HP Envy 15 ep0123tx Specifications:

• Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-10750H (2.6 GHz base frequency, up to 5 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 6 cores)
• Graphics adapter: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1660 Ti with Max-Q design (6 GB GDDR6 dedicated)
• Memory:  16 GB DDR4-2933 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• Display: 39.6 cm (15.6″) diagonal, FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, micro-edge, anti-glare, 300 nits, 72% NTSC
• Storage:  1 TB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• Networking: Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (2×2) and Bluetooth® 5 combo
• Battery: 6-cell, 83 Wh Li-ion polymer cell
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10
• Camera: HP Wide Vision HD camera, IR Thermal sensor
• Audio: Audio by Bang & Olufsen; Dual speakers; HP Audio Boost 2.0
• Size: 35.79 x 23.68 x 1.84 cm
• Weight:  2.14 kg
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB-C (Thunderbolt + DP + Power Delivery), SD card reader, HDMI, Headphone / mic combo

What’s in the box?

The laptop and a 83Wh power adapter and some paper manuals.

Design and Build Quality of HP Envy 15

My very first laptop I owned is an HP, so I been following them for quite a long period. When it comes to design, they are a bit restrained but they mean business. You will not find yourself out of place carrying an HP machine. They can blend well.

The device sports a clean design with aluminium chassis. The silver-grey tone comes out well for a classic look. When I weighed it, the scale tipped at 1.997 kg. It looks well chiselled with aggressive lines and corners. It gives a comforting good build vibe. There is the HP logo on the top lid, the lid itself is easier to lift with a single finger, which I have struggled with on many laptops.

The back hinge has ENVY branding subtly etched with a clean line drawn horizontally for aesthetics.

The backside is angled at three sides at the edges. The speakers are housed at the angled edges on the bottom sides. The dual speakers are tuned by Bang & Olufsen. There is a large vent for the airflow. There are two long rubber footers to enable space beneath for air circulation and also avoid scratches at the bottom.

The bezels are thin and the black colour bezels strike a good contrast with the silver-grey body tone. The top bezels house a webcam, there is no physical shutter in the bezel area but the privacy shutter can be enabled via a dedicated button on the keyboard. Nevertheless, it is a physical shutter and not software that disables the camera, you can actually see a plastic veil that closes the camera when you click the button.

Ports

Talking about the ports, on the left side you got a power jack, USB Type A port, HDMI 2.0a, two USB Type C ports (Thunderbolt 3) and a SD card reader.

The right side offers a Type A port and an audio and mic combo. There is an air vent too here.

Display of HP Envy 15

• 15.6-inch IPS panel, 300 nits brightness, 72% NTSC
• 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution
• No touchscreen control

The variant I got here has a full-HD IPS panel, though the series also offers a full-blown 4K OLED panel. The display offers an anti-glare coating, which I prefer over reflective panels. You won’t have to worry about any light source behind you to distract your viewing. The 300 nits brightness proved to be sufficient for my daily use. The viewing angles are good, I worked on it for some days writing articles, watching movies and it catered well to my requirements.

Speakers

When you open the lid, you see a grille design on either side of the keyboard and most likely you would assume it would be speaker grille. I did but it is not. The actual speakers are at the bottom like I mentioned earlier. This grille design flanking the keyboard gives a false impression. I am not sure what was the purpose for this may be aesthetics but I would have preferred a cleaner look. Coming to the actual speaker, it’s a dual speaker tuned by Bang & Olufsen. There is a Bang & Olufsen audio control that gives you a 10 band equalizer along with many presets, noise cancellation feature and other general controls. The speaker output has a very good clarity and sharpness, though lacks a bit of bass which you can control by dabbling on the equalizer to your liking.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Being a large 15.6 inch display laptop, there is a lot of room for accommodating a good keyboard. HP has done exactly that. Though, I had to get used to many of the special function keys baked into the keyboard right from the camera shutter key to the fingerprint sensor and power button. I like the font HP uses on their keyboard. The keys are well spaced and are comfortable to use without jumping at the wrong key. The travel length is pretty good too. There is a white backlight for the keys which can be activated by the F4 fn key. It also has two levels of brightness.

