my upgrades:
4GB RAM
460 7200RPM Harddrive
50GB SSD
core i5 2nd gen turbo boost
Nvidia Geforce 630 1GB
I try to take care of by turning it off every 1-2 days, and use high security. The laptop still turns on and off quickly. I have had several updates, and right now it seems I am not guaranteed to have the laptop to upgrade to windows 8.
Pro: small, light weight, quiet, and doesn't get heat up. It has a beautiful smooth look to it. Has a pretty loud speaker.
Cons: I guess it's pretty expected from customization. A lot of the common features easily crash. I can barely look at pictures with this laptop.
The Nvidia Geforce 420M 1GB doesn't seem to do anything more compare to my old Toshiba with no dedicated graphics card.
What annoys me the most is the keyboard. the mouse is constantly interfering with what I type. Even now, whenever my hand hoovers over the mouse pad, the typing tool gets navigated to a different location, so I have to keep putting it back to where I am typing (if you have to write a lot, this keypad will annoy the heck out of you). I am in pharmacy school, and it requires fast note taking in class, it is really annoying when the mouse goes all over the places which I have to make the mouse to come back to the right place and miss many important things professors talk about. One trick I now use is to just turn off the mouse pad, however that still causes inconvenience.
Another thing that bother's me is the up and down arrow key. The two of them are the size of 1 key, and it's ridiculously hard to get use to (which I still haven't). The sound bottom doesn't work sometimes no matter how you try to press the volume up/down, though I can live with that.
The laptop doesn't fold that far flat, so when I try to play bass, I'd have to bent down a lot to see the screen.
The battery life has decreased significantly it seems since the time of purchase. Even though I try to use the battery life whenever I can and fully charge it before unplugging. It has froze on my once, which I am not so happy about considered it is only 1 month old.
6-22-2013 update:
The battery completely died on me in less than a year, it shows that it has 0% and does not charge. So I performed a diagnosis on "HP Support Assistant" for the battery and got an error code. Then I made a call to 800-HP invent (or 800-474-6836), fortunately the laptop is still under warranty, I was able to get a free battery ($120 worth) to be shipped to me soon.
9-14-2013 update:
After 1 year of normal use in professional school (without those gaming or photoshop stuff), this lap top is getting extremely annoying. Not only it turns on or wakes up from hibernate mode with constant beep sound every time, it also has a sticky key on the down bottom, making me unable to read any of my documents! My last HP from 8 years ago was so good to me, but this terrible experience have made me never want to chose HP again.
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My old toshiba protege(r830) died and I recieved my money back from squaretrade.I had a hp ultrabook envy4 but it wasn't user upgradeable. I returned it and I recieved this inside.
This is my 1st HP laptop and so far the quality is great.
1) Upgradeable to 16gb ram(User Serviceable). This is great for virtual machine testing.
2) User serviceable bays for battery and hard drive.
3) Fast processor and speedy performance.
4) Great screen and the webcam works well.
5) Nice keyboard with good feedback.
Cons:
1) Heavy. at 4.78 lbs. My toshiba was 3.8lbs
2) I wish I didn't have the dvd drive which adds to the weight.
3) Touchpad always gets dirty really easy.
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I bought this computer for my college classes, and it has exceeded my expectations. Powers on and off quickly, the sound and video quality are great, there's lots of space for my college assignments and programs, and the graphics card is good enough to run the games I enjoy with ease. The battery life fluctuates between 5 and 7 hours, but that's a small complaint. All things considered,I am thoroughly satisfied with the product, and will definitely buy another HP computer in the future.Honest reviews on HP Envy dv4-5220us 14-Inch Laptop
Purchased this little computer at the end of December 2012 for a fantastic price at Amazon. Smooth transaction and speedy delivery. Had it charging up and using it straight from the box. No issues, very quiet and stays extremely cool even if on for long periods of time. Not heavy, weighs exactly 5 pounds on the bathroom scale. I had a small Acer netbook prior to this and my Envy is just as portable and quite attractive as well. It does come with a CD burner which was not listed in the product details. Needed to call Amazon to confirm this. The keys feel fine to me, as there was one review that stated the opposite. It is fast, the screen displays bright and clear graphics. Windows 8 takes a while to get used to but I like it so far, especially the "app" format. All kinds of ports (3 USB) and card reader. Holds a charge for a very long time. Been off the charger all day and still has 7+ hours on it. I searched for a long time to find a lightweight computer with a decent speed and memory that could be my workhorse, as I am using this mainly for business. This little gem has it all! Totally satisfied!!Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for HP Envy dv4-5220us 14-Inch Laptop
I purchased a dm4 customized from HP's website, with an Intel Core i3-2350 and 6 GB of RAM, a little over a year ago. As a student on a budget and someone whose last HP computer lasted five years with no issues, it was basically my six-hundred dollar answer to the looming shiny drop-shadow of the Macbook. The beats audio took me a little while to get used to--it sounded kind of off at first--but once it became familiar, I had no issues with it. You can turn beats on and off if you want to (fn + b), and the speakers' sound without it is very tinny and not nearly as good, so that helps endear it to you too. I also have a light-up keyboard, which I thought would be a novelty, but is actually incredibly useful and worth the $25. It makes typing in the dark so, so much easier. My only complaint is it's a straight on-off function, with no changeable degrees of brightness. One point for the Mac.In order to avoid rambling, I think I'll break this up:
Build: Compared to my last monolith of a computer, the dm4 Pavilion is light and portable, although it doesn't feel as sturdy as some of the other computers out there. This is mostly because, despite the good-looking brushed metal on the back and body, it's more or less lined with plastic, and kind of crunchy to open and close. I would never describe this as a computer I wasn't afraid of breaking. Actually, just a couple days after I got it, I bumped the edge of it into something, and there's now a permanent dent in the silver plastic lining. Very attractive. But it's held together after a year of use and having a couple liquids spilled on it, so it gets points there. It's pretty solid overall.
