*HP Envy 15 (11XX / 12XX series) Owners Lounge!*

You both need to realize the Envy 15 is 1" thick and weighs 5.2 Lbs. In that small chassy you get i5 or i7 CPU's with a great 3 fan cooling system, a beautiful 1080P LED dislplay and a 5830 GPU. So far no other PC (or Macbook) this size has come close to bettering this awsome computer and IMHO $1200 is a bargain compared to any other comparable options unless size and portability are not important to you.

While a backlit keyboard would be nice I don't miss it, if I need to see the keys I just tilt the screen down a bit and increase the brightness (which at max can blind you in the dark). I also have no problems with an external DVD or bluray drive, I'll take the size and weight savings. How often do you really use it anyway? You should also note the larger thickness and weight of the 14 and 17 envy's and you'll see the compromise required for the internal drive and B/L keyboard, IMO they are not even in the same class as the 15 but just relabeled new pavillions...

Regarding the display: I had the glossy and anti glare models side by side and the glossy is much brighter, sharper and has higher contrast, as a photographer this is the only one I would recommend.

USB 3.0: I said it may be included with the i5 version, it is unlcear in the new manual. It's a higher speed interface (+10x over USB 2.0), google it for more info.

Noise and heat have not been an issue since the original first gen i7 models.

EDIT: Here is a picture of the interior of my envy 15. Note the large sliver area which is the battery compartment, the keyboard rests directly on top of it with no room to add any thickness required for a backlight. Also note that there is no room for any internal DVD drive due to the excellent cooling system design, I'll take this over an internal drive any day.

View attachment interior-1-full[1].pdf

 

JJB, the external drive i really don't give a rats behind about, i just was wondering about the backlit keyboard thing. If you remmeber last years models the HDX 16 and 18, they both had later models with a backlit keyboard! Hewlet Packard always does this lol. I do agree with you now and i do see your point but when their is a will their is a way even to overclocking too. Yeah your the one with the 4 second video sad so sad and they were off cmon man! If not then my bad to offend you. Wow that pic is crazy the innovation for this machine is crazy and they used the unibody design tsk tsk apple... I think its awesome to have a matte screen, sometimes these glossy screens strain my eyes you know, sometimes... I really love matte screens and its great they are offering an alternative. Now from the manual of the envy 17 it says that both of the fullhd screens are 300 nits. If your photographer why didn't you get a machine with high nits than this like 400 like the W workstations? Also why not RGBLED?? I do have a precision m6400 if your wondering with rgbled. Also these ssds i see just like the sony designs you can't take them out huh? Also 1'8th like the Sony Z... Can you upgrade the processor if you want or not? I am guessing nope. Intel g1 160s huh. How are the benchmarks on those? I will google for more info and research more about it. But tell me your dislikes and likes about the machine. Thanks!!

 

@freedom16

WT* are you rambling about?? Is there a question in there somewhere?

No idea what your saying about overclocking, the 5830 OC's just fine, the new mobile CPU's cannot be OC'ed (yet). Also have no idea about what 4 second video your talking about The envy is not anything like the unibody construction of a macbook, it's a cast magnesium alloy chassy, watch the apple video, it's a whole different and much better process. Also AFAIK all recent envy's have been shipped with gen 2 SSD's, either version benchmarks as spec'd by intel.

As I stated above the matte screen basically sucks compared to the glossy, as far as brightness specs go, never believe the manufacturer, they measure it with no video card or driver, just the backlight through a powered panel. 300 nits will test out to about 200 nits with an image or blank screen. If you had a true 400 nit screen you would never be able to look at it at full brightness, talk about hurting your eyes...

When professionally editing photograghry you use a color calibrated screen at 80 or 90 nits in order to match print outputs.

BTW, none of the notebooks you mention are really in the same 'thin and light' class as the Envy 15 exept apple at over twice the cost, not even th envy 14 and 17...

 

Yeah i know you like your thin and light notebooks, i just want a thin and light backup just incase anything ever happens to the m11x, also its light to carry around the Envy 15 and s a 15 inch form factor. Your right about the build quality and design. Ok awesome all are G2 ones, those are best ones besides the OCZ vertex ones. Yeah the notebookcheck review of the 1336x768 had a brightness of 175 so just about the average, i really can't believe it to be that bad i love my matte screens lol. Why couldn't they use RGBLED in this beast? Yeah i heard the cooling in this machine is nuts and awesome, seems like the 5830 is a bit above the 4830, I just get tired of edge to edge glass screens you know what i mean? What cameras and programs do you use? I have a Panasonic FZ35. Are you talking about spyder elite pro?

