HP Envy reliability?

Hey all,

I've been suggested an HP Envy 14 for college in the what computer should I get forum, but I've heard and experienced some pretty horriblebad things with HP notebooks (dv2000 series, in my personal experience). Can someone with an Envy attest to the reliability or lack thereof of this line?

Thanks!

 

Well... the envy 14's haven't come out yet

But HP claim to have fixed a lot of the issues that were mentioned in both the envy 15 and 13. Personally after seeing the videos I think it looks quite nice and hopefully pricing should be ok.

Youtube vid:
YouTube - HP Envy 14

This is a link to the envy 14 page. High Performance Laptops w/ Free Audio Software | HP Envy Features
and a link to the spec sheet. http://www.hp.com/united-states/personal_again/datasheets/envy14_17_ds.pdf

Apparently being released on june 27th in the US. So if you can wait for a while and see some reviews that should help you decide.

 

Hmm I was thinking more like over time reliability as in hardware failures and whatnot that seem stuck to the HP brand like an evil Siamese twin - wouldn't the level of quality on the previous Envy models be a reasonably good indicator?

 

Who made the new Envy 14 and 17?

 

HP? By previous Envy I was referring to the original HP Envy 13 and 15, not the Voodoo Envys.

 

Who is the manufacturer? Is it really HP?

 

I think I'm either misunderstanding your question or losing my sanity. Yes, it is the HP Envy? You can buy the HP Envy 17 off their site as of today?

 

Yes. HP bought VoodooPC and retained the engineers, so it's really an HP machine, designed by the guys who used to work for VoodooPC. All flavors of the HP Envy were done this way.

 

Does this mean that they're less of HPs and more of Voodoos in terms of reliability/quality/failure rates and whatnot?

 

HP contracts foreign companies (similar to Quanta and Compal) to make their laptops. Also reliability changes by model, so I don't know if anyone can say for certain that the Envy 14 will be reliable or not.

 

Its either Quanta or Inventec. Quanta produces 40% of HPs notebook line while Inventec produces 30%. Not sure who the other manufacturer HP uses is. But Iventec manufactures HPS business line and Quanta manufactured the previous Envy's. Quanta will probably manufacture the 14 and 17 as well.

 

I see...so it is an unreasonable assumption that the Envys 13 and 15 will be a fair indicator of the 14?

 

Yes, that is what I meant by manufacturer. But VoodooPC is american company, isn't it?
I thought Quanta was working for HP now...

EDIT:
i missed all the new posts!

All the problems were fixed, I read.

 

Well HP has been known to be the most unreliable.. as in 25% percent of their computers fail within 2 or 3 years.. I forget where I saw that but it was from a reliable source.

However, the Envy line seems to be a lot better than this, though when I had mine, I noticed that one of the rubber feet of the computer was slightly raised up.. I don't know if that was because of a case defect, or if there was something actually wrong with the foot itself. HP must make a lot of Envys, so its understandable for case defects to happen.

My main complaint with the Envy 15 was how hot the case got just while surfing the web, as in I couldn't use it on my lap. My temperatures were normal, it's just that the Envy uses passive cooling.

With the Envy 14, I'd assume this will be fixed because it'll have a switchable graphics card, drastically lowering both power use and heat output.

We'll see how reliable they are when they come out.. but this is technically a 3rd generation Envy, so it should be good.

 

uhhh.. my Envy 15 has 3 fans. 2 for CPU, 1 for GPU. i actually have them turned "off" in bios so that they only activate when the chips get get too warm. for light tasks, browsing, etc they don't need to run constantly and its totally silent. of course they kick on in games or movies.

 

My envy had three fans too.. I'm saying that although the temperature of the chips themselves, both CPU and GPU, were very low, the case itself gets very warm because it's used to dissipate heat. I like using my laptop on my lap, so this was a disappointment.

 

If you believe the data from squaretrade (3rd party warranty supplier), HP is worst in terms of reliability.
Laptop Reliability Study: Asus and Toshiba Come Out on Top - Laptops - Gizmodo

 

So, in light of that warranty report, I wonder if the Envy line suffers from the same issues that the rest of the HP laptops due, or if for whatever reason (sturdier casing?) it has a lower failure rate?

 

True, but looking at the graphs, the most reliable laptop manufacturer (ASUS) was still not even twice as reliable as the least reliable laptop manufacturer, HP (at 15.6% failure rate over 3 years, projected vs. 25.6% for HP). Additionally, it would be important to know how the HP line falls on the Netbook vs. Mainstream vs. Premium laptop failure rates. In general, the study showed that netbooks are the least reliable, Mainstream in the middle, and Premium laptops are the most reliable (at least overall).

