The 16:10 1200p IPS display is bright and with both excellent colors and low black levels for high quality images in line with other flagship Ultrabooks. Black-white response times are slow for noticeable ghosting, but this is a common drawback on many narrow-bezel Ultrabooks. Fast-moving 3D games like Overwatch are not recommended on this machine even though it is well-equipped to run them. Brightness distribution could have been more uniform as the top edge of the screen is measurably brighter than the bottom edge (453 nits vs 380 nits). It’s thankfully not very noticeable during use and so it’s only a minor nitpick.

Processor

The Intel Core i5-1135G7 is a quad-core, mid-range SoC designed to be used in ultra-light laptops. The Tiger Lake-UP3 processor was introduced in September 2020. It features four Willow Cove CPU cores running at 2.4 GHz (base clock speed @ 28 W TDP) Boosting up to 4.2 GHz (1-core Boost). The all-core Boost clock speed sits at 3.8 GHz. This is a Hyper-Threading-enabled CPU, allowing for up to 8 concurrent processing threads.

Performance

All SKUs come with either the 11th gen Core i5-1135G7 or Core i7-1165G7 alongside an optional GeForce GTX 1650 Ti Max-Q for users demanding gaming-level graphics. The pairing of a U-series CPU with a GeForce GTX GPU is rare for 14-inch laptops where GeForce MX options are much more common. The Envy 14 is therefore better suited for graphics-heavy tasks when compared to most others in its size category. Users looking for an even faster 14-inch laptop may want to consider the Asus Zephyrus G14 instead. We set our unit to Performance mode via HP Command Center prior to running our performance benchmarks below. Owners should become familiar with the software as HP-specific features can be toggled here.