HP Voodoo ENVY133 reviews – an ultraportable laptop with never seen before features
- Monday, December 22, 2008, 11:59
- Laptops
- 129 views
- Add a comment
The Voodoo Envy, ultraportable laptop from HP is definitely going to turn heads. The shiny laptop is equipped with so many features that it also qualifies as a business notebook. The Envy’s design features make it to be an attention getter like the MacBook Air. Measuring 12.7×9×0.8 inches, the laptop weighs just 3.5 pounds.
The laptop is powered by Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6-GHz CPU and 2GB of RAM. The laptop also houses an 80GB hard drive spinning at 4200 rpm. Looking at the configuration the Envy can’t be called a gaming machine. The Envy has a battery life of more than 2hours and 30 minutes which is more than the battery life of MacBook Air but it still lags fare behind the battery life of Lenovo ThinkPad X200 and Samsung X360.
The most distinguishing thing about Envy is its unique design features, which you have never seen before. The slim device doesn’t houses large number of ports or connectors. You will find a headphone jack, one USB port, shared USB/eSATA and, HDMI-out port. You will not find any optical drive integrated with the system instead you have to connect the external optical drive with eSATA cable.
Moreover, the machine does not house any Ethernet port. On the first of its-kind move, the Ethernet jack is integrated in the power brick. Another attractive feature is the HDMI-to-VGA connector that comes with the unit. The HDMI converter automatically adjusts the images for VGA display and you don’t need to do anything.
The Envy 133 supports a 13.3-inch screen with a native resolution of 1280×800 pixels. The display is crisp and clear for indoor use but the outdoor sunlight makes it difficult to view the text and images. So, the Envy display is not as good as the display offered by Samsung X360 and X460, which are viewable in any lighting conditions.
The Envy’s keyboard lacks multimedia shortcuts which are assigned to function-button combinations. The keypad also includes a Wi-Fi and power button located close to the Delete key. The touchpad, located below the keyboard, features tiny silver bars which serve as mouse buttons. The divots in the wrist rest denote the touchpad area but the boundaries separating the touchpad, wrist rest and keyboard could have been better.
When you start the system, the Function-F2 button allows you to do few things before booting. These include Web browsing, photo viewing, MP3 playback, IM chats (with support for everything from AIM to Yahoo Messenger), and Skype.
