HP ENVY 17-1011NR 17.3-Inch Laptop Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Beauty and brains August 13, 2010
I've been using this notebook for a few weeks and I'm very pleased with it overall. The system feels powerful and responsive but that power comes at the expense of cooling. Under heavy load the right side becomes very hot. Too hot to touch in reality and you can even feel the heat through keys like caps lock, tab and the left shift and ctrl. That's one of the few caveats of this system. The others are the lack of a FireWire port for capturing digital video and the insufficiency of RAID support. Although the system uses two speedy Hitachi HTS725032A9A364 hard disks there's no option in the BIOS to create a RAID 0 or 1 array with the disks. In my opinion HP missed an opportunity there to squeeze a few more drops of performance out of the system with RAID 0.

Many reviewers have complained in the region of the clickpad being quirky and annoying. HP has released an updated driver that fixes the problem and it's available on their web site. Once you install the update and familiarize yourself with the multi-touch gestures you realize they're very cool and convenient.

Oddly, HP has chosen to make the subsidiary controls of the function keys active by default. Meaning that if you press the key shared by F7 and volume down, the volume down control will be triggered. You need to press the fn key (between the ctrl and windows log keys on the bottom row) to trigger F7. This is truly annoying at first but a quick trip to the BIOS let you change it back to the way it should be so the function keys are triggered by default and the fn key is only needed for the secondary controls like volume, blind brightness, wireless toggle, etc.

On the software side, unlike what the PDF specsheet states, this system does NOT come with Office 2007 trial or any other office productivity software pre-installed. The Corel video and image editors are present and accounted for but you'll either need to buy Office right away or install the free OpenOffice suite like I did.

Gaming is a pleasure on this system as you would expect. So far I've played Batman Arkham Asylum on it at 1920x1080 resolution with the quality settings turned all the style up and the game is beautifully detailed and frame rate is completely fluid. Of course the system gets hot as hell during gameplay, but such is life, I guess.

All things considered, I highly recommend the ENVY 17-1011NR to anyone who wants a powerful notebook.


5.0 out of 5 stars Best Value + Style + Power available July 14, 2010
I'll be honest that a laptop from HP was far from my first choice. At the end of the day it be half the price of Apple and Alienware and way more stylish and feature packed than the Asus stealth fighter laptop. Every now and then I do want to transfer 10GB of movies and video's around so USB 3 and ESata ports in a desktop replacement laptop business, something that Apple and Asus don't seem to care about. Heads up, this is a 17" but with 1920X1080 instead of 1920X1200 that you may have been used to before. This makes the laptop wider than my prior 17" Vaio I had owned... general enough that it make the laptop feel massive. Enough so that I won't be carrying it around in a backpack anytime soon.

This unit ships with dual 320GB hard drives. First thing I did was establish a SSD to replace the boot drive, so my experience is based on that modification. I ended up doing a fresh windows install so I never worried about bloat ware. Fortunately the installation files for everything short of the O/S were in a nice setup folder on the c:\ drive I replaced, so I can always re-install anything I may decide I want later.

At the close of the day this laptop is FAST. The windows experience index for the machine after the SSD upgrade is 7.0 which is good thing. Supreme Commander 2, Assassins Creed 2 both run with full detail at 60fps. There have been reports of unbearably hot palm rests and sub par competence on the assemblies. I had none of those issues. I'm gaming and surfing on a plain table (no cooler) and heat has not been an issue. In a quiet room I can hear the fan but typing the keys on the keyboard is louder.

The extras I like include the backlit the ivories, the status led lights on the mute and wireless function buttons, the led that lights up the RJ45 network jack when plugged in, the tiny led lights in the front left for power and harddrive activity, only have to remove 2 screws to replace the primary harddrive.

The only criticism would have to be the track pad. I've used a macbook with bootcamp and the gestures made more sense. Since the left and right "buttons" are simulated, the act of holding a "mouse" button down and dragging the mouse (when selecting manuscript for instance) makes the mouse move in fits and jerks. I don't know if driver updates can ever fix that, but allowing us to simulate those interactions with just gestures (no physical clicks) would.

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Laptop! October 12, 2010
I was quite surprised with the covering this laptop came in. The box is matte black and sturdy--leaving you with the idea that some people at HP are trying to make a statement. If you are giving this as a gift, the recipient will be quite impressed.

