HP ENVY 15-3040NR 15.6 Inch Laptop (Black/Silver)
- 2nd generation Intel Core i7-2670QM processor 2.20GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 3.10GHz.
- 8 GB SDRAM
- 750GB 7200RPM HDD with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection.Solid-State Drive?
- Display: 15.6-inch diagonal Radiance Full HD Infinity LED-backlit display (1920 x 1080).Video graphics: Radeon HD 7690M switchable graphics with 1024MB GDDR5 and up to 5093MB total graphics memory.
- 15.6-Inch Screen
Hear music the way the artist intended using the sleek HP ENVY 15-3040NR notebook with Beats Audio. Plus, HP Wireless Audio lets you stream audio to wireless-enabled devices using KleerNet Technology. Watch DVDs and slideshows on the ultra-sharp 15.6-inch diagonal Full HD LED-backlit display. This stylish HP laptop has an all-aluminum body in nero black and natural silver. With the HP TrueVision Webcam and HP Radiance Backlit Keyboard, working in low-light environments is easy, too. The HP ENVY 15-3040NR also has a large hard drive with HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection to help prevent data loss. With an extended life battery that lasts up to 8 hours per charge, stay powered without plugging in your notebook. Integrated Wi-Fi and Bluetooth help you connect and sync your HP laptop to a printer, MP3 player or smartphone without using cables. You can also stream content to your HD TV with Intel Wireless Display. Plus, transfer photos directly from a memory card to your PC. And at 5.79 lbs, the ENVY 15 delivers awesome performance and amazing experiences in a size that’s easy to carry in your backpack or laptop bag. Warranty- 1 year
List Price: $ 1,299.99
Price: $ 1,299.99
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Gorgeous, some issues, but I am more than happy,
I bought this from Amazon but I ordered it through my wife’s account (she has a prime student) and that’s why Amazon is not showing as verified purchase. This laptop is gorgeous, very much a clone of a Macbook pro. I use a Early 2010 Macbook pro 17″ for my work, and I can assure you it excels my Macbook pro in the following functional aspects:
1. It has a full keyboard. The Macbook’s so called “Full” keyboard is really not that full. Macbook misses all the home, end, page up and page down button. And trust me, even after two years of regular usage, I find it irritating. True, you can use Command + Up/Down etc. combination. But it’s really a productivity issue.
2. The Envy’s 4 speakers and the woofer combination is really awesome. In fact, this is the first laptop that I saw that outperforms my 17″ Macbook pro speaker (both sound quality and volume). Previously I compared Asus N53, hp DV5, Lenovo (forgot the model number) and hp DV6 and all of them had much inferior sound quality than my Macbook pro
3. The USB ports are distributed on two sides, which is really nice
From aesthetics and ergonomics part, it excels my Macbook pro in the following aspects:
1. The corners of the rectangular chassis is not sharp like my Macbook pro, which is really nice. The Macbook’s sharp edges cut into my palm everytime I lift it. Even while typing, it feels like a knife against my arm.
2. I liked the back lighting of the hp keyboard better
Now some cons in comparison to my Macbook pro 17 (early 2010):
1. My hp envy 15 power button’s painting is already peeling off!! My Macbook pro still looks like brand new (not just the power button). To be fair, the Envy 15 doesn’t seem to have any other weak part to peel off, and I am planning to keep the laptop as that minor cosmetic blemish is not a big deal for me.
2. The screen on my Macbook pro still would outperform the radiance display (to be fair, this is the best display of all the non Macbook pro that I have seen (refer to the earlier mentioned laptop models that I played with)). That being said, the Macbook pro 15″ display really SUCKS. Refer to my updated comparison with Macbook pro 15″ at the end of this review.
3. My 2 years old Macbook pro’s 640×480 resolution webcam (yes that’s only 0.3 mega pixel) still outperforms this Envy HD webcam (True vision or whatever they call it). That being said, again, to be fair, this is one of the best webcam that I have seen in non-Macbook pro laptops. Particularly, my last attempt with Asus N53SV webcam was horrible! It was sooo laggy and soo horrible quality that it was a deal breaker for me. (UPDATE: I changed my opinion, and kindly refer to my updated part of this review for my current subjective opinion).
4. The touchpad on my macbook pro has NO competitor. It’s really awesome, and the hp touchpad can only dream to be of that quality.
