HP Envy 14 review

Our review unit was powered by a 2.66GHz Intel Core i5-450M processor, 4GB of DDR3 RAM and a 500GB 7,200rpm hard drive. It was also coupled with an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 GPU with 1GB of VRAM. The processor and RAM alone pushed out some of the best benchmark scores we've seen in quite a while, which translated to very zippy everyday performance. Not only was the system extremely adept at handling our usual application load simultaneously – including Firefox, TweetDeck, Trillian, Microsoft Office, and Skype – but when we threw in Photoshop to edit a few pictures it didn't flinch or slow down. Also, those heat issues we complained about when we reviewed the Envy 15 have disappeared, for the most part. The keyboard and touchpad of the laptop stayed relatively cool during our usage, even while playing Flash videos. The bottom of the laptop did get a bit warm, but not to the point that we feared burning any reproductive organs. We've also heard some recent buyers complaining about fan noise, but we weren't bothered by it. ATI's Radeon HD 5650 also topped a lot of the other laptops on 3DMark06. With its 1GB of VRAM, it pushed along a 1080p clip beautifully – though Intel's integrated solution is more than capable of dealing with HD content. When it came to gaming, the card helped KO the Joker's crew at 33fps in Batman: Arkham Asylum. We also downloaded a demo version of World in Conflict on Steam, and at medium settings it clocked in at over 40fps. The graphics performance is pretty good for a mid-range card and it can support a killer Eyefinity setup if you happen to have six monitors, but we can't help but think a solution like NVIDIA's Optimus would be nice on this sort of machine – a few times when we unplugged it wouldn't switch to the integrated graphics until we closed some programs, and we had to go into the graphics control panel to turn on the GPU when we wanted to play some Batman when running on battery power.

The HP Envy 14 is like the final revision of a C+ term paper that always had potential, but just needed a bit of extra information and refinement to get an A. In fact, when HP introduced the Envy 14, the company was rather blunt about the fact that many of the issues that plagued the original Envy systems had been addressed, including the lack of an optical drive and backlight keyboard, the frustrating touchpad and the heat caused by the Core i7 processor. On paper, the 14.5-inch Envy 14 has everything we wanted to see in those first models while still maintaining its beautiful yet tough etched aluminum chassis. It's also got a new lower $999 starting price, though our review unit rang up at $1,290. So, has the Envy 14 finally make its way to the head of the class? We've spent some quality time with the rig to find out.