HP Envy 17 Multimedia-Laptop review - Cutting the wrong corners

The birthplace of Silicon Valley is said to be a small garage in Palo Alto. It was there that, in 1939, William Hewlett and David Packard built their first products. Today, HP has little in common with that small garage. The manufacturer's electronic devices, ranging from laptops and computers to printers, are sold across the globe.

Even the HP Envy series itself has accumulated a certain history by now. It has been around since 2009 – we even published a review on an HP Envy 15 at the time. Then and now, Envy laptops are sold as premium devices (it's all in the name, after all), and today's test unit is no exception. At least that's what you would expect from the sleek aluminum and glass chassis. HP is marketing the device to creatives and freelancers. But, as you will find out in our review, not everything about the HP Envy 17-da0076ng is premium.

Nonetheless, the laptop featuring Nvidia graphics is an attractive alternative to the LG Gram Pro, the Samsung Galaxy Book4 or the Lenovo Yoga Pro 9, not least because its market prices tend to be a lot cheaper, depending on the features.  

Please note: We recently updated our rating system. The results of version 8 are not comparable to those of version 7. Find out more about this change here.

The case, which features lots of aluminum and glass, makes the HP Envy 17 feel classy and appear to be of high quality. But these materials also impact the laptop's weight, explaining why the manufacturer decided to use more lightweight plastic for the cover of the base unit. Still, the HP Envy 17 weighs over 2 kg. Fortunately, workmanship, haptics and stability are excellent. There is hardly anything that can be twisted, bent or pressed in. The touchscreen has a smooth-running hinge that still keeps the screen in position.

Mulitmedia laptops with a 17-inch display are rather rare in our database. But you can still see that the Envy 17 is a lot heavier than its competitors. The LG Gram is clearly a feather-weight, but the Envy's 2.5 kg are more like gaming laptops than anything else.

Apart from a card reader, the Envy 17 features everything you would expect from a modern laptop. USB-C with Thunderbolt, USB 3.1 and USB-C charging, which also means that one of the two ports on the right side is usually occupied.

The Envy's webcam has 2,816 x 1,584 pixels, good colors and appropriate image sharpness. It can be closed off with a privacy shutter when not in use.

The HP Envy 17 has good maintenance features. The cover of the base unit is held in place with only a few screws and clips and can easily be removed with the appropriate tool and a screwdriver. Once inside, you will have access to an M.2 NVMe SSD, the Wi-Fi module and a RAM module that is slotted, not soldered. It consists of SO-DIMM modules. HP PartSurfer allows us to identify many of the parts in our test unit, though ordering replacement parts can be a hassle in Europe as the only authorized HP parts resellers are in the US and Canada.

According to the data sheet, label and imprint on the casing, our test device has a two-year warranty ex works. This is region-independent.

The touchpad always feels nice and cool compared to the surrounding aluminum and has good gliding qualities. The feel is flawless and the precision of the input device is good.

Installing a touchscreen on a clamshell laptop isn't always very practical. Still, the touch-sensitive surface of the panel works well, recognizing and responding to inputs quickly. An oleophobic coating ensures that not every touch automatically turns into an ugly smear.

The HP Envy 17 is available in various configurations. Our test unit is equipped with the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U, 32 GB of DDR-5 RAM, a 2-TB NVMe-SSD and a 4-GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050. The U series Intel processors are now equipped with an Intel iGPU with four cores. But as the Nvidia graphics is available to do the heavy lifting, the smaller and more energy-efficient iGPU is the right choice. Other configurations are also available without a dedicated GPU with an Intel Core Ultra 7 155H or Intel Core Ultra 5 125H. In these cases, the Arc iGPU is capable of taking on more demanding graphics tasks too. Depending on the processor, the Envy is available with 16 or 32 GB of RAM and between 512 GB and 2 TB of storage.  

Don't expect any major changes from the predecessor, as Intel's mature CPU architecture has changed little in recent years. From the Intel Core i7-1255U to the Core Ultra 7 155U, the number of P and E cores remains constant. Only the UE cores are new. They have little processing power but are very energy-efficient. We appreciate that the performance of our test unit remained constant for a long period of time but noted that the processor is supplied with very little electrical power, which means that, ultimately, performance is reduced. The working memory is also comparably slow and most competitors of the HP Envy 17 are faster in these benchmarks.  

Our HP Envy 17 ran smoothly at all times during testing. Again, the system performance benchmarks are highly impacted by the slow RAM and the Core Ultra 7's watt limitation. Overall, our test unit's performance can't quite keep up with the times, despite being equipped with up-to-date hardware for the most part.