HP Envy 17: HP's MacBook Pro Killer?
by Dustin Sklavos on December 16, 2010 12:30 AM ESTConclusion: Not a Killer, But a Great Alternative
As we mentioned before, HP's Envy line of notebooks are often touted in the comments on our reviews as being alternatives to Apple's MacBook Pro series. In reviewing the Envy 17 at least, we find that's not entirely a fair comparison. Apple's notebooks seem designed more for students and visual arts professionals than for the average user, and the fact that HP equips the Envy with a modestly powerful Mobility Radeon HD 5850 should be evidence enough that they're gunning for another market entirely. That market, however, will probably be very happy with the Envy 17.
While our favorite gaming notebook remains the ASUS G73Jh/G73Jw, the ASUS notebook doesn't quite share the Envy 17's style. Dealing in strictly hardware, the ASUS is going to overpower the Envy 17, and that's due largely to the comparatively anemic Mobility Radeon HD 5850. The Mobility 5800s weren't a great line to begin with, incremental at best over the previous generation (although lest I be accused of an NVIDIA bias, I'm keen to point out that NVIDIA's GTX 480M was almost a bigger disappointment than the 5870), but the lower clocks on the Envy 17's 5850 start to impact playability on the unit's native 1080p resolution.
That 1080p resolution is, by the way, an upgrade you will want to shell out for, no question. The screen really is excellent, and if you need any further excuse to drop the $100 on the upgrade, note that HP advertises the default 1600x900 screen as having a 42% color gamut. That's downright awful and ranks easily among the worst of the screens we have to test. At the same time, the sweet screen is backed by the healthy Beats audio speaker system. Jarred swore by the speakers in the Dell XPS 15, and I'm keen to get our XPS 17 sample in here to really compare the two. While I didn't hear the subwoofer doing a whole lot of work, this is still a healthy jump over the normally dire notebook speakers we're used to and if audio quality is important to you, this would be one place where the Envy 17 absolutely trumps the bass-heavy and mushy sounding ASUS.
At the end of the day, the price is right on the Envy 17 and you get what you pay for. I'm not a big fan of the keyboard layout and touchpad, but neither of these are deal-breakers, and in exchange you do get a fairly fast multimedia machine. Battery life sucks, but that pretty much comes with the territory when you're dealing with notebooks like these. I'm not as completely blown away by the Envy 17 as some of our readers appear to be, but it's definitely a fine notebook and if the stealth fighter-inspired ASUS G73 doesn't do anything for you, it's worth taking a look at. Of course, the smaller Envy 14 is arguably the more interesting option, and Vivek will be looking at that in the near future, so stay tuned....
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Penti - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
No it is just a gaming laptop, it's definitively not a MBP killer. It's not even a semi-professional setup. It's not really an alternative if you where thinking about a MBP 17 or something like that. It's as usual not even a true portable computer as with lots of these consumer HP's. It's DTR in a whole other segment and is an alternative as an alternative to MBP users. Don't really think these fit into the Envy category which is supposed to be high-end consumer stuff. It's really not that much of that. It's an replacement and alternative to a low-end gaming machine.While it has stuff like USB 3.0, eSATA, and mini-DP it doesn't have a matte none-gloss display, it doesn't have Firewire or a ExpressCard-slot (granted MBP 17 doesn't have a antiglare screen by default, but it's just a 50 dollar add-on, and is also something available to most business or mobile workstation notebooks). It's not a prosumer product in that category. I think they should put together a great setup on the ATi/AMD mobile GPUs but this is just not it. And why wouldn't you buy this piece with the 9-cell battery? I know it's not available at retails but anyway. You might actually get 2 hours of internet use then. And you don't HAVE to have a quadcore, look at the MSI GX640. And you should be able to get through a movie on the larger battery. Simply I don't think it's worth it even if what you are after is a gaming laptop that will always be plugged into the wall.
PrezWeezy - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
You asked if it was a MacBook killer but then didn't include any of the MacBook specs in the review. Can you update the charts with MacBook info? I've been very carefully considering buying a MBP 15 for the battery life and screen quality so I'm interested to see how this stacks up.ahmed25 - Thursday, December 16, 2010 - link
Hi SklavosAny idea about the 900p screen quality?Contrast and color gamut...?
TheQuestian - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
I'm a little confused by this article. It posits whether or not the ENVY is a MacBook Pro Killer, and then proceeds to compare it not even once to said competitor. Instead? Yes, let's compare it to gaming laptops costing hundreds/thousands more. And then, let us conclude, based on these pointless tests that the ENVY is simply designed for a "different market". Wow.Sure, expensive gaming laptops outperform the ENVY in gaming, but if you are in the market for a super high-end gamer, this is not the laptop for you. In fact, the tests in the article even corroborate that. What they don't corroborate is the disappointing conjecture put forth here as a conclusion.
I would have liked to see some benchmarks comparing performance in Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, or some other 3D modeling programs, since these are what "art students" are actually using their MBP's for. Why we are including FPS numbers for Crysis Warhead in an article "supposedly" about the MacBook Pro is beyond me.
I don't actually have a problem with conclusion, here, so long as it is founded on real numbers. But this article just smacks of preconceived notion mixed with irrelevant extracurriculars. Yes, the ENVY is a mediocre gamer that looks like a MBP. But how is it as a MBP? That is the question. As for now, it still appears to be a C-H-E-A-P-E-R (hello!) alternative to the MBP, and I have no reason to think it will underperform in that capacity. Please let's keep in mind what questions we are answering.
locowolf - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
Given the article title and text, it's surprising that none of the benchmarks include the macbook pro for direct comparison. Can you add the macbook pro to the charts so that readers can compare the numbers and make their own determination?Blindsay - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
One thing that might be interesting to look at would be to see how much extra peformance you can get at overclocking the gpu, try it at what the reference clocks are and then see if you can push it further. I have a 5650 in my DV7 and it runs at 550/800 stock and i have it running at 700/1000 (on a/c only) and it made a huge difference in gaming. I bet we would see similar results with the 5850. And temps were well within spec still, i didnt go above 70c. my i7 720 was maxing at 80c and i couldnt find a way to overclock that.IceStorm - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
I did a clean install to a Vertex 2 240GB SSD and put the included 500GB HDD into the second bay (you have to buy the second bay kit separately). I installed all of HP's patches. I installed ThrottleStop and limited the CPU to a 7x multiplier, 62.5% usage, and used AMD's GPU Tool to bring the GPU down to 150/312.Didn't help.
The most I could get out of it in that configuration was 90 minutes on the 9-cell battery watching a blu-ray - from the disc or from an image file on mechanical HDD. The only major change in that state was that the fan didn't kick on.
It's a DTR, no matter how you color it. To be fair, it's a very nice DTR with a beautiful screen and excellent audio (when the fan is low/off), but it's still not going to live life far from a wall socket. It's good if you don't want a proper desktop and need multiple display support (assuming you can stand the fan), but they could do so much more with a proper mobile part and switchable graphics.
Dug - Friday, December 17, 2010 - link
Why are you adding in desktop components into the mix and so many sli configurations?It is so hard to read these things with different graphs for different components that don't even belong.
And then they completely switch on the next page.
Keep things consistent.
araczynski - Sunday, December 19, 2010 - link
how is this an alternative to a macbook? does it run osx? does it look good?no on both accounts, so this is just another pc notebook.
what's with the 70's paintjob?
araczynski - Sunday, December 19, 2010 - link
mind you, i'd pick this over a macbook any day though.