Now some common complaint and their solution:
1. The touchpad is horrible, doesn’t do smooth scrolling, doesn’t register click etc. The solution is to install the latest driver. The notebook review forum has a Envy driver page which is up to date with the latest drivers (including drivers that are still not officially available from HP) and I downloaded a Synaptic driver from that link. It’s a direct download from HP server, so nothing to be worried about. HP is probably going to release that soon. The driver was built at the end of January and after installing that, this touchpad is REALLY awesome. Almost as good as my Macbook pro (but as I said, it’s still has a long way to go)
2. The two finger tapping has no right click configuration: If you come from Mac world, you are probably accustomed to tapping with two fingers and that acts like a right click. You can install an open source program named TwoFingerScroll (hosted on google codes) to achieve that. After that, IMHO, the touchpad is feature complete (you can configure many options in original Synaptic control panel + TwoFingerScroll)
3. Battery issue, and smooth switching between built in and ATI graphics card: Right now I have fixed mode driver enabled and I am only using built in Intel Graphics, which is more than adequate for me as I don’t play games. You just need to go to BIOS settings and set Fixed mode in video switching setting (instead of Dynamic (the default)), and then right click on the desktop and go to Configure Switchable Graphics and set the power saving GPU as the graphics card. That seems to give me around 5 hours of typical usage, where I can edit the documents or browse typical web. Please refer to the updated review at the end of this review for some battery comparison with Macbook pro 17″ and 15″.
4. People complain that the red looks orange. But that’s a common problem of the recent IPS panels (I heard Sony has same problem). And to me it doesn’t look bad at all. The notebook review forum…
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|Can’t get over 2 serious problems, even after trying so hard to love the laptop. (UPDATED: NO problems!),
I really wanted to like this laptop, because on paper, there are very very few (if any) laptops that offer a similar package at this price point (up to 30% off MSRP after various HP coupons on the web for i7-2620qm, powerful graphics via 7690m, but most of all, 1080p IPS display). However, after 2 months of patience, I can no longer ignore the glaring issues HP has chosen to overlook. First, there have been numerous reports first appearing in forums about users’ complaints about the Envy 15 1080p’s inability to produce red colors. Since the initial reports in January, numerous tech blogs like the Verge, notebookcheck, and Engadget (among others) have confirmed this issue. While I had tried to overlook the issue myself, the non-reds eventually became far too big of a distraction, especially considering that this was a $150.00 upgrade option. If HP charged $250.00 for a screen upgrade that had a decent color gamut (come on! I’m not asking for Dreamcolor quality or even 95% Adobe coverage like Lenovo offers, just a screen that can reproduce the THREE PRIMARY COLORS!), I would have gladly and without hesitation ponied up the extra cost. I regret that HP chose to cut corners like this, when they were so close to a phenomenal laptop/display. -1 Star for display.
The second issue I take is the keyboard. To be fair, when I first received this unit, I had no skipped/missed keys, and I decided I could live with the slight flex on the left side of the keyboard. But ever since a BIOS update (F.05, for those of you keeping track), which by the way was ON HP’s OWN SITE, the keyboard will miss literally about 15% of my keystrokes whenever I’m running on AC adapter (but strangely, I have no problems when running on battery!). The keystroke issue is actually distracting enough to disrupt my day-to-day web browsing (missed spaces and mistyped web addresses are nothing but common); in fact, the only way you are reading this review without typos in every 3rd word is by my proofreading. Again, to be fair, I am understanding of the fact that software/updates can be buggy at times; it’s another matter when the manufacturer does not fix these bugs, not to mention refuse to acknowledge the numerous complaints from customers (google for forums in notebookreview.com and HP customer support forum for “Envy 15 BIOS keyboard” and skim through results). -2 Star, 1 each for keyboard/HP customer service handling complaints.
Others have complained about banged up USB ports, scratches, paint peeling, etc., but my unit arrived cosmetically flawless so I will not dock any stars for that.
It is my own fault for waiting 2 months to try to like this laptop and end up discovering all of this, instead of returning the unit within the initial 21-day period. I hope others will benefit from my less-than-pleasant experience with the Envy 15. I will update this review should HP offer any solutions to these and other complaints not even mentioned in this mini-review, but I am not holding my breath.
