HP Envy Sleekbook 6-1126sa review

The 15.6-inch display defines the form factor of the machine, and to some degree it defines the function as well. Measuring 37.4 x 25.28 x 1.98cm (14.72 x 9.95 x 0.78 inches) and weighing 2.15kg (4.48lbs), a laptop this big requires a little more forethought than something you simply drop into your bag as you head out.

On the positive side, the HP Envy Sleekbook 6-1126sa does a far better job of handling media than a smaller, more nimble laptop might. And this is something that HP has picked up on, giving the system the Beats Audio treatment, or in other words installing a pair of speakers and a subwoofer into the system's tight frame.

We're not entirely convinced that this takes the computer into a different realm of audio greatness, but it does a fine turn of giving impact to your movie soundtracks and music.

We're not sure you'll want to throw away your headphones quite yet, since laptops do tend to be used in more social locations, but it does give you options when watching films in private.

The rest of the specification hides no great surprises, neither particularly good nor bad. Alongside the aforementioned AMD A6-4455M APU you'll find 4GB of DDR3 RAM, which is pretty much a bare minimum these days, and a 500GB traditional hard drive.

We'll admit that having been won over by SSDs, particularly in laptops, it is difficult to go back to these slow platter spinners, but at this price the money that gets you the 500GB 5,400rpm drive here wouldn't stretch to a fifth of that capacity in SSD terms.

There are times when this lack of speed shows, particularly and unfortunately, when you first use the PC, but overall the amount of space on offer just about outweighs the lack of speed.

A 7,200rpm drive would have been better, and importantly faster, but again it would have added to the cost, pushing it over the £500 (around US$790/AU$757) mark.

One of the reasons for using the AMD A6-A4455M APU is the access to the 7500G graphics core, which means you don't need discrete graphics.

This doesn't mean you're missing out on the feature list front, though, with the HP Envy Sleekbook 6-1126sa managing to offer DirectX 11 support, as used by the latest games. And 512MB of video RAM gives plenty of space too.

There's plenty on offer in terms of ports and expansion too, including HDMI, a single USB 2.0 port and two USB 3.0 ports.

You will of course find 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support as standard, with a collapsable Gigabit Ethernet port providing faster wired access when you need it.