First entity I did after the 15-minute setup experience was to create the 5 backup DVDs. This takes 2-3 hours to complete. During that time I did notice the left side of the keyboard was warming up. It was really noticeable moved out of the trackpad, where my wrist was resting. I can tell that over time this will become a major annoyance, especially if I am taxing the processor. So, I am buying a laptop cooler. I spent the afternoon on the patio with the laptop sitting on a metal table with a lattice design, allowing air to access the bottom of the gadget. This kept the left side of the trackpad much cooler.

The things you'll find in the box are two batteries and the power supply (brick). There is also a 2GB SD card. Plug that in and you'll be prompted to install the HP user manuals. No other cables or installation CDs.

One major disappointment is the lack of a 1394 port, which I use for my video camera. The up/down arrows are half-size--an unusual design concept--but they actually work only just fine. The full size keyboard is one of the best I have ever used on ANY PC! The F10 key enables/disables the wireless connection.

This machine looks impressive. The case is aluminum in a steel gray color and shows no fingerprints. It has 4 USB ports, along next to the others advertised. No dead pixels on the magnificent screen. I like the slide-in DVD tray design--no more hunting for the eject button which is at the upper right of the keyboard.

The Envy is quiet unless you are pushing the processor, then the fans will speed up and the fry level increases. My previous HP laptop had a screen size of 1920 X 1200, while this one is 1920 X 1080. I miss the extra screen height, but all manufacturers are going to a 16 X 9 format.

The reasons for purchasing this laptop were the processor speed, Bluetooth, Gigabit LAN and the USB 3.0/ESATA connections. I looked-for a laptop that could process large video files and make my own DVDs. I'm not a fan of Windows 7 Home Premium so I installed Windows 7 Ultimate instead. It appears that the driver files on the hard drive were created on August 2010, but these files have a date of Jan/Feb 2010. As of this date (Oct. 12, 2010) the HP website has newer drivers for almost everything on the Envy. Windows 7 performance scores are adjectives 7.0 or higher, except for the hard drives at 5.9. Installing a solid state disk (SSD) will bring the hard drive rating to 7.9.

I like the backlit keyboard--makes for easy navigation in the dark. A function key toggles it on/off. Another function key toggles the eyeshade brightness up or down. I also purchased some additional items with the Envy: Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000 Mac/Windows, Zalman ZM-NC2000Black Notebook Cooler (Black) and the Targus Deluxe Top-Loading Leather Case Designed for 17 Inch Laptops TLE400 Black). The keypad is somewhat of a nuisance. The two keys at the bottom of it are actually part of the whole keypad surface. Finding the keys by moving your finger to the keys cause the mouse to move off the point on the screen that you wish to click on. No other laptop I've ever had has shown this quirk.

Bottom line: If it had a 1394 port and a cooler surface (hard to find with a fast processor), I'd rate it a 5. But a 4 is not impossible in the ever-changing world of electronics. And the Amazon price is $300-400 less than HP's website.

UPDATE: 11/17/2010
The heat level on the left side was fixed by purchasing the Zalman cooler. The Targus case holds everything (barely), including the cooler. The Bluetooth mouse works well except when the wireless LAN is running at full speed. Then the mouse locks up until the WLAN frees up. Apparently there is a single-thread chip driving the two processes. The F10 push button turns both the WLAN and Bluetooth devices on/off. Using a Bluetooth mouse requires you to separately enable it in this instance.

I watched a 42-minute video last night while running on the 6-cell battery. At the end, there was 45% battery-operated life remaining. A two-hour movie uses most the life of the 9-cell battery.

Prices should come down on this box as there is a 3D version now available from HP. Unless you really need a fast laptop, you might want to consider some of the cheaper HP versions available.

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Performace For the Dollar! September 11, 2010
*Edited*

Pro 1: "In Depth Specs" The computer runs wonderfully near it's i7 720Q 1.6GH~2.6GHz quad(octa/virtual)-core CPU, it's 8GBs of DDR3 running @ max of 667MHz (Hynix brand DIMMs) (more below: Other) and a ATI Mobility HD 5850 with 1GB of DDR5 (not DDR3) running @ max 500MHz (more below: Other) and DDR5 runs max 900MHz. As for storage this contains 2x "WDC WD3200BEKT" 320GBs running @ 7.2K RPMs.

Pro 2: "Mild Gaming" I prefer to play my games windowed (1280x720) instead of a full screen so I can keep an eye out for computer stats and temperatures. I can run Crysis with Extreme Particles mod @ Ultra High 4xAA in 1280x720 and get 20~30fps. this goes pretty much the same for NFShift, and Starcraft 2. I couldn't play Oblivion next to these settings in a window, the same for Front Mission 5 and Metro 2033.

