HP Envy 17 vs Dell Inspiron 17 (7706): Which One is For You?

• Share on Facebook
• Tweet it
• Share on Reddit
• Pin it

This is the comparison review of HP Envy 17 against Dell Inspiron 17 7706 laptops. Both are 17-inch laptops but the Inspiron 7706 is a convertible one. Let’s see which one is better for you considering the features, performance, and also price range.

BUY NOW	BUY NOW
Dell Envy 17	Dell Inspiron 17 (7706)
PROS	PROS
Good design and build quality. Decent performance.	Good battery life. Sharp and vivid display.
CONS	CONS
Poor battery life.	Still, 16:9 format

SPECIFICATIONS

INTRODUCTION:

This is the comparison of 17-inch laptops which are HP Envy 17 and Dell Inspiron 17 7706. If you thinking about buying a laptop for use in-home or office or any other casual works, the HP Envy line of laptops offers a nice balance between price and performance. If you’re looking to buy a laptop and also a tablet, then you can take a look at Inspiron 7706 2-in-1 laptop. It serves as a laptop and when it’s folded, it serves as a tablet. Let’s get into the detailed review.

DESIGN & BUILD:

HP Envy 17

My first impression right out of the box was, it’s big but it’s not clunky. It looks and feels high-end with a premium modern design. You can get this laptop in natural silver, but I wanted something a little bit more unique. This is Nightfall Black with Modern Walnut which looks stunning. It’s an all-metal chassis with this authentic wood palm rest. You can see and feel that natural wood grain. It’s just a classic combo of black and walnut. You might expect it to feel rough or even uncomfortable to use, but it’s not. It feels smooth and really refined. The trackpad doesn’t suffer at all and gestures work just fine.

I don’t think anyone expects a 17-inch laptop to be lightweight, so the 6.02 pounds was no surprise to me. I imagine most people buying this laptop want it for use in a family setting or office setting placed on a desk or table. It feels like it’ll hold up to everyday long-term use. According to HP, this wood design was formulated not to splinter or crack. The hinge isn’t a 360-degree version, but it feels rigid and sturdy with no creaks. I imagine durability won’t be an issue if I base it on my previous experience with HP laptops.

The keyboard is black with a white backlight. The usual silver keys with white backlighting aren’t my favorite combination and I find these much easier to view in different lighting environments. It’s full-size with a number pad, which is another reason to choose a 17-inch laptop. It’s a comfortable keyboard with well-spaced keys and good key travel. You get good tactile feedback. I find it to be better than the keyboard on the MacBook Pro and not as good as the one on the ThinkPad workstation. Overall, it’s big, it’s good and it’s not cramped for long typing sessions. The wood trackpad feels smooth and it’s a good size. It’s using precision drivers and has been responsive with no hiccups thus far.

Dell Inspiron 17 7706

One of the cool features of this laptop is, of course, it says on its name, 2-in-1. When you don’t want to use it as a laptop, it serves as a tablet by just folding it down. It’s pretty slim. When it’s compared to other laptops, it’s pretty slim. If you compare it with my older laptop which is 15.6 inches only, the body of the older laptop is thicker and wider than this laptop. The only difference is the length, the length is about a quarter-inch more on this one and it’s like double the size of the new laptop.

The keyboard is backlit. There are two options in backlit. You can set these options directly from the keyboard.

DISPLAY:

HP Envy 17

The display is big and it’s gorgeous. This is a 17.3-inch 60 Hertz IPS display with a resolution of 3840 by 2160 or 4K. I almost always opt for the 4K screen when configuring a laptop for my own use, but you can get this machine with 1920 by 1080 display instead and that will definitely help save some battery life. This is a touchscreen, and we get nice vibrant colors, good contrast, and deep blacks. As far as brightness goes, it measured in right below 400 nits which aren’t anything to get excited about, but indoors, I found it to be more than adequate even with this glossy finish. You’re not going to be able to compete with direct sunlight, so keep that in mind if you plan to use this outside.

At 100% sRGB, it’s not just pretty, but it’s also accurate. If you’re a content creator working in Photoshop, Lightroom, or even Premiere Pro, you should be happy with the image results here. With a screen this large, I think entertainment will be a big part of the daily use of this laptop. Everything looks good on this Envy 17. If I had to nitpick and find something to complain about, I would like even slimmer bezels to really get that immersive viewing experience.

Dell Inspiron 17 7706

The screen is a 4K 17 inch IPS display which is pretty sharp. The touch response is pretty awesome. Now, when you go to dark mode, it goes pretty dark but if you’re working in a dark environment, it not going to disturb anyone but when you want more light, it’s pretty bright. This display is in 16:9 format which is not the great one but it is also one of the good formats to use in laptop mode. The color gamut of this screen is also great. It has 100% sRGB, so the colors are vibrant and the pictures look sharp. As this has a QHD display option, this will be beneficial for creative users and for video editing.

FEATURES:

HP Envy 17

This review unit is running the 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 with the Nvidia MX450 GPU. There’s 16 GB of DDR4 Ram, a 512 GB NVMe SSD along with 32 GB of Intel Optane Memory. Now, if you were looking at the Envy 15 and wondering if this is just a bigger version of that laptop, it is not. One key difference to make note of is the much more powerful dedicated graphics card in the Envy 15. If you plan to do more than just a little occasional gaming, you will definitely appreciate the RTX 2060 Max-Q on that laptop. We only get the MX450 here. Rounding out the specs, we do have Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 on board, so connectivity is fast and file transfer speeds are great.