The touchpad is large enough for use. It supports Windows gestures. I am a mouse guy but you can get away with the touchpad if you are not carrying it or fine with this.

Biometrics

The HP Envy 15 supports Windows Hello Fingerprint login but not Windows Hello face. The fingerprint scanner as I mentioned earlier is tucked in the last row of the keyboard. I personally prefer the scanner in the touchpad but you can get used to this once you start using it daily. The scanner is very accurate and reliable.

Performance of HP Envy 15 ep0123tx

The buck stops at the performance. So let’s find out what HP Envy 15 delivers. Under the hood, the variant I got is powered by an 10th-gen Intel Core i7-10750H CPU clocked at 2.6GHz. This is combined with a 16GB 2933MHz RAM, a 1TB NVMe SSD, and GTX 1660Ti GPU. The 10750H CPU maxes at 2933MHz RAM and that is on cards here. It’s a dual-channel RAM. There is always an option to further boost the RAM, in case you want to.

For most of us, this configuration would be good enough to sail through most use cases. As a content creator, I could even work on some of my premier pro video edits. Though if you are buying it for regular video edits and 4K, I would suggest you upgrade to 32GB RAM, if not for 4K 16GB should be good enough. This should be good at almost everything, unless you are a hardcore gamer, if that is your priority use case, you should really be considering a full-blown gaming laptop. It does not mean this machine cannot handle gaming, it can play comfortably well. I had no issues playing PUBG with graphics set to High. It tend to warm up a bit.

In the synthetic benchmark scores, PC Mark 10 delivered 4793 overall score.

Battery life of HP Envy 15 ep0123tx

The HP Envy 15 boast an 83Wh battery inside. The company claims 16 hours of battery life, which I initially rubbed off as a tall claim. Usually, I find the test results on lab conditions behave differently in real use cases. But I was pleasantly surprised, the laptop did indeed delivery a good battery life if not the 16 hours but it did manage really well. The battery test is a difficult thing to calculate on laptops since each one use case is very different, the way we put the hardware to use. But rest assured, this laptop gives better battery life than most others in its league.

Verdict:

If you want to mix work and play, wear your suit and carry it for work meetings, later loosen the tie and play games on it – this is a great machine for it.

Pros of HP Envy 15 ep0123tx

• Neat design
• Great battery life
• Dependable performance
• Good display with anti-glare
• physical shutter for webcam

Cons of HP Envy 15 ep0123tx

• No face login

HP Omen 15 2020 has a wider choice of configurations to choose from. The HP Omen 15-ek0019TX I got for my review is powered by Intel Core i7 10th gen combined with a modest NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti. You can also get more adrenalin rush with GeForce® RTX 2070 with Max-Q configuration, if you are into higher spectrum of gaming.

HP OMEN 15-ek0019TX Specification

• Processor: Intel® Core™ i7-10750H (2.6 GHz base frequency, up to 5 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology, 12 MB L3 cache, 6 cores)
• Graphics adapter: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650 Ti (4 GB GDDR6 dedicated)
• Memory:  16 GB DDR4-2933 SDRAM (2 x 8 GB)
• Display: 15.6-inch, 1920 x 1080pixel, 300 nits, 144Hz refresh rate
• Storage:  1 TB PCIe® NVMe™ M.2 SSD
• Connections: 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-C 5Gbps signaling rate (DisplayPort™ 1.4, HP Sleep and Charge); 1 SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate (HP Sleep and Charge); 2 SuperSpeed USB Type-A 5Gbps signaling rate; 1 Mini DisplayPort™; 1 HDMI 2.0a; 1 RJ-45; 1 AC smart pin; 1 headphone/microphone combo
• Networking: Intel® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (2×2) and Bluetooth® 5 combo
• Battery: 52.5 Wh Li-ion (3-cell)
• Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit
• Camera: 720p
• Audio: SAudio by Bang & Olufsen; DTS:X® Ultra; OMEN Audio Control Support DTS:X® Ultra; Dual speakers; HP Audio Boost 2.0
• Weight:  2.36 kg

Design and Build Quality

With the 2020 model, HP had toned down the aggressive dash of curves and lines in their gaming machines. When you call out gaming laptops these days, there are flurry of offerings with strong accentuated cuts and psychedelic LED colors popping out. The HP Omen 2020 lineup is muted in comparison and follows traditional laptop looks with robust build. It can sneakily blend in an office environment.