Pro 3: "Beats Audio Does Work!" Sounds wonderful (for the first 30 days) through the speakers and any set of headphones. I wish the Beat Audio control panel had more than 2 equalizer presets.



Con 1: "Bad Speaker, Bad" Nearly a month after getting mine in the mail the right speaker broke. I think it's because of the 2 USB ports on the right mitt side get hot. My Blue-Track mouse would keep disconnecting for no reason and finally the speaker went out.

Con 2: "Too Many Drives!?" OMG too many freaking partitions, I swear there was 4 drives. 2 Drives were conspicuously garbage so I removed those and extended the others.

Con 3: "Bloatware, HP's Bloatware" Freaking annoying on how much crap they set up on these things now, Icon Packer (trial), Fences, Roxio (doesn't work) and not to mention HP's Netflix and Hulu apps (don't work). I will give them props for giving away a 1 year subscription of Norton for free though.


Other 1: "RAM" The RAM is rated to run @ 667MHz but Everest reports that the max the Envy 17 will push it is 609MHz, so there's another underclocked part here.

Other 2: "GPU" The ATI Mobility HD 5850 is underclocked from 650MHz to 500MHz which is just 10 or so fps extra and if you really want those frames you can use MSI's Afterburner software to OC the GPU (I haven't, neither should you).

Other 3: "Heat" during play time, running Crysis with above settings I only reach temperature around 180f~190f, idle 145f~150f, and the HDDs never go about 150f. If you expect this too run cool, I'm sorry you're retarded.

Other 4:"MiniOS" HP tried doing something pretty cool, run a small operating system before Win7 for music, photos, videos and web but it falls short and delivers half way through. Every 5 second the pointer stops moving for a second, the miniOS cant detect user music, video, photo folders. It's sluggish and thankfully you can disable it.

*Edited*

2.0 out of 5 stars Fast but problematic laptop. support issues remain. September 25, 2010
I cannot recommend HP Envy.

Pros:
- Fast
- Nice big screen
Cons:
- Terrible battery life
- Randomly drops keyboard characters. I have called HP again and again. They have tried to fix the BIOS and done software fixes that seem to clear no difference. It makes annoying and embarrassing spelling mistakes in emails and documents. (this problem went away ... see my update below)
- Bluescreens. Less than a month old.
- NO ONE AT HP KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT ENVY MODELS. Yesterday I was handed off from person to being for 2 hours before giving up. 6 or 7 support people passed my call from one to the other without one of them being "an Envy specialist"

updating on 11/29/2010:
GOOD NEWS:
- keyboard character drop problem disappeared as mysteriously as it had started. Don't know yet if this is quantity of the intermittent pattern or a permanent resolution.
- HP support left a few voicemail messages on my answering machine
BAD NEWS:
- product still bluescreens, most recently during Web browsing (at fault driver was the ATI graphics card driver)
No change in overall 2-star rating.

updating on 12/09/2010:
GOOD NEWS:
- HP support website have an updated driver. It was as I suspected the ATI graphics driver (Why would HP not put an Nvidia card in its premier product??). The laptop was consistently crashing if you clicked on a link to a youtube video sent to you in email. It is no longer doing that with the new driver.
BAD NEWS:
- The keyboard has developed squeaky key
- I know for sure that the SHIFT key and the spacebar are squeaky
- I suspect this product has inferior hardware in the keyboard.

Given how much I paid for this product (and the price has gone up for Christmas so you will pay even more), I am going to keep my rating down at 2 stars. When you pay 1500 bucks, you expect the product to not break in 3 months of use.


4.0 out of 5 stars The good, the bad, and the unavoidably H.P. August 30, 2010
Just the facts. or at least anecdotal opinions (from a non-gamer who uses this type of device as a portable development workhorse):

The good:

* Fast. I've seen some other i7 units and this manifestly keeps pace if not surpasses them. The memory and drives are very fast (2 x 7,200 RPM makes for some nifty RAID 1). Note that the graphics chipset seems to be set at 500MHz, not 1GHz but it seems very snappy to me still.

* The display is great -- crisp and clear.

* It's VERY melodious. Amazingly the quietest laptop I've even owned.

* Virtualization works very well on this machine.

* I'm looking forward to using a USB 3.0 drive on this someday.

* Value for the money seems reasonable to me.

The bad:

* You can't have 3+ displays without a display port device. I'm seeing some confusion over whether it has to be moving or not, but right now I'm guessing it has to be an active adapter to VGA or a display port monitor. I can't test the third display yet since I don't have an adapter...

