HP's New ENVY 15 and ENVY 17 First Look: Good Design and 3D Discussion

[J.R. Nelson]

Suppose I'll reserve final judgment until I see these in person, but based on the photos, I'm pretty disappointed by the design. The early Envy 13/14/15/17 had a bit of a unique look, whereas these are just out-and-out MacBook Pro photocopies-- even the metal colors and touchpad finish have been changed to match, along with a cheap Pavilion-like black screen cover (fingerprint magnet-- look at the photos on Engadget).

They're not the sleekest machines by any means, but at least the earlier models used curves and tapered surfaces to reduce visual impact. The flat edges on these, combined with the speaker grille, makes them look like a cross between a MacBook Pro and a Compaq closeout special from a few years ago.

The volume knob is a nice touch, but overall I think my old Envy 15 looks a heck of a lot more interesting than these new ones.

I think HP's dropped the ball on this by trying to clone MBPs of the past. I can see Apple making the MBP line much sleeker (more MBA-like), dropping the optical drive (which HP added back into the Envy 15 for some odd reason), and leaving HP in the dust.

Wonder if any of the Voodoo team is left at HP at all...

Wow, really? I think the old ENVY lineup looks a lot more like a MacBook Pro than the new design does.

I do agree about the optical drive; it needs to go away, and I do think that Apple will soon be making the MBP line a lot closer to the MBA than it is now.

[cy007]

The next MBP might steel its thunder, but personally, I'm not at all worried. HP managed to use the best design elements from Compaq (namely their former Evo line), HP (well isn't that obvious), and Apple and made "the" perfect looking product. As long as the Ivy Birdge iteration looking anything like this one, 100% buy for me.

[REMF]

Sounds to me like you want the just-announced HP Folio 13 ultrabook.

HP's 13-inch Ultrabook: The HP Folio Hands-On

needs a gpu that is not a bag of balls.

[RefinedPower]

wonder what GPU it will have... the previous one had a HD5830, which was pretty good for its time.

[yknyong1]

HD7690M, a rehashed HD6770M. A disappointment really.

[Rubenstein]

HD7690M, a rehashed HD6770M. A disappointment really.

Where do you get the performance rating from? If you look at the benchmarks,
HP Communities - Hands On: New Envy 15, 17 ? And A New Look - HP Communities
the Envy 15 performs a bit over the 6630m but quite beneath the 6750m and 6770m.
Looking at the Envy 17, it just performs a bit over the 6850m. Btw my 5870m has a windows rating of 6.8, the Envy 17 gets 7.0. This indicates some decent grafic power.
I know that this is just very little data which only gives some indication, so take what I am saying here with a grain of salt.

But again, where do you get the info about the rehashed 6770m from?

[lee_what2004]

From this ?

[Charles P. Jefferies]

I always liked the volume dial on earlier Toshibas I reviewed, I found it convenient. These days most notebook vendors don't even include dedicated volume up/down buttons, which is a shame (strangely enough, it seems only the business notebooks include them).

These new ENVY notebooks look great and if I was in the market, I'd be eyeing the 17. The glossy display is about the only thing I don't like.

[Rubenstein]

From this ?

Nice,where is that from? If this is true, that would be good news. It would outperform the MBP, which is the logical counterpart and quite the most powerful notebook with compareable specs, measurements.

That would also mean that my estimations from the review would be too low, which would be great and easily possible as the error bars are quite high with that little information that we have.

Thanks for the info so far.

[mobilebuddha]

Did they fix the trackpad completely?

I hope they did. This would be my next machine if they fixed it. I went to bestbuy a few weeks or so ago and played with Envy there. At times the envy STILL had problems correctly interpreting my clicks/movements.