Customer Reviews

HP ENVY 13-1030NR 13.3-Inch Magnesium Alloy Laptop (Windows 7 Home Premium)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I currently own 5 laptops. They range from small netbooks and tablet PC's to a 17" HP Entertainment laptop. As a contractor I used the 17" for all my meetings and it served its purpose well. The problem is I wanted something smaller, and a longer lasting battery.

I had looked at the envy 15 but it runs hot even while idle. I just did not like the heat on my palms as I typed. After much research the envy 13 seemed to meet all my requirements. ITs a very portable laptop and even with the slice (extra battery) attached its thinner and lighter than all my other laptops.

Even when playing graphic intensive games it does not break a sweat. As for the battery/s I'm getting about 11 hours of constant use with Bluetooth on and wifi off. With wifi and Bluetooth on and streaming movies I get about 7 hours of constant use.

The laptop is small so the IO ports are at a minimum. It only has two USB ports so I purchased a Microsoft Bluetooth mouse and it works perfect. The included external DVD drive gets its power from the USB and also acts as a USB hub supplying 2 ports.

There does not seem to be any user accessible panels on the laptop so you can't change the hard drive of update the memory. Even though the laptop has only 3GB installed it does have windows 7 64-bit installed and can handle up to 5GB. But currently I see no way to upgrade.

One thing I noticed is that the laptop has an accelometer installed so it can detect movement. When on the battery it will park the hard drives if you pick up the laptop. This is indicated by a small orange LED that turns on in place of the normal white hard drive LED.

The speakers are probably the weakest point on the laptop. They just don't have any output for most movies so you will have to use earphones or purchase a external speaker set. I got a pair of those tiny USB powered HP speakers and they have plenty of volume and are small enough to keep in my laptop bag.

As will all laptops there is quite a lot of bloteware installed. It took me three solid days to get rid of all the crap but now the machine runs at between 0-2% CPU usage when idle.

Would I purchase the laptop again? The answer is definitely YES.

I really expected more from HP. I read great reviews about this laptop, and most of them were right on the money: A good attempt to a different breed of PCs but falling short on key points.

I was close to send it back but i kept it at the end mainly because of the size and weight and also because i needed a sturdy laptop. These are the key points that prevented the HP Envy from being a magnificent machine and a true contender against Apple:

- Battery life not even close to 5 hours nor 16 with the additional battery: HP really oversold the battery capacity here. Expect to get 2 hours at the most when using wifi. With the extra battery you probably could get 5 to 6 hours but that's it. And then the weight goes from 3.8 pounds to 5.3 so, not so light to get more juice. My wife owns a MacbookPro that she uses for 5 to 6 continuous hours with no sweat and definitely less strain on her arm.

- Trackpad: The worst ever. I thought that because of the product age (about 6 - 7 months now) they had come up with a better driver for it. Nope. It still stinks. Clicks are limited to a tiny area in the trackpad. Why did HP make such a big trackpad with no buttons (a la Mac) but limit the area where you can click? Doesn't make any sense to me at all.

- Price: If you are conscious about money and need to save some money look elsewhere, this is not worth the money you pay. Again, I kept it only because the magnesium casing was important to me but you probably can find something similar from Asus or Dell where you can save some dough.

I bought two of these for employees at work. I prefer the basic Apple models, which I have, for $1000, and it performs much better, better battery, and integrated disc drive. This model has a separate disc drive, which is not as good, and today the hard drive crashed. Of course it's two months after warranty. I have to have Windows applications due to working with Medicare, but my Apple is much much better, and costs less. Didn't want to add Windows to an Apple, that seems like an oxymoron to me...?

Tengo este portátil hace casi dos años. Al comienzo todo bien, pero con el tiempo se han ido presentado problemas. Primero de hardware: las patitas de abajo se salieron y la pantalla se fue soltando de la base, lo que la dejó menos firme. Pero los problemas en realidad no son de hardware. De hecho, es una máquina bastante robusta: en dos oportunidades se me cayó a un piso de baldosa y el daño fue mínimo. Es muy duro y la calidad de la construcción no podría ser mejor. Punto aparte el teclado, que es excelente. Y el touchpad funciona impecablemente, contradiciendo las reseñas que lo critican. Si hay cosas a las que acostumbrarse, uno no tarda en hacerlo. Y ya está. Pero donde no puedo alabar a este computador es en su rendimiento. Como usuario multitask, permanentemente me veo frustrado con la performance, permanentemente debo quedarme esperando hasta que se desperece, permanentemente tengo detener mi quehacer para esperar la recuperación de lo que estaba haciendo. Esto para mí implica una insatisfacción que me impide reconciliarme con una máquina que en todo lo demás es un placer.

