HP Envy 17 3D Review

HP’s Envy 3D notebook has been around for some time now but amongst so many notebooks sporting Nvidia’s 3DVision floating around, it seems lost in the crowd. This is one of the few notebooks that support AMD's HD3D technology which is a rare sight as the desktop segment is also completely dominated by Nvidia. HP currently offers only a single model in the high-end Envy range, which will compete with Asus and Alienware as they sport very similar features and are targeted at gamers. Let’s see if it has what it takes to go up against the big guns.

HP Envy 17 3D Notebook on video

Design and Build
When it comes to design and build quality, it seems HP can do no wrong. HP has paid attention to a lot of detail which shows in the finished design. The plastics and metal used are of high quality giving the Envy 17 a very polished and refined look. There’s an engraved design running throughout the notebook which takes away from the otherwise monotonous colour scheme. The lid is strong and applying pressure doesn’t distort the screen. Other than the design, there’s just the illuminated HP logo down at the bottom. The screen is held securely in place by two hinges that let you tilt it all the way to 160 degrees backwards.

Very well designed

The Envy 17 is not exactly light weight at 3.41kg but it’s really slim for a gaming notebook, in fact it looks more like a regular multimedia notebook from their DV6 line-up. On the left we have a large vent for the exhaust, which can get pretty toasty even in power saver mode. You can’t use the notebook on your lap for too long as it gets hot pretty quickly even when you’re just browsing or not doing anything. Connectors include dual headphone jacks with microphone support for one of them, HDMI, DisplayPort, Gigabit Ethernet jack, VGA and memory card reader. Our review unit came with a total of four USB 2.0 ports (including one ESATA combo port) but their website states that one of the ports will be USB 3.0. The optical drive is a Blu-ray/DVD combo drive and not a Blu-ray writer.

DisplayPort is a welcomed addition

Due to the size of the notebook, there’s plenty of place to play around with for the keys and trackpad. HP have gone with the chiclet styled backlit keys which includes a proper Numpad as well. The finish and feedback of the keys are really good so no complaints here. The backlights for the keys only have two settings, either on or off and there’s no ambient light sensor so you’ll have to manually enable it. The trackpad is nice and large with a very smooth finish making it effortless to use. Finally, we have the speaker grills that are placed in the front facing outwards.

Features
With a price tag of almost a lac, you’d expect HP to throw in everything but the kitchen sink, sadly that’s not the case. Powering the Envy 17 is an Arrandale-based Core i5-480M processor running at a stock speed of 2.66GHz with the ability to Turbo up to 2.9GHz. With Sandy Bridge being quite widespread now, it’s a wonder why HP is still stuck with the older CPU model. The bundled memory is 4GB but there’s another free slot so you can expand it to 8GB. For storage we have a 640GB hard drive running at 7200rpm. The graphics card used is an AMD Mobility HD 5850 with 1GB GDDR5 memory. This is a high-end DX11 graphics card for notebooks with full support for OpenCL and DirectCompute 11 applications.

Perfect for watching 3D Blu-rays

The 17.3-inch full HD display is simply gorgeous and supports HP’s Ultra BrightView technology. Since this is a 3D ready notebook, the maximum supported refresh rate is 120Hz. As AMD don’t have any 3D implementation of their own like Nvidia, they have to rely on third party developers which in this case is TriDef 3D. Using their TriDef Ignition software, you can play games in 3D whereas for movies, you can use Cyberlink’s PowerDVD software which comes bundled.

Speaker grills face outwards so it's not blocked by the user

Another highlight of the Envy 17 is the use of Beats Audio by Dr.Dre. The software gives you a little control panel allowing you tweak the audio settings to your liking which includes a graphic equalizer. Apart from the two speakers in the front, HP has included a Triple Bass Reflex Subwoofer which we’ll put to the test a little later.

Overall, HP has done a great job with the build and finish of the Envy 17 that’s only rivalled by some of their other notebooks. But looks aside, does it have the chops to compete with hardened gaming veterans like Asus or Alienware?