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Benchmark

All benchmark tests were run at high performance settings on the laptop. All other settings were left unchanged.

Windows Vista Experience Index



The computer receives a rating of 4.5, which is quite high and the first sign HP has delivered the full package, also in terms of hardware.
I have decided to compare it with the revision of the MackBook Air. They both cater to much the same segment within high-end laptops with a focus on design, and though the HP Envy tries very hard to be a MacBook Pro, it will be interesting to see by how much it can outperform a MacBook Air. Hopefully, quite a lot! In addition they share the same display size and neither laptop has an optical drive, so there are quite a few similarities even if the price difference is substantial.

The MacBook Air model had the following specifications:

Category
Office, Business

Processor
1.60 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo – 1066 MHz FSB – 6 MB Cache – 45 nm

Chipset
nVidia MCP79

RAM
2 x 1024 MB DDR3 RAM – 1066 MHz  

GPU
GeForce 9400M – 512 MB DDR3 RAM (shared) – Windows
GeForce 9400M – 256 MB DDR3 RAM (shared) – OSX

Storage
1.8” – 120 GB HDD – SATA300 – 16 MB – 4200 RPM

Display
13.3” LED – 1280 x 800 Pixels

Sound card
Intel High Definition Audio

Optical drive
None

Battery
4900 mAh – 6 cells

Connectivity
Airport Extreme (Broadcom BCM43xx)
IR
Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR

I/Os
1 x Power
1 x USB
1 x Mini Display Port
1 x Minijack

OS
Leopard OSX

Price
Around £1,200

Boot and out of standby times


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Boot and out of standby times are measured from when the power button is pressed until the Windows desktop appears.

The two laptops are quite even here. The MBA is slightly faster to get out of standby, but the difference is minor.

Battery life


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Idle times are measured at the lowest power profile on the tested models, whereas Classic times are measured at the high power profile. Both are tested with BatteryEater 2005 in order to find the maximum achievable battery life at the settings used.

I am not particularly impressed with the battery life. As can be seen, it does not last for all that many hours, which may be why they are selling an extra battery that fits in with the design. Regardless of that, I would have liked to see this device last a bit longer. Like so many other OEMs, HP simply cannot keep its promise (in this case over 18 hours), at least not in the way we test (and really, what good are 18 hours if your computer is Sleeping and the display turned off?). Having said that, the battery life is not particularly bad.

The processor

SuperPi


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SuperPi calculates the number Pi, in this case with 1 million decimals. The result is a time in seconds, hence lower is better. The number can be directly compared with other laptops that have run the same test.

With a focus on battery life and mobility, HP have opted for a processor that does not use too much power but still performs quite well. We can see that it outperforms the MBA and that is all you could ask.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Arithmetic


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SiSoft Sandra's Whetstone and Drystone benchmarks tests the processor’s ability to perform pure number crunching, which for example occurs during gaming or picture editing. The scores are measured in Mflops (Millions of Floating Point Operationer Per Second), and the higher the better.

Same as above; Envy delivers some satisfying results, as well as it should when you consider the price difference. Anything else would be disappointing.

SiSoft Sandra CPU Multimedia


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The Multimedia test in SiSoft Sandra performs calculations on a 2D figure. The result it/s) is Mandelbrot iterations per second, and here bigger is better.

Once again the HP outperforms the MacBook Air as it should, so all is well.