IT'S HERE!! IT'S F**KING HERE!!!

So yes, my new laptop is finally here and as you can probably tell; I'm a little excited.

But, you're probably thinking "dude, I thought you were getting a kick ass gaming PC?" and you'd be right in thinking that, if we'd spoke before. Which is unlikely.

However, for reasons outside of PvP, I had decided to go down the laptop route instead of the desktop, for practical and space reasons. So there, now you know, Deal with it.

So what's the down-lo Home Fry? 

I went with the latest HP Envy 17 (although there is a slight upgrade available, exactly the same specs, only with a touchscreen) and for the handsome some of £1199, you get a laptop with Windows 8 that can really stand tall with the big wigs of the desktop world, but before we delve into the specs, let's take a look at the actual bloody thing.

 The most obvious thing about the Envy, is that it blatantly looks like a MacBook Pro; which is no bad thing, but means it does loose some kudos in the originality department. Shameless design aside, the Envy does look incredibly sleek. With a pretty slim footprint at 420 x 30 x 274mm it's no couch potato, whilst not feeling cheap by any means. A full size Chiclet keyboard, with matte black keys -- that are all also backlit at the touch of a button -- are all placed and spaced out exceptionally well. I do have a soft spot for Chiclet keys, but the keyboard on this is very, very nice to type on. Which, considering typing is a big part of my life, is always a good thing.

Moving on,  you'll notice there's a huge trackpad at the bottom, with recessed left and right clicks that are embedded at the bottom left and right. The trackpad also has multi-touch gestures, so pinch-to-zoom, two finger scrolling etc are all on board. 

To the left of the trackpad, is a fingerprint scanner for, well, fingerprint scanning. You can use this to sign into Windows 8, as well as set it up for signing into other services.

At the top left you have the power button, whilst the top right houses a little Beats (by Dr Dre) logo. 

Yes, the Envy has Beats Audio, with 4x Speakers and x2 Triple Bass Reflex subwoofers, which, sound absolutely brilliant. It will by no means take the place of any dedicated home theatre set-ups, but on a laptop, this is great sound set-up.

Now, onto that generous 17" screen.  It's a stunning full HD 1920 x 1080 affair, that really looks sublime. Movies, games and even web browsing all look stunning, and even if you have a TV in your bedroom, the screen of the Envy is still perfect for snuggling up in bed to watch a film. If you really must watch a film on your massive TV in the lounge, then why not plus in the Envy via HDMI. Success!

Port wise, you have,  as stated above, 1x HDMI for plugging into a TV or monitor, as well as 4 USB 3.0 ports, headphone 3.5mm jack, ethernet, card reader and a SuperMulti DVD±R/RW with double layer support optical drive.

There's also Bluetooth 4.0 and Wifi running at 802.11b/g/n with WiDi (Wireless Display and Intel).

With all that out the way, the bigger picture here, is what the fudge can the Envy do?

Well, a lot actually. So, I have made a handy little chart, just for your eyes.

Processor

Intel® Core™ i7-4700MQ Processor 

(2.4 GHz, 3.4 GHz with TurboBoost, 6 MB cache)

Storage

1 TB HDD, 5400 rpm

Performance:

RAM

12 GB DDR3 

Graphics Card

NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M

Graphics Card Memory

2GB

So, for a laptop, that's not bad going in the slightest, and just to show the specs in a gaming light, these are the results of a couple of demanding PC games;  the upcoming shooter Titanfall, and as ever, the beautiful Skyrim.

Skyrim

Titanfall

Not too shabby for a laptop!

As I use the Envy, I shall update this post with my findings, but until then, check out PvP for more goodies than you can shake a lemming at.

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