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Home > Notebook Reviews > HP Envy 15-3040nr

HP Envy 15

Editor's rating (1-5): Discuss this product Where to Buy

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What's hot: Very fast, great gaming performance, 1080p IPS display, metal build.

What's not: Keyboard flex on left side, some complaints about red color accuracy on forums.

Reviewed January 22, 2012 by Lisa Gade, Editor in Chief (twitter: @lisagade)

The first generation HP Envy 15 was HP's first Envy model and it dates back to the fall of 2009. It was both ahead of its time and woefully inadequate as mobile products go. It was one of the first Intel Core i7 quad core laptops and it had a powerful ATI Radeon GPU that's still capable of playing today's demanding 3D games. As HP's entry into the world of high end, gaming oriented notebooks it was good stuff. But the notebook ran only 2 to 2.5 hours on a charge and lacked an internal optical drive (a pain for gamers and DVD watchers) and had few ports. It was thus one of the least portable 15.6" notebooks on the market. Fast forward to late 2011/early 2012 and the 15" Envy is back and it's ten times better.

The new HP Envy 15, like the first gen model, is a serious powerhouse that packs the multimedia and gaming credentials of a capable 17" machine into a portable 15.6" chassis. This time it really is portable, with plenty of ports, a DVD burner and solid 5 to 5.5 hour battery life when running on integrated graphics. The Envy 15 runs Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit on a 2.2GHz quad core Intel Core i7-2670QM CPU with Turbo Boost to 3.1GHz. It has switchable graphics with Intel HD 3000 graphics and the AMD Radeon HD 7690M with 1 gig of DDR5 VRAM. Short of an Alienware, you'd be hard pressed to find another 15" notebook that benchmarks better. The Envy 15 weighs 5.8 lbs. and is 1.1" thick. The form and footprint are reminiscent of older Envy models but HP has abandoned the metallic etched lid for a matte "Nero" black lid and bottom. The keyboard deck is less distinctive and reminds us of the 15" MacBook Pro with which it competes. There are other Envy 15 configurations available including one with a 1366 x 768 display and a Core i5. We take a look at one of the quick ship configs from HP's website that's also available in some stores. Our unit was purchased at a local store and is the HP Envy 15-3040nr sold in the US.

Design and Ergonomics

The Envy is a dense and durable notebook that's entirely clad in aluminum with magnesium alloy in the frame. The Envy 15 might not be as pretty as the glass-glad HP Envy 14 Spectre, but it's got gobs more computing power and is more durable. It's seriously rigid and strong with no play anywhere except the left side of the keyboard deck. The top and bottom are matte black and do show fingerprints that are easily cleaned with a damp cloth laced with a little bit of Soft Soap. The straight metal sides remind us of the MacBook Pro. The keyboard deck likewise looks like the MacBook Pro, though the closed Envy doesn't so much. The keyboard deck is matte light silver with a slightly recessed keyboard area that's lined in red. A large Beats audio rotary analog control wheel lives on the right side and a speaker grille rims the upper deck rather than the sides like a Mac. There are two pairs of speakers on the front edge as well, for a total of six, not counting the bass reflex subwoofer on the bottom. Sound is excellent by 15" laptop standards with plenty of volume, good separation and full sound. The subwoofer isn't going to shake the screws loose in the Envy, but it does have more bass than competing notebooks.

The machine has several vents on the bottom, and doesn't get too hot to touch even when gaming. The warmest area is directly below the number row on the underside, and it gets fairly warm when gaming but not as hot as a MacBook Pro or the original Envy (it's much cooler and quieter than the first gen Envy). The 8 cell battery is not described as user replaceable, but it's easy to get to by releasing a bottom latch. The hard drive is also in this area and is easy to replace. To access the rest of the internals including the two RAM slots, you'll remove the battery/hard drive door, and then unscrew 6 Phillips head screws to take off the second back panel. The machine is thus very easy to service and upgrade, especially compared to the Samsung Series 7 Chronos and MacBook Pro.

