HP ENVY dv7 review

The old HP Pavilion dv7 is dead. Long live the ENVY dv7! This update to HP's popular 17-inch multimedia laptop might offer enough value to be a true heir to the PC throne.

overview

The HP ENVY dv7t-7200 is a new Windows 8 laptop release with a 17.3-inch screen and comes in a variety of configurations to suit almost every budget and performance need. If the ENVY dv7t sounds oddly familiar, you're right, it's simply a rebrand of the 2012 Pavilion dv7t line, but with the updated Windows 8 operating system. HP now places the ENVY label on any laptop that is classified as a high-performance device or with a premium design. The company also has the production of

15" ENVY 15 and 17" ENVY 17 models

, citing the fact that there was too much overlap between these machines and the corresponding dv6 and dv7.

In fact, there is a shift happening at HP, they have recently

lost their title as the number 1 PC manufacturer in the world

to Lenovo and so it's new innovative releases like that

ENVY 4 TouchSmart

and flagship models like the ENVY dv7t - one of their best-selling mainstream laptops, which will decide if they can regain the glory of the past. Read on to find out if the ENVY dv7t is a keeper or another reason to consider HP as zombie of his former self-awakening laptops.

Build and design

The ENVY dv7t-7200 is a 17.3-inch notebook aimed squarely at an audience looking for a desktop replacement device. With all the rage about Ultrabooks, you might be surprised to learn that the desktop replacement segment of 15- to 17-inch laptops is still the best-selling category. That's because laptops like the ENVY dv7t offer lots of nice features, great performance options, and a price that's well under one that's lighter and slimmer looking, but less powerful Ultrabook falls.People still want their notebook to look decent, no matter the size and purpose, so HP made sure the ENVY dv7t appealed visually to a wide audience.The lid has a subtle brushed metal skin with a jet black finish , which is contrasted with a silver trim around the edges. The HP logo on the top is illuminated, this offers a pretty cool loo k, but probably doesn't generate the same lust for technology as an Apple logo.

Opening the ENVY dv7t reveals a continuation of the midnight black finish across the palm rests and around the keyboard. The black metallic finish areas hide fingerprints well, unfortunately the same cannot be said for the glossy bezel HP around the screen and area of the keyboard tray. Wherever you reach to open the screen or adjust the angle is likely to leave a greasy fingerprint, a matte finish would have been more practical. Fortunately, the keyboard keys themselves are matte, not glossy like the tray area that Keyboard uses an island-style key design with flat tops. As an added bonus for accountant types, there's a number pad on the right side.

The ENVY's side areas, where the ports are found, use a silver trim made of an aluminum-look plastic material. On the underside of the dv7 you'll find a thick plastic skin that reinforces this vulnerable area and protects the inside. There is a bezel that can be easily detached with the removal of a screw and provides access to upgrade things like RAM, dual hard drives or WLAN card. The battery is removable and upgradeable and bucks the trend towards sealed cases.

Overall build quality is very good. The ENVY dv7t uses an aluminum chassis internally to provide a solid frame that protects the interior and offers resistance to external flexing. The only area of ​​flex we could detect on the chassis was in the middle of the keyboard, but only if additional pressure was applied than with normal typing. With sufficient twisting force on the upper screen area, it can be bent by a few millimeters, but this is not a problem since the screen is sufficiently protected and when pressed in by the lid no ripples appear on the screen.

The ENVY dv7t-7200 comes standard with a 6-cell 62Wh battery, this battery sits flush with the bottom of the notebook and can be easily removed and swapped out if necessary. There is also an option for a larger 9-cell Battery that HP advertises as having 50% longer battery life. The 9-cell protrudes from the bottom, raising the back of the notebook. This can have the side benefit of creating airflow underneath for better cooling and sloping the keyboard for better ergonomics. Besides the upgradeable battery, you can also easily upgrade the RAM, PCIe wireless card, and one of the two hard drive bays .With so many sealed notebooks on the market where you can't even upgrade the battery, this easy upgrade is nice to see.

connections and functions

The 17-inch ENVY dv7t has all the essential ports you'll need and that the average consumer will want, although it's missing some of the more specialized and business-oriented ports. A majority of the ports are on the left side of the laptop, with just a few on on the right side. There are no ports on the back of the notebook and there is only an SDHC card reader on the front. The rest of the ports are on the left and right sides of the notebook and you get the following:

Left: VGA, HDMI, Ethernet (covered), two USB 3.0, microphone input and headphone output

Right: Indicator lights, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, optical drive (Blu-ray or DVD), power supply and slot for a Kensington lock

While a plethora of ports is available, it lacks a few business-focused and specialty ports that might interest some users. For example, there's no DisplayPort video-out, eSATA port, SmartCard reader, or ExpressCard slot. The faster USB 3.0 Transfer rates should be sufficient for most users, but given the dv7t's size and physical footprint, it might have been nice to have added DisplayPort and an ExpressCard slot.