Hp envy 13 1030nr review

Purchased the envy 13 back in February. I've been very pleased. I travel extensively and use my computer constantly. I run zillions of apps at once so I'm always after a laptop that is small, yet has plenty of power.

You certainly do not get the battery life that HP suggests with the machine. I get 2-3 hours with the small battery and 5-7 total with the added battery slice. The plus side is that machine comes with the battery slice. On my last Sony laptop I paid $200 for an extra battery. I do run the machine most of the time on full power setting because I need the extra power to run all of my apps.

The machine runs cool and has been a joy to use. It is definitely classy and fairly powerful. I upgraded the machine to 5gb ram myself. The extra 2gb give the machine a little more zip, but I wouldn't consider it a deal breaker. Do NOT attempt this yourself unless you are a laptop tech, it involved taking the computer completely apart.

My last laptop was a Sony Z series, which was amazing and more powerful than this machine. However, I'm enjoying the class and slightly smaller size of the envy.

Here are some thoughts:
Wifi signal - very strong
Bluetooth signal - not as strong as my Sony Z.
Glossy screen - very bright, but I prefer glossy screens that don't reflect as much.
Sound - great (I did have to turn up one hidden sound volume setting)

The mouse pad took me an entire month to get used to. It is by far the worst part of the computer. However, now that I am used to it, I really like it. I love the fact that I can use a finger swipe to enlarge a web page or photo. I can open an email and quickly enlarge the text with mouse pad.

I love having the hdmi port and also purchased the hdmi to vga adapter from hp. The computer came with a usb to Ethernet adapter. I also upgraded to Windows 7 Professional because of the included XP virtual software so that I can run some older apps that don't work in 7 64bit. The virtual XP works great on the envy.

Even though it is not as powerful as my Sony Z series, I'm really glad I purchased the Envy. The classy look, bright screen, smaller size, included second battery, and decent amount of power make it a great choice.

My new job allowed me to purchase my own laptop with a $1400 budget....yeah, not a bad start. So I shopped around looking for something as far away from the Lenovo business look I am used to. I am not a Mac person at all but I had to be fair and check out the MacBook and MacBook Pro. All seemed to be the same in price and similar in specs but our company didn't support Mac (yet) and they offered a free download of Microsoft Office Business 2007 and lots of other PC based software. If I went Mac I would have to come out of pocket for this software and probably more. Couple hundred bucks, right?

So I looked around at Acer, MSI, Dell and ended up spotting this lil beauty. So far, so good. I will say the only disappointing feature is the battery life "claim". I get around 2 1/2 - 3 1/2 hrs of battery without the slice battery just on the 4cell. With the slice battery I would say it added another 3-6 hrs in various types of use. So it's not bad especially with the slice option but it is no where near the 10+ hrs it claims on the HP site. The design is sleek and sexy. I really like the monolithic style screen and have used the webcam to chat with my kids when I travel. The keypad is great but the trackpad does take some getting used to. For me, this isn't a huge issue since I use a retractable mouse at home, at the office and when I travel.

It came with Win 7 64 bit and Core Duo processor is really fast. I never intended to run heavy apps on this but use regularly use Google Chrome, MS Outlook, Lotus Notes and MediaMonkey at the same time and they all run very smoothly. The laptop isn't too loud or noisy but I added an application to make sure it stays quiet and cool.

On a side note, there is only HDMI out so I recently ordered the HDMI to VGA adapter from HP for when I have to present but have yet to test it out.

All in all, I am pretty stoked about my HP Envy 13. As I said in the title, not too shabby of a laptop.

I'll begin by saying that i've been searching for this laptop at an affordable price since the Envy 13 came out last year. When i finally got one i was impressed by the overall look and packaging that it came in. It was like unboxing a beautiful present which was a phenomenal experience. When i opened the box it came with the computer wrapped in it's own cloth casing. It also came with a 2gb Sd card which was also very useful. The laptop itself is very beautiful. It's thin and lightweight and has a very solid feeling to the magnesium alloy chasis.

