Performance Anxiety

It's been a few weeks since the HP ENVY dv6 joined the team. I've constructed a report card of sorts that puts some of my thoughts together to get to just how well this model performs. To some degree it should be noted that this laptop has dual graphics cards and advanced power management. That has the effect of really making it act like two very different laptops based on whether it is plugged in or not.
Power
Lets start with battery life. I have been very pleased on how well this unit performs even with just the 6 cell battery. It runs for a few hours with the regular battery and about another hour with the Long Life 9-Cell Notebook Battery. Overall, I would consider this very good. My last laptop had such poor battery from the built-in battery that I had to essentially permanently add a supplemental battery and always carry it around. No such issues with this one. I have been using the 9-cell battery quite a bit more because since it is larger it provides a more comfortable typing angle and also provides better bottom ventilation. This thing can run warm if you're getting into some extended game time.


Display and Sound

The screen has proved to be very, very good. I've played a few DVDs on it and then fired up a Blu-Ray movie last night. The screen was very sharp though it looks a lot better with low ambient light shinning on the screen. Sound was supposedly designed by beats audio and it sounds pretty good. It didn't seem to get very loud, but that might have been the titles I used. The audio fades quite quickly once you move away from it. If you're watching on the road, I'm sure you are going to use headphones which deliver much more volume. This isn't really a big issue as most people will be using it on a one-on-one basis not trying to display it for a room. If you are going to do that, I suggest carrying an HDMI cable so you can plug it into a larger display. I haven't tried that yet, but I'll get around to it soon enough.

Input
I've grown to be a fair typist on the ENVY so far. However, one thing that has already grown annoying is that the backspace key squeaks, presumably from the spring. It's the only key that does it and I wonder if that's a typical issue with the island style keyboard. I'll be closely monitoring this to determine if it worsens and requires a replacement. 

I still accidentally hit the touch pad and cause occasional issues but I've been getting better. Again, this is something industry-wide so I'm not knocking HP too much here. It also comes with finger print reader - which I didn't realize. However, I'm trying it out and it seems to be working just fine. One thing I really like is that it has a small LED on it that says, "Hey, use me!" when applicable. That's a nice touch.

Performance
I'm not currently playing many PC games so it is hard to say that it's good or bad. The nVidia graphics controller seems to acquit itself quite well - the couple I have tried have been able to run at the native screen resolution (1920x1080) and at pretty high quality - when plugged in. Unplugged, it defaults back to the Intel 4000 chipset which becomes mediocre at best compared to Nvidia. That said, I think it is a smart compromise for power when you need it and better power management when you are on battery. You can always dumb down the graphics if you really want to play something while on battery.

I touched on WiFi speed in my post on the changes I made to my home network. Summary: It's fine.

Miscellaneous
I'm still getting used to the larger size versus my old 14" work laptop. But, the light weight is quite nice and I've found it to be a nice traveling companion so far. I'll be taking another trip in a few months and it'll be good to take it through another run. 

Other than the aforementioned keyboard issue, I haven't had any problems with the laptop. I like the brushed metal lid and palm rest - it feels solid and high quality. There seem to be enough ports for everything I need so far. Oddly, the network cable is a covered port so you have to flip that down to access it. If I were using this on a wired network every day I expect it would break at some point when I shoved it in my bag and forgot to close it. It's a strange design choice when all the other ports are exposed and they leave the Ethernet port exposed on their business laptops.

Summary
It's a solid laptop so far. I'm pleased with the performance and usage. I still have somethings to try like the webcam and HDMI output but I'll get there and report back. For now, it's got my thumbs up.