Question about HP Envy 17 - CRAZY SPECS (HP ENVY - 17-ae151nr)

Hi all. Long time member of this form back from the dead and wanting to ask a question or two

I am considering the machine below. It's on sale for $1,399 or $1500 after tax. The model is HP ENVY - 17-ae151nr .
1) Does this look like a good buy?

2) And does anyone have an HP coupon I can use on it...?

3) Any reviews of the below model? Pros/cons....?

Thank you guys again and it's nice to be back.
-tsd


CPU: i7-8550U
GPU: NVIDIA GeForceMX150 (4 GB GDDR5 dedicated)
Display: 17.3" diagonal 4K IPS anti-glare WLED-backlit (3840 x 2160) [16]
Memory 16 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
Hard drive: 1 TB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD [17]
Wireless technology - Intel® 802.11b/g/n/ac (2x2) Wi-Fi® and Bluetooth® 4.2 Combo [14] [15]

 

Machine arrives tomorrow night and im super excited... anyone else care to comment on this machine overall? have other people with envy 17's liked their units?

 

So i got the unit yesterday... all i have to say is... IT IS A BEAST.
* 17.3" nice and bright display
* feels like you have a 22" monitor sitting on your lap
* from pushing power to being to desktop via windows hello/facial login = 10 seconds or so
* it came with a 1tb SAMSUNG NVME m.2 SSD drive!!!!! this drive alone is $500 right now
* surprisingly did not come with a TON of bloat ware... it's there but there is not a lot of it. I have to clean it up this weekend....
* unfortunate hum from fans, bottom left of the keyboard gets warm but maybe bc the unit was updating itself...?

anyway, i absolutely love this machine so far. and i saved almost $3k but not getting a macbook pro with similar specs! i know you cant compare both machines but i am fine with having more $ in my pocket...

 

I don't have that exact machine, but I am getting a 13" ENVY with the Core i7, 256GB SSD, and FHD display with Intel graphics. Looking forward to hearing more about what you have found with the system.

 

So happy I discovered this thread.

My story. I bought almost the exact notebook you did a couple of months ago. It was the HP Envy 17t Best Value. It has the identical components as yours except it has a 500 GB SSD drive. And it's $180 cheaper and was $230 and $250 cheaper in the last month. I ordered it originally on Oct. 19 and received it on Nov. 2, assembled and mailed from China. And it was great. All those things you are saying. HOWEVER, and it's a big HOWEVER. I read one of the first reviews and he mentioned, "Beautiful, fast laptop. Only one problem with mine: backlight bleed on all four sides, more pronounced in lower left corner." So I checked mine and it had the same issue. But it wasn't too bad. But I didn't want it to have issues, as it wasn't cheap, so I returned it and ordered a new one. But that one took more like 2 1/2 weeks to come. And that one had worse backlight bleed plus it had a broken display that would flash a white background with vertical black lines several times a minute. So I returned that one and they assured me they would contact the assembly people in China and that they would definitely inspect it for these problems before they shipped it to me. I was skeptical. I just received this second replacement a few hours ago and ....................... the backlight bleed is as bad as the second one plus the bleed isn't even just white but is reddish in spots. See image.
https://ibb.co/mzN3X6

So I really love it other than that. I'm wondering if you checked for this issue or if you can please do that. Here's a backlight bleed test on YouTube. You'll see it best in a darkened room full screen.

And now I see two more reviews from the last couple of days which say, "Shipped with major defect” "The backlight bleed on my new laptop was so bad that it would obscure the display. How this made it past testing boggles the mind. I returned it" and "The 4K screen on these laptops has a known defect yet HP continues to ship them. The screen on my laptop began to flash randomly a few days after I received it. I searched for the issue on the web and found numerous people with the same problem, including videos which depicted identical circumstances."

Now it says it ships in one day so at least if I ordered a new one I wouldn't have to wait 2-3 weeks and I'd know right away if it's okay. I'll wait to hear from you and am anxious to hear if you have the same issues. Thanks.