Turning it on was also a great viewing experience. For example, even the images describing the steps in setting up the os and the HP ion menu was a great HD viewing pleasure. This computer allows u to access the web, webcam and dvd without loading into Windows 7 which is good if u don't have time to wait for it to load up.(called the hp ion) Be also prepared to go through about 20 minutes of set up time when first loading up Windows 7. All the updates and restarting took a little bit of time.

When that was done, I started by loading a dvd into the external drive. What i first realized was that the audio speakers are average at best. I could barely hear the quality sound that people had been bragging about on this laptop. Out came the headphones and omg that was phenomenal! You could literally hear all the bass sounds and high tones in the movie i was watching. Although it was just a normal dvd the picture was very good. I felt the dvd didn't really test the HD screen much so i started using the web. I couldn't believe how wonderfully clear and bright the screen was! To my pleasure i was pleased with my web experience. I haven't fully explored the track pad's extra functions yet so i just set on a normal function and that worked fine.(no pinching or zooming) Next i tried playing some games on the laptop. Wow, Civ 4 looked awesome especially in HD. (had to set it to 1366X768) So far so good!

The webcam was average to good for this laptop. It comes pre-loaded with Skype on the HP ion but i haven't figured how to activate the webcam during that mode yet, otherwise works just fine in windows. The battery life was just slightly above average. With the extra battery slice the envy gets around 4 and a half hours when i did intense gaming. I'm pretty sure u could eke out a few more hours if you're only surfing the web or doing some simple applications. This laptop has been a great mutimedia experience for me and if you can find it for 900 dollars or less go out and get it....u won't be disapointed.

Taking in count the price I paid for the 13 inch envy I thought I was getting a very good computer, but the truth is it isn't:
1) In what I read about the computer they advertised 15 hours of battery time with the extra battery, you'll hardly get 6, or 2 without the extra battery.
2) The extra battery is really heavy, so its not that "slim" if you want to get extra battery time.
3) The tracpad tried to copy mac's functions but it doesn't work as expected: the two fingers to scroll is messed up, and its hard to drag and drop items.
4) Also the gums that support the screen when it's close fell, so the computer looks unajusted when closed.

In conclusion, don't buy it. It isn't worth half the money they ask for it. And aditionally on my case I got some hardware malfunction that makes the screen go black every time I connect it, so I have to pack it and send it in for warranty. They have a great repair service, but I rather not having to use it.

The HP Envy 13 is truly one of the best laptops I have ever owned (I ordered mine thru the HP site with all the bells and whistles, you can always find an online coupon to bring the price down about $300 less if you look), it has everything I wanted exept a harddrive larger than 250GB. I decided to give it a try and gave my wife my Sony VAIO VGN-Z850G/B because I wanted a laptop that was more solid with up to date styling (Still, NOBODY beats Sony VAIO's for performance and the latest technology, you just have be willing to pay for it). My Teen Kids both own newer MacBooks, the older owning the Pro. They were chosen because all their other Lemming friends had them. Comparison wise the Envy 13 blows the Macs away. Below is a comarison review from the hpfansite, the reviewer didn't even mention that the Envy 13 has the NEWER Core 2 Duo processors, a faster video card and a brighter screen with higher resolution. Maybe by years end Apple could come up with a newer laptop and fool people into thinking that were the first to make new innovations that are light years ahead of PC's (the truth is Sony does and did, do some research). Yea, and I still do like Sony Vaio's too! By the way Apple, my kids thank you for finally adding an SD card slot in the Mac (but still no HDMI?) :(

Here is a comparison from the hpfansite:

Thanks to HP United Kingdom posting up the product page for the HP Envy 13, I finally have some numbers to play with and make a comparison ABOUT the comparisons people are making out there. First off, a little intro about what's been happening since HP announced their Envy 13 and Envy 15 designer+performance notebooks five days ago... people have been touting the Envy 15 as the notebook that practically `owns' (AKA pwns) the Apple MacBook Pro (any existing MB Pro) with its 1 GB of ATI graphics, quad core Mobile Core i7 option, solid construction, stuff like that.

On the contrary, the Envy 15's sibling, the Envy 13 has been called `less impressive' and `an overpriced copycat' of the Apple MacBook Pro 13. Really now? I digress. First off, let's take a look at the dimensions of the 13 inch MacBooks available.