* I don't like the mouse pad. The multi-touch function is a pain, especially since the mouse buttons are piece of the pad. This makes resting your trigger thumb rather touchy. It'd be nice to be able to disable it entirely without having to screw with X11 but no Fn key seems to do that.

* The nouns from the laptop speakers sucks. I'm a little biased on this since I'm going from the deep, epic sounds of the Harmon/Kardons of my Quasimodo to a set of speakers that have all the acoustic depth of a wet towel. When plugged into a more advanced system, they seem to work fine, but I don't really understand why I'm supposed to get adjectives jazzed over this "beats audio" thing. The only thing it seems to beat is

* It runs VERY hot when first purchased.

The unavoidably H.P.:

* Upgrade the BIOS and all the drivers right away. Doing that alone decreased heat output greatly for me. (I haven't be to the hospital for palm burns since.)

* Battery life is not great, even with two batteries included. I'm estimating about 3-4 hours for BOTH TOGETHER. I capitalize not out of anger but to forewarn the wary shopper. This is a portable aircraft carrier, not a dingy. Higher heat levels = more power.

* Why oh why does Windows/HP feel the have need of to take all four primary partitions on their laptops. (Make your backup DVDs early. Especially if you're a Linux user and are planning to repartition but might want to make sure they're available for later. Just sayin'. You don't want to be one of _those_ guys that has to dig out the recovery NTFS out of the hedge table by hand because you accidentally turned on the dynamic drive looking for a way to get an extended partition.)

* When initially started, before the BIOS upgrade, the fn keys would do BOTH the regular operation + the HP operation. Normally you would hold "fn" and then press F1 or what not, but the default state didn't seem to require the "fn" for anything reason. The BIOS upgrade seems to have fixed that.

This would be 4.5 stars if possible since it fits my personal needs (if indeed I can get the third display), but since I can't I have to rate 4 since the machine isn't really perfect.

2.0 out of 5 stars Two defective unit. Great idea, poorly executed. October 25, 2010
I went from a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop to this HP Envy 17. I was really excited to get this laptop, and really did want to like it. Unfortunately, I received not one, but TWO defective units from Amazon. The first shut down and booted up repeatedly at random. The second wobbled on a level surface. Trust me, I tried it on 5 surfaces. The laptops design is great, and build quality could be wearing clothes. I say could because with the wobble, and some gaps between the frame and side pieces, it isn't refined. The wobble is a fairly widespread problem, check out the notebookreview.com forum on the envy 17 and you will see just how widespread.

PROS

-Concept
-Build quality (could be great)
-Price
-"Fingerprintless"
-Nice upright, plus its backlight
-Slot loading drive

CONS

-Quality control (received 2 defective units)
-Runs HOT
-Sitting next to my Dell Studio XPS 16, the screen looks terrible (the Dell has a WLED backlight screen)
-No play, skip buttons

Overall, I cannot recommend this laptop because of the obvious quality control issues with HP. I'm going back to Dell- Alienware M17X

4.0 out of 5 stars Great performing computer and well built. August 13, 2010
The HP envy string is the higher end line of HP's laptops. They have many great features that you may find on higher priced laptops such as Mac's. Firstly, the processor on this thing IS FAST i was able to encode a full length movie surrounded by under an hour and I rarely see the processor go past 40%. Almost everything about this computer is perfect, the keyboard is great and the back-light isn't too bright, like on my previous laptop. At first I did not believe that the beats audio would breed much of a difference, and it doesn't through the speakers, but man plug in a good pair of headphones or speakers and you can definitely tell the difference. I have done some gaming and the graphics card was able to play star-craft 2 at full settings as in good health as other games. The display on this thing is wonderful to look at as it really makes things pop especially blu ray movies, although you may need to visit hp's support site to update the dvd software to get certain blurays to play properly. I have yet to try the eyefinity as I don't own another monitor but I am hoping to draw from a nice set soon! The only gripe I have with this laptop is the fact that the left palm rest can get quit warm when playing video or games off the hard drive. Other than that I find every other aspect of this computer to be flawless. I had heard about people who had problems with their hp envy 17 but I believe that hp has improved manufacturing process as i did not enjoy any problems nor did my friend who also bought this model. This is the type of computer in which when you hold it you can tell it is a well assembled machine. I must say though, this computer while portable is not going to be easy to carry from place to place, it it meant as a high powered desktop replacement. I recommend this laptop to anybody who requires great implementation and not a lot in the means of portability.

