In an era where truly upscale laptops seem like an endangered species, it's always nice to run across a well-built system with few compromises, such as the HP Envy 17. We've always liked the Envy line in general, and the two most-recent models, the 14-inch Envy 14 and this 17-inch Envy 17, manage to surpass last year's original 13- and 15-inch versions by coming in at much more reasonable prices.
HP Envy 17
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The feature-packed Envy 17 includes a Blu-ray drive, both HDMI and DisplayPort outputs, and a USB 3.0 port (although very little current hardware can take advantage of it). As the slim (for its size) Envy 17 is one of the only laptops that looks and feels like a real alternative to Apple's 17-inch MacBook Pro, its $1,399 starting price is even more attractive, as the 17-inch MacBook goes for $2,299 and up.