Note: I'll be using centimeters since HP UK has no measurements for the Envy 13 in inches and it's only fair to use manufacturer supplied dimensions, instead of DIY conversion.

Apple MacBook White aka Plastic (13 inch model) = 32.5 x 22.7 x 2.75 cm @ 2.27 kg

Apple MacBook Pro Unibody (13 inch model) = 32.5 x 22.7 x 2.41 cm @ 2.04 kg

Got that? Now for the Envy 13:

HP Envy 13 (13 inch model) = 32.0 x 21.5 x 2.05 cm @ 1.70 kg (Source: HP UK)

The Envy 13 is a good 3.6 millimeters slimmer than Apple's Unibody MacBook and also shorter/narrow. So there's no way HP could have packs in a optical drive into the Envy 13, neither could they have stuffed in an Ethernet port without making the notebook thicker. HOWEVER, HP did manage to push in double the graphics memory (512 MB on Envy vs 256 MB on MacBook), a removable batteryand most `essential ports' - things that I would personally appreciate more than an optical drive or Ethernet port. Not to mention the Envy 13 is supposed to feature `Beats' audio, which people claim to produce much better sound than conventional notebook speakers.

Back to my point, people are complaining that the Envy 13's $1699 price tag is too high. Why buy the Envy 13 when the so-called similar Apple MacBook Pro 13 can be had for 30% less at $1199, right? Wrong! I say that it's only right to compare the HP Envy 13 to Apple's MacBook Air (both spec and price wise).

Apple MacBook Air (13 inch model) = 32.5 x 22.7 x 1.94 cm @ 1.36 kg

That's right folks, the HP Envy 13 is mere millimeters thicker than the MacBook Air. In fact, the HP Envy 13 is overall, a more compact notebook compared to the Apple MacBook Air. If you compare their volumes, the HP Envy 13 is 1410.4 cubic cm while the Apple MacBook Air comes in at 1431.235 cubic cm. Simply put, if you could fill water (but please don't in real life) into the empty casings of both notebooks, the MacBook Air would hold more liquid (bigger) than the Envy.

Fine, the size difference isn't huge, but my point was to prove the Envy is positioned closer to the Air than the Pro. But the Envy and Air have more than size in common: Lack of an optical drive, ultra-slim profiles, 1.86 GHz ULV SL9400 processors - you get the point. The Envy 13 costs $1699 but the MacBook Air is priced at a close $1499 ($1799 for the 2.13 GHz/SSD model) - pretty close huh?

HP hasn't mentioned anything about disk capacities for the Envy 13 and Envy 15 yet. But comparing the HP Envy 13 and Apple MacBook Air in general, paying $200 extra for the HP Envy 13 versus the cheaper Air would get you:

A HDMI port in place of Display Port
1 additional USB port
1 hour of extra battery life (5 hours built-in on Air, 6 hours primary battery on Envy)
Ability to add-on a secondary battery to extend battery life to 18 hours
More graphics memory (256 MB Nvidia on Air, 512 MB ATI on Envy)
Option for DDR3 RAM up to 5 GB (Apple locks the Air to 2 GB)
Supposedly better audio quality
Again, the difference between the Envy 13 and MacBook Pro is too large (no pun intended), in my opinion, for a fair comparison to be carried out. There's no way HP could've fit in larger/more components into the Envy.

I don't have the Envy 13 in person but I do have a Pavilion dv2 to get an idea of the Envy's size.

HP Pavilion dv2 (12 inch screen) = 29.2 x 24.0 x 2.37 cm @ 1.70 kg

The dv2 is thinner than the MacBook Pro 13, and in turn, the Envy 13 is even slimmer than the dv2. So imagine that, HP had to do use some really compact components and a lot of design planning to make the Envy 13 as capable as it is now. Hence the premium price.

If you're still complaining about the HP Envy 13 being more expensive than the Apple MacBook Pro 13, do yourself (and Apple) a favor by also complaining about how the MacBook Air is pricier than the MacBook Pro. After all, the Envy 13 is the Windows cousin to the MacBook Air. The MacBook Pro 13 is a whole different animal.

Disclaimer: In no way is this article an anti-Apple or pro-HP post. I merely stating my observation on how people are comparing the HP Envy 13 to the wrong notebook. It should be HP Envy 13 vs Apple MacBook Air, because, again, the MacBook Pro 13 is a different class of notebook compared to the Envy.