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HP Envy 15 – A 4K OLED RTX Laptop!

We’ve been featuring some very interesting Laptops on the channel lately, and this is another very unique Laptop. HP has sent over their brand new HP Envy 15 and they also sponsored the video linked up top, for us to give you a closer look.

It comes with a 4K Touch-Display that’s also an OLED Panel, up to a 10th Generation Intel Core i9 and an NVIDIA RTX GPU. This Laptop is not just outstanding for Video-Editing, Photo-Editing and 3D Modelling, but it’s also a very good choice for Gaming as well.

So, without any further ado, get those snacks ready and here is our first look at the HP Envy 15.

Design

Starting off with the Design, the HP Envy 15 is a 15” Laptop, hence the name. It comes in this really nice silver metal build, this is a fully metal body. There’s no plastic here at all, so it has a very premium build. I’m also a big fan of the silver colour, especially now when most Laptops are black or dark grey, seeing something different definitely makes it stand out. 

Rather than being a thick and heavy power Laptop, the Envy 15 is surprisingly portable. At a weight of just 1.81kg and a thickness of just 1.8cm, this is one of the thinnest and lightest power Laptops that I’ve ever seen. Also, the body itself is actually tapered, so it is thinner on the front, at just 0.5cm, and then it gets thicker towards the back. The sides are also very thin, they’re about the same thickness as the Ports. Overall the HP Envy 15 has this very thin look to it, no matter the angle that you look at it from.

The full-metal Body and tapered design make this look & feel very premium

The full-metal Body and tapered design make this look & feel very premium

In terms of the Ports, we have a microSD card slot on the left, alongside not one, but two Thunderbolt 3 Ports with 40Gbs/s Transfer Speeds. You can also use Thunderbolt to connect a powerful eGPU, something like an RTX 3080, and get some insane Gaming Performance out of this. It’s just incredible what you can do with Thunderbolt. You can also hook this up to a 5K Monitor via Thunderbolt, or even a 5K and a 4K Monitor at the same time, they all connect via this single cable. I’m a big fan of Thunderbolt and it’s really nice to see that we do get two of them rather than the usual one that we see on most Windows Laptops.

Aside from this, we get a full-sized HDMI Port, which is also HDMI 2.0, meaning it can do 4K60. Then we get a USB 3.1 Type A Port as well as the Power Connector, which uses a powerful 200W Power Adapter. On the right-hand side, we have a Vent, a second USB 3.1 Type A Port and a Headphone Jack. On the bottom, the HP Envy 15 has some pretty tall rubber feet in order to give it as much airflow as possible, which will be quite important when we get to the Performance section of this video.

I have to say, I really love how this Laptop looks from the bottom as well. I haven’t said this about many Laptops.It’s got this industrial look to it, with perfectly cut cut-outs for the Air Intake, the Air Outtake and the Speakers. So, Design wise, the HP Envy 15 is one of the most premium looking Laptops on the market right now. 

Display 

When it comes to the Display, this is one of the most striking Displays you can find on a Laptop, and not just because this is a full 4K panel, which has a PPI of 282 across 15.6 inches.

The 4K OLED & Touch-Screen Display gives you everything you’d expect from a high-end Laptop

The 4K OLED & Touch-Screen Display gives you everything you’d expect from a high-end Laptop

Since this is an OLED Panel, a Samsung manufactured AMOLED Display to be more precise, the Black Levels are perfect, the Viewing Angles are incredible alongside a 100,000:1 Contrast ratio, you get what is one of the very best viewing experiences on a Laptop. Whether you’re watching a movie or playing a game, the colour will be super vibrant and the overall viewing experience is going to be very impressive. The Display itself can go up to 400 Nits of Brightness and it also supports HDR.

This is also a Touch Display, which means that even though the Panel doesn’t go fully flat, for you to be able to use it as a drawing Tablet, you can indeed interact with the on-screen elements by just touching the Panel.

Keyboard & Trackpad 

The Keyboard feels better than I expected. It’s soft to the touch, but you also get a clicky feel when you type. The Keyboard itself is Backlit but we do not have an RGB Backlight as this isn’t a Laptop dedicated to just Gaming, more about that in a bit. 

If you’re anything like us, you won’t miss that right Control Key.

If you’re anything like us, you won’t miss that right Control Key.

We do have a Fingerprint Reader, which for the first time that I have ever seen on a Laptop, is actually a Key on the Keyboard. You cannot physically press it, but it does replace the right-hand side Control Key. That’s a Key that I don’t think I ever use, I mostly use the left Control Key and I think most of you do the same. To be honest, I actually do like having the Fingerprint Reader here as opposed to on the top, built-into the Power Button. It just makes it so much easier to reach when I’m using the Trackpad and I’m in an App that has Fingerprint Support. 

