Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Modern design, slick, large touch pad, good display

Thumbs Down:

Expensive, bulky, keyboard is not backlit, connections and ports are limited.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

HP Envy 13 is powered by Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz, dual core processor. Installed memory is 3 GB DDR II SDRAM of 1066 MHz. For storing data, there is a 250 GB hard drive of 5400 rpm. Optical drive is 8X DVD+/-RW Drive. Display is 15.4 inches big. Graphics card installed is ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330.

Razzle Dazzle:

Envy was originally a part of Voodoo lineup from HP but Voodoo is now gone which makes this a pure HP product. But compared to other Voodoo notebooks, this HP Envy 13 has a traditional HP feel and look but it is very much spruced up. The body is aluminum along with magnesium base which gives the slim look to the notebook. The lid is gunmetal gray and there is a nice semirandom pattern of dots which are imprinted on wrist rest.

Inside Dope:

HP Envy 13 is looks really attractive and will easily catch your attention at first glance. It is a great slab of magnesium and aluminum and it comes etched along with nice visual details. The interiors too are impressive; it is filled with good components like a discrete ATI graphics card and dual core low voltage Intel CPU.

We see this notebook as a direct competitor to 13 inch MacBook Pro even though HP doesn’t declare it explicitly. The display has edge to edge glass and the multitouch pad too is big which confirms our suspicions that HP wants this notebook to compete with the Apple’s product. There is a catch though, the HP Envy 13 is priced very high, it is on par with other ultra thin laptops Mac Book Air and Dell Adamo. This notebook starts at $1699. Our review notebook costs $1799 and if you choose the Blu-ray drive as well, the price goes up to $2149.

The display is made better; it now has a 1600×900 pixel resolution. Apart from that, the CPU is faster and there are more options which makes a convincing argument as MacBook Pro’s alternative but the price is a big turn off. If you have deep pockets, are willing to spend big then we will recommend you this notebook for its great mix of portability and power.

HP Envy 13 doesn’t look heavy but you will feel the bulk when you lift it up. HP gives you another slice of battery with this noteobook which will further add to the weight. The secondary battery is thin and has a sliced look. Along with this, the notebook will weigh 5.2 pounds. This notebook feels solid and can stand occasional careless activities.

Interior of the HP Envy 13 is sparse, there is a keyboard which is sunk deep and is spacious keys which are flat topped. Above the keyboard there is a power button. The keyboard doesn’t have medial control or quick launch buttons which we are used to seeing on notebooks these days. Media controls are relegated to the function keys so you will have to hold the F4, F4 buttons along with the Fn key to use them. We thank HP for giving us full sized buttons for the important keys like Shift, Tab and Backspace. The only compromise on this keyboard is the direction keys, especially the up and down buttons. The keys give a solid feel and the finish is pleasant matte which is comfortable to type on. There is no backlighting in the keyboard which is an eyebrow raiser in such a high end notebook.

The touchpad of the HP Envy 13 is oversized and we’d always welcome that. The mouse buttons are built in at the bottom and you have to push the entire pad in order to click. If you touch up on the left corner of the mouse, the trackpad gets deactivated. You can do this if you are going to use an external mouse. But we didn’t like the combined button interface; we prefer normal trackpad with two separate buttons at the bottom. Because the mouse buttons are built in to the track pad, the entire thing has a floating feel and when you tap on the trackpad it moves a bit.

The multi touch gestures are also bothering on the HP Envy 13. You use 2 fingers in order to scroll down and up through the long pages. It gets quite frustrating because the interface is not quite like that of Macbook and it seems a bit convoluted.

The screen of the HP Envy 13 is 13.3 inches big and has a resolution of 1600×900 pixels which is the same that you get on MacBook Pro. The screen of the notebook is one of its highlights; the brightness is impressive and off viewing angles are excellent. Audio quality too is good and there is special bass boosting application given by Beats Audio. Headphones quality is also good.

HP Envy 13 comes with just two USB jacks and there is not built in optical drive. You can buy an external Blu-ray drive for $350 or standard DVD writer for $100. There is no built in mobile broadband option so you will have to use a USB dongle which will in turn occupy a USB port.

The processor of HP Envy 13 is 2.13GHz SL9600 low-voltage Intel CPU and the notebook performs well and has a performance similar to MacBook. Compared to this, Adamo from Dell comes with an older U9300 chip which is very slow. This reiterates the importance of finding the correct balance between power management and performance. The fast performance of HP notebook can also be attributed to Windows 7 OS. Previous iteration, Windows Vista, takes up a lot of resources.

HP Envy 13 comes with 512MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4330 which is good for entry level gaming but still it is more power full than integrated Nvidia GeForce 9400 card on MacBook Pro. We got 31.5 fps at 1280×800 pixels in Unreal Tournament 3. This may not be a gamers ultimate wet dream but still it is good for casual gaming. You can also easily play World of Warcraft on it. You can switch off the discrete graphic card to save power or the card is also programmable to be switched off when on battery.

HP Envy 13 gave a battery life of almost three hours in our battery drain tests. Noteworthy is that our battery drain tests are very grueling; (we turned the graphic card on for the tests) you can get plenty more out of this battery with moderate use. However, when compared to the Apple’s notebook, it is really poor as MacBook pro lasted for almost twice that time in our lab tests. On the bright side, unlike Apple’s battery, this one can be removed and replaced.

You get another ‘slice’ of battery with this unit which is thin, large and covers the notebook’s entire bottom. We haven’t tested the slice yet but we will update this section as soon as we do it.

HP Envy 13 comes with a one year warranty for parts and labor. You can visit the manufacturer’s Website for driver downloads and online knowledge base. There is also online chat support and HP says queries over the e-mail are reverted back to, within an hour.

Nitty Gritty:

HP Envy 13 is an upmarket product and the high price should make that clear. The features and performance is impressive. We will recommend you this laptop if you can afford the price.