When it comes to selecting our favorite mainstream Windows laptops these days the HP Envy 14 is pretty much at the tippy top of the list. HP's design philosophy when it comes to the Envy series of laptops is to borrow liberally from Apple's Macbook line, then add some of its own flavor. The Envy 17 is no exception. At less than 8 pounds without the power brick, the Envy 17 is barely thicker than an inch and includes robust media playback capabilities including Blu-ray movies.
Metal edging means the chassis feels substantial, and the machine's overall build quality is high. As a consequence, this machine is heavy. Weighing in at 3.41kg and measuring 275 by 416 by 317mm, it's hardly portable. This laptop definitely falls into the 'desktop replacement' category.
The display is impressive. 17.3 inches on the diagonal, the screen boasts a resolution of 1,920x1,080 pixels, which makes for a display so sharp it could slice your eyeballs open. It also offers excellent horizontal viewing. Colours stay vivid with no warping even when you're watching the screen from an extreme angle, so you'll have no trouble crowding the whole family around to check out the latest bear on a bungee video.
Optical discs slide into the right-side mounted Blu-ray ROM/DVD burner. Also on the right side are two USB 2.0 ports, the 5-in-1 flash memory card reader and the power connector. The left side offers up a single USB 3.0 port and a shared USB/eSATA port, and not one, but two digital video outputs a mini-DisplayPort connector and one for HDMI. Without needing a docking station, you could have access to a triple display setup two external monitors and the 17-inch, 1080p Envy 17 screen. One of the monitors would have to have a DisplayPort connector, however. Using the VGA output together with the two digital outputs, you can even hook up three external monitors at once, albeit without using the laptop's display.
The overall feel of the keyboard is quite nice, with excellent tactile feedback. Its layout is mostly good, too, though I'm not happy about the compromises HP made with the arrow keys and with the overall lack of dedicated media keys something a little odd in a laptop offering such rich media playback offerings. The trackpad seemed a little on the twitchy side.
The Envy 17 arrived with an Intel Core i7-720QM CPU clocking in at 1.6GHz, with a peak turbo boost frequency of 2.8GHz. The 720QM is a true quad-core CPU with hyperthreading, so it supports eight simultaneous software threads. Boosting graphics performance is an AMD Mobility Radeon HD 5850 with 1GB of video RAM, the fastest mobile Radeon GPU short of the high-end units found in heavier, dedicated gaming laptops. Rounding out the specs were 8GB of DDR3-1066 memory. The price of the system configured as we tested it, with the Blu-ray drive and the 8GB RAM upgrade is a steep $1825; the base configuration starts at around $1400.
One concern about the Envy 17 that's worth discussing is heat. The cooling fan became noticeably loud when game benchmarks were run, and the surface (of the keyboard) became quite warm in places. It wasn't too hot to touch, but clearly a lot of heat is being generated in a tight space and needs to go somewhere. That's the downside of building a high-performance system into a compact package.
Those heavy performance parts and the large screen take a serious, toll on battery life. The six-cell battery lasted only two hours and 10 minutes on our battery rundown test, which loops the same standard definition video.
Despite a few design flaws, such as the oddly shaped arrow keys, there's very little to dislike about this machine. It looks great, has a truckload of computing power and is highly usable. As with any product, a high price tag affords equally high expectations. Overall, the Envy 17 looks to be an elegant, relatively compact laptop (as desktop replacement systems go) for digital photographers, music buffs, video enthusiasts, and gamers. Just make sure you keep it cool!
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