HP Envy 14 (2nd-gen) Review

Many were excited to hear about a 14-incher that will join HP’s Envy series (originally kicked off with 13 and 15-inch models). The premium notebook line was first expanded in with 14 and 17-inch models, mid last year. After a number of ups and downs in the company in the past months, Hewlett-Packard revamped the Envy 15 and 17 models in late November. The Envy 14, on the other hand, remained mostly the same but receiving a couple of speed bumps and price cuts. Although it looks quite similar on the outside, the second-gen model (2011) has renovated internals.

The Envy 14 comes with a 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-2430M with Turbo Boost, 6GB DDR3 SDRAM, a Western Digital 750GB hard drive, Radeon HD 6630M switchable graphics, a 14.5″ HD BrightView Infinity LED display, 8X DVD+/-R/RW with Double Layer support, Intel HM65 Express Chipset, Intel 802.11a/b/g/n WLAN with Bluetooth and an 8-cell 3800mAh Lithium Ion battery. The device runs Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.

TechSpot feature editor, Shawn Knight, made an in depth hands-on review on the second-gen HP Envy 14. Here are some of the important points in the article:

• From the outside, the 2010 and 2011 Envy 14 models are nearly indistinguishable. The latest version features the same gunmetal lid with an attractive etched pattern.
• On the front of the notebook are two speaker grills with the Beats audio logo prominently displayed beside the left grill. A SD/MMC card slot flanks the speaker on the right. On the right side of the system is a power and hard drive activity light, USB 3.0 port, HDMI port, mini DisplayPort, Kensington lock slot, Ethernet jack and an array of exhaust vents.

 

 

• The back of the system is clean besides another series of exhaust vents. On the left side is the slot-loading optical drive, two USB 2.0 ports and headphone/microphone jacks.

• The display has a resolution of 1366×768 which isn’t quite the 1600×900 pixels found on last year’s Radiance display. Unfortunately, HP no longer offers the Radiance display option as they were unable to obtain enough from suppliers for 2011.
• HP did a fairly good job at keeping the system clean out of the box as there are only a few but very useful apps pre-installed.

•  To prevent damage to the drive’s platter when excessive movement is detected, a built-in accelerometer isparked in the hard drive. The accelerometer also puts the system into maximum cooling mode when in transit to prevent any potential overheating.

  

• The Beats audio software suite is split into four tabs: volume, listening experience, recording experience and advanced settings. The interface is a bit plain but there are plenty of options to work with, including a graphic equalizer.
• The Envy 14 features Intel’s Turbo Boost technology, which is built into Core i5 and i7 chips and is designed to better manage workloads by dynamically adjusting individual processor core speeds when more processing power is needed.

Now, let’s see how the HP Envy 14 System Specs (2011) differ from last year’s version:

2011

• 14.5″ HD BrightView Infinity LED 1366 x 768 display
• Intel Core i5-2430M (2.4GHz – 3GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 6GB DDR3 SDRAM
• AMD Radeon HD 6630M
• Western Digital 750GB hard drive
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

2010

• 14.5″ HP Radiance 1600 x 900 display
• Intel Core i5-450M (2.4GHz – 2.66GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
• 4GB DDR3 system memory
• 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650
• Seagate Momentus 500GB 7200RPM
• Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

TechSpot concluded the benchmark with the following statement:

Pros: Solid construction, good keyboard and touchpad. Good performance.

Cons: Average battery life. No higher-res screen option. Fierce competition from thinner and lighter systems could force to a model update very soon.

For the full hands on/technical review on the second-gen HP Envy 14, please click on the source link below.

 

Source:   TechSpot