Does This Laptop look ok?

steve3194

In the market for a laptop for college. Trying to get something reasonably powerful for course doing software development.

I've been looking at this

http://www.laptopsdirect.co.uk/a1-refurbished-hp-envy-15-ah150sa-amd-a10-8700p-1.8ghz-8gb-1tb-amd-radeon-r-a1-n7h24ea-w10/version.asp

Seems like a fairly good deal. Its refurbished so it only has a 3 month warranty but it seems to be fairly powerful for the price. I've read that this particular model has issues with the WiFi constantly disconnecting but tbh I wouldn't mind buying a usb adapter if I had to as aside from that issue the laptops seems ideal.

Thoughts?

Daveybits

I recently bought this exact model from the same crowd, so I'll surmise how I got on for you. Depending on what you need it to run I would advise caution, this thing looks and feels beautiful but it flatters to deceive a bit unfortunately.

First of all the positives. This laptop has some excellent features for the price point, the build quality of the chassis is just outstanding, its got an aluminium body, backlit keyboard, 1080p IPS screen, and the best speakers I've heard on a laptop. I mean it's really premium stuff here for the 300 odd bob you'll pay. If you do a bit of googling you'll see that these 2015 envy models are more commonly fitted with Core I-7's and dedicated graphics cards to be sold as premium machines for 3 times the €, so that speaks to the quality of the unit you'd be buying.

I compared it to what you could get elsewhere for the price and pulled the trigger because of the above. I'll mention now that mine was grade A1 refurbished and not a blemish to be found on it. Laptopsdirect are legit in how they advertise their stock, and seem to know what their doing cust service wise.

I will say though that the performance of the machine is lightweight. I wasn't expecting much out of the AMD chip to begin with, but I would definitely say I was surprised by how sluggish it is, even for the basics. I researched the APU a fair bit before buying and since I only really wanted the machine for light use I didn't foresee any issues. But I must admit, laggyness from 1080p @60fps youtube playback is just irritating. The thing can struggle under a fairly mild load and just feels under-powered at times.

As I've learned, there's little point in trying to get an exact benchmark for the a108700p apu chip against an intel equivilent, because it depends a lot on the configuration of the machine as a whole, which is the problem here.

The processor itself has a base clock of 1.8 ghz and is supposed to boost up to 3.2ghz when needed, which is a reasonably big leap and in practice, just never happens. The capabilities of what is a half decent chip have been severely gimped by HP by way of setting the TPD restriction extremely low at 15w. It's capable/supposed to run at 35w, and any capabilities of the chip that you might have read about are based around that configuration so be warned, it makes a massive difference.
In practice this means that the processor is running on the bare minimum power, this keeps the machine cool and extends battery life but performance suffers. As far as I can feel out from using it, it'll kind of start stuttering when it encounters load(1080p vid for example) and might take about 40 seconds - 1 min before it clocks itself up to be able to deal with it without noticeable issue. which is annoying but not the end of the world I suppose.

I would say an I-3 5th gen and up can be got for similar, might suit your needs better if there's actual software to be run. But I suppose look further into benchmarks for the chip @ 15w TPD to see what she can do for you. The machine is great value for what you get all things considered though

steve3194

Thanks a million for the detailed response!

I've been pondering getting it for a while now and I'm still fairly unsure. From the pictures the build quality looks brilliant way above the other laptops I've been looking at in a similar price range. I think I may go for a different model at this stage judging by the multiple bad reviews I've seen and from what you've said about the performance. Laptops direct have a Toshiba satellite with a Pentium N3700 which seems to have much better reviews.

By the way I've read multiple reviews which have said that the WiFi in the HP constantly disconnects. Just wondering if this is something you've experienced?

steve3194

Thanks a million for the detailed response!

I've been pondering getting it for a while now and I'm still fairly unsure. From the pictures the build quality looks brilliant way above the other laptops I've been looking at in a similar price range. I think I may go for a different model at this stage judging by the multiple bad reviews I've seen and from what you've said about the performance. Laptops direct have a Toshiba satellite with a Pentium N3700 which seems to have much better reviews.

By the way I've read multiple reviews which have said that the WiFi in the HP constantly disconnects. Just wondering if this is something you've experienced?