EDIT 2/21/12: BIOS F.06 also does nothing to address the keyboard problem.
EDIT 3/20/12: I’m adding one star back to my review. F.07 was released a couple of days ago, and I’m happy to report that all of the keyboard woes are gone! Here’s to hoping that those problems don’t return… I would like to add on a half-star if I could, for the fact that HP’s coming around to responding and ACKNOWLEDGING the problems surrounding the Envy. HP recently made a formal (though somewhat vague) announcement about HP’s proposal to fix the screen issue. This gives me some hope that the company’s at least taking steps to do what it can to remedy the issues at hand. I will update again after seeing what HP ultimately does w/ the LCD problem.
EDIT 5/10/12: HP released a software that allows some control over colors for the display, but as I had suspected, the software doesn’t do anything to fix the red/violet issues (I wasn’t hoping for too much out of the software option anyway since my research had confirmed the colors are a limitation of the LG panel itself).
EDIT 7/10/12: I honestly didn’t think I’d be updating this review again, but here I am. First I have to say that HP’s engineers offered better customer concern/service than any dedicated customer service departments, period (Thanks again, Jonathan!). Second, HP contacted me a few weeks ago to ask whether I had the orange-red issues with my panel, to which I provided details about the problem. Long story short, I was offered a free exchange (HP paid shipping both ways), and quite frankly, I wasn’t expecting any difference despite the different panel part number of the new panel. Well I was wrong–wrong about my customer service comments above, and wrong about the panel. The new panel isn’t perfect or even great by any standard, but it is definitely a noticeable improvement on the original Envy 15 panels’ reds. In light of these two points, I’m…
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|It’s a Cool laptop and all but…,
Spec wise and all. This laptop is pretty good.
- The display is very crisp and clear.
- It’s fast.
- It has a sleek design.
- Cool button for changing volume.
- Back lit keyboard.
- Switchable graphics can save power.
- HD
- Beats Audio provides great sound through the speakers.
That being said, there are some issues I have with this laptop.
- First, as I type this right now, it seems I have to hit my space bar key pretty hard when I use my right thumb since it seems to not respond when I hit it from the right side.
- The red is not so red. I don’t really care much about it, but it’s an issue some of you might not really enjoy.
- Switchable graphics not so switchable. Sometimes, it doesn’t switch GPUs, but it’s not that big a deal since you can simply, no, I advise you to change it to manual switching on the BIOS if you chose to get this laptop, so you can switch the GPUs yourself.
- As I feel through the edges of the laptop, it feels uneven. It’s not noticeable when you look at it, but you can feel it.
- Looks like a Mac book. Originality please.
As for game performance and display, it performs great for the basic games, though it struggled a bit with GTA IV, but I was not on High Performance power mode, so I can’t be certain.
Summary: If you are into Photoshop or you do stuff that involves colors, than I’ll advise you to stay away from this laptop. If you are just a gamer(casual) looking for a portable gaming machine from this era, and you don’t care much about color, then go ahead and get this.
Color-wise, I don’t feel like returning it. Keys-wise, I just might.
EDIT(2/21/2012): According to some info I got from another forum, there was a BIOS update to attempt to fix the keyboard issue (BIOS F.06). I installed this update, but it didn’t fix anything for me. On the other hand, some people claim that it fixed the issue for them. There was also another fix which would force the BIOS to recover, and some said that fixed it for them while others, like me, still remain with the keyboard issue. I guess right now, it’s a game of chance for those with this laptop.
I have also decided to return the laptop since I couldn’t bear the missing keystrokes any longer.
EDIT(3/8/2012): Long story short, I couldn’t return the item yet, but I was able to ask for an exchange. I received another Envy and this one works way better than the one I got before even though it is still running the F.06 BIOS. The one thing you’ll have to do to avoid skipping keystrokes is to dim the back light of the keyboard while on AC (You don’t need it to be too high anyway). While on Battery, you should turn off the back light, and that should solve, or “improve”, the missing keystrokes issue (It did/does for me) until HP decides to throw out a fix.
EDIT(3/28/2012): Hp released BIOS F.07 update to fix the keyboard issue. I have updated to that version and I am convinced, and can conclude, that the keyboard issue has been rectified. So if you aren’t running F.07, get that.
Later.
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