HP Envy 15 Video Review

Display

Our Envy 15 3040nr model ships with a 1920 x 1080 IPS "Radiance" LED backlit display with a good but not stand-out 250 nits of brightness. That's not to say the display is dim, far from it-- it's just not a super-bright display that's intended for outdoor viewing. As you'd expect from a gloss IPS display, it has very wide viewing angles, rich blacks and good contrast. Movies look great, even with two folks sitting side by side, and there's no need to angle the display back "just right" to get good colors and contrast. The edge-to-edge style display lacks a distinct bezel and the black edges disappear nicely when watching movies. We heartily recommend the 1080p display over the 1366 x 786 base display (a $150 difference when building to order).

There's been some discussion on forums about reds looking orange, but our LG manufactured display doesn't have this problem. I'm picky about color and have art training, so serious color aberrations stand out. Check out our comparison photo below, with the Envy sitting in front of a color calibrated 30" Apple Cinema Display (the older Apple display with a matte display and a wide color gamut). Notebook displays lack the wide gamut (color range) and potential color accuracy of a high quality external monitor, but as notebook display panels go, ours is pretty decent in terms of color representation (your Envy may vary). Reds are too warm (too much yellow in the mix) but still look red, and I find it acceptable as notebook panels go. In fact, I find it very pleasing for all manner of things and colors are good enough to edit photos for the web.

Above: showing red with the HP Envy 15 in front of a 30" Apple Cinema Display.

Keyboard and Trackpad

Here's the less than good news. The keyboard has flex on the left side, and though it's not a deal breaker, it is a minor annoyance. The keys have good travel and excellent backlighting with an LED under each key. There's a keyboard backlight on/off button on the top row, and there's no need to hit the Fn key to use it. To change backlight brightness (3 levels), you have to hit the keyboard backlight button and the arrow keys (we wish there were dedicated backlight up and down keys since there are two unassigned Fn keys). The white backlighting goes from gentle to very bright and it turns on and off in a cascading manner (one row at a time). There are two red glowing sensors on the left middle bezel area, and these are proximity sensors that detect if you're in front of the machine and turn on backlighting when you come back from a coffee break and sit in front of the laptop. I don't find these sensor lights overly bright or annoying, but if you do, you can turn the sensor off.

The keyboard has a standard 15" layout with page up/down, end, home and delete keys on the far right edge. The keys have good travel by notebook standards, but they lack the cool edge ringed backlighting of the Samsung Chronos Series 7 and the Samsung's number pad.

By HP standards, the large, buttonless Synaptics trackpad is pretty good, but that doesn't say much. HP's trackpads have largely been a train wreck for the past few years, but we're happy to report that the Envy's is well behaved with no cursor jumping or out of control inertia scrolling. The surface is slightly rough, and I prefer a smoother surface like the Samsung Series 7 Chronos or MacBook Pro, but that's a matter of personal preference. The trackpad has automatic palm rejection and you can turn off the trackpad by double tapping in the upper left hand corner if necessary (an indicator light lets you know the trackpad is disabled).

We love that you don't have to hit the Fn button to use the top row quick access controls for display brightness, keyboard backlight on and off and media playback. But there are two unused keys that HP could have assigned to keyboard backlight brightness and Beats on/off. You can bring up the Beats audio control panel by pressing down on the dedicated Beats analog rotary control, and you can turn Beats on and off by pressing Fn and the "b" button. The Beats controller isn't just a gimmick: it's a really easy way to control audio volume, and the volume change is gradual rather than jarring. The wheel works well even inside games, unlike the usual volume up/down Fn key combo that's often erratic or ignored on other notebooks.

Performance and Horsepower

For those of you who don't much like reading, here's the short story: this is a wicked fast laptop. It plays demanding current 3D titles at medium or high settings well. It can edit 1080p video, and it can do CAD and Adobe Photoshop CS 5 like nobody's business. We aren't going to outline performance of every program on the planet because it can handle them all well. It's a fast machine, at least the Intel Core i7 version. The Core i5 is no slouch either, but if you're into really demanding tasks like video editing and engineering apps, get the Core i7 that bows to nothing.

Fast, metal clad laptops with dedicated GPUs tend to run hot, but the Envy 15 manages to keep its cool. When doing business and web tasks with integrated graphics, the CPU cores averaged 35 degrees Centigrade. When gaming, the cores went up to a very safe 57 degrees Centigrade (100C is the allowable max temp and thermal management may start to throttle in the 80's, though ours never got hot enough to reach the throttle point).

