thing. I rarely use the drive in my current laptop. So 95% of the time it is wasted space. No cd drive probably goes to space for a second drive in this machine, which could be many times more useful. I use D-tools or nocd patches for all my games, and steam games don't need a cd. Really only need a drive to play movies on occasion.

At $2000 the Envy is expensive compared to suitable alternatives... not a lot of buyers.
At $1500 it outclasses almost everything and they have lot more buyers.

 

Stop complaining about the no OD deal!!!
This laptop gave up the OD in order to have A SECOND HDD/SSD!

For most people that is more important than an OD bay. And actually, how many of you watch a movie while moving around? Or game? Or do anything with a CD? Normally you do that at a house, with the laptop plugged in, and on a surface, so the eOD is not a problem, but the dual HDD is a great thing to have. Some people will value more the added HDD rather than the OD

 

The 25% off puts it in the sweet spot. I wouldn't have bought one if it weren't for that deal, I would have bought a Dell Studio XPS 16. But with the discount, I had no choice but to spend the extra $200 or so vs the Dell for the incredible video card, chiclet keyboard, etc.
But I wonder how often they'll be on sale.

BTW, if you really want to watch movies on the go, just rip the discs. If you put in a 500gb 2nd HD, you can fit 60 DVDs uncompressed, or 120 application DVDs. Try carrying that many in a binder.

 

agreed. this thread has turned into a bunch of bickering. if you need a OD on the go the get a different laptop. yes HP could have put one in it, but they didnt. life goes on

 

Stop trolling and ranting. I will start reporting posts if this becomes a war.

Kindly adhere to the Forum Rules.

If this laptops specs are not for you, either OD, CPU, GPU, etc., then it is not for you. Some other alternative is surely available. Thanks.

Now, back to topic. jwhit3367, excited about your upcoming Envy 15?
How are you digging the "flowery" design?

 

Yeah the 25% definitely hit the sweet spot, though I was banking on it lasting more than 1 day, hopefully it comes around again soon or I will have to go a different direction.

I also find it odd the big discussion here between this and the sxps 16... I don't even think the m15x lounge was getting hammered this hard

EDIT: Yeah I also hope they make more design options, though the flower design does not look feminine, it would still damage my masculinity

 

It was not. The M15x was a let down mostly, due to the humungous chassis, the over weight, over price, and low config.

But since HP is the direct competitor to Dell, and Dell owns Alienware, no Dell vs AW hammering was ever there, only "polite" conversations, but this is HP, direct competition, same performance bracket, same "niche" we could call it (though not exactly), and a lot of mixed feelings.

This thread in 3 days has gone from 600 posts to almost 1300.

 

I was hoping for a pink one for breast cancer awareness month. If the NFL guys can rock pink gear so can I?

I don't see any envy 13 thread, but found its maintenance and service manual searching the HP support site:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...3908&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&cc=us&y=0&x=0

Hope to see the 15's manual up soon and a full production version reviewed.

Edit:
Page 56-57 has some information on the 13' internal heat sink. It looks like a massive heatpipe loop that cools CPU, northbridge, and video card. With two blowers, one on each side, to exhaust out the side. Guess it pulls air from inside the chasis since the 13 doesn't have vents on the bottom, but does have them along the back.

 

I'm looking for a good laptop for photography image processing in the field. A fellow photographer modified his 15" Macbook Pro to have dual SSDs in RAID 0 and no ODD - all for maximum performance in image processing. It's really fast but will of course be nowhere near an Envy 15.

I'd say as photographers we're more of the target profile for the Envy 15 than gamers. The dual drive option is great and if I need to read or burn a disc (unlikely, USB sticks rule in the field) then sure I could bring an ODD, or ask someone else to transfer over USB.

I'm just praying that the FHD display panel is decent. In a way I'd rather have WLED than RGBLED backlighting unless the panel is a true 8-bit panel (likely not). RGBLED stretches those 6 bits far.

Price-wise, once upgraded to 8 GB memory the Envy 15 is actually quite moderately priced. The Envy 13 OTOH seems like much more of a premium notebook than professional imaging workhorse.

 

Yeah that is true Serg, but I think the sxps 16 and m15x are closer niches than this and the sxps, but to each their own

Yeah I figured there was no envy 13 thread since the number of buyers would be severely limited, though I was definitely interested in it :/

 

it brings out my feminine side.................
unfortuneately i have a longer wait than the rest of you guys. its going to my moms house and then she will mail it to me in iraq. which will take another 2 weeks

 

DOH! oh man that is going to be a painful wait
at least it will be even more awesome when it finally arrives haha

 

yea especially since i will be working on a netbook until that time.

 

Dont complain. When I get a laptop, ill wait mre than a month, till 11th December for any laptop bought now.
GRRR EU is too far from US...lol

 

hey look on the bright side........atleast you dont live in france!! ooops j/k

 

ooo.. that was harsh.. lol

 

Fixed! :wink:

(that was a low hit!)

And yes, I have to wait that long to get my hands on my laptop, wether this is the HP or the Dell or any other...

 

Got a response from HP rep regarding 920XM availability:

"We have received numerous inquiries about this. Regretfully, we are not aware component release dates until shortly before they are available to our customers, and as such, cannot provide an exact date."
"I recommend checking regularly for product arrival, or for future reference, our newsletter would provide this information in a timely manner before its release."

No exact dates so far