HP Envy 14 review: A solid no-frills laptop for productivity and occasional gaming

• The HP Envy 14 comes with the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.
• It has a 14-inch WUXGA display with a 16:10 aspect ratio.
• Here’s how the HP Envy 14 fared in our review.

HP Envy 14 is the company’s latest offering in the premium laptop segment. This laptop is catered to the creator community like photographers, designers, and illustrators. It comes with some impressive internals like the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti GPU and a 1TB SSD storage. The laptop also has a premium and sleep metal design which also adds a little bit of weight to it. In India, the HP Envy 14 has a starting price of ₹1,04,999.

We’ve been using the HP Envy 14 for a few weeks now and here’s what we think about it.

Design

The HP Envy 14 has a solid metal design with sharp edges which comes wrapped in a silver colour. The laptop is slightly on the heavy side and it’s not as slim and lightweight as its sister Spectre or Elitebook laptops so in terms of portability I would prefer something much lighter. The ports are adequately placed on each side with the 3.5mm headphone jack, USB 3.1 Type-A port, an HDMI video output and a USB Type-C Thunderbolt 4 port on the left side. You get the charging port, a USB Type-A port and a microSD card slot on the right side of the laptop. Overall, the HP Envy 14 has a sleek and clean design.

Display

The Envy 14 has a 14-inch WUXGA display with 400 nits of maximum brightness and 100% sRGB coverage. It also comes with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti which makes it a considerable option but more on that later. It also has a 16:10 aspect ratio which gives the display a taller view and that’s great for not just productivity but daily tasks as well. The HP Envy 14 is adequately bright with great colour reproduction thanks to the 100% sRGB coverage. It doesn’t have a touchscreen display which might seem a bit disappointing considering its price.

Keyboard, speakers, webcam

The keyboard on the HP Envy 14 is quite packed for a slightly squarish design. It’s a full-sized keyboard which incorporates a fingerprint sensor along with dedicated buttons for the webcam shutter, and to mute the microphone. The constricted design however made it slightly difficult to type on this keyboard with me constantly pressing the wrong keys. I wouldn’t recommend this for machine writers or if you’re willing to take some time to adjust the spacing then you can consider it.

The Envy 14’s touchpad is fast and smooth and although I can’t get by without a mouse I found myself not requiring one most of the time on the HP Envy 14. The HP Envy 14 comes with front-facing speakers which are powered by Bang & Olufsen. The speakers are good enough for listening to music and gaming too and you most likely won’t need additional speakers. The speakers are also clear enough for video calls on the Envy 14. Speaking of which, the HD webcam produces decent results with good brightness and video quality.

Performance

The HP Envy 14 is a powerhouse when it comes to handling daily work with light photo editing. My daily work was mostly on Chrome with multiple tabs opened at once. Chrome is known to be one nasty RAM hogger but the Envy 14 handled all tasks with a breeze. In terms of specs, the HP Envy 14 is powered by the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 processor coupled with 16GB of RAM and 1TB of SSD storage.

The Envy 14 can also tackle gaming which was a sweet surprise. Thanks to its NVIDIA GeForce 1650Ti GPU, it can take up gaming duties at medium settings for most titles. We ran F1 2020 and Fortnite on it, and it consistently delivered playable frame rates without any stutters. It does heat up considerably when performing at its peak, but considering it’s a thin and light laptop without gamer-grade cooling tech, the result is quite remarkable as it delivers playable results without compromising on performance.

Verdict

The HP Envy 14 passes as a powerful machine that’s well suited for your everyday tasks, productivity as well as gaming. This laptop is designed and aimed at creators and illustrators and while it’s powerful the lack of touchscreen and convertibility pulls it back a little. We would recommend this for people who are looking for performance, don’t mind a little weight and want to sneak in some few hours of gaming too.

SEE ALSO:

Prices of the Google Pixel 6 series are out, thanks to a leaked advertisement
OnePlus Watch Harry Potter Edition launched in India — All you need to know