You can't really draw any conclusions about a specific HP laptop from that data (particularly given that the Envy 15 hasn't been out long enough to warrant any meaningful data). You can say that if you buy a random HP laptop, it's more likely to fail than a random ASUS purchase, however.

It's possible that the most reliable HP laptop is more reliable than the average ASUS, for example. Without a closer breakdown of the specific models tested, there's no real way to tell whether the Envy is reliable.

For comparison's sake, my 1.5 month old Envy 15 hasn't broken yet. That's also completely un-reliable to make judgement on the reliability of the Envy 15 product line as a whole.

 

Well, given that the Envy is supposed to be HPs "premium" line, theoretically one would expect them to have lower failure rate, especially now that HP really seems to want to reconstruct their image as a notebook manufacturer.

I would, in reality, expect that the new Envy 14 and Envy 17 to be pretty reliable, given that they are the third generation of Envy laptops. The Envy 14 derives from the Envy 15 (they are VERY similar), but it has a less powerful graphics card, so I would expect it to run cooler (although there are less fans I think). I'm sure that they'll have worked out most of the manufacturing issues from the 15.

The reason my Envy died is because something messed up while I was flashing the BIOS. Whoops. So user error, not HP error.

 

I'm on my bought-in-November-2007 HP dv2610us (dv2000 series) notebook. It still runs strong, even though it gets warm often. A can of compressed air will fix that though.

I can vouch for HP's quality, minus the fact that the jack on my adapter melted/ripped. Replaced it with a Kensington universal adapter though.

 

Mayb the problem with HP's is that HP users never clean out dust.

 

And that is even an AMD powered laptop, which are supposed to be very warm.

 

Hmm so is the HP lack of quality less of a reality and more of poor user care/myth?

 

I would not hesitate on the warranty.

 

This is hard to say for a given laptop line, but yeah, I would get at least 2 years warranty, no matter what manufacturer you get the laptop from.

 

From my limited knowledge, I would say there's some truth to it. However I also think it is more complicated than simply HP=automatic high failure. As has been mentioned endlessly, HP sells a lot of really cheap consumer laptops that simply must have high failure rates.

 

From my personal experience I haven't had any relability issues with the two HP laptops I've had.

I've had a zd8000 and a DV9500. The 8000 for two years and the 9500 for almost three years now. Never had to send them for service or anything. They worked great for me every day I've had them. I didn't get the extended warranty on them either.

That's just my $.02.

 

Speaking only for self I have been as happy as one can get with HP.

Owned HP Pavillion dv4000 since August 2006 and never had any problem other than battery (which obviously ran out of juice after 3 years) and using Envy 15 since February 2010 and no problems as of yet (other than graphics driver which got fixed sometime ago).

Can't talk about Service staff though as I never had a problem to get to them.

 

HP Envy 15 said to be suffering from blank screen issues, lousy webcam -- Engadget

 

I'm currently using my HP Pavilion dv4000 purchased in summer 2006. However, about 2 years after owning it, the hard drive failed. After some arguing, they sent me a brand new one. My charger also died on me after about 3 years. Currently, my laptop gets sizzling hot to the point where it shuts down. However, I'm not sure if this is due to the laptop itself or the eBay charger I'm using.

Two of my friends both had HP Pavilions (from 2006). One was a dv4000 and the hard drive failed on her after about 1-2 years. The other Pavilion died after a year. Both of these people took care of their laptops, so no major foul play came from the owners.

I'm currently in the market for a new laptop, and after these stories I told myself I wouldn't get another HP. But... the Envy 14 is just looking too good aesthetically and on paper. My major concern though is 1) if the thing will last me 3-4 years and 2) heat. I'm guess just going to see how the reviews stack up for the Envy 17.

 

Have you tried opening the laptop up and cleaning all the dust out from the vents? This could be a cause of overheating, dust accumulates in all laptops.

I doubt the Envy 14 will suffer from heat problems.. the Envy 15 kept its stuff cool, and the 5650 draws much less power / switchable to intel integrated.

 

Yea the only "heat" people complained about was when the aluminum gets hot. My MBP has literally burned me through my jeans... it comes with the whole aluminum package. It probably doesn't help that my MBP houses the GPU right above the one place that I like to put my leg under...