 

Im just going to throw this out there but me personaly I LOVE my matte screen. The fact that when I use my envy in class and I can actually see the screen compared to my glossy netbook in which I can not see half the screen in the same lighting condition. Sure the colors might not be as bright but the screen itself is still better then a lot of lcd monitors out there on the market I have used... as for the external cd drive...piffff who needs it.... as for the backlighting on the keyboard if you look at JJB's pic there is NO extra room for the backlight.... and if you read the review of the envy 17 on the nets the backlight isn't that good anyways...

 

I don't quite understand why you would use the envy 15 as a backup for an MX 11, it would be the other way around for me (not to mention that I would be laughed out of my clients offices if I powered up an MX11 for displaying portfolios). If you use the MX 11 for gaming then you need to check out the envy benchmarks thread HERE, you'll see that the envy can run circles around the MX 11, in most cases even at full 1080P resolution. Default 3dmark06 8000+ and 3DmarkVantage is P5000+ with max OC's I get >10,000 and >P6500.

That notebookcheck review was for an original gen 1 model and is not representative of the current models, also the 1080P glossy screen is much brighter ~220nits vs. ~170nits for the matte (both after calibration). RGB/LED screens have several issues of there own, including needing to be thicker and they are very power hungry. Also it sounds like, from your comment, that you are not aware that the envy 15 does not have edge to edge glass.

Re: Cameras, it would take to long to list them, right now I'm primarily shooting my Nikon D3S and a D300. For software we use Photoshop CS4, Nikon NX2, OnOne and NIK. For studio calibration we use the Spyder3 elite Pro system with Spyder Print.

 

Just love my matte screen.......................

 

I also love my matte screen! I hope they can offer E2E matte screen, but it will add lots of cost for glass

I'm not an EE, but I understand some basic circuit stuff.

I thought M15X is super easy to desgin, why?

There is no limitaion for m15x

When their engineer team find out, if the fans have not enough CFM for its cooling system, they just basically increase the thickness of fans.
If it's still not enough, they just simply added the thickness of heatsinks

The basic idea for allienware notebooks, add more power, add more weight, add more dimension of notebook. Then put everything together and keep them in a box

So, it comes out, a 15 inch notebook has about 10lbs of weight...and super thick dimension ( G73 has like 1/4 more power but about 20% less weight compare to m15x)

Their team don't need to improve too much for the circuit in motherboard, squeeze every single parts to reduce weight and dimension , because there is no limitation of weight and dimension. Of couse, they will do some, but not as much as others, like Sony Z, Macbook pro.

I personally thought M11x is not a impressed notebook, 4.5lbs with low voltage CPUs and decent GPU (some similar dimension and weight's notebooks have closed performance)

It success, because it's cheap at starting price and has a Alienware logo on top of lid.

 

I think I'm also gonna join in the matte screen loving here hehe. I originally had an Envy 15 with the 1080p glossy which I had to exchange due to some defects. In the exchange process, I asked them to change my screen to the matte display.

So now that I've had some experience with both screens also, I want to say that indeed, while the matte screen clearly isn't as sharp, it is barely worse in terms of brightness and color (to a more untrained individual like me at least). In fact, it's also a lot less blue-tinted than the glossy. Then again, I've heard that there are multiple manufacturers making Envy screens; my matte screen is an LG, not sure what the glossy was, don't know if that has to do with anything?

Also, regarding brightness, JJB rates the matte screen at 170 nits, but I feel it's actually brighter than that. One of my friends has an Inspiron 1564 which anandtech rated at 225 nits in their review, but when placed side-by-side, my matte Envy screen is definitely brighter than his Inspiron screen when both are at max brightness. Not sure if that's also due to manufacturer.

 

I have a LG Display, too.
LP156WF1-TLF3

Use HWiNFO32 to determine what your system components are..

Darn I want to stick an RGBLED panel in this Envy, that would be just awesome...

 

Just checked, mine is also a LP156WF1-TLF3. Cool utility haha

 

Hi guys, I would like to buy an envy 15 2nd gen, but I found that the price on ebay was only $1000 for 1366*768 and $1100 for a 1080p(both brand new,top seller). That's about $300 lower than HP, plus no tax and waiting time. I was curious why the price was so low.

will make a decision tonight and become a future owner love envy's design so much

 

Well I finally updated to the F .28 BIOS and am pleased to report a significant temp reduction over F .26 and F .24. It appears to have allowed core #2 to fully shut down again at idle like the older BIOS's (F .18 and earlier). Both the CPU and GPU dropped about 4C at idle and core #2 now drops to the upper teens while at idle compared to mid 20's with F .26. See screen shot below. Going to run a 100% stability test and see what happens when maxed out.