Speaking of the Trackpad, we get a Glass one rather than the traditional Plastic that we see on a lot of Windows Laptops, we get full support for the Windows 10 gestures as well as Windows Precision Drivers. The Trackpad is also a single Button and it uses a ‘Diving Board’ mechanism, meaning that it gets more difficult to press the closer you are to the top.

Camera, Microphones & Speakers 

Check out the Video above to see & hear how these fair.

Check out the Video above to see & hear how these fair.

Moving on to the Camera, the Microphones and the Speakers. The Front Camera is positioned on the top, so no weird angles from having the Camera on the bottom Bezels, or even inside the Keyboard.

I’ll let you be the judge when it comes to the Camera & Speaker Quality and the Microphones, you can check that out in the video linked at the top. The Speakers themselves are powered by Bang & Olufsen audio.

Performance

So now that we’ve covered the Design, Display the Keyboard, Trackpad, Camera, Microphones and Speakers, let’s talk about my favourite section, the Performance. The model that we have comes with a 10th Generation Intel Core i7 10750H Processor. This is a Six-Core CPU with a turbo-boost of up to 5GHz. According to Intel, this offers up to 54% more FPS in Games, up to 44% better overall Performance compared to a 3 year old PC and up to two-times faster 4K Video & Rendering. 

It’s not a purpose-built Gaming Laptop, but it does a decent job of it

It’s not a purpose-built Gaming Laptop, but it does a decent job of it

GPU wise, we get the RTX 2060 Max-Q Edition with 6GB of GDDR6 Memory. This, in combination with 16GB of DDR4 2933MHz Memory and 1TB of NVMe Flash-Storage, make it a very powerful device for not just 4K Video Editing and 3D Modelling, but also Gaming. The 2060 isn’t really a 4K Gaming Card, so you wouldn’t be Gaming in 4K Resolution, however, you can easily play pretty much any modern game in 1080p on maxed out settings and get a very stable 60FPS or higher. In some games, you can even bump the Resolution to 1440p. In Fortnite for example, I can play on fully maxed out (Epic) settings and get a solid 90FPS in 1080p. If I bump the Resolution to around QHD, I still get 70FPS while still having everything on Epic settings. 

Since we have an RTX GPU, this Laptop is actually very good in terms of 3D Rendering. If you use software such as Keyshot 9, that support GPU Rendering, we’ve seen a noticeable improvement in rendering times, even coming from our 32-Core Rendering PC. This Laptop, thanks to its RTX GPU, can render faster than our dedicated Rendering PC using CPU Rendering. 

Overall, I would say that this Laptop is still suited more for creative professionals, rather than people who are just looking for a Gaming machine. Think of the HP Envy 15 as a Creative Laptop that can also game pretty well.

Battery Life

As with any PC of this variety, it is best to leave it plugged in to maximise Performance

As with any PC of this variety, it is best to leave it plugged in to maximise Performance

In terms of the Battery Life, HP promises up to 16.5 hours of battery on the HP Envy 15. Obviously, that does depend on how you intend to use it. The HP Envy does actually support Fast Charging, meaning that you can charge it to 50% in just 45 minutes, which is pretty impressive. Now, I do have to mention that if you do want to use this at its fullest potential, you need to have it plugged in as when you’re on the go, the RTX 2060 would just be too power-hungry, depending on on if it’s utilised at its max Performance. 

Value 

So in the end, who is the HP Envy 15 for and how much does it cost? Well, a similar spec’d model to our unit, that comes with the same i7 10750H Processor, RTX 2060 and 16GB of RAM, but 512GB of Storage rather than 1TB and an 4K IPS LCD Display rather than 4K OLED, costs around £1,800. I think that is pretty good considering that for this price, other Laptops don’t even come with a dedicated GPU at all, not even to mention a 4K Display.

Overall, if you’re a creative professional and you do Photo & Video Editing, 3D Modelling or 3D Rendering, I would definitely consider taking a look at the HP Envy 15 as it not only offers a stunning looking body, but also a stunning Display alongside some unrivalled Performance for its price.

The BEST TV (2020) - For PS5 & Xbox Series X!

The PS5 and the new Xbox Series X will both be out around November 2020, so now is a very good time to buy a new TV. This is pretty much the best one on the market, especially if you’re into Gaming.

