HP Envy 14

Equally at home playing games and films as it is tackling a day's work, this is atop-quality offering

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SCORE

PRICE £1,167 (£1,400 inc VAT) from hp.com

The HP Envy range has been a regular on the PC Pro A List, often offering amazing quality for the money. With a starting price of £1,100, the latest iteration of the Envy 14 range falls short of that description, but if you're after a powerful machine with luxury trimmings, then read on.

Let's start with the power on offer. Our test system included a Core 17-1165G7, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, and discrete GeForce GTX 1050 Ti graphics. As such, it's no surprise to see it near the top of every speed-test graph (see p92). If you're after firepower, this is a superb choice.

It even qualifies as a gaming laptop of sorts thanks to that GeForce chip, which is based on Nvidia's older GTX technology (so not RTX with its raytracing abilities) and meant the Envy actually beat the Asus TUF Dash in Dirt: Showdown at 1080p. Admittedly, the newer and more technically demanding Metro: Exodus put the Envy back in its box, scoring 31fps at 1080p compared to 73fps for the Asus.