Looking for a cheap Macbook Pro clone? The HP Envy 15-3040nr is an 15.6″ laptop with a performance CPU and GPU. Not only is it powerful in terms of specs but is also sleek with a nice design by HP. The entire exterior of the Envy 15 is made of aluminium with a black casing which has the HP logo in the bottom hand corner of the shell. It is quite light weight in terms of powerful laptops because it weighs 5.79 pounds and is only 1.1″ thick.
The resolution on the Envy 15 is also FullHD, 1920×1080 pixels on a glossy IPS Radiance display which helps with viewing angles. Not only is the screen very nice, so is the audio. HP teamed up with Beats by Dr. Dre to implement Beat Audio on their Envy laptops. Instead of the normal function volume keys, the Envy 15 uses a dial for the volume control seen on the right side of the laptop. Beats Audio means nothing without 6 speakers and a subwoofer to backup the Envy 15. What’s a good laptop without a back-lit keyboard? The Envy 15 even has a chiclet keyboard that you can change the lighting of depending on your environment.
Moving into the specifications, this top of the line laptop comes with a 2nd generation Intel Core i7-2670QM processor 2.20GHz with Turbo Boost Technology up to 3.10GHz and a Radeon HD 7690M switchable graphics with 1024MB GDDR5. There is also 8GB of DDR3 1600MHz RAM which is the maximum amount of RAM supported (2 DIMM). With 750GB of hard drive (HDD) space running at 7200RPM, there is enough for all your videos, music, games and documents. The operating system also comes with your standard Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.
If quick file transfers are your thing, look no further because there are two USB 3.0 ports and one USB 2.0 port. There is even an HDMI port for high quality display on another monitor, one microphone-in and two headphone-out for listening to music with a buddy. Wondering how much time you will get on average? With an 8-cell lithium-ion battery it is sure to get you plenty of hours of usage depending on what you do. Of course, gaming and heavy multimedia will drain your battery life much quicker than browsing the web.
Notice how the Envy 15 looks very similar to the Macbook Pro from Apple? That’s because it does! Although the Envy 15 is a bit heavy and thicker than the Macbook Pro, the price difference is quite outstanding. I myself own an Envy 15 which retails for about $1199 USD at the time I purchased it while the Macbook Pro 15.6″ with the same specs can cost you nearly two grand.
So far, my experience with this laptop has been great because it can keep its cool under a lot of gaming and hardcore usage. It has a great feel to it and is very sturdy, making it not seem like some cheap toy. The only problem I’ve had with it so far is sometime my keystrokes would be missed once in a while but I was able to fix it easily by updating the BIOS. There have been complaints of this model having distorted red colours but so far I have yet to notice this problem on my own.
I recommend this sleek and performance laptop to you if you’re in the market for a replacement and aren’t willing to go out on a limb and buy a Macbook Pro. As quoted from Engadget,“In some ways the 15 improves on the notebook it so unsubtly imitates.”
