Review: HP Envy 13 (2017)

When it comes to laptops, you get three options – sleek and slim, powerful and bulky, or cheap and low-powered. The HP Envy 13 is a beautiful, powerful, and slim device that will win your heart over with its pocket-friendly price.

The laptop comes in a shiny gold avatar and measures just 12.9mm in thickness. In terms of weight, the Envy 13 weighs around 1.27-kgs. It comes with a 13.3-inch FHD display that is quite delicious to look at.

The laptop also accompanies a HD WDR camera that comes with wide viewing angels. An optional HP Secure Pad with embedded fingerprint reader and Windows Hello is also available for added security.

The overall design of the Envy 13 gives you a more premium feel to it – a mixture of a silver aluminium chassis and a matt black bezel around the screen, makes it stand out from the crowd. The lid has an attractive mirrored HP logo and a debossed strip for a little visual flourish.

On the left edge of the laptop, you will find a micro SD card reader, a USB 3.0 port that supports sleep and charge, a USB C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The right edge meanwhile has the power port, one USB 3.0 port and a USB C port. sadly, though, there is no HDMI port or a full-sized SD card slot.

The overall premium design continues to show on the keyboard and the trackpad, as well. The keyboard is comfortable to type upon, too. This 2017 model adds real gaming performance while reducing the footprint of the laptop.

The laptop is portable, has the power for real work, and it can even play games. The one weakness of the HP Envy 13 is that the trackpad isn’t as good as some rivals.

In terms of specs, the HP Envy 13 comes configured with either i5 or i7 processors. The one we have reviewed here, came with the Intel Core i7 processor and dedicated Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics.

Performance is something where the HP Envy 13 really shines, especially when compared to other slim laptops on the market. Our HP Envy 13 came with a Core i7-7500U CPU, ensuring the laptop could breeze through day-to-day tasks without breaking a sweat.

Any laptop with a Core i-series processor, 8GB of RAM and SSD storage makes Windows 10 feel great. And the HP Envy 13 does just that. It also has an Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics chipset, as mentioned earlier, which is pretty impressive at this scale.

In terms of battery, the HP Envy 13 was able to be alive for around 12 hours, before it needed charging again. The Bang & Olufsen speakers that accompany the Envy 13 also sound good, but not great.

For a price of AED 5999, the HP Envy 13 is a good laptop. The HP Envy 13 is a laptop that can do a lot more that most pricey laptops on the market can’t, especially because it packs in a discrete graphics card. It is a laptop most people need for a very compelling price, that also offers good performance.

Price: AED 5,999

Comments

Comments