Speaking of the brushed metal, I can tell you that after a couple months of steady use, it starts wearing to a lighter color where your hands rest. I don't mind this, but it's pretty visible. And one of the things I reliably do not like about HP computers is the finish they use on the backs; this thing holds fingerprints like a menace. If you care about appearance like I do, you'll be cleaning it a lot. And, again, the plastic of the top part gets scratched up and looks flimsy next to the metal itself.
And this may just be my computer, but one thing I've always had issues with is the CD tray. It pops open a lot when you don't want it to just because of how you're holding the computer, and mine is really hard to close again. It gets caught on itself, almost, and I have gotten really annoyed with it before.
Oh, and lately the fan will catch on something and start buzzing really loudly. And I've had the battery randomly pop out once or twice for no reason.
Okay, in short, I am very fond of my computer, but its construction feels a little on the cheap and careless side.
Keyboard: This is my first computer with chicklet keys, and I like them a lot. I find them really easy to type on, and I love how they don't hold dirt the way an older keyboard would. There are F-keys to control the volume of your speakers and brightness of the screen, which is nice, except mine stop working sometimes. Especially the audio controls--it will bring up the "I'm changing the volume!" wheel, but it won't actually do anything until I open up the volume control in the bottom right corner and do it myself.
I personally really like the touchpad, and find it appropriately responsive. I like the slightly rough texture it has, and it almost always picks up on my finger flicks to scroll, enlarge something, etc. The buttons have a pretty loud click when you hit them, but that's about it. I like that they're separate from the touchpad itself, and I like that they're even and in a place that's easy to use and intuitive under my hands.
Screen/Lighting: Now, I'm not a graphics kid, so I'll have little to say about the color quality and pixel quality other than it's good enough for me. I can say for sure that it isn't as vibrant and beautiful as the colors on a Mac, but it serves. Having easily adjustable brightness is always nice, because I tend to have my screen a lot darker than most people. And my screen has survived getting stepped on by a full-grown Great Dane and didn't crack or break, so kudos to it there.
Performance: When I first got this computer, it was hella fast, especially compared to my old one. And, even now, it opens things pretty quickly and pretty reliably. It's starting to get slow after reboots, but I think this is inevitable. I have Adobe Photoshop 7.0, and I will say that my computer usually freezes for a moment or two while opening it, which it didn't do in the beginning. Still, it's serving me very well thus far.
I know I don't have a fantastic graphics card and shouldn't be too uppity about what my computer can and can't do in terms of video games, but I've found it frustratingly slow at some fairly low-demand games. It lags hard on Minecraft unless I'm on the HP Recommended power plan and have my rendering set to Short in the game. I guess the recommendation here is be sure you know what you want to do with this computer, and make sure you can do it based on what you put in and what kind of graphics card you're willing to buy. Mine gets a little laggy on bad days if I have too many things open at once.
The battery life has been really good to me so far on this thing, to the point where, over winter break at my parents' house, I could come downstairs with it fully charged in the morning and not have to go plug it in until around five or six at night. Lately, I think it's finally puttering out a little. If I leave and take it for a 9 AM class, on lowest brightness settings and power saver battery mode, it's dying out on me by about 2 PM. But hey, I think it's done pretty well for how long I've had it!
Gimmicks: No matter what they say about the webcam, it's not very good. Highly pixelated, weird lighting, stupid added effects, take a long time to load, the whole nine yards. I mean, it can take a picture or record a video, and if you want it to Skype with it can hold its own, but it's by no means fantastic, especially in low light. The sound when you record isn't bad, at least; it's pretty human.
HP in general has a really bad habit of filling your computer with dumb things you do not need, and this one is no exception. On start-up it automatically gives you HP Assistant, a bunch of windows of stuff, and other things that don't do much for me but take up space, and a while ago I did a major re-haul and uninstalled a ton of what HP started me with. I haven't missed any of it. If you know what you're doing with computers, you'll probably want to do the same. I've also never, ever had a reason to use QuickWeb, although the idea behind it is nice, I guess.
Overall: My computer serves me well, and I'm very attached to it. My daily computer needs mostly consist of word processing, internet browsing, gaming, and painting/designing, and the Pavilion dm4 has held up on all of these counts. If you don't want a super intensive monster computer that can do everything, I still think this guy is a good choice. Just remember it comes a little cheap for a reason and may be flimsier than you want it to be.
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