HP Envy 13 Review: An Ultrabook With a Dedicated Graphics Chip

Ultrabooks are probably the prettiest laptops to own with their slim and sleek profile, who would not want to one one of these beauties and the word Ultra is not just for fun as most of them come with very decent processors and enough amount of ram to do all the multitasking and work that you need to do. However, there is always one problem where ultrabooks come up short and that's in the graphics department. HP has decided to bump up the ultrabook game by including a GeForce MX150 into their Envy 13 laptop in hopes to make ultrabooks more worth the money, let's check it out if that is enough to start eyeing ultrabooks. Just looking at it will easily tell you that this is one premium looking laptop and it's pretty obvious from the cover of the laptop to the sleek curves and finishes that comes with the overall profile. This is definitely a design profile that will work whether you are in the business line trying to make a deal of a lifetime or just a university student grinding for your exams and rushing to finish your assignments. Just like all ultrabooks, it is light and easy to carry around weighing only 1.32kg you will definitely not have any issues transporting this device around. I am not too sure if HP intended to have one USB port and Type-C Gen 1 ports on either side or if that's a coincidence in design, but I love that the made the accessibility for left and right handers easier as I can see it in some of my friends that struggle with laptops that tend to use one side of the laptop more than the other. The only problem with this is that there is a microSD card slot rather than a regular SD card which is somewhat of a questionable choice, as most cameras use a standard SD cards and if it were the case of microSD card in a phone, you could simply just connect your phone to the computer to access the SD card it in. Looking at the design, they have more than enough space to make it a full-size SD card reader Flipping it open you will realize that the laptop somewhat props up and this is thanks to the hinge design that slightly elevates the laptop but don't worry about scratching the glossy surface as there are rubber bumps that do the work of lifting it up, so the glossy hinge is kept nice and shiny this also helps with the airflow as it easier for air to rush from the bottom of the laptop into it effectively giving more air to cool the device. Once fully open you are greeted with a gorgeous full HD IPS screen that is simply lovely to look at. Colours are nice and that is further enhanced with the great viewing angles that come with an IPS display. Going down from that is the keyboard which is really nice to type on as the keycaps have a nice size and the spacing is just perfect so you will have a nice typing experience when using this keyboard. There is also backlighting for the keyboard but I did wish that they gave the option to control the intensity of the light as they only provided the option to turn it off and on, not a big issue but a nice feature to be included for those that work in dark environments or just want a subtle lighting effect. Sadly when it comes to the touchpad that's where I believe HP could improve on, the tracking is really nice and it is very easy to navigate the laptop but when pressing on it, you would need to press a little bit harder as it gives you the impression that you have pressed the left click but in reality, that is just the touchpad plate resting on the left click button to which you need to go all the way down to actually send the input to the computer. They have also included a Bang and Olufsen speakers in this compact laptop and the speakers are no joke. They sound great and if you want to tweak it to your liking, they have included the HP Audio Manager where you can adjust the bass, treble and dialogue clarity of the speaker to fit your liking. This version of the Envy 13 comes with really great specs, like an 8th Gen i7-8550U processor 512GB SSD storage alongside the NVIDIA GeForce MX150 graphics card but they still choose to go with 8GB LPDDR3 RAM which is questionable decision to use DDR3 RAMs in 2017. RAM aside, It definitely shows its performance when it comes to everyday task like browsing the internet and even using Photoshop which is thanks to the dedicated graphics card included. It can even perform decently when it comes to gaming, sure you will not play games like the likes of Witcher 3 or Call of Duty: World War 2, but games like Dota works fine on it and if you are willing to drop the resolution below FHD for destiny 2, it can actually run decently well. Battery life of this beauty is also decent, HP has mentioned that it can go up to 14 hours of battery life, but during my use I find that I can easily get 8 to 9 hours of battery life which is just perfect for a day's worth of use if you are just browsing the web, drafting up a document or just watching your favorite videos on Youtube. You will definitely not need to worry about the laptop dying on you halfway throughout your day.

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