 

Perhaps. I've used my wifes MBP (9600M dedicated card, early 2009 model) and my own Envy 15 (2nd generation, with the 5830 card, and i5 processor) to play World of Warcraft. And I'd have to say that the MBP got so hot after only a few seconds that I could no longer play the game on my lap (until the fan finally kicked in, but it was still too hot after then). My Envy 15 didn't get too hot for the 3 hour session I played. I don't know what that means, other than the Envy 15 (having only 1 video card) might have been better designed for cooling that single video card than her MBP which has both the integrated 9400 and the discrete 9600 cards.

 

And check your credit card benefits before spending on a two year basic warranty. Many credit cards will extend the manufacturer's warranty for a year if purchased in full with that card.

And on the Envy, poke around the owners forum and you'll see that people with the "at home" warranty have reported that HP have declared that all but the simplest of Envy repairs have to be done in a "controlled environment." So it seems that you shell out the big bucks for in home care and you have to send it in for repairs any way.

 

AMEX, for me at least, gave me a year extension on my GX640 warranty.. so it's a full 4 years of warranty.

 

Hey thats not bad. I didnt know about that. Does AMEX link with paypal so that I can take advantage of Cash-discount on xoticpc?

Also, I havent cleaned out my dust in this thing since like April 2009. And between then and now, my gf's had it at her house and she uses it in bed. So honestly, I'll vouch for HP quality any day. Even my old pavilion desktop from 1999 went great through 2002 without dusting. Only problem with HP that I can think of, is ty mainstream specs. It's about damn time that they produce, and think of producing, models which users like us can enjoy. This dv2610us has a dual core AMD turion 64 x2 processor, but SC2 beta just freezes and its like .00000000000000001 frames per sec on it even with low settings. THe geforce 7150go on it can produce the pictures in ULTRA, but thats all it is: an image, lol.

In conclusion, I havent steered away from HP just yet, cuz they're finally giving me something worth buying. Plus, I got this dv2610 for only 650+tax at Fry's

 

No clue... I bought through XoticPC with just the credit card.

 

So...is the verdict here that HP's reliability reputation shouldn't fall into consideration when I'm looking at an Envy 14?

 

my Envy 15 Limited works just fine, no complaints.

 

HP's marketing is doing just what it should with the Envy series - making it look like a premium brand apart from the less-reliable consumer lines. This is true to an extent, but I just have to expect that these Envy models coming out will be afflicted with problems.

HP will always be HP.

 

hmm.. can't wait for envy 14.

 

Well, I was asking some people I know about this and one of them gave me next month's (not sure how that works) consumer reports magazine which talks about computers. The survey sample was 75,000 laptops bought from 2005 to 2009, the repair breakdown for laptops by manufacturers is:

Toshiba, 16%
Sony, 17%
Compaq, 18%
Acer, 19%
Apple, 19%
HP, 20%
Gateway, 20%
Dell, 21%
Lenovo, 21%

The article notes that differences of <3% are not meaningful, suggesting that the only manufacturer of laptops that is really any better than the others (they didn't have enough data for Asus) is Toshiba, and even then by a 1 point difference. Wow.

 

Uhm, first question would be.. equal representation from each company?

 

actually the first question would be what is the representative pool among the entire line up of each manifacturer

 

why would that be a surprise? they all buy from the same mediocre suppliers. very few of those computers have parts in them branded and made by the company putting their name on the outside of the computer.

HP's Elitebook line is a cut above. Definitely better than the typical HP consumer-grade experience. the HP in my sig is a frekin' champ.

 

Its a surprise because everyone rags on HP's reliability.

The magazine is Consumer Reports, they don't break down their survey size but with a sample of 75,000 and with their reputation I imagine that its rather even and statistically fair.

 

Read my posts about my 3 year old HP notebook. It's still running strong. Only reason why people complain is cuz they dont do the proper maintenance and they prolly toss it around and sh*t.

 

Yeah I was wondering that myself, if maybe all the people with poor HP life/reliability were just not treating their notebooks well and had gone with HP because it was the cheapest option.

 

I was an owner of a dv9000t about 4-5 years ago, died after a year with fried Nvidia GPU/motherboard. Bought a dv4 right after, currently been on it for 2-3 years, hasn't died yet, but HEAT is the everlasting issue in these laptops. The fan is just placed in a very low-ventilation spot (in the crack where the laptop folds). I've used a vacumm to suck out dust, maintenance was done.

I'm currently looking for a new laptop to buy for the upcoming school year (fall), and as much as I want to pull away from HP for good, all this talk about the upcoming Envy 14 makes me curious. It looks good on paper.

Has HP really done something to improve their heat issues? We won't know till they come out will we? Those of you eyeing the Envy14, what other contenders have you looked at? For me, I've been looking at Asus/Acer/Lenovo, do they compare?