Ok, so a bit of a background story first. My previous TV was an LG B7 OLED. This TV came out in 2017, hence the ‘7’, and it was the lowest-end OLED TV from LG, but that was fine because all of the other models still had the same OLED Panel and the same CPU. The only real difference was that the C7, E7 and W7 had a nicer Design and improved Speakers, that was it.

I bought this TV in mid-2018 for about £1,500, which was quite a good deal, and I’ve been very happy with it. I didn’t really plan to upgrade to the 2018 models as they were mostly the same. The 2019 models were using almost the same OLED Panel again and the 2020 models had some minor improvements, so I didn’t really see myself upgrading for a few more years.

Well, LG HQ actually got in touch and they’ve sent me the brand new LG CX, which just came out now, in 2020. Massive thanks to LG for sending this over. I have to say, it turns out that the CX is a massive upgrade over my B7 and here is why I genuinely believe that this TV is the best TV that money can buy, for the next-gen Consoles. 

4K OLED 

So, number one, this is a 4K OLED TV.

OLED is really the highest-end TV technology on the market right now. The only other technology that’s superior is microLED, but that’s still a few years away from being available for consumers. Samsung is indeed working on that Wall TV but until microLED becomes a real thing, OLED is the best.

Don’t be fooled by Samsungs ‘QLED’ Branding, OLED is definitely the superior technology.

Don’t be fooled by Samsungs ‘QLED’ Branding, OLED is definitely the superior technology.

Some of you might have heard of QLED, which is what Samsung calls their high-end TV’s. Spoiler though, QLED is still LCD, it is not OLED or anything like that. Essentially, on an LCD Display, the Pixels only provide the Colour and not the Brightness. This means that you would need a Backlight in order to be able to see anything on the screen. This Backlight not only makes the TV’s very thick, but it also means that when you want to display Black, the Backlight would still have to be fully on and would therefore look grey-ish, they wouldn’t be pure Black.

On OLED Displays, the Pixels provide both the Colour and the Brightness, so you can turn each of these 8 million Pixels off individually and get perfect Black Levels and an infinite Contrast. It’s the best picture quality that you can get right now. 

120Hz

Now, the second reason why this TV is so good for Gaming is that it supports 120Hz, meaning that it can display up to 120FPS in a game, which is something that both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will support.

A little bit of downgrade, but it makes almost zero difference.

A little bit of downgrade, but it makes almost zero difference.

There have been some TV’s, mostly OLED TV’s from LG before, which have also supported 120Hz. However those ones, like my B7, did not have HDMI 2.1, which meant that while Netflix content could run at 120Hz, all the inputs going into the TV were limited to 4K 60, rather than 4K 120 like we have now. Not only that, but the CX can do 10-bit at 4:4:4 Chroma, which is pretty nuts. However, this is actually a bit of a downgrade from the LG C9 from last year, which could also accept a 12-bit signal. This is because the HDMI Bandwidth has been downgraded from 48Gb/s to 40Gb/s.

My friend Vincent Theo from ‘HDTV test’ did a very detailed Review of the CX and talked about this more in-depth, so if you want to know what this all means, I highly recommend watching his content if you’re looking for the best TV Reviews on YouTube. Long story short, this won’t affect you at all, as 10-bit already displays over 1 billion colours compared to the usual 64 million colours on 8-bit Displays. The Panel is still a 10-bit Panel anyway, it’s just that having a 12-bit signal would have resulted in slightly better Gradients when it comes to Banding. A very minor thing, which I did want to point out. But no need to worry, the PS5 and the Xbox Series X will be fully utilised by using this TV.

Response Time 

Now, the next most important thing about a Gaming Monitor, or a TV, is the Response Time. This is the amount of time it takes for the Monitor to switch the Pixels from one state to another, after it receives an input.

This TV could easily be used as a Gaming Monitor, especially the smaller variants.

This TV could easily be used as a Gaming Monitor, especially the smaller variants.

Gamers prefer extremely quick Response Times, ideally 1ms. Unfortunately, TV’s have typically always had around 30-40ms and around 20ms for the very best TV’s on the market. Well, not anymore. The LG CX 2020 has a 1ms Response Time, on par with all the highest-end Gaming Monitors out there. Anything that I do on my Controller translates pretty much instantly to the TV, Modern Warfare (Warzone) feels like it’s had a massive upgrade. It feels incredibly responsive and it’s pretty much the same experience as playing on a high-end Gaming Monitor.