I also installed the ATI 10.6 'alpha' and so far it is running stable except it appears I have lost a slight bit of max OC capability when testing with 3Dmark06, 633/1125 max (10,153pts) vs. 640/1133 max (10,273pts) with the 10.4 drivers. Did not spend any time playing with the 3D settings so it may be improved with some tweaks. Good news is that 10.6 installs the HDMI driver, Hydravision and Avivo automatically and enables full OpenGL functionality in Photoshop (did not allow this with past non WHQL alpha or beta versions), also 10.6 is 100% OpenGL 4.0 compatible (10.5 was 50%).



EDIT: Regarding display P/N and system info, if you really want all the details of whats installed in your system I recommend Everest which gives the most data on your system, here is the info it gives just for my display:

 

Interesting, you lost OC capability.. and I gained some.

I'm still not sure about the best OC combination for mine..

Mine pushes mem clocks up to 1220mhz, but that is just on 500 core.

I'm not sure as to how to start pushing the core.. haha.

How do you check for artifacts JJB?

 

@meraki1990

Wow! 1220Mhz memory OC, that's the highest by far I've seen reported, is that speed stable while benchmarking or gaming? Mine loses stability at 1140Mhz. If you can maintain those mem speeds with ~600Mhz core I bet you can break the 11,000 3D06 barrier.

I would suggest Furmark (v.1.7) to test for stability and artifacts. Or you can just keep bumping up the core speed while running a benchmark like 3Dmark06 until it freezes up on you, no need to worry about frying the GPU since their are multiple safety shutdowns and over temp protections, worst case is the screen will freeze up and you'll have to hold down the power button to restart. I would suggest starting at a 'reasonable' mem speed of say 1100 and then start upping the core in ~25Mhz steps and if you can get to 625 then start upping both speeds together, at this point memory speed increases will make more difference than the core speeds.

Be interesting to see if you can still hit those high mem speeds with higher core speeds...

 

FYI here are the results of a new stability / burn in test with the F.28 BIOS and the 10.6 (alpha) ATI driver. This test ran both the CPU at 100% on all 4 threads and the GPU with 1920x1080 full screen Furmark stablility test at 600 / 1100 O.C. at the same time, basically 100% maxing out the computer. Surprisingly the temps on the palmrests remained very cool to the touch, much cooler than with the F .24 or F .26 BIOS, even though the max CPU temps were about the same. The GPU temps ran about 5C cooler due to the fan kicking into a higher speed at 75C (this is new with F .28) which kept temps down to 73C and kept the right palmrest very cool to the touch.

Here is a screen shot after running for about 15 minutes, as you can see temps stabilized after 3-4 minutes and the palmrests seemed to stop increasing after ~7 minutes.

 

How and where did you get 10.6? I've been dying to update this stupid driver, but anything downloaded from the ATI site just does not work (last release in May is what I'm trying). It installs, and after everything is done "not suitable ATI device found, blah blah blah".

I never had these issues with the dv6t and nvidia updates

 

go into device manager and keep removing the ati display driver until it loads the generic windows vesa driver....then click this link on strags.com that will start the download....grab a drink if your on a slow connection... then just extract it to a new folder and run the setup

 

No luck. I uninstalled a good 15 times (I kid you not). here's what I did.

Uninstalled. Rebooted. Driver came back (to be expected). Uninstalled, didn't show up in list again, nothing was being installed.. ran the setup as adminstrator .. no driver was installed, even though it said to reboot.

Upon reboot, driver was from november 2009 (guess it was loaded from Microsoft's database).

This time I just ran the installer.. the warning about a unsigned driver popped up (yay!), and.. during the install process... black screen of doom. It flickered a few times, thought it worked, and then it just died on me (no driver installed upon reboot)..

Thoughts/ideas? What the heck could I be doing wrong?

 

@Drecca

First of all what GPU do you have? If it is a 4830 then that's the problem. If it's a 5830 then you probably have been installing all sorts of ATI files and not fully removing them before updating. If you are running HP's original software that came with the envy then it may be reloading the drivers from the recovery partition and you'll need to figure out how to turn off that auto update / recovery feature, I think in that rediculous Support Assistant program.

