UPDATE:
The HP Envy 17 3D is now available. You can now enjoy all the power and entertainment of 3D right on your laptop: http://bit.ly/HPEnvy3D
Recently, HP took over some swanky hotel in San Francisco. The reason: Give the gathered press hands-on time with some of the new notebooks and some sweet devices that'll be available in the coming months. This installment is part of a series -- so look for more updates!
A few months ago, I walked you through HP's Envy 14 and 17 -- and the improvements that came with them. You can find that story (and a couple handy YouTube video demos) right here. This time around, HP revealed a couple new machines including the HP Envy 14 Beats Edition and the HP Envy 17 3D -- a 17-inch Envy with…you guessed it…a 3D display.
Let's start off by looking at what is in the new Envy 17 because, frankly, this is the only 17-inch laptop I know of that's offering a 1080p, 3D screen. OK, so, 3D -- kinda neat and more and more movies are using it. Let's talk about how it's actually being implemented here. It's using active shutter glasses from Xpand Cinema and an LCD panel that refreshes at 120Hz. A little quick math for you: That means it's capable of rendering an image in 3D at 60 frames per second without a hitch. It's kind of hard to show you how it works with the 3D engaged. I mean, I could try strapping the shutter frames onto my digicam....like I did in this YouTube clip:
Let me just say this: The engineers are focusing on the cinematic experience here, but it can still rock some 3D games. Spokespeople on hand they told me that the Envy 17 uses third-party software from TriDef to handle the 3D.
Or, if you want to split that image between three screens, you've got that option as well. Like I showed you in a video a couple months back. Of course, you need a mighty GPU to pull of these tasks. In this case, you get an ATI HD 5850 with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM.
So what's the big deal with the new premium Envy Beats model? The black aluminum lid, the red backlit keys, a pair of Beats Solo headphones and a price that’s kind of hard to, well, beat. It will start at $1,249. That’s almost $1,000 less than the 15-inch model that came out last year.
Probably the most notable difference from the last Beats laptop (besides the screen size and price) is the focus on the music enthusiast as opposed to music makers. I love music, but my ability to create some….well, let’s just say that I need to put a lot more work in before I can use the Traktor DJ software that came with the last Beats edition laptop. There is the addition of an amplifier on-board so that your sound gets an extra bit of boost when you’re plugging in headphones.
That said, I like how these machines still cater to some creative folks out there. Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Premier Elements come standard with both systems. Load it up with up to 8GB of RAM and that ATI Radeon GPU will rip through any tasks you might have.
All right, that’s just a quick look at the new Envy laptops on display – You can find the news release on these laptops here. But do you have any burning questions you might have about how these work? Ask away in the comment box!
