HP Envy 14 Spectre Ultrabook Review: Something More Than Envy
by Dustin Sklavos on August 24, 2012 10:09 PM ESTBattery Life
The other disappointment with the HP Envy 14 Spectre was its battery running time. The i7-3667U is capable of very respectable performance, but the Spectre's midrange battery capacity is substantially hindered by poor efficiency.
Ouch. HP rates the Spectre for up to nine hours of running time, but we topped out at seven. Truthfully I'm not sure exactly what's eating the battery life up so much, but the results are consistently poor. I suspect it's due to the constantly running fan, which is almost always operating at even a low speed, but there could be other things contributing, too: the increased power draw of the 900p display, the i7-3667U, and the second mSATA slot could all be part of the issue.
Heat and Noise
If the fan is pulling that extra power, at least it's making good use of it: the Envy 14 Spectre runs fairly cool and the chassis doesn't ever seem to heat up uncomfortably. Unfortunately, that fan also produces a high-pitched whine typical of these smaller systems at about 43dB from a foot away.
I can't believe I'm saying this after seeing scads of ultrabooks and even regular notebooks basically running the processor thermals at spec, but I feel like HP's actually too aggressive with the cooling in the Spectre. These tiny fans can produce noise at such a high pitch that they may actually hurt the ears of people with more sensitive hearing, but it's clear that the Spectre just doesn't need to run its fan that hard to keep the CPU cool.
Display Quality
I believe the display of the HP Envy 14 Spectre can be called a near miss. It's by no means bad, and the 1600x900 resolution feels frankly ideal for a 14" screen. Better still, viewing angles are actually pretty reasonable for a TN panel. So with all of these things going for it (and more), what makes it a near miss?
Contrast and color gamut are both fantastic, but the problem is that the screen is...kind of dim. It's not quite bright enough to really compensate for the reflectivity and glare of the glossy surface, and it has a slightly reddish cast to it along with an abnormally visible lattice. Again I'm undoubtedly nitpicking and I'd still take it over any of the mediocre 768p TN panels that populate the bulk of the market, but I personally found it more difficult to use than I'd like.
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Beenthere - Saturday, August 25, 2012 - link
HP is going to be out of Biz before long the way they are going. They are so confused they don't even know if they are in or our of the PC Biz.ggathagan - Monday, August 27, 2012 - link
The idea of HP getting out of the PC business was pushed by a CEO (Leo Apotheker) that was fired the month after he spewed that nonsense.Given that this all occurred a year ago, you might want to get a fresher news source.
MrTeal - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link
I can't help but notice that the UX31A is in your charts for this review. I sure hope this means that a review of the new 13" Zenbook Prime review?JarredWalton - Monday, August 27, 2012 - link
Coming very soon. :-)seapeople - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link
Sooo... the spectre gets beat at Futuremark by two other laptops with the same thermal envelope, graphics, and slower processors (Asus and Intel UB), yet supposedly runs extremely cool at max load so therefore has no thermal issues?Is the cooling really that great, or are they throttling to reduce temperature?
Also, did I miss the gaming review section?
CaioRearte - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link
Please review the HP Envy 14z (the one with Trinity). I think it's a nice comparison, then we can finally see the graphics power difference clearly.joshv - Sunday, August 26, 2012 - link
I was one of the unfortunates who bought an original HP Envy 15, right after it was first released.The '2' key was stillborn, requiring a trip into the shop. Then the video intermittently began to fail. This resulted in about 4 to 5 round trips to the repair service. Every time but the last failing to fix it. Once it finally returned with a brand new motherboard, 2GB of RAM had gone missing (still recognized by the BIOS, but not by windows) and the BIOS they shipped me was so old it had this nasty little bug: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware/HP-... . I had to fix it myself. Still can't figure out what's wrong with the RAM.
So after that six months of fun I sat down to finally start using my ENVY, just in time for numerous other keys on the keyboard to fail.
$2,000 - down the toilet - the thing is a useless brick.
HP can't make quality, durable hardware. I should have known better.
Sunburn74 - Monday, August 27, 2012 - link
Funny how the bench's for the asus ux31a are available for viewing in this review.CharonPDX - Monday, August 27, 2012 - link
Absolutely, I'd love to have a replaceable battery!
Or not....
Non-replaceable means the space used to make it replaceable can be filled with more battery.
th3architectto - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
it's a classy amazing design, the best out there, good for "music and watch pictures". no this could be better if it has a 15 inch 1080p resolution display at minimum, upgradable aftermarket ssd, more memory capable, discrete graphics 1 gb ddr5 at least and handles ivy bridge 35/45watts processor, well making the classy design funtional real functional and they can do all that without over raising the price they're gonna be making them best business ever.