Hasta La Gadget!

There’s no getting around it, so we’ll just say right at the outset: HP’s new ENVY 13 and 15 laptops might’ve been built on the “Voodoo ENVY legacy,” but they sure look a lot like Apple’s unibody MacBook Pros. Of course, there’s much more than meets the eye. The ENVY 13 is a bit of a mix between a traditional 13-incher and a real thin and light, weighing in at 3.74 pounds and packing in Radeon HD 4330 discrete graphics, but still forgoing an internal disc drive. The 13.1-inch WXGA display is the real draw, offering impressive colors (82% color gamut) and brightness (410 nit). The other big winner is the optional Slim Fit extended life battery, a slice which snaps onto the bottom of the laptop, hardly protrudes, and more than doubles the standard 7 hour quoted battery life. The laptop body is magnesium coated with aluminum — which gives it the texture of a MacBook Pro, but a bit less of the weight. In our non-scientific tests the build wasn’t exactly as rigid as a MBP, but still quite a bit stronger than the average laptop — and quite nice to the touch. The MacBook-style glass clickpad, however, is not an exciting addition in our book, since the software to support the automagical detection of left and right click — not to mention zoom, rotate and scroll gestures — just wasn’t very tight. Please, give us back our buttons.

HP’s ENVY 15 isn’t much of a “thin and light,” really, more of a straight up premium 15-incher crammed into a 1-inch thick 5.18 pound form factor. It keeps the ENVY 13’s unibody-style construction, and, sadly, the single button glass trackpad, but also works in a new Core i7 processor, makes room for dual SSD drives and adds high-end Radeon HD 4830 graphics with 1GB of VRAM. The 15.6-inch LCD isn’t quite as stellar as the 13, at 300 nits, but HP did manage to include support for a Slim Fit battery for the ENVY 15 — though with non-switchable discreet graphics, you’re not going to get much longevity out of this laptop either way. The two laptops start at $1,699 and $1,799, respectively (a far cry from the original ENVY 133‘s $2,100 starting price), and will be available on October 18th with Windows 7 pre-loaded. Check out video of the ENVY 13 after the break.

Continue reading HP ENVY 13 and 15 bring luxury to the everyman, look like MacBooks

HP ENVY 13 and 15 bring luxury to the everyman, look like MacBooks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Sep 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s not really much to say about MSI’s X600 that can’t be said about the X340: both laptops slightly improve upon the (rather shoddy) build quality of the X320, but the X600 is just bigger, and packs a numeric keypad. The keyboard is really the definition of mushy, though it’s at least got a bit of a backbone underneath now, and the machine overall feels like it could snap in half at the slightest bit of misapplied pressure. We’re sure that’s an overstatement, and it’s hard to find this much computer in this thin of a form factor at this low of price, but you might want to save a few dollars for a new pair of kid gloves if you’re thinking of making the plunge.

Filed under: Laptops

MSI X600 hands-on: 15.6-inches on a slim plastic platter originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 06 Sep 2009 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Samsung just debuted its new X Series line, a trio of fairly thin big brothers to the new netbooks Samsung is also launching today. The X420 (14-inch), X520 (14.6-inch) and X120 (11.6-inch, pictured) all hover around 0.95-inches thick, and range from 3 ounces to 4.4 pounds in weight. Samsung is touting its new design language for the laptops, though at a glance it doesn’t seem too special — the scratch-resistant UV coating for the glossy finish is a nice touch, though. Under the hood we’re a little short on details, but an unannounced dual-core Intel CULV processor makes an appearance somewhere in there. Otherwise there’s the fairly standard WiFi, Bluetooth, card reader, and HDMI plug. Samsung claims some special mojo to squeeze 9 hours of battery out of its 6 cell batteries (in the X420 and X520, the X120 does 4 cell), with 6 hours of movie playback also claimed — we’ll believe it when we see it, but we want to believe. Prices range from 699 to 899 Euro (about $1,000 to $1,286 US), and the line should ship this month in Europe and Asia.

Filed under: Laptops

Samsung X Series thin-and-lights sport dual-core CULV procs, 9 hour battery life originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Sep 2009 09:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Santech might not be the most familiar name around here, but the company has a bit of history in the mobile field, and its latest 13.3-inch effort definitely merits a second look. Coming in under that magical mental barrier of an inch in thickness and sporting an Intel CULV processor, it’s slinky and (just) powerful enough to be called an ultraportable. Add in a claimed 12 hours of battery life, and the LV1 would seem like a viable competitor to Acer’s Timeline series, but it falters on pricing, which — once you add the 8-cell battery to the base unit of a SU3500 1.4GHz CPU, 2GB RAM and 160GB HDD — is €701 ($1,003) after taxes, or €100 more than an almost identical Aspire 3810T from Acer.

[Via Notebook Italia]

Filed under: Laptops

Santech LV1 is low voltage and low fat, but not low price originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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All the cool kids are building CULV-powered 11.6-inch miniature wonders, and Acer-owned Gateway is no exception. This new EC1803h unit (a rebadge of sorts of Acer’s Timeline 1810T) just popped up in Canada, and has a lot in common with Gateway’s LT2000 netbooks — though somehow knowing there’s a “real” processor underneath makes it seem just a bit more sexy. Unfortunately, the $600 Canadian (about $550 US) pricetag isn’t quite as grand as the $400ish CULV laptops that Acer and Dell have been showing, but it’s hard to fault the 3GB of RAM, 6 cell standard battery and 250GB hard drive. No word on when this will head to the States.

Filed under: Laptops

Gateway’s 11.6-inch EC1803h CULV ultraportable surfaces in Canada originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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