HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx Review: It Makes No Sense To Pay So Much More For The Dell XPS 15

A lot of that performance comes from the really fast SSD that is in use for the storage requirements. This variant has 1TB SSD, which ticks off what you need—lots of space, and lots of speed. This particular spec also runs the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 Ti (6GB) graphics, which offers really good performance at this display resolution, that is Full HD. If you want to game, this will be more than ready for that too, but at slightly tuned settings. However, for the creators, the editors and the designers this is aimed at, the GeForce GTX 1660 takes advantage of the architectural improvements that should stay up to speed for a few years to come.

What impressed me all this while was how cool the laptop manages to remain. I usually never use a laptop while sitting on the bed, in any position. But just out of curiosity, I did use the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx while sitting on the bed—a pretty weird position where it was partially on the bed and partially on me (okay, focus!) with less than optimal ventilation for sure, and yet it didn’t heat up or have the fans whirring loudly. And well, the performance wasn’t throttled either, which is a great sign for sensible users who will use this properly on a table or a hard and flat surface with adequate space for ventilation.

A lot of that has to do with what HP has done on the inside of the ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx. There is a vapor chamber that helps with the cooling, so do the nicely chiselled vents, the placement of the fans and the smarter switching between CPU and GPU to reduce consumption and therefore heating. In fact, this heat dissipating vapor chamber is used in the HP Omen gaming laptop series to keep those incredibly powerful machines cool, and that tech has been integrated in the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx as well. If nothing else, that shows you how things have been well thought out. There are dual fans as well, which use a motor that has been designed for less friction. All said and done, I hardly ever heard the fans whirring up, let alone them ever creating a din.

It is not just the power which is the futureproofing in the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx. This laptop is Wi-Fi 6 ready, which means as and when you upgrade your home broadband line for faster internet speeds and upgrade to a Wi-Fi 6 router for better coverage, bandwidth and range, this laptop will be ready to take advantage of that. This is something that will become more and more common with Windows 10 laptops in the coming months.

Battery life: You Will Be Pleasantly Surprised

For a laptop as big as this, in terms of the screen size, and packing in this much power, the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx does rather well on the battery life front. I’ll give you an instance. Two hours of working documents, Microsoft Edge web browser in use side by side with up to 7 tabs open permanently and more opened and closed as an when needed, with the screen brightness at 50% (too bright for me, but we must undertake these perils for you), keyboard backlight at the highest and music streaming to a Bluetooth speaker—the battery charge reduced from 100% to 93%. That is just 7% in 2 hours, of not exactly sitting around in a low power setting. Which is why I really would believe most users, for most use cases, will get close to the 16 hours of battery life that HP claims from the ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx. Even if this gets close to the 12 hour mark for most users, that is most definitely a win. The HP Fast Charge juices up a completely discharged battery to 50% in 45 minutes.

Display: A Good Canvas To Play With

The test mule that we got, the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx, has the Full HD display. I have often shared my view on the matter of Full HD vs 4K, and it is always on the lines of how one really doesn’t need a 4K display on a laptop. The WLED display, the full 15.6-inches of real estate, does a rather good job on almost all fronts. It is bright enough for indoor use, at 300nits rated brightness. It is crisp, it isn’t very reflective, it is colourful and viewing angles are good too. The only aspect where this doesn’t really stand out is that you could perhaps note how the colours while being accurate and well distinguished, aren’t exactly popping out. It is this accuracy that should appeal to the creators, particularly as they set about editing photos or videos.

Keyboard: Apple MacBook Pro-esque Excellence

As someone who has to write a lot on a daily basis, the keyboard is a very important tool in my daily workflow. An inferior keyboard or a plainly bad one will slow down work, deadlines will be missed and there will be anguish and rage as a result. There is a reason why I have often said that the Apple MacBook Pro line have the best keyboards in the business. Whether it was the much maligned Butterfly keyboard or the new Scissor mechanism, Apple gets the feedback, travel, spacing and size spot on. Many have tried to replicate that, but the thing is, simply aping the design and hoping for substance doesn’t work.

HP, on its part, has matched the Apple keyboards over the years. HP laptops do the basics well—key size, key spacing and travel are not compromised or unnecessarily modified for the sake of it. The same ingredients have been put together in just the right manner in the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx. Switching from my trusted Apple MacBook Pro 16 to this didn’t at all make me re-learn the keyboard and the typing experience. In fact, I would have perhaps preferred if there was no extreme right row of keys, but that apart, this keyboard is very easy to get used to. Again, HP has done a very good job with the keyboard experience.

The Last Word: Why Would You Want To Spend So Much More On A Dell XPS 15?

It is hard to ignore the price differences between the Dell XPS 15 and this, the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx. The entry spec Dell XPS 15 with the same Intel Core i7 processor, 16GB RAM, lesser 512GB SSD and the very slightly lower spec Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 Ti (4GB) graphics started out with a price tag of Rs 2,08,160 and since then that’s been slashed to around Rs 1,89,660. The HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx is priced at Rs 1,49,999. Within the Windows 10 ecosystem, it pretty much becomes a no-brainer in terms of what offers better bang for your buck.

All considered, the HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx ticks off the design bit, in absolute style. Performance is excellent all through, including the 1TB SSD, and so is the battery life. Amazon Alexa assistant is built in, if that’s what catches your fancy—actually it is incredibly easy to tell Alexa to add something to your calendar, while you continue working. The Full HD display is a very pleasant real estate for creatives to look at all day. And when you aren’t working, this will help you let out a bit of steam with some gaming too. Yes, HP could have perhaps bundled an adapter that was USB-C, but that doesn’t really change anything. The HP ENVY Laptop 15 ep0123tx is an excellent machine for those who may have the budget, and it will deliver.