HP revamps Envy laptop line
New look, more power
HP has restyled its 15in and 17in Envy laptops, kitting them out in a "timeless design that includes an all-metal chassis with rounded edges in a classic black and silver finish".
Performance comes from quad-core Intel Core i7 CPUs, up to 16GB of DDR 3 memory, plus AMD Radeon HD discrete GPUs with 1GB of GDDR 5 video memory.
The 17in Envy can take two hard drives and a 128MB mSata SSD.
Both models have HDMI and DisplayPort output - two of the latter on the Envy 17 - plus the inevitable Beats Audio tech, this time with an analogue volume dial. There are a couple of USB 3.0 ports. The keyboard is backlit.
There's no word on international availability yet, but the two new Envies go on sale in the States on 7 December. The 15.6-incher kicks off at £1100 (£697) and the Envy 17 at $1250 (£793).
Update HP has just said the Envy 17 is expected to be available at the beginning of 2012 at a starting price of £1399. ®
COMMENTS
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Eh?, Wot? Apple... yawn....
I coudln't agree more, if their panel is a decent IPS, they could easily ramp it up to 1920x1080 on the 17", or at a bare minimum 1680x900. Anything less is a total waste of physical size.
As for the price, well: import duty and 20% vat take that £750 up to over the 1k mark. This is the RRRP not what you will pay through the chain, so I would guess this will be available for around £1150.
As with any branded machine (yes even apple....yawn....) buy the best cpu spec you can get without the faff.... you can upgrade/add memory and hard disks/ssd yourself at less than half the cost these companies normally want to charge.
Naturally this couldn't go without an Apple design comment
For one thing, Apple themselves are just copying a Braun designer from last century..
Either way, the design is better than a lot of ugly, amateur-designed, over-styled laptops are. And since Apple machines don't run windows all that well (not optimized, so they run slow and heat up more), I'm glad HP saw fit to put out a laptop with slot-loaded optical drive and a simple, (relatively) clean soap bar shape.
But: are they less noisy now? And did they put better displays back on them again?
I remember the whole sham: First, they put great displays on them, building a reputation, and then they cut cost by starting to install cheap crappy displays a short time later. That was poor. Did they really think a pair of beats headphones was going to make up for the loss of really good screens??
When I really hate something, its all these scumbag manufacturers trying to play little shell-game tricks on their customers.
Apt
"timeless design that includes an all-metal chassis with rounded edges in a classic black and silver finish."
I'm sure Apple will be pleased HP finds their design timeless, but Envy is a character defect which leads only to misery and failure.
Nice exchange rate HP
Since when has $1250 equated to £1499, epic fail and no buyers this side of the Atlantic.