Screen

The ENVY dv7t-7200 comes standard with a glossy 1600 x 900 HD+ screen, but can also be upgraded to a Full HD 1920 x 1080 screen with a matte finish for an additional $150. While we could complain that Full HD should be standard for a premium laptop, the low price of the dv7t you can get with the standard screen (starting at $649) and the fact that not all of us young eyes and 20/20 vision make it an acceptable Starting point. If you just need more pixels per inch and value the anti-glare quality of a matte display, you'll probably pay for the higher-resolution Full HD screen.

The tested dv7t comes with the standard 1600 x 900 display. Given the 1600 x 900 resolution, the ENVY dv7t has the same pixel density as a laptop with a 15.6-inch screen and an HD resolution of 1366 x 768. This screen uses the TN panel technology found in most laptops, rather than the more expensive, wide-angle IPS technology you may have heard of featured on the

MacBook Pro with Retina display

or

Lenovo ThinkPad X230

.This means that the colors will shift as you tilt the laptop screen back and forth. A straight view with the screen perpendicular to your eyes provides the best experience. For the HD+ screen, there's not much else to write home about - colors, contrast, and black levels are all average. Screen brightness is for indoor use fine, but don't expect to be able to see the screen outdoors in full sun. The glossy screen helps make colors richer and more brilliant, and is fine for watching movies, but if you're in a brightly lit one Working in a room with a light source from behind and above, you'll get a lot of reflection off the screen.

Somewhat disappointingly, HP didn't offer an option for a touchscreen display when updating the dv7t to Windows 8. After all, the Windows 8 UI is all about offering touch interactions, and a large 17-inch display would be plenty provide space for such on-screen interactions.

speaker

HP uses Beats branded speakers on the ENVY dv7t-7200, there are four speakers on top and then a subwoofer on the bottom to provide deeper tones and additional bass. The four speakers on the top are located at the top of the keyboard and then at the bottom of the display on the left and right sides. The front-facing orientation of the speakers on the screen is a nice touch. The sound delivered is very clear and remains so even at high volumes. Full volume can be defined as ridiculously loud. Avoid that level unless you need to fill a large room with sound. Audio brand Beats doesn't get much respect alongside Shenheiser or Audio Technica, but for a laptop, the ENVY dv7t stands out as much better than average.

keyboard and touchpad

The ENVY dv7t has a chiclet-style (sometimes referred to as "Island-style") keyboard design and can be configured with a backlight for an additional $20 if customized through HP.com. The keyboard backlight is on recommended upgrade, it makes the key lettering easier to see even in a lit room and adds a bit of design. The keys themselves have a matte finish while the keyboard back is glossy. The keys are flat and offer good travel and tactile feedback when pressed. The keyboard is firm and doesn't sag under typical typing pressure, but can be depressed with above-average pressure. The keyboard quality and feel isn't as good as the much-lauded Lenovo ThinkPad series, with its ergonomically designed keys and precisely engineered tactile responsiveness and travel distances, but for a consumer notebook, the ENVY dv7t is definitely Good.

There's a number pad on the right side, which should please accounting types. One note about pressing in the number pad is that the alphanumeric keys aren't centered on the display, but are shifted to the left relative to the center of the display. This might bother some people who like precise symmetry.

The ENVY dv7t touchpad has a fairly large surface area at 4.13 inches wide and 2.13 inches deep. That's nowhere near as big as the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch, which is 5.2 inches wide and 4.3 inches deep trackpad offers, but HP has chosen to offer dedicated mouse buttons instead of the integrated clickpad buttons that Apple uses. The more real estate you have on the touchpad in Windows 8, the better, there are many touchpad gestures to perform and swiping from side to side is recommended for navigation. So a clickpad and deeper touchpad surface might have made more sense on the ENVY. Notably, the touchpad is slightly sunken, which is helpful for finding it in the dark or avoiding looking down. If you opt for the Unfortunately, the touchpad does not get the same backlight treatment.

As with most Windows laptops, the ENVY uses Synaptics drivers for the touchpad, which allows you to adjust some settings such as cursor speed, enabling or disabling gesture features, and palm detection sensitivity to avoid accidental cursor movement. For the most part, the touchpad worked well, although the cursor jumped sometimes even though I had increased the sensitivity of the palm detection. The bigger problem for most users will be figuring out the new Windows 8 screen navigation features, which just seem more intuitive for use with a touchscreen instead of a touchpad. Certain Windows 8 -Navigation, such as bringing up the Charms bar on the right and other hidden shortcuts that require precise positioning of the cursor in specific areas of the screen, can be performed more easily with a mouse that has a more precise cursor position ionization enabled.

The mouse buttons below the touchpad are a little disappointing. While they work well, they have a very short range and don't provide convincing feedback to let you know you pressed them all the way down.

Just below the keyboard on the right is a fingerprint reader, this is a standard feature and combined with the onboard software can be handy as an alternative to using entered passwords to log into the device or even websites.