Is HP ENVY 14 with 11th gen i7 + RTX 3050 a good laptop?

[Axerys]

Hi guys,

 

I've been thinking of getting a new laptop. I have an opportunity of getting a HP ENVY 14 with 11th gen Core i7 CPU and RTX 3050 for a good price; however I couldn't find any reviews of it, only the version with 1650 Ti and I'm a little bit concerned about the thermals and possible thermal throttling.

 

I wanna ask if any of you have this laptop, and can recommend it, or if you can recommend some other laptop in that price range.

 

I use my laptop for programming (C++, TIA Portal), some light gaming (MC, Space Engineers), video editing in Blender, writing and editing documents (Word, Latex), and some other stuff... The ability to run a Linux (or Windows 10) VM together with 1 or 2 IDEs and Firefox with 10 - 20 tabs is mandatory.

Also, because some of the software I use does not support scaling, the display resolution can be no higher than Full HD or its equivalent.

 

I would like to have a 16:10 display (14 - 15.6" in size) and Thunderbolt connector. As someone coming from a ThinkPad laptop, keyboard is also a very important aspect to me.

 

Thank you for your advices.

[jaslion]

The 1650ti version already overheated a lot the more powerfull 3050 one will do worse.

 

Battery life will also be pretty meh due to it being an 11th gen chip.

 

Whats the price for the envy?

[Axerys]

At current exchange rate, around 1300 USD. With all my requirements considered, this is, on paper, the most powerful laptop I can in my country get for that money. What I am interested in is its real world performance.

[GamerDude]

On 8/16/2022 at 3:17 AM, Axerys said:

At current exchange rate, around 1300 USD. With all my requirements considered, this is, on paper, the most powerful laptop I can in my country get for that money. What I am interested in is its real world performance.

Any chance to snag or is there a market for used laptops with warranty? I'd recently gotten a Lenovo Legion 5 Pro (2560x1600 res) with 23 months (then) of Premium Care warranty left. Scored it for ~1450USD (local $ to USD). The warranty is still good, I know 'cause I called them up due to very high temps on my CPU/GPU, and they'd sent a technician over. He did not simply clear the fans (which were choked with dust, I think he believed the fans was not functioning well or damaged, so he went ahead and replaced the entire cooling assembly:

Before -

After -

 

Let me tell you, I was one who's never believed that gaming on laptops would be good, but I've changed my mind, the laptop handles everything I've thrown at it - Serious Sam 4, Siberian Mayhem, Metro Exodus PC Enhanced, COD MW2 Campaign Remastered - with ease. So now a believer, even bought a Keychron K2 v2 + Razer Basilisk X Hyperspead + 2 pairs of USB powered speakers so that I can game when I travel to Canada and Thailand. I simply love this new portable gaming setup, the laptop is sitting on a CoolerMaster laptop cooling pad -

 

Edit - IF you wanna enjoy gaming on a laptop, my advice is look for one with at least 16GB RAM, a decent AMD Ryzen or Intel CPU (6C/12T or 8C/16T) and an RTX 3060 or 6600M (or higher). The RX 6600M is generally faster than the mobile RTX 3050 Ti (but a fair bit slower than the RTX 3060, which competes with the RX 6700M I guess), with the latter needing DLSS to either beat it or close the gap.