Not only that, but the CX supports both NVIDIA GSync and AMD Freesync, so if you decide to hook this up to a PC, you can actually use it as a Gaming Monitor. Since this is a massive OLED Panel, the Gaming experience would be even better, even when compared to a standard Gaming Monitor. LG does have a smaller 49” model, which is more suitable for PC Gamers as it’s smaller. If you care about a fast and competitive Gaming experience, the CX is the best TV on the market for this. 

HDR Performance 

Another important thing about any Gaming TV is the HDR Performance. 

The CX supports Dolby Vision, HDR 10, HLG and pretty much all the main HDR modes. But, thanks to the brand new Alpha 9 Gen 3 Processor, the Brightness of HDR Content, when in Game Mode, has been significantly improved. With my B7, HDR Gaming was pretty dim to the point where if I was playing anything during the day, I could barely see anything on the screen. But on the CX, the difference in HDR Performance is night and day. Even when in HDR Game Mode, the screen stays just as bright as when it is not in HDR Game Mode. In fact, it was so bright that I had to turn down the Brightness as it was bothering my eyes. 

This was probably the biggest improvement over my old B7.

This was probably the biggest improvement over my old B7.

Not only is the CX significantly brighter in HDR Game Mode, but we also have a new HDR option called ‘HGIG’. What this is, is a brand new HDR standard where the Games themselves send the HDR Metadata directly to the TV, through the Games Console. What this means is that you’ll get a perfect HDR image without having to calibrate the image, as it will always be calibrated as the Game Designers intended. There are only a few games that do support it but for the ones that do, such as Spider-Man and Modern Warfare, the results are incredible.

So, this is why this TV is perfect for the next-gen Consoles. You get a 4K OLED Display with a 120Hz Refresh Rate, 1ms Response Time, NVIDIA G-Sync & AMD FreeSync Support and this brand new HGIG HDR Standard, on top of an already bright HDR representation.

But, there are a few more other things that I really love about this TV.

Smart Home

For example, not only does it have an AI Voice Assistant, but it even allows you to set-up your Smart-Home Accessories and control them from there, with full support for the Google Assistant and Alexa. You have this massive digital hub where you can control your entire home, which is really cool.

AppleTV & AirPlay

The CX also supports both Apple AirPlay, which means that you can stream content to it directly from an Apple device, and an integrated version of the AppleTV App, meaning that there’s no need for you to buy a separate Apple TV Box. I haven’t even used my Apple TV at all, since I got this TV.

Magic Remote

Not something that you might normally think about for a TV, but it makes a huge difference.

Not something that you might normally think about for a TV, but it makes a huge difference.

Probably my favourite part about this TV, is LG’s Magic Remote. LG has had this for a few years now, you essentially get a Mouse Cursor that you can control by just waving the Remote in the air. It honestly works so well that now it’s simply a joy to navigate through the TV Menus. Even typing text with this Remote is incredible, it’s just like using a Mouse on a digital, on-screen Keyboard. The Remote itself also has dedicated Buttons for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which allow you to instantly access the Apps, there’s really no need for an AppleTV at all anymore. 

WebOS

Also, the UI on LG TV’s is just brilliant. You get this Navigation Bar on the bottom, which contains all of your Apps and you even get a dedicated App Store from where you can download even more. The catalogue of Apps isn’t that massive, but you can still find all of your most popular TV Streaming Services. 

Sound

The sound on this is very good and you can even enable AI Sound, which will dramatically improve the sound quality based on the content that you’re watching. Also, the TV Remote itself has a Microphone which can monitor the sound levels of the TV and adjust those based on that as well, pretty smart.

Design

Finally, you cannot talk about a modern TV without talking about its Design. The CX is basically all screen. There are no Bezels at all aside from the very slim screen border, but that’s it. It looks absolutely stunning. 

Out of the current range of OLED TV’s, the CX is the best value for money.

Out of the current range of OLED TV’s, the CX is the best value for money.

I also love the stand, which is made out of Machined Metal, it looks very sleek, premium and the TV itself is also crazy thin. It does get quite thick towards the bottom, as that’s where all the components are located, but I do still think that this is one of the best looking TV’s on the market. So there you go, my In-Depth Review of the brand new LG CX 2020. The TV which I consider to be the best for Gaming, in 2020.

Ok, but…why not get the BX which is less expensive? Well, the BX comes with a weaker Processor, which means that the HDR Processing won’t be as good on the BX, as it is on the CX. All of the higher-end models like the EX or the WX still have the same image quality and processing power as the CX, it’s just that those are wall mounted. 

There’s honestly nothing negative that I can see about this TV, aside from the price. It’s quite expensive but OLED TV’s have dropped in price over the years. Again, massive thanks to LG for sending over this amazing TV!