It is made of a combination of aluminum and plastic with the underlying chasis in metal and gives a sturdy and robust feel to it and probably can handle few knocks too. The matte finish on the lid tend to catch grease easily and is a fingerprint magnet. The lid has a diamond-shaped mirror-like logo which glistens in green and blue, depending on the angle viewed. Personally, I find the logo too bland but on hindsight, this subtle logo would appeal to even non-gamers.

Weighing 2.36 kg, the Omen 15 2020 definitely has fair bit of heft to it and measures 22.6mm in thickness. If you are planning a machine to carry often, this should be kept under consideration. A Wide Vision 720p HD web camera is housed on the top bezel. There is no privacy shutter, a while light indicator glows when the camera is active. Like most webcams in laptops, this is passable for video calls. The power button finds an odd place between the F12 and delete button.

The bottom has a large ventilation grills, which could inhale lots of air towards the heat sinks.

Ports

The HP Omen packs a lot in terms of port selection. On the left, you get a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, an HDMI port, an full-sized SD card reader, a Gigabit Ethernet port, headphone/microphone jack, and power jacks.

On the right side, you get a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A ports along with a mini DisplayPort and a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Thunderbolt Type-C port. 

Display

The Omen 15 2020 laptops can be flat laid to 180 degree and the hinge mechanism is confident. The Omen 15’s 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080-pixel display is love at first sight. I liked the popping colors, deep blacks and the colors are vibrant. Details are crisp and you will not miss anything in good game scenarios. It clocks 313 nits brightness which I find to be adequate and 71.8% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut is impressive. In short, the display is extremely likeable. There is also Nvidia G-Sync support.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The chiclet keyboard is almost silent which I kind of like for my laptops unlike the mechanical keyboards I like for my desktops. HP might also have gone for the silent treatment inline with the design choice of blending it in office ecosystem. The keyboard is full-fledged with separate numeric keys and calculator and arrow keys. I didn’t have any issues while typing. The travel distance is comfortable to use.

Then there is the RGB lighting, which most games would love to see. The back lighting can be customized from the OMEN command center. They keyboard is split into four zones for RGB lighting. The customization is not free wheeling but you can pick the colors for the four zones and the lighting is static. There is no strobbing, breathing or other dynamic effects.

The trackpad is large and easy to use. There are no separate dedicated left and right buttons. Omen 15 supports gestures and responds very well to them

Performance

Coming to the performance, if you are looking at top-notch gaming performance you should go with the GeForce® RTX 2070 for the max performance but that also costs a bit more than the unit I have here. Though the RTX 1650 Ti is not the powerful GPU from Nvidia, you can’t disown it, it still has in it. If you are aiming to mix gaming and work and a machine for multimedia editing, this variant proved to be fairly good in my use. This could be a good mid-level gaming machine. I used it for some of my video rendering and real-life use cases and it proved it to be a good reliable workhorse.

In 3D mark benchmark test we got 3897 in Time Spy test and 1761 in Time Spy Extreme test.

It has a Samsung NVme 1TB SSD storage. On Crystalmark 7 test, we got the following results in real-life performance and peak performance tests. There is 16GB of dual-channel DDR4 memory (8GB x 2 sticks), which can be upgraded to 32GB.

Omen Command center is you go-for destination to customize the keyboard lighting, adjust fan speed, monitor system diagnostics. For gamers, it also has an AI-based software that maps your play and throws pointers on your weak points. The game stream functionality aids to stream your game to another device in the same local network.

Battery life

The Omen 15 packs a 3-cell 52.5 Wh Li-ion battery. I could get a bit above 6 hours on an average on Omen 15 laptop, which is pretty good for a gaming laptop.

Verdict

The HP Omen 15-ek0019TX is a great mid-segment gaming laptop. If you don’t fancy the over the top design cues of gaming laptops and want something that would blend with your office environment, this is a great buy. Plus, the display is stellar and you get decent battery life for this segment.

