HP Envy 23 review

All-in-ones usually look great, but the HP Envy 23 is one of the most stylish we’ve ever seen. The key to its success is its hinge-and-base arrangement: instead of a simple prop- or monitor-style stand, the Envy’s display connects to the slender base via a pair of tubular legs that extend down from the bottom corners and curve into the base’s sides.

It’s an eye-catching design, and one that’s matched by good build quality. Although it looks worryingly slight, the base anchors the machine solidly to the desk, and the tilting mechanism feels stiff and reliable.

The downside to this design is a lack of flexibility. Other machines have double-hinged stands that allow them to tilt and fold flat, but the HP Envy has a comparatively restricted range of movement. It’s enough for using the system as a main PC while sitting at a desk, but you can’t push it back far enough to comfortably use from a standing position.

The keyboard and mouse are middle-of-the-road units. The keyboard’s traditional design contrasts awkwardly with the Envy’s ultra-modern chassis, and the keys feel light and plasticky, with an indistinct action. As usual, the keyboard has no Windows 8-specific keys; we’ve no complaints about the mouse.

Screen and core performance

The Envy’s screen has a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, and quality is good. The colour accuracy is excellent, with an average Delta E of 3.3, ensuring images never look oversaturated or unnaturally cool or warm. For photo editing, it’s excellent; any flaws we did come across – such as a miniscule strip of backlight leakage along the bottom edge of the display, and a lowish maximum brightness of 208cd/m2 – are minor gripes.

You won’t be disappointed with performance, either. The system’s Core i5-3330S is a low-power part, but it’s one of Intel’s latest Ivy Bridge range of chips and has plenty to recommend it. It has a stock speed of 2.7GHz, a top Turbo Boost clock of 3.2GHz and 6MB of L3 cache – twice the amount that’s included in slower Core i3 chips.

The HP’s application benchmark score of 0.8 is enough – when coupled with 6GB of RAM – to keep Windows 8 feeling nippy. We didn’t experience any sluggishness when navigating Windows 8’s Live Tiles and full-screen apps, and desktop mode was similarly responsive.

The HP Envy 23 has a 2TB hard disk, and the capacious Hitachi Deskstar drive is plenty fast enough: sequential read and write rates of 144MB/sec and 137MB/sec are quick for platter-based hardware.

A Blu-ray reader is included, as is a TV tuner. The only gap in the specifications list concerns wireless, which is single-band only.

Audio and graphics

HP is fond of including Beats Audio features on its laptops and PCs, and this Envy receives the same treatment.

However, the Beats processing delivers bass that dominates the rest of the audio spectrum, overpowering mid- and high-end tones in music, and creating distortion when the speakers are used at full volume.

Fortunately, you can disable Beats, which gets rid of the distortion. There’s still too much boom for our liking, but mid-range and high-end sounds get room to breathe, making for a much more balanced listening experience.

The weakest link is the AMD Radeon HD 7450A graphics chip – an OEM version of the standard HD 7450, and this month’s slowest discrete GPU. While it copes with Windows 8 and high-definition media playback, it will only cope with basic games: it scored 19fps in our Crysis benchmarks at Medium settings.

Verdict

The HP Envy 23 is one of the best-looking all-in-ones around, but its unusual stand design doesn’t allow for as much adjustment as many rival machines.

The HP Envy 23’s colour-accurate, high-quality screen is ideal for work and play, however, and the specification is more comprehensive and powerful. It’s a worthy buy, especially if you want to run more demanding software.

Warranty
Warranty	1 yr return to base
Basic specifications
Total hard disk capacity	2,000GB
RAM capacity	6.00GB
Screen size	23.0in
Processor
CPU family	Intel Core i5
CPU nominal frequency	2.70GHz
Processor socket	LGA 1155
Motherboard
Wired adapter speed	1,000Mbits/sec
Memory
Memory type	DDR3
Graphics card
Graphics card	AMD Radeon HD 7450A
Multiple SLI/CrossFire cards?	no
3D performance setting	Medium
Graphics chipset	AMD Radeon HD 7450A
DVI-I outputs	0
HDMI outputs	0
VGA (D-SUB) outputs	0
DisplayPort outputs	0
Number of graphics cards	1
Hard disk
Hard disk	Hitachi Deskstar 7K3000
Capacity	2.00TB
Hard disk usable capacity	1.80TB
Drives
Optical disc technology	Blu-ray reader
Monitor
Resolution screen horizontal	1,920
Resolution screen vertical	1,080
Resolution	1920 x 1080
Additional Peripherals
Speakers	HP Beats Audio
Speaker type	2 x 2W
Peripherals	Media Centre remote control
Case
Case format	All-in-one
Dimensions	580 x 214 x 455mm (WDH)
Mouse & Keyboard
Mouse and keyboard	HP wireless keyboard and mouse
Operating system and software
OS family	Windows 8
Noise and power
Idle power consumption	47W
Peak power consumption	91W
Performance tests
3D performance (crysis) low settings	19fps
3D performance setting	Medium
Overall Real World Benchmark score	0.80
Responsiveness score	0.76
Media score	0.90
Multitasking score	0.74