You'll need to first turn off windows auto update of drivers. Then run the ATI install manager and choose uninstall ALL ATI software, then you need to run an app called 'driver sweeper' HERE Then delete any AMD and ATI folders in Computer 'program files' and 'program files (x86)'. Then go back to device manager > display adapter > 5830 > update driver > Browse my computer... > Let me pick from list... and then 'check' the box 'show compatible hardware' . You should now have just the generic windows VGA adapter listed, if any ATI drivers are listed you have to remove them manually and start again with driver sweeper until all are gone from that list.

If your next install attempt fails then try extracting the downloaded ATI driver package to a folder and then repeat the device manager choices above upto the 'let me pick from list' option and click the 'have disc' button and browse to the saved ATI folder location, open it and click 'next' That should load the driver itself manually but you may need to go back and install the other features manually from the extracted folder (CCC etc.)

 

Yes but my friend you tend to forget to look at my sign, i am getting replacement alienware also with sli lol. I have a G73JH, i just care for a streamline machine with an very decent gpu but this one is pretty good, not really if you pulled out your m11x just put a custom skin on it and turn off the lights duh lol, but if you want a single machine no no m11x just can't play games like that. What games do you play? That's a good gpu overclock, if you get a custom vbios then you can clock it higher, I'd say try 650/1225 if you get that Vbios you can get it clocked higher in the area of the 5870 but what will always bottleneck this card is not having GDDR5. It got some pretty high benchmarks with the proper settings. Nice cameras, i prefer buying a nikon over a Cannon for just taking pictures, i have Photoshop CS5 the entire suite. I never used those calibration programs/hardware. So now you can see why i would use it as a backup gaming comp and also a secondary ultraportable. Hmm from what i am seeing i thought it was edge to edge glass, i really dislike that after a while. I was looking at an envy 15 though. I wonder why hp never had a cross-fire or sli in this machine.

 

oh wow thats good to hear, i wasn't aware of the changes HP made to the cooling system.

I have three other concerns that i would appreciate if you could address:

1. Do you play any games? If you do, how does the i5 hold up, ive looked at some benchmarks and stuff but what are you personal experiences with it.
2. I began customizing an envy 15 on HP's site, but when i select the i5-540 and ATI 5830, the GPU only allows 4gs of ram, how do you have 8?
3.What is the difference between the Anti-Glare and Ultra-Brightview screens?

 

@SS9221

1) here is a link the the envy 15 benchmarks thread HERE. I don't really game much but I use the 3D benchmarks to test performance of the system after changes to drivers or upgrades etc. The i5 actually performs better than the i7's in most games since they are almost always designed around dual core CPU tech and don't use all 4 cores of the i7's, the speed boost on the i5's outperforms the i7's. Also most games are mainly GPU dependant and use very low % of the CPU's capabilities.

2) I added the 8GB (2 x 4GB) myself

3) Been addressed multiple times here. I prefer the glossy do to higher brightness, contrast and sharper images, others will argue they prefer the matte finish.

 

If you want a screen like a standard lcd monitor then go with the matte anti glare screen... If you want a brighter more viberent screen but with the down side of tons 'o' glare if you have light on it then get the brightview...

 

JJB, what controls do you use on your envy to calibrate the envy screen. I have eye-one display LT, and would like use that. Do I use ATI CCC for making changes since there is no OSD like desktop displays ?

 

I use Spyder3 elite pro, it creates the ICC profiles from it's own sensor and software based on what settings I want to calibrate for (sRGB, Adobe 1998 etc.), then it just has a 'profile chooser' app that lets me choose what profile I want on the fly or it can auto load any I want at startup. This program only works with windows 7 control of color settings, I have to make sure the CCC color controls are not being used before calibrating the display, it's all software controlled except for setting the brightness level manually.

 

Yeah i am starting to rethink the matte screen cause i see what you mean and also thinking about my rgbled screen when i got the edge to edge glass compared to the mostly crappy too much red samsung one! But then again i really have to see it in person.

 

anyone have any laptop coolers they would recommend for an Envy 15?

 

NZXT Cryo S.

The fans are aligned perfectly with the Envy 15 vents,

the LX series are a bit too big for the Envy 15 and the rubber packing covers the vents instead of providing airflow.

One should stick to the S size if one were to go along the lines of the NZXT.

 

can anyone tell me how about the envy screen compare to xps 1647 (not RGB) ? how much does 5830 outperform the 4670 in gaming? Thanks

 

Zalman 2000 works like a charm.