On the right, we have the power port, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and the full-size SD card reader, which I always prefer over the micro-SD card slot. Moving to the left side, there’s another USB 3.2 Type-A port that can charge other devices even while the laptop is asleep, an HDMI 2.0 port, the headphone microphone combo jack, and a USB 3.2 Type C port capable of power delivery, data transfer and display out. Now, this USB C port is not Thunderbolt 3 or 4. This port selection is more than adequate for most consumers I feel this machine is targeted to and other than the lack of Thunderbolt support for my workflow, I have no complaints.

Above the display, there’s the 720P webcam. I think a lot more people are using a webcam in current times and this one is good enough for Zoom calls, Google Meets, and whatever video chats you need to be a part of. It has a camera shutter for privacy and an integrated dual array microphone, so your voice comes through loud and clear. It’s a laptop webcam with the normal level of quality and no Windows Hello technology, so nothing spectacular. For a secure way to log into the laptop, you can use the fingerprint reader here on the keyboard. In my testing, it’s been accurate and fast enough.

The speakers on this machine sound really good. It’s a dual speaker system by Bang and Olufsen. They have great clarity and good bass response. Using these in a central location for media consumption should be an overall pleasant experience. Watching Netflix, YouTube videos or just listening to music, this gets the job done.

Dell Inspiron 17 7706

One of the highlighted features of this laptop is it does have the newest 11th generation Intel Core i7 chip. This one does have 16 GB of Ram, it has an Intel Optane memory of 32 GB with 512 GB solid-state storage that’s pretty awesome.

The port on the left sides are including a power button, HDMI, then there’s a USB 3.2, and there’s a Thunderbolt 4 with power delivery and display port, so basically you can charge your laptop with this and if you do not want to carry a charger with you, you can charge with any USB Type-C. On the right side, there’s an SD card slot or micro SD, USB 3.2, and your audio jack with a microphone as well as headphones.

It does have a fingerprint scanner which is pretty quick. It has a usual 720p webcam which works decently. It also has stereo speakers by Maxx Audio. The sound quality of these speakers is pretty good but you should use headphones for gaming and other things like that.

PERFORMANCE:

HP Envy 17

A pretty laptop is nothing if the performance falls apart. This HP Envy 17 with the 11th Gen Intel Core i7 CPU and Nvidia MX450 GPU holds up really well. I did some benchmarks, in Cinebench it got around 4955 scores in multi-core performance, in Geekbench 5 CUDA it got around 28885 scores, in 3D Mark Spy it got around 1400 scores, and lastly in PC Mark 10, it got 5010. In my real-world use, this laptop performed well in all the tasks I threw at it. Now, this isn’t a video editing workhorse or a gaming laptop but for everyday tasks, virtual academy, using the Microsoft Suite of applications, editing photos, and just browsing the web, this is a capable and affordable machine.

Just because there isn’t an RTX graphics card inside doesn’t mean you can’t game on the Envy 17. On low settings in 1080P, we got some decent framerates. I found this laptop to be pretty versatile and it should be a great fit for a mobile office machine if you don’t mind the weight.

Thermal performance has been good, and throttling is kept to a minimum with the dual fans inside. Tiger Lake is built to be more efficient and I think it works really well in this larger chassis. It never got uncomfortable to the touch in hand or on my lap. The fans didn’t sound too loud.

Dell Inspiron 17 7706

One of the unique features of this laptop is thermal management. It does have four options for how you want to keep your laptop depending on how you really want it. In the first one, it will optimize and this is the standard setting for a cooling fan and processor heat management, this setting is a balance of performance, noise, and temperature. Basically, if you are using something which consumes your CPU more like video editing, in that case, because of the high performance, your CPU becomes hot, it will lower down the performance and speed up the fan. The second is just cool mode, it will lower down the performance of the CPU. The third one is a quiet mode, in this one the processor and cooling fan speed is adjusted to reduce fan noise. This may mean a higher system surface temperature and reduced performance. The fourth one is ultra performance. In this one, processor and cooling fan speed is increased for more performance. This may mean higher surface temperature and more noise but you can get rid of this by just adding a cooling pad to your laptop. Booting time on this laptop is pretty fast.

BATTERY:

HP Envy 17

It’s a big laptop with a big screen. I usually get around 4 hours of battery life, but I do believe that if you opt for the Full HD panel instead of this 4K screen, you should get around 5 hours. It’s a 55-watt hour battery and it charges with a 65-watt power adapter. You can go from 0 to 50% in about 45 minutes. It’s a long enough run time for my needs since this has been a mostly stationary laptop.

Dell Inspiron 17 7706

This has a decent-sized battery of 4-cell 68 WHr battery. We can get around 8 hours of battery life in this Inspiron 7706 laptop. 

WHICH TO BUY?

The Envy 17 is a nice large laptop that should meet the needs of a lot of consumers that don’t need the great graphics on the market. For a student or working from home, this is an easy recommendation. The design is just gorgeous and premium, the performance is good, the speakers are good, the display is color accurate and beautiful. I can get work done plus do a little gaming if I want to. The Inspiron 17 7706 is a good laptop if you want a bigger desktop replacement and also it works as a tablet, so that will be an added benefit for you all. This Inspiron 17 7706 is pricier than the HP Envy 17 but it also gives a lot better things.

If you want a budget 17-inch laptop with a good performance, then HP Envy 17 will be better. If you have a good budget then you can also choose Inspiron 17 as it is a convertible laptop, which could also be a beneficiary.

Arya

Hello! I'm Surendar Arya, a passionate tech writer from Uttar Pradesh, India. I'm a freelance contributor to the tech blog - The World's Best And Worst. My enthusiasm for technology drives me to explore the latest trends and innovations in the field. I take immense pleasure in guiding individuals on how to leverage technology for their benefit, making their lives easier and more efficient.