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice... with a few sticking points. July 12, 2010
At the end of the day performance is the most important measure of nouns to me and this machine lives up to expectations here - its definately snappy. In regards to games, I've installed Dragon Age, Borderlands, Crysis - all run great at maximum settings. I'm confident this machine will handle my gaming needs for the next couple of years.

Nice fit and finish. Lots of metal bits and overall solid feel. Its not exactly light but for a 17" its respectable. It looks suitable enough to leave out when company is over. I had some concern buying site unseen because I know the previous envy models didn't quite deliver in this are - but I think overall this version meets the bar. Its not a mac book - but it get pretty close.

Battery life has been good so far - the extra 9 volt battery is an awesome bonus.

It does have a blu ray drive.

The screen is beautiful - super clear, detailed and bright.

So surrounded by the two primary areas that drove me to purchase this vs. other 17" gaming machines - performance and aesthetic - this machine delivers.

I have a few usability complaints though..

The mouse pad. The problem here is that the click buttons are also part of the touch bad - so when go to click on things your clicking finger will move the cursor. This happen often enough to be very frustrating.. maybe a patch will come out that will address. In the meantime I've been having to plug in an external mouse because I can't take it.

The PC does something strange when it sleeps - when you open the lid it will resume but the eyeshade doesn't come back so you have to open and close the lid once again and that will make the screen turn on. Not a big deal but a bug that bothers me. And the lid is a bit of pain to open - no real place to receive a good grip and its tight and heavy. Its more like prying it open rather than the nice smooth lid opening experience of the mac book.

Too much cluttering software pre installed and Windows disk not included making a clean install difficult.

The Beats audio is not that exciting - but i didn't expect it to be. Sounds like a laptop to me at the end of the light of day.



5.0 out of 5 stars High-end winner! October 12, 2010
I reviewed several high-end laptops with the following specs - i7 processor, 8 GB RAM, multiple-HD display capabilities, 1920X1080 resolution, dual hard drive slots, USB 2 and 3, and aesthetics. I read the reviews here, Newegg, and PC sites which revealed a few common themes about the Envy 17. It's a dressed up workhorse with a refreshing minimalist design. I'm a big Apple fan and own several of their products, and this comes pretty close to their design appeal. I prefer using smaller laptops and netbooks and most recently the iPad for travel and don't understand the criticism of some reviews regarding battery life. I bought this to literally replace both my home and office desktops with a powerful "portable" machine that I can unplug and plug back contained by. I can't see why anyone would want to lug this 8 lb monster around for use in the "coffee shop." If you're still reading . . . here's more info regarding my Amazon purchase:
1. Shipping to Seattle was fast and it arrived in an outer shipping box and there was no visible damage to the HP Envy box.
2. You'll appreciate the details that go into designing the HP Envy box, the laptop itself is enclosed in a nice cloth sleeve and the manual comes on a 2 GB SD card that you simply insert to get started.
3. The upgrade screen is fabulous and easily matches the display on the high end MacBook Pro within terms of clarity of brightness.
4. There is a fair amount of bloatware that will take some time and effort to sort through and remove.
5. There have been past reviews that commented on QI issues. My unit came unblemished, no wobble, reliable screen without a single pixel issue, and a quick check showed all the advertised components (320 GB HDD X 2, 8 GB RAM, BD optical slot drive, etc.)
6. After one day of continuous use on a laptop stand, the unit was warm (particularly on the gone corner), but not noticably hot (granted just running Office apps with Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator). Given the many reviews, I had ordered a Zalman 3000U cooler which fits this laptop perfectly and both the fan and laptop are whisper quiet.

Overall, I'm satisfied that I made the right choice to return with the Envy 17 which exceeds the specs on the highest end MacBook Pro. Price was not a determining factor, but I certainly appreciated paying $1000 less for a better machine. For all of you media-philes like myself, Windows 7 is a pleasure to use (Vista was a nightmare) and truthfully this HP Envy 7 brings the in one piece Mac vs PC battle back to parity.

*** update 12/18/2010 ***
The Eyefinity multidisplay technology is AWESOME. Took me a while to find out that you need an active DisplayPort dongle (google: AMD Eyefinity FAQs) to enable 3 monitors. I purchased the Accell B087B-006B UltraAV Mini DisplayPort to DVI-D Single-Link Active Adapter for ~ $30 from Amazon and it works beautifully running an HD monitor at 1080p via HDMI, Envy display @ 19020X1080, and 3rd monitor at 1440X900 via DVI. This feature alone makes this a must-buy!



Related Product Reviews: