Freezing cold 3 days ago, the last time this was posted - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-envy-15-ae109na-laptop-hp-store-2361767

I don't get this place at times.

Ok this was 10 years ago, but I spent 2k on my ultimate dream machine desktop from PC Specialist ... what should have been an awesome machine was a nightmare ... the people they have putting them together couldnt care less about you or your dream machine ... i received it with an un screwed in floppy drive (lol) which was hanging around inside hitting all the other components in transit ... they put cheaper hard drives in than the ones i ordered... on first turning it on, the first thing i saw was 'your PC did was not shut down properly' ... It went backwards and forwards 3 or so times ... and then i got really ill and was not able to ever get my money back and the machine never worked ... They should have scrapped that pc and built a new one but they refused and I must have spent 200+ hours trying to get it to work ... worst company i have EVER dealt with in 45 years and i have never been in the position to afford a dream machine before or since ... one of the worst experiences of my life and I will cut and paste this into any PC Specialist deal I ever see here, and maybe one day theyll understand to respect people

Don't want to take anything away from the deal as for the item it is a good price.

Get this instead for less though. I ordered it:


http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/7559-8045-Dell-Inspiron-15-7000_1856981.html

I'm looking for something pretty powerful at about this price point at the minute myself... Looks interesting but it's only dual core and the HDD only 5400rpm?
Can anyone in the know tell me how this laptop stacks up against the Asus [url=Asus GL552JX 15.6-Inch Laptop Notebook (Intel Core i7-4720HQ 2.6 GHz, 8 GB RAM, 750 GB HDD + 128GB SSD, Webcam, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 950M, Windows 8.1) with Free Windows 10 Upgrade https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00Y0LX3BS/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awd_HqgHwbE4M6C72]here[/url]

The majority of laptop hard drives spin at 5400rpm, a 7200rpm drive would drain the battery life.

The HP uses the low power 2 core cpu whereas the Asus uses the full fat 4 core cpu.

Freezing cold 3 days ago, the last time this was posted - http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-envy-15-ae109na-laptop-hp-store-2361767

I don't get this place at times.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B015OG3SAS/ref=ya_aw_od_pi?ie=UTF8&psc=1&th=1 I bought this today. Seems to be a good spec for the cost...

​Disagree. My MSI CX61 laptop has a 7200 rpm disk as do many others, and that was purchased in 2013 for £699. This is a nice laptop but under specced for the price imo.

I disagree.... spec is on the button for the price. Aluminium Ultrabooks will always attract a price premium, compare the price of this to it's real competitors like the Dell XPS15, Macbook Pro Retina 15 and you'll see it's a actually a decent price.

http://www.ebuyer.com/723758-msi-cx61-2qf-gaming-laptop-9s7-16gd51-1885

is this the same? You recommend? Looking around at the minute for a decent gaming and media laptop. Or any one got any better suggestions? Probably £600 tops.

I said "Majority" not all. If the laptop was desktop replacement laptop then thats where I wouid expect to see 7200rpm drives, other laptops like business laptops would use 5400rpm drives.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-envy-15-6-touch-screen-laptop-intel-core-i5-6gb-memory-1tb-hard-drive-natural-silver/4583913.p?id=1219773218106&skuId=4583913

uk ripoff land again

i got this machine a couple of days ago, is anyone else's fan always on regardless of what they are doing? it is really annoying. i know you can turn the fan off in the bios menu, but is this safe to do? please advise, thank

Don't want to take anything away from the deal as for the item it is a good price.

Get this instead for less though. I ordered it:


http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/7559-8045-Dell-Inspiron-15-7000_1856981.html

That's for the i5 version but I suspect your right that even the i7 version will be a lot cheaper.

Half the RAM, i5, and integrated graphics. Not even close to the same laptop.

They're not the same. BestBuy one doesn't have NVIDIA graphics card.

Dual core, this is a no go

Mega specs? Hardly.

For £22 less you could have:

Intel Core i5-6300HQ instead of a Intel Core i7-6500U

GTX 960m instead of the VERY poor 950m

12GB of Kingston DDR3-1600
1TB HDD
128 m.2 SSD
DVD Writer
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
Three Year instead of One Year Warranty!

Plus it's extremely easy to upgrade yourself.

http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusVII-15/

So would this be any good for Photoshop?

Here's a 17" with an i7, 960m, 16gb ram for a £100 more. Only thing is no ssd.

http://www.cclonline.com/product/197613/9S7-179554-034/Laptops/MSI-GE72-6QC-034UK-Skylake-i7-6700HQ-16GB-1TB-nVidia-Geforce-GTX960M-2GB-17-3-INCH-FHD-Windows-10-HE-2-yr/NOT02206/

pavilion gaming model is about this price and has a quad core i7-6700hq, not voted either way as i would imagine the portability is probably better on this one...

thanks. so does the fan kick in often then, when you have turned it off? does the machine get hotter or anything? thanks

Ok this was 10 years ago, but I spent 2k on my ultimate dream machine desktop from PC Specialist ... what should have been an awesome machine was a nightmare ... the people they have putting them together couldnt care less about you or your dream machine ... i received it with an un screwed in floppy drive (lol) which was hanging around inside hitting all the other components in transit ... they put cheaper hard drives in than the ones i ordered... on first turning it on, the first thing i saw was 'your PC did was not shut down properly' ... It went backwards and forwards 3 or so times ... and then i got really ill and was not able to ever get my money back and the machine never worked ... They should have scrapped that pc and built a new one but they refused and I must have spent 200+ hours trying to get it to work ... worst company i have EVER dealt with in 45 years and i have never been in the position to afford a dream machine before or since ... one of the worst experiences of my life and I will cut and paste this into any PC Specialist deal I ever see here, and maybe one day theyll understand to respect people

While true it would be a minimal drain and as the SSD is the OS drive, the other drive would only spin up when in use.

If games are a priority I would go for Dell Inspiron 7559 which can be had for £699 right now, has a faster CPU along with GTX 960m which is considerably better than the 950m version. Also leaves you with £100 to upgrade RAM if you want to along with sticking an SSD inside.

If games are a priority get a desktop.

This: http://www.saveonlaptops.co.uk/N551VW-FW238T-ASUS-N551VW-FW238T_1886585.html would be even better for additional £87. You get a i7-6700HQ instead of crappy i7-6500U (keep in mind kids that all Intel processors that have U at the end of their model number are crap), +4gb of DDR4 instead of DDR3, better video card, +1 TB of storage, a bag and a mouse :smiley:

Thanks for your reply. My experience started in 2012 and matches yours so whether its 10 years or 3 years in the past, it appears it makes no difference whatsoever when it concerns PC Specialist.

This laptop is only good if you plan to plug it to an external screen (as the laptop screen is crap), an external keyboard (as the built in is crap) and a mouse (as the trackpad is crap). The battery life is quite poor so you'll need to have it plugged in to a socket regardless.

It's more of a portable PC than a laptop. Please read the reviews before giving your money to HP.

£800 for a 950m based machine is a poor deal. GPU simply doesn't cut it in a £800 laptop. A 128gb SSD is pretty tight as well, and throw in a crappy ULV CPU and it's seriously overpriced.

Sorry, but COLD.

I was going to buy the Asus (that someone posted above) but heard bad things about the build quality! So instead I bought the MSI GE62 6QL from Amazon for £799. Full Intel i7 6700HQ Quadcore, 1Tb HDD, GTx 950m and FullHD display! For £799 it's a bargain and should be delivered any minute now under my Amazon prime same day delivery!! Only thing it doesn't have is an SSD, but I'll bit my own m.2 SSD in the near future!

Almost in Apple price range. Must be good then :stuck_out_tongue:

This is one of the best laptops for upgrades with a very easy to open maintenance hatch. From reviews that I've read there's just a single stick of RAM in there so simply buy another 8GB module and you're good to go.

I've purchased it anyway as it seems value for money. Dell could not deliver it until after 20th January so I went with Saveonlaptops, should be here 12th January if all is well

In terms of upgrading this. I take it SSD would be easy to sort for it? Did you read anything in regards to graphics card, chances of upgrading that in future? I don't know much about the M graphics cards.

Cheers

I should say this is for my 13" i5 variant without the dedicated graphics. It doesn't spin up often for me but when it does its fairly quiet. Rarely does it ever go to full speed, when it does though then you'll notice the sound but for me that's only with intensive tasks. For this laptop I would expect it to be on a bit more if it's cooling a GPU as well

buy a dell xps or alienware :wink:

Graphics card wise, unfortunately that is soldered onto the motherboard as far as I know so no chance of upgrading it or the CPU in the future. In regards to the hard drives, it only has space for one conventional laptop drive but has one additional M.2 SSD slot, those are more expensive than regular SSD drives at the moment but are also generally faster. So you can install one of those and then have SSD in M.2 slot and continue to use the big drive already in there as storage.

Under specced?!? 6th Gen i7, 12gb RAM, SSD+HD combo, Nvidia 950M 4GB.. where's its weak point???

The ULV processor and the 950m. Neither are performance chips. For £800, you'd expect a full fat CPU and a 860/960m. In the case of the GPU, they've really skimped in providing a DDR3 part. That's going to provide significantly lower memory bandwith that DDR5 based GPU. For example, it's struggling in GTA at 1080p on high:



They really should have thrown in a DDR5 860m at least especially at this (high) price, or better still, a 960m and a processor to make use of it. And if you say that you don't need graphical performance because you don't play games, then you'd be better off with the 2016 XPS13.

It's a cynical marketing ripoff really, as HP are playing on consumers not knowing any better and them assuming that 6th means better than 5th gen,and 9XX is better than 8XX etc

ULV is Ultra Low Voltage, any other more powerful CPU would be non-ULV, and consume a lot more battery. ULVs are expensive because they are binned to be super efficient and maximise battery life.
And a 950m can get 25-30fps in Star Wars Battlefront in Full HD on high quality.

ULV chips aren't expensive. Intel haven't revealed OEM pricing but they won't sit in the premium end of the Skylake range as you can find the i7-6500U in a £350-£400 retail mini PC. In any event, this laptop is going to spend most of it's time plugged into the mains because nobody with any sense is going to buy a 2.5kg + PSU, laptop to take on the road. And in the real world, you'll probably get 4-6 hours of battery life on this, considerably less if you max out the GPU (which is any event, is likely to be bottlenecked by the CPU which offers negligible performance over it's Broadwell predecessor).

http://vr-zone.com/articles/intel-core-i7-6500u-skylake-chip-gets-benchmarked-results-disappoint/98013.html

http://laptoping.com/cpus/product/intel-core-i7-6500u/

That's roughly half the perfomance of a 4th gen i7-4720HQ....

And it struggles in Battlefront (which is a truly terrible game anyway):



^ And that's with a much more powerful Core i7-6700HQ, not the ULV processor that comes with this HP.

And all the princely sum of £800? Not a good deal.

You're comparing a 15w TDP CPU with a 47w CPU. Half the performance for less than 1/3 the power is more efficient. So basically, for £800 you don't expect any parts to be middle range. You expect every part to be top of the range? I would expect to pay £1000+ for having every spec being high/top-end. I seriously doubt you're going to find a i7-4720HQ, 970M laptop for £800 (From a reputable brand, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc. and not random brand, plastic rubbish).. If you could, post it here, and get the 1000+ heat it would receive.

You seem to have a reading comprehension failure - nobody's talking about 970m. There have also been LOTS of deals with a more powerful CPU/GPU combination than this for less than £800. Have a search. This is a poor deal, with underspecced components, plain and simple.

960m? And yes there are more powerful CPU/GPU combos for this price, but not with the same battery life nor in the same premium chassis, and probably not with 12gb RAM or an SSD. You seem to be blinkered by the raw performance of the CPU/GPU, when there's a lot more to a laptop than that.

Yeah but RAM and SSD drives are components that are not only easy to replace but also happen to be relatively inexpensive. The point people are making is that this is not the best use of your money if you'd like to play games as a lot of people in here have been asking about that.

i dont photoshop or do media creation, but Ive never ever seen my pc use more than 5gb or 6gb of RAM (using win8 sidebar memory monitor)... I have 16gb with a self built i7 4790 and a gtx 970 on win10 x64 and primarily a gamer .... I regularly have 20 webpages open at a time, run Shadow of Mordor with the high def texture pack etc, loads of 1080p streaming ... as a pc builder id be interested in how much ram you need for video/photo editing if anyone is feeling kind enough to share .... just wondering who 12 and 16gb machines are aimed at .. maybe its more for future proofing?... Many thx

I agree that there are more to laptops than simply headline specs, but you really are a bit of a noob in terms of what you're saying as there's nothing to really justify paying £800 for a machine like this. You want an SSD or extra RAM? Have you not heard of selling the HDD and buying an SSD or an extra stick of ram? And what exactly do you think you need 12gb RAM for?

This is the memory usage of my laptop running GTA V at 1080p @ high, playing back a 1.5gb 1080p H.264 video file, Chrome with about 15 tabs open, Word, Outlook and Excel running, and ton of other Windows bloatware. I'm not even close to 8gb.



And if you want to conserve battery life, just downclock or u/v the CPU, or run a power saving CPU profile (see below). You can do that with 2 clicks of a mouse. Non ULV processors don't constantly run at 3.4ghz+ and draw maximum power if it isn't necessary.



Granted the power draw is not going to be as low as a ULV CPU but you still haven't explained why someone would buy a 2.5kg+ laptop like this if they're a road warrior who needs battery life.

I used to own an HP Envy - I wouldn't have said that there was anything particularly premium about it over similar laptops. What exactly do you think is 'premium' on this apart of it being overpriced?

There's more uses of a laptop than gaming, browsing the web, and Word...
I could very easily use 12+ gb of RAM.
Downclocking will not give you anywhere near the same power saving. It's about voltage, not clock speed. They all underclock automatically anyway.

If you think 2.5kg is pointless for anything other than a desktop replacement then why do they bother putting a battery in.

"Premium" will be solid chassis, cooling, speakers, screen, keyboard, trackpad, reliability. All the things not listed on the tech specs.

Again, you're seeing this from *you're* perspective. Clearly you want a gaming desktop replacement, which this is certainly not ideal for. However not everyone else does, and will want it for a wide range of reasons. So to say this is bad value purely because the CPU/GPU can't play the latest AAA on high at 1080p with 60fps is extremely narrow sighted.

Okay, give some examples of where you're "easily" using 12gb or more.

Do you even have any experience of this model? HPs Envys have ropey touchpads and not particularly good reliability. The Envy I had had a motherboard failure, and ran hot and loud in terms of fan signature. Envys aren't even HP's premium laptop offering.


Battery life on this is no great shakes either. This is from the TR review:

"In terms of battery longevity, the Envy doesn't live up to the claimed 9.5 hours of life, coming in at a mere 3 hours 59 in our tests. In fact, the first result was so low at 3 hours 41 minutes, we ran it again just to make sure it wasn't a false reading."

From V3:

"The problem with laptops as vast, thick and heavy as the Envy 15 is that they're usually better parked on a desk than carried around for lap use. Indeed, having picked up this demo unit, we certainly wouldn't want to lug it over our shoulders for more than a few minutes at a time."

"There's even enough room for a full-size keyboard, with numeric keypad. It makes for very comfortable typing, but we almost immediately managed to jam the ‘O' key, leaving it permanently pressed in. It's not a good sign of a product's build quality, and disappointing from a veteran manufacturer like HP"

Doesn't sound too good.

VMs, IDEs, compiling, R work. They can all take up many GiB each.

I've got the 13" version of this Envy range. Despite owning an excellent Dell Inspirion 7537, I find this one faultless. Keyboard, trackpad, cooling, speakers, display (FHD matte), solid metal, all spot on.

Not only that, you will notice the higher spinning speed - it's much louder.

LOL. You don't need to spend £800 on a machine like this for that sort of work. Do you not even realise how cheap a stick of RAM is? A code monkey doesn't need a GTX 950. It's pretty clear that your liking this laptop is just your own personal indulgence rather than it objectively being a good deal for people.

I do need to spend £800 for that kind of work.
Your ignorance is really showing. Don't need a GTX 950? How about if I want to play games as well? Or have you ever heard of GPGPU before?
Unlike you, I am not assuming my personal preference is the same for everyone else. This is a multi-capable machine.

I see you've added a lot to your comment. Are you sure that review is for the right model? There's many HP Envy 15s, almost every year. Here's a review of the current model, which states 5hr08m wifi surfing and 12h33m idle, which sounds about right.
Review
Infact, it lists the following "Pro" points:
+ good design
+ high-end aluminum elements
+ good keyboard
+ good battery life

In the cons it lists just two:
- (gaming) performance is lower than expected
- limited viewing angles

Which is expected, as we've already established, this is not a high end gaming machine.
I trust Notebookcheck over any other notebook review site as they are by far the most thorough

Touche..

I'm wondering about this one myself. The dell 7559 that had been mentioned is similar specs for cheaper, but Asus has better all round review (screen, keyboard touchpad etc)
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-N551JK-CN166H-Notebook-Review.135234.0.html (note much lower spec model is reviewed)

I'm struggling to find something for 6-800 that is
-quick, ideally ssd or big ssd cache
-nice screen, full HD IPS , ideally matte for outdoor use
-aluminium or well reviewed solid chassis
-good keyboard and trackpad

HP Envy 13? I love mine. £600, 13.3", 256gb SSD, 8gb RAM, i5-6200u, FHD IPS, matte, aluminium, 1.29kg, excellent keyboard + trackpad.

Ah, should have mentioned i want 15" :smiley: I actually came round to thinking this envy deal at 799 may be better for me than the dell or Asus (I don't need the power of those and prefer envy form factor) , only to see it is now oos!

The updated Dell 7537 is nice.. pretty slim, seems similar to the Envy range.

The 2013 aluminium 7537? Yes, wish I had gone for this when it was around but can't seem to find it anymore. Or is there an updated version you are referring to?

Yeah that was the one I was referring to. Looks like the new Inspirion 15 is more of a desktop replacement.