I've had this laptop for about 3 months, and I give it a solid 4 stars. Here's why:
Pros:
— The Screen. The 4K OLED touch screen is magnificent with incredible detail, great responsiveness, and very vivid colors and deep blacks. It truly was amazing to look at and use for the first time. It also seems to have a short response time for gaming even though I couldn't find a number value for it online.
— The Potential for Productivity. This laptop is a joy to type on as the keyboard feels great and feels very tactile (has backlight as well), the trackpad is quite wide (though isn't as tall as I'd like, but using a mouse instantly fixes this issue), the laptop hinge is great even by 2-in-1 standards, and the included pen works well on the touch screen with great responsiveness and (pen) battery life. My main gripe is the 16:9 screen aspect ratio.
— Overall Design of the Laptop. The gem-cut design makes it look one-of-a-kind and allows for some nice feats of engineering, such as the power button being located on the top-left corner of the laptop so it's accessible even in tablet-mode as well as a Thunderbolt 3 Port being accessible on the top-right corner so the USB-C cable will naturally be pointed in a direction away from the laptop and out of the way of any wired mice. I love the matte finish and color scheme (rose gold/matte black {matches my Sony WH-1000XM4's}) and the hinge is very sturdy, even after 3 months of use.
— Unlock Options. This laptop has Windows Hello facial recognition as well as an integrated fingerprint scanner, allowing for great versatility in how you'd like to unlock your laptop.
Cons:
— Battery Life. For me, I've struggled to get more than 5 to 6 hours of light use at medium brightness from this laptop without having to plug it up. It probably has to do with the laptop powering it's beautiful 4K OLED touch screen display, but nonetheless, this is a problem for people on-the-go like myself.
— GPU Selection at time of Purchase. I feel as if by having an option to purchase this laptop with a mid-tier NVIDIA GPU that it was trying to appeal to gamers. It can be a struggle to maintain 60 to 70 FPS while playing new game titles at mid-tier settings at times, and I've noticed the performance of the laptop drops SIGNIFICANTLY once the battery goes below about 40% to where my FPS will spike drastically. Not sure exactly why it does this. If you're going to give me the option to include a decent GPU in the laptop and it be quite heavy already, why not let me shove a 20-series NVIDIA GPU into it and live with the tiny bit more weight for a better gaming experience? Side note: I notice tons of screen-tearing when I am gaming, but this may be as a result of some settings I haven't tweaked correctly. Not sure.
— Weight. If you are trying to market this laptop to on-the-go workers by day and gamers by night, this system can't seem to make up its mind about what it'd like to be. I feel it is too heavy to be a practical to replace tablets for some people while the GPU in the laptop is unable to compete with most gaming laptops for performance - even ones that can lie flat, but maybe not go fully convertible. It is an OK gaming laptop and an OK 2-in-1, but not exemplary at either just because of the weight and lack of GPU options and performance.
In-Betweens:
— Port Selection. I am happy about having a full HDMI port as well as two Thunderbolt 3 ports, but the barrel charging port should have been weeded out this generation and replaced with another Thunderbolt 3 port or another USB-A port - maybe even a DisplayPort. This is made up for with the SIM Card reader and Hardware Camera Kill-Switch (!!!).
— Thunderbolt 3 Port Issues. I am currently building a setup with external monitors, and this laptop's Thunderbolt ports seem to be giving not only myself but lots of other users huge issues when trying to use them for display-out purposes. After months of researching, somebody finally posted a solution to my issue on an HP Support thread in the past 24 hours which fixed my issue and my setup. This may be a sign of bad software or some inconsistent ports, but either way, this is something that should be noted.
Final Thoughts:
I feel this laptop is good at everything but not particularly great at anything besides watching movies on it's gorgeous display. It is an OK gaming laptop, a pretty good tablet replacement besides it being QUITE heavy (and I'm being kind), and it's an alright productivity laptop but it's battery life is inconsistent at best and the 16:9 screen ratio isn't the best for doing real work. If you're looking for an on-the-go laptop/tablet for productivity and/or school, I'd look at Microsoft's Surface lineups. If you're looking for a gaming laptop, this is not where you should be looking. If you want something somewhere in the middle and NEED your laptop to be convertible and pen-compatible, then you may want to look at this x360.
Regardless, I feel the price is too high for this laptop under any circumstances, and if you are looking at buying this laptop, consider open-box or wait for a decent sale (or do both, like I did).