Box contents of Smart Tank 530

• HP Smart Tank 530
• 135-ml Black Original Ink Bottle – 3 Nos.
• HP GT52 Cyan Original Ink Bottle
• HP GT52 Magenta Original Ink Bottle
• HP GT52 Yellow Original Ink Bottle
• Power cord
• USB to printer cable
• Setup guide
• Black and Color heads

Setting up the Smart Tank 530

Even if you are a novice, it should be an easy straight forward setup and the pictorial setup guide comes very handy. I found filling the ink bottles easier than what I did on my Canon Pixma 3000, where I had to squeeze the bottle for the flow but in Smart tank you just pop the bottle into the nozzle. The spill free design also makes sure it is not a messier job. Even installing the print heads was simple plug and shut case. The touch display initially gives an easy display instruction step by step and also shows error message if you did something wrong. It’s a stress free easy job getting this printer ready to go.

HP Smart Tank 530 Design

The Smart Tank 530 weighs 6.19 kg. It has a dimension of 449 x 373 x 198 mm that can go to maximum 449 x 605.65 x 258.7 mm when the feeder tray is opened up. The touch display is a neat addition for the touch generation to navigate through the menus. The ink levels are clearly visible in front which is very convenient.

The paper tray is tucked in at the rear. When closed, there is a lid that makes sure dust doesn’t go inside through that gap. On top we have the Scan bed and above that is a automatic document feeder (ADF) for copying. Though do note, it is not doubled side ADF.

Connectivity & Features

Apart from the USB wired connectivity, the Smart Tank 530 is dual band WiFi-enabled and provide smart wireless connectivity for printing. It also supports remote printing via HP Smart app. This feature is very handy both at work and home, where multiple users or family members can print without having to login to connected computer. The Smart App available on both PC and mobile is versatile and also allows customizable smart tasks for regular printing needs.

Dual-band WiFi uses two frequencies 2.4 GHz (frequencies used in normal home Wi-Fis) and 5 GHz. The Smart Tank 530 also has an additional connectivity option of Bluetooth LE, if in case WiFi is not available.

The 530 does not have the automatic two-sided printing option. It allows for duplex printing but you need to do reverse feeding. It is the case with the ADF too for copying.

HP Smart Tank 530 Specs, Speed and Cost per print

The 530 is a Thermal Inkjet and the HP’s product page states it has a duty cycle of up to 1000 pages and recommended monthly volume of 400 to 800 pages. This makes it ideal for home and small office. If you have page volumes more than this monthly numbers, you should be ideally looking at different models. For those not sure what duty cycle means printer duty cycle also called the monthly duty cycle, is the absolute number of pages that can be printed per month at the rated print quality of a machine and without errors / jams.

Print quality is listed as: Black: Up to 1200 x 1200 rendered dpi Color: Up to 4800 x 1200 optimized dpi color (when printing from a computer and 1200 input dpi) The input tray can handle 100-sheet input tray and output tray can accommodate 30 sheets. The ADF can handle 35 sheets maximum in its tray. The paper sizes supported are A4; B5; A6; DL envelope, legal and supports file format JPG, BMP, TIFF, PDF, RTF, TXT, PNG. Maximum scan size supported is 216 x 297 mm.

The cost of print works out as 10p for black prints and 21p for coloured prints.

Verdict:

HP Smart Tank 530 is a easy to use printer ideal for home and small office with requirements less than 1000 pages per month. The multi connectivity options including the wireless connectivity makes it a smarter printer for smart homes.

 HP Omni 10 specifications:

• 10.1 inch touchscreen
• Intel® Atom® Z3770 (1.46 GHz, up to 2.4 GHz, 2 MB L2 cache, 4 cores),
• 2GB RAM,
• 32GB internal memory with MicroSD card support,
• Up to 8.5 hours of battery life
• 10″ diagonal WVA multitouch enable (With Corning Gorilla Glass 3) (1920 x 1200)
• 1920×1000 pixels resolution
• 2 MP (front-facing webcam); 8MP with Auto-Focus(rear-facing webcam)
• Windows 8.1
• Stereo speakers; HP Premium Sound
• Accelerometer; Gyroscope; Ambient light sensor; Hall; eCompass