 

I can confirm another case of this specific laptop having backlight issues. I saw this thread hours after I bought mine before xmas, hoping I wouldn't be affected.

I had researched all the components in this specific model, an Envy 17 ae151nr. It was to replace a 12 yr old dell laptop that is my main pc.

The laptop itself, aside from the atrocious Windows 10 operating system, was phenomenal- for the 1 day I had it before going through the motions to return it. I decided to exchange mine,
in laughable hopes that the next one that replaces it doesn't have the same problem. Fortunately, I can still return and absolutely WILL return the replacement if I see the same issue.

Guys, my backlight was ridiculous. I used to sell flatscreens, so I'm familiar with backlight bleeding issues. I have never seen such an atrocious backbleed on a laptop screen.
It was bad. I'll try to upload a pic if I can, but it was especially bad in the lower left corner. It was bad around the entire screen, more at the lower edges and sides though. It almost
went away at half brightness, but I tried playing 4K clips from youtube of deep space, as well as the backlight screen test BCE posted above- it made the videos almost unwatchable.
It was near full white where the bleedthrough happened!

I've never owned anything from HP before- and I was seriously impressed with everything this thing had in it. It was dead silent, no fan noise at all for the day I had it testing stuff.
Dead slient, never got hot at all even running for 3 hours on top of a tablecloth. Other than the screen (which again, had absolutely atrocious backlighting bleedthrough), it was fantastic,
and everything I'd hoped for after meticulously researching the new 8th gen i7 chip, the new 4GB MX150 card, all of it. The 4k screen on this thing, with a big aside from the massively
flawed backlight issue, was stunning. Mad Max Fury Road in 4k on this was like looking out the window to the desert it was filmed in. Except white everywhere around edges!

I pray that the replacement will not have this issue. If it does, I will return it too- and I'll let people here know. This site may have saved me nearly 1500$ by pointing this flaw out!

HP people- if you read this, your stuff has a good reputation among geeks where I live. You better fix this issue PRONTO, please. It's a good product- but a glaring obvious flaw that should never have left your QC dept. And I should know that one too- I used to work flatscreen quality control for a major US TV manufacturer based in Japan, that starts with S and ends with Y- and they would never let something this bad out the factory on one of their LCD screens 10 years ago. TV and laptop use the same tech here, so it really shouldn't matter.

 

I need a favor from you owners, please?

I just got one of these, a HP ENVY Laptop 17-ae1xx, mine has the same specs, but I got the 1tb sata/256 SSD and the FHD IPS screen, the 1920x1080.

I had some display issues at first, with games (sound and display, weird colors and sound not going through to the tv when hooked up with HDMI) and in a Windows program redrawing and reduplicating screens like mad. I updated windows and did a few of the updates from HP and lots got better, and fixed some issues. Can you guys who own this laptop do me a favor? to see if you have the same lingering issues I do?

Go to and put the video on full screen, HD. I know this will bore you to death, but you only need to start watching at about the 2 minute mark. Do you get the weird green funky display between 2 minutes and 2:45 or so? It doesn't happen on my old computer, nor in my husband's Asus ROG. I'd REALLY appreciate it if you'd take a look. Thanks.

 

HELLO, WHERE DID YOU FIND
HP ENVY - 17-ae151nr ON SALE?

 

Any satasfied costumers with envy 17? I'm looking to by ae142ng (same specs like from op) but I read this about screen now, while on other sites I didn't read anything bad about screen but did about fan being active all the time..
I don't care about bloatware, I would set up everything myself.

 

You guys are crazy to pay this kind of money for these kinds of results that are well documented. Imo HP's build quality has only gotten worse since my last purchase with them in 2012. But if you're really set on it, you might be able to perform your own screen swap to get rid of bleed issues.

 

On amazon, reddit etc I haven't read anything about screen bleed.
And there are no really cheap 17.3 UHD laptops..