 

Glossy screens is about equal or greater on the envy to the dell... as for the 5830 it outperforms the 4670 nearly 25-40%.... I traded in my studio xps for the envy and will never look back.... the best perk is the metal body...NO FINGERPRINTS!!!!!!! (except for bezel but thats a different story)

 

Yup besides a lack of a backlit keyboard this machine is so much lighter and thinner and more powerful than the Studip XPS 1645 and less smudges lol and also pretty better build quality and the GPU is so much stronger screw the 5730 that is for 1645. How do you like your matte screen?

 

Welp, I heard rumors before, but today I got a taste of how bad HP tech support is when I picked up my envy 15 today and it didn't work. Then I enjoyed three hours of talking to three different tech representatives, and ended up having to send it back in for service. Joy.

 

what problem(s) do you have with your envy 15?

 

I'll admit it was a refurbished unit, but what happened was it originally took around 2m to boot to the windows boot screen on the first try; during that time the computer kept looping some bootup sequence with a blank screen; later after the computer booted up and was setup, it would randomly crash when uninstalling or running programs; each time Windows would ask for an integrity check, and finally one time after logging in the screen turned into an 8-bit color mosaic. After a recovery there were more errors, and windows kept trying to do a startup repair which never worked and kept looping, and trying to continue to windows resulted in a crash.

 

Does it run hot? I am thinking about getting the envy 15 too but I am concerned about the heat issue lots of people complaining.

 

Theres NO heat issues with the i5's in the envy... Mine is cool to the touch when playing 90% of my games...the only time the palms get hot is when I am playing battlefield but thats pretty much it.....If your thinking about this laptop vs the studio xps.....hands down the envy 15 wins

 

I have N61JQ-X1 from Asus right now and I am thinking about getting the envy 15 because it is more portable and stylish. anything I should know about the envy15 before I place my order?

 

I have a question about the keyboard -- I'm torn between the IBM ThinkPad W510 and the Envy 15 - the ThinkPad is at least 2lbs heavier, which is a huge problem. I don't care about the internal optical disk, I actually applaud HP for ditching it. So the Envy is pretty much perfect.

But my main issue with the keyboard. I've used ThinkPad keyboards for the last 5 years or so (even on desktops) so I'm pretty attached to them. I use a wireless mouse, so the trackpad (or lack of the ThinkPad's nipple are not an issue. I'm a software engineer, so I type A LOT and I need to know that the HP's keyboard is good for typing.

So? How is it for key travel, clickieness, etc? How do the keys compare to the 'traditional' ThinkPad keyboard?

 

Oh, I used thinkpad before

Thinkpad keyboards are truly awesome, and I had no issues with them.

I used MSI before the Envy, and I should add that the Envy keyboard does not disappoint you in any way.

It was my first time, well second, after macbook air, to use chiclet style keyboards, and the keyboard is so much better in the Envy than the macbook air and the MSI.

Thinkpads are really good, but I don't think Envy falls to much behind.

Well, I used to type on a happy hacking professional 2 keyboard which cost $260 new... for a keyboard.. so I can't really say I like typing on laptops,

but of all the computers I used, I should say that the thinkpad and the envy are the two top laptops in terms of keyboard.

 

Thanks -- so the extra columns of keys don't get in the way, layout is good?

 

I did not notice anything bad with the extra columns of keys..

Outlook, Google Chrome, Calculator, Printer..

everything was what I used often, and I loved the keys.

Layout is awesome, though my girlfriend, who has small hands, thought that the keyboard was too spread out to type comfortably.

So if you have tiny tiny hands, it might be a problem..

 

What is the screen make of the Glossy 1080P screen?

 

I've been playing WOW on this for the past 8 days, each day 13 hours of it being on with WOW running. Works great. I've even HDMI it to my 57" LCD and that worked nice too!

 

You mention things about a new manual and etc...

is there a refresh coming out for the envy 15? 9although the 14 is about to be released?)

 

what's the temperature after 13 hours gaming? Heard a lot of heat issues. I'm waiting for my envy from hp. hope it won't become too hot

 

Anybody try the RadTech "Clear Cal" anti-glare screen cover on the glossy screen?

Reduce Glare on MacBook, iMac and Apple Cinema Displays with ClearCal Anti-Glare Film - RadTech Products

Seems like it might be nice, sounds like the glossy screen is much brighter than the matte, this might give you more brightness but a matte screen. Maybe get the one for the 17" MBP and cut it down. There's some videos on youtube, looks like the thing actually works.