Our machine ships with a 2.2GHz Intel Core i7-2670QM with Turbo Boost to 3.1GHz. It has 6 megs of level 2 cache, 4 cores and 8 threads. The computer has 8 gigs of DDR3 1333MHz RAM in 2 DIMM slots and the max is 16 gigs (many consumer notebooks top out at 8 gigs). Our model has a fast 7200 RPM 750 gig hard drive, and HP offers several drive options including an SSD if you build to order. The Envy 15 has switchable graphics with Intel HD 3000 integrated graphics and AMD Radeon HD 7690M dedicated graphics with 1 gig DDR5 VRAM. The Envy has an internal slot-loading 8x dual layer DVD burner, but sadly there's currently no Blu-ray option. We wish there was a Blu-ray option given the 1080p display, Intel WiDi and HDMI port.

Benchmarks

Windows Experience Index:

Processor: 7.4
Memory: 7.8
Graphics (Aero): 6.9
Graphics (Gaming): 6.9
HDD: 5.9

PCMark 7: 2590

3DMark 11: 1354 (graphics 1188, physics 6464)

3DMark Vantage: 6216 (5103 GPU, 17,894 CPU)

PCMark Vantage:

The HP Envy 15 vs. the Competition

If you're a Mac person, by all means get the 15" MacBook Pro. I use one as my main work machine because I enjoy Mac OS X. It's significantly more expensive and there's no 1080p option, but if you want to run Mac OS X, it's your machine. If you really want to run Windows and Windows apps, we'd recommend the HP Envy 15 unless money is no object. The MacBook Pro is a visual feast with beautiful lines, excellent build and similar internals. But it lacks a 1080p IPS display option, though the high res matte option is attractive to graphic artists and has excellent and accurate colors after calibration. But the HP Envy was designed for Windows and honestly gets better performance under Windows.

If you're considering the capable Samsung Series 7 Chronos with a Core i7, dedicated graphics and a 1600 x 900 matte display, the decision is a little harder since they're priced similarly. The Samsung has a better keyboard and trackpad, and business/school performance is similar to the Envy, but the Envy does better with games and has a higher resolution IPS display. Be sure to check out our Samsung Series 7 Chronos vs. HP Envy 15 comparison smackdown with video too.

The Dell XPS 15z is another strong competitor for the 15" super-powerful laptop of your dreams. It too has a great 1080p display option, plenty of power but the keyboard is just OK and the Nvidia 525M graphics aren't as powerful, despite the unusually beefy 2 gigs of VRAM. The Dell came out in May of 2011, and the graphics card is showing its age. We find the 15z aesthetically challenged vs. the Envy, Chronos and MacBook Pro, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Wireless and Networking

The Envy has a gigabit Ethernet jack and Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6230 Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with Intel WiDi wireless display that worked well in our tests with a Netgear Push2TV HD PTV2000 connected to our Sony AV receiver that's connected to an HD TV via HDMI. WiDi was lacking in its first year but now handles 1080p content and DRM including Blu-ray and really works as a wireless replacement for HDMI cables. Range and throughput were good in our Wi-Fi tests.

The computer has Intel Bluetooth 3.0 + HS as well with support for Bluetooth stereo speakers and headsets, phone tethering and keyboards/mice.

Graphics, Gaming and Adobe Photoshop

The HP Envy 15 has AMD Radeon HD 7690M dedicated graphics with 1 gig of DDR5 VRAM. The 7000 series GPU is new, but it's not a significant jump forward from the 6000 series, and the 7690M has much in common with the Radeon 6770M. This is a solid higher end GPU for 15" and even 17" gaming and multimedia notebooks. For gaming, the Envy 15 is a winner. We tested a variety of popular and current demanding 3D titles like Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and the older but demanding FEAR 2. All tests were run at 1920 x 1080 resolution to the internal panel. The Envy handled COD 3 and FEAR 2 well on high settings, and Skyrim and Battlefield 3 did fine at medium settings. In our gaming demo video below, you can see some of these games in action, along with the settings we used in each game.