HP ENVY 14 SPECTRE: Mind Blowing Design for Premium Consumers

I recognize that this isn't the first review about HP ENVY 14 SPECTRE. However, I intend to have my own habit to know things that I use, deeper, to know better about it for my daily use. Pretty much like a boy when he gets a new toy. He's gonna play with it all day.  I'm sure so is everybody.

I've been using HP Mobile Workstation for years, since my very own nw8240, to the current 8760w. Yes, they are not slim, but they bring me the performance I need for my daily work, and its stability are so amazing.

Now, I'm having my hands on the HP ENVY 14 SPECTRE, which has earned few fascinating awards at some shows around the globe.

Configuration

• Intel Core i5-2467M 1.6GHz, 3MB cache, 2 core
  
• 4GB DDR3 Memory
  
• Intel HD 3000 Integrated Graphics
  
• 14" SuperFine LED Display with 1600x900 native resolution
  
• Gorilla Glass Front and Back Cover Display
  
• 128GB mSSD
  
• Gigabit NIC, WLAN 802.11 b/g/n
  
• 1x SS USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, HDMI, Mini DisplayPort
  
• Beats Audio integrated speaker

HP Envy 14 Spectre may not be the slimmest or lightest Ultrabook out there. However, the first time I saw this Ultrabook, it was during Indocomtech 2012 exhibition. Its design knocked me down when I knew its display is protected with Corning's Gorilla Glass.


Eye Popping Features
Okay, there are several things that attract me to this HP ENVY 14 Spectre Ultrabook:

• Native Display Resolution. Other 13" or 14" Ultrabook can only go as high as 1366x768, which I consider not enough to do my work. The Envy 14 Spectre can display up to 1600x900 in native mode. So, more space for me to put some more windows
  
• Corning's Gorilla Glass protected. Well, we all have been familiar with Gorilla Glass on premium smartphones. This was the feature I was looking for about a year ago, and finally HP comes with it inside ENVY 14 Spectre.

• Slim and Sleek Design. There are dozens of Ultrabooks that only a milimiter or two thinner that the Envy 14 Spectre. However, we all couldn't feel the difference. But when it comes to the design, when I wrote my personal impression at this stage, ENVY 14 Spectre is the only one who comes with Gorilla Glass.
  

As for BEATS Audio, there are plenty of HP mobile computing products come with BEATS Audio. And yeah, it gives another plus for me, to my own listening experience.


The Engine (Well, not a V12 though)
Intel Core i5-2467M doesn't come out with huge muscles. However, it has powerful sidekick as well to accommodate all the computing tasks I have: 128GB SSD. We all know SSD performs a lot better, I mean a lot, than a spinning hard drive. Even the SAS one (serial SCSI). Though, after using it for a while, some friends of mine asked me that "popular question": is 128GB enough for your work? After you install some applications, it may have eaten your storage capacity.

That may be true on one side. But on the other side, it's also equipped with Super Speed USB 3.0. And with it, I could attach my 1TB USB 3.0 7200 rpm portable HDD on it, and voila! 1TB of high performance storage for my data, which I could share also with my mobile workstations.

My personal experience with my ENVY 14 Spectre has been great, even with its Intel Core i5-2467M only. On my next words, I will share some scores I tested using some of common benchmark tests.

The Benchmark
My ENVY 14 Spectre comes with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Should be enough for everyday use. Also, I'm attaching the Windows Performance Scores for your convenient.

However, the tests don't stop there. As a graphics enthusiast, I also put down some tests on some popular graphics application for engineering: DRAFTSIGHT from Dassault Systemes, and BLENDER 3D, an open source 3d modeling and animation software.

Both applications have received respectful places in each of their own areas.

DRAFTSIGHT Benchmark
Frankly speaking, I didn't do much with DRAFTSIGHT on this test, other than creating objects, opening a sample file and also interacting with the sample file to know how far it can smoothly interact with several complexities. I use DRAFTSIGHT's sample file as shown in the pictures below. All test, brought me a smooth feeling and telling me that the ENVY 14 Spectre I use is quite fast. No jittering panning process or even zoom-in and zoom-out. Everything was so smooth.

DraftSight UI

Sample File Opened

Entities Duplicated

Blender 3D Benchmark
I'm using the Blender 3D Benchmark file, obtained from http://www.eofw.org/bench. It's a standard bench file which contains some of primitive objects. I was comparing the ENVY 14 Spectre to my HP 8530w Mobile Workstation, which I use for daily purpose notebook. The result is quite fascinating. The ENVY 14 Spectre is slightly faster than the 8530w, when completing the rendering task.

Rendering Test on ENVY 14 Spectre: 45 secs

Rendering Test on 8530w: 47 secs

Final Thoughts
For me, the HP ENVY 14 Spectre is another landmark by HP, for the fine tuned design of its Ultrabook Series. It's lightweight and quite convenient to bring it anywhere for my mobile tasks. 

The balance between the components (processor, memory, SSD and other attached devices) surely fit the needs to most premium mobile users.

Another thing is its battery lifetime. One charge can bring you almost 6 hours of uninterrupted mobile usage. That should be enough for me to cover 2-3 meetings in a day.

I recommend this to most premium gadget enthusiasts, as well as professionals in engineering and multimedia, such as CAD managers and business executives, who are in daily use of doing drawing mark-ups, reviewing and business presentations. And when it comes to the time you're using it in front of the people or clients or customers, one thing for sure, their eyes will suddenly be attracted by the ENVY 14 Spectre. This  happened to me when having some meetings with some CEOs and CTOs of other companies.

Updates: Dec 4, 2012
I'm attaching the Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 4000, as a perfect companion for me to go with the ENVY 14 Spectre. Lifetime? Still enough for me for my daily meetings without power plug.