HP Envy 17-j173cl Touch Laptop via Amazon
HP Envy 17-j173cl is a 17.3 inch laptop with a Full HD touch display, Beats audio with 4 speakers and a subwoofer, a high end Haswell Intel i7 processor with a Passmark benchmark score of just under 8000 as of today, very generous amounts of memory and hard drive and great range of connectivity. Being a certified refurbished unit by the manufacturer it comes with original accessories and 90 days of warranty and it won’t be likely to show any signs of use- or very little. HP Envy 17-j173cl comes with the 4th generation quad core Intel i7-4710MQ processor at 2.5GHz to 3.5GHz speeds with Intel turbo boost and hyper threading for four cores to handle eight threads in parallel, 12GB DDR3L SDRAM memory on 2 DIMMs for exceptional multitasking and supports up to 16GB, 1TB SATA HDD at 5400rpm rotating speed with HP ProtectSmart to help protect your data and 64-bit Windows 8.1 operating system as a solid platform for whatever you do on the laptop.
17.3 inch diagonal FHD WLED-backlit touchscreen display with 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution equals to very sharp and clear picture with great contrast and vivid colours. The integrated Intel HD 4600 graphics card shares the memory with the main CPU and is adequate for performing multimedia tasks efficiently and offers some level of gaming but you have to bear in mind that this is obviously not an advanced gaming PC. For the best of audio you have the quad speakers, a subwoofer and the impressive Beats Audio and for chatting live on Skype the front facing HP TrueVision high definition webcam with built-in dual array digital microphone. Sleek, modern and beautiful silver HP ENVY TouchSmart 17-j173cl weighs 7.1 pounds and has the dimensions of 10.83 x 16.37 x 1.16 (to 1.35) inches, comes with a full-size island style backlit keyboard that feels nice to the touch plus numeric keypad for better data entry but the HP Clickpad supporting multitouch gestures is not the most responsive so you may go for a mouse. The 6-cell 62WHr 2.8 Ah lithium ion battery is good for up to 4.5 hours of battery life and this is OK considering this is not really the kind of laptop you will have out and about a lot due to weight and size issues and for connectivity you have the faster 802.11ac wireless with better coverage, Bluetooth 4.0, 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet LAN with RJ-45 connector, 4 x high speed USB 3.0 ports (one with USB Boost), DVD-RW Optical Drive that writes to DVDs and CDs, HP SimplePass and built-in Fingerprint Reader, an HDMI output, a Headphone out/ Microphone-in combo jack and a Multi-Format Digital Media Card Reader for Secure Digital cards.
Conclusion: HP ENVY 17-j173cl (F9M14UA) is very easy to set-up right out of the box, is highly customisable and user-friendly (you can easily personalise it), runs fast with the i7 processor and the massive 12GB memory, works quietly, sound quality is really good for a laptop and you will hear the Beats Audio difference and quad speakers along with the subwoofer help this great sound (one of the customers comment on it as the best laptop sound they’ve ever heard) but make sure you do not block the speakers located at the bottom of the machine. Windows 8.1 seems to be a bit of a learning curve for those that are used to Windows 7 but the newer Windows 10 will be out on the market with two releases in Summer and Autumn of 2015 and you are entitled to a free upgrade within a year of its release as a current Window 8.1 user. This HP comes with some bloatware and McAfee antivirus which you may consider replacing with the free AVG or Avast. It is a bit heavy and large as you’d expect from a powerful 17.3 inch Full HD touchscreen computer and can get a little hot when you’re playing games that are more demanding with better visuals and require more processing power, but overall it runs cool enough with the HP CoolSense technology that changes the temp according to usage and you can occasionally get ‘power cord not adequate’ message. It is a great well rounded desktop replacement type machine that offers some degree of portability and that does pretty much everything you can ask from it including day-to-day and a lot more, which means even those extremely demanding tasks will be handled with ease.
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