HP Envy 13
Silver bullet
Cheap, fast, good: pick two, as they say in the tech world. Here’s a new laptop, though, that comes from a respected brand, has specifications that promise very decent performance, and costs under £850. You might even get it for less: HP often runs promotions (there was a £50 discount at the time of writing), or you can shop around, although buying from HP gets you a free three-year warranty. But is it the bargain it seems?
The slim aluminium case looks and feels much more expensive than it is. Comparisons with Macbooks are inevitable, but HP’S design is distinctive, with chiselled angles and a hinge design that raises the back of the keyboard in use, creating a more comfortable typing angle. It’s a full-size keyboard, but in a Us-style arrangement (with a single-height Return key and double-width left Shift) that might take a bit of getting used to. The backlit keys are full size, well spaced and very usable, and although the touchpad doesn’t meet the incoming Microsoft Precision standard, it’s responsive and recognises the basic Windows 10 gestures.
There are some nice extras, too. A fingerprint reader is built into the right-hand side, letting you unlock Windows without a passcode, and on the left side is a microsd slot, which could take some pressure off the fast 256GB NVME SSD if you have a substantial photo or music collection to fit in.
We didn’t pay much attention to the ‘built-in’ Bang & Olufsen speakers – there’s a trend of audio brands lending their names to laptop components that have nothing in common with their hi-fi technology – but in fact this system produced a surprisingly rich sound.
Inside is an up-to-date quad-core i5 processor and Geforce graphics card. This has 2GB of its own memory and supports Directx 12, Opengl 4.5, CUDA and so on – so it’ll boost any creative programs with these names on the box, as well as running almost any 3D game, give or take some compromises on quality settings.
If you need more clout, the £1,099 version with an i7 and twice the main memory (at 16GB) also looks good value, but our tests confirmed that the i5 is quite adequate for all but advanced tasks. The battery lasted just over seven hours in our video-playback test, despite HP claiming nearly 11. Expect even less if you work it hard, but it could be worse, and it charged to 50 per cent in just 45 minutes.
If there’s a weakness, it’s the screen. It’s a touchscreen, even though this isn’t one of those laptops that folds into a tablet, and the Full HD resolution is reasonably sharp at 13in. Gorilla Glass covers the whole front of the Envy’s top section, covering bezels that aren’t quite as narrow as Dell’s Infinityedge, so it’s robust and easy to clean. But brightness is limited, and we found only 77 per cent of the SRGB colour range covered, with poor accuracy. With no other screen options on this model, that means you’d need a separate monitor for any kind of colour-critical work.
It’s a disappointing limitation, but if colour accuracy isn’t a priority and you don’t use your laptop much outside or under harsh lighting, it could be a reasonable compromise. All round, this is an excellent laptop for the money.
SPECIFICATIONS
Comfy keyboard, useful extras and great sound – but don’t use it outdoors
1.8GHZ Intel Core i5-8250u processor • 8GB memory • 256GB SSD • 13.3in 1920x1080-pixel touchscreen • Webcam • 802.11ac Wi-fi • 2x USB 3.1 ports • USB Type-c port (HDMI adapter supplied) • Windows 10 Home • 14.0x307x212mm (HXWXD) • 1.3kg
• Three-year warranty www.snipca.com/29285 VERDICT The screen is a drawback, but this still feels like a more expensive laptop than you’ve paid for
★★★★★
ALTERNATIVE Asus Zenbook 13 £1,000 With a similar spec, this is lighter but its screen is only slightly better, and it’s much pricier