HP Envy 14 Radiance Review

The HP Envy 14 Laptop is a reasonably thin all-metal laptop, that is part of the HP envy series; HP's flagship laptop series. The model that I will be reviewing today is one of the earlier models (with the radiance high resolution screen). It is a very stylish laptop, with great spec, and is very similar in both design to the macbook pro - from an edge-to-edge screen to the slot loading DVD drive. The specs of my review model are listed below:

• Intel i5 520m processor - 2.4-2.9ghz (turbo boost)
• 8gb ddr3 ram
• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Bluetooth v2.1
• 128gb Crucial c300 ssd (upgraded from Seagate 7200.4 HDD)
• AMD (ATI) mobility radeon 5650m GPU 1gb and intel HD switchable grphics for extended battery life
• 8X slot-loading DVD burner
• 1600*900 radiance display (as opposed to current brightview screens)
• 8-cell Li-ion battery (14.8v, 3800mAh)
• Intel Wireless Wi-Fi 6200AGN

The all-metal design of the HP Envy 14 gives it a very solid feel. It is arguably the most solidly built laptop after the unibody macbooks. The screen cover and palm rest are both etched with a swirly-type pattern to improve the look as well as increase grip for your hand while you carry it around. On the bottom left of the lid, there is a mirror-like HP logo, that illuminates white when the laptop is switched on. The aluminium lid has almost no screen-bending when pushed down on.

One of the best features of this notebook is its keyboard. HP has chosen a minimalist design, with chicet 'island style' keys which stick up from an all metal keyboard tray. The keys probably have the best feel to them of any laptop - with just the right amount of response to them. Another huge plus is that the keys are backlit, however unlike the macbook pro, you can't vary the backlight intensity. The only bad thing to say about the keyboard is that unlike the rest of the laptop, there is quite a lot of keyboard flex around the P and the W keys. This is not noticable under normal typing, however it is still a shame that there is this problem on an otherwise extremely sturdy laptop.

Lots of reviews of the Envy 14, criticise the buttonless trackpad (dubbed the HP Clickpad), sating that it is twitchy and that it it not as good as the trackpads with dedicated buttons. I completely disagree. Although when I first got this laptop, the trackpad wasn't without its flaws, I followed a guide on the notebook review forums (the guide is created by user eafd; you can find it here), that allows you to click (not tap) anywhere on the trackpad to act as your mousebuttons. Although this trackpad isnt intended to be clicked anywhere, installing the 'broken' drivers from the guide will enable this feature - improving usability tenfold. Anyone that is familiar with the new buttonless macbook pros will be familiar with clicking anywhere. Finally, on the top left of the trackpad, there is a little light that when tapped twice, illuminated red and disables the trackpad.

My envy 14 comes with a 14.5" radiance display. This has a 1600 by 900 resolution, as opposed to most other laptops of this size, which have a 1366 by 768 resolution. I will keep this section short and simple as I'm sure that with a quick google you can find its technical specifications. The radiance display is and absolutely stunning screen, and if not thebest laptop screen available then it is definitely in the top 5. It is easily as good as the macbook's, and the dell's now discontinued rgb led displays, with insane brightness and really vivid and saturated colours. It also looks much better when properly calibrated - a guide can be found here(of course you would apply the ICC profile via the windows colour calibration tool rather than under Linux)

The only slight problem with the screen is the very glossy display, which makes it slightly more difficult to view in sunlight; this can be counteracted by turning up the brightness to the highest setting.

The HP Envy 14 is advertised to have audio designed by monster's beats line. This is however a pure marketing gimmick, with the speakers being average. I have a pair of monster turbine pro earphones, and I can hear hissing from the audio jack, and the sound is on par with any other decent laptop. The only thing that may make a difference to the sound is the beats audio software, which essentially lowers the treble and raises the base, which is arguably makes music sound even worse. With that being said, the sound outputted from the speakers and the headphone jack is not by any means bad - just don't expect anything special.

Connectivity on the Envy 14 is excellent, with the only thing missing being USB 3.0. It features 3 USB 2.0 ports, one of them doubling up as an eSATA port - which is arguably better than USB 3.0. The Envy 14 also features 802.11n WIFI, bluetooth, HDMI out, a displayport connector, and finally an ethernet port. A displayport to DVI/VGA converter is also easily available. I am happy that HP left a VGA port out as I find them very ugly on the side of a laptop.

Again, I will not bore you with benchmark charts, as a simple google of the Envy 14 followed by benchmarks will get you all the wprime scores you could wish for. I will however say that the laptop is incredibly fast. Without all the crapware installed, it will boot up photoshop cs5 in just under 3 seconds, and word in just over one. Be aware that the speed in which things load up is greatly affected by the hard disk type - with an SSD being much faster. The laptop has not problems multitasking, and will encode a clip faster than a lot of other laptops.

The Envy 14 will also play games at full resolution on reasonably good settings. Prototype ran smoothly on full settings (no AA), and Assassins Creed Brotherhood ran well on medium settings. Although the graphics card (ATI Radeon 5650m) is one of the best you can get in a non-gaming orientated laptop of this size, HP have chosen to underclock the cards, and overclocking may be without success. For an average gamer, this laptop will run games smoothly at full resolution - at much better quality than the PS3 or Xbox 360 can ever offer.

There is not much to say in this section - the laptop remains very cool when idle, and still manages not to heat up too much in extended gaming sessions. Whatever HP has done in terms of heat dissipation - they have done so very well.

The battery life of the Envy 14 is not excellent by any means - you may manage to manage four hours on battery with low brightness and the intel gpu. You can however buy an optional slice battery that slots under than the machine, that claims to double battery life. I can confirm that this fact is correct, with the the laptop lasting 7 hours and 52 minutes with the slice battery.

The HP Envy 14 is a very desirable and well built laptop - that could be recommended solely based on its Raidance screen. Inside its all-metal frame HP has managed to cram in a very fast processor and a decent graphics card, whilst still managing to keep the laptop reasonably thin. Even when gaming the laptop manages to keep fairly cool. Battery life isn't excellent, and there is a small amount of keyboard flex.However these minor flaws can be forgiven due to the amazing build quality and outstanding display of this laptop. This laptop can be purchased at base configuration at around £900 in th UK, however this is without the excellent radiance display, ssd and 8gb of RAM, so I would strongly recommend searching around on ebay for one with the radiance screen - even if this may cost a little more.

I will give this laptop 8.5/10, and would recommend it to anyone that is looking for a macbook pro like laptop, but with a bit of extra performance.