HP - ENVY x360 2-in-1 13.3" Touchscreen Laptop - Intel Evo Platform - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - 512GB SSD - Pale Gold

Alright ladies and gents I had recently acquired a new HP laptop and I wanted to take the time to write a review for it. I'll get right down to business. Let us start off with my initial thoughts. For anyone who has been keeping an eye on the competition with team blue & team red we know what has been happening as of late so there isn't a need to fan those flames. With one of HP latest releases this Envy is solid all around and I'll explain in detail as we delver further into the review. Upon opening the box you don't get a fancy experience or anything like that but that is alright because it is the product itself that has to impress me not the box. The fact that HP decided to create a different colored laptop I can certainly appreciate that it is certainly a nice shade of gold but nothing flashy because it still has that metal looking finish to it. It is nice to see HP offer something other than the default gunmetal grey/silver. :::Build Quality::: The new Envy 13 has a nice bit of heft to it and feels solid in the hand. When you first open the laptop the hinge feels sturdy and solid and there is no wobble or creaking noises. That is a plus because this isn't a poorly built product. I do not know if the correct term is all in one but the hinge rotates fully so it can be used in tent or tablet mode for drawing or taking notes. The keyboard is nice and has a good amount of spacing and the keys feel solid and has plenty of travel. the keys do not stick, they are not mushy or anything horrible like the new Mac keyboards. It feels good and has a normal springy feel nothing too crazy. The backlighting is adjustable and gets plenty bright so that you can actually see in a dark room, and the opposite can be said as well with the keys can be dimmed to a comfortable level and also to conserve battery life as well so there is a nice balance. I was pleasantly surprised with the webcam and I do not mean the actual webcam because it is a decent webcam and will get the job done. The webcam privacy cover has its own dedicated button to toggle the cover so that you have privacy which is essential in this day and age. The screen is bright it isn't as bright as the premium televisions on the market but it will get bright enough to meet your needs, the viewing angles are great and If I am not mistaken this is an IPS display. The screen is also touchscreen and supports pen input as well. I tested my Envy with an existing HP stylus I had laying around from a previous HP laptop I own. I am not sure why my other laptop has a problem with One Note but thankfully that is not the case here I suspect perhaps a driver issue of some sort. The stylus experience is what you would expect from a device like this and is pleasant to use and will be helpful to students or artists or whomever has a use for a device like this. It is comparable to using a surface device after it is running on Windows OS. :::Specifications:: Alright so we have touched on the aesthetics and build quality of the device let us touch on the specifications briefly. I will not go and repeat verbatim what the specs are because they are clearly listed on the page. I love the direction that PC manufacturers are headed in where we are getting SSD as the norm and this Envy has a respectable 512GB of storage. I am impressed with that because you can do quite a bit with that amount of storage and of course you can use the SD card slot I suppose for more storage or even an external drive. Now being that I have not went an attempted to open this up I went to crucial website and checked to see if this could be upgraded and provided that the RAM and SSD are not soldered then upgrading your memory and and ram should be possible. You could hypothetically swap the SSD for a bigger drive. Now my only complaint is the measly 8GB of RAM now that may be sufficient for most but I find that for the CPU configuration of an 11th gen quad core eight thread CPU 8GB won't be sufficient for more demanding applications. But again I will do some research or take it to geek squad and see if this device has user replaceable RAM & SSD. Heck I may even open it up myself and peek under the hood. According to CPUZ theoretically you can install up to 128GB of RAM but there are only two slots on the board. I do not know if anyone actually makes memory modules of that size and I would not spend the money to install that on a laptop either to me that just doesn't make sense. Again should this device support user replaceable components then I will most definitely swap out the current 8GB of DDR4 ram for 16GB. That will be the sweet spot on this device or at least for me and my usage it will be. The memory is running at a frequency of 732.3 MHz (1:11) and is single channel. Battery life now I feel that battery life has gotten better overtime I have the power slider on the third notch out of four and with mixed usage I am averaging approximately 7 and a half hours which isn't bad at all but that is me actually using the laptop for more than word processing. I find myself running folding @ home sometimes, photoshop and some media consumption. I am sure that it is possible to squeeze more out of the battery but this is just my unique experience. The speakers are made by B&O so the sound is pretty good for a laptop HP has gotten better with their audio game as time has passed. While it will not blow you away like a home theater would that is expected because this isn't for that kind of usage. The speakers get plenty loud and do not sound like a hollow tin can. There is some nice oomph to them. :::Pros & Con's::: Pros: - Beautiful gold finish - Compact & sturdy - built in fingerprint sensor (works fast too) - touch & pen input - better than average battery life - decent amount of full sized ports & thunderbolt (I&O) Cons: - Measly 8GB of RAM :::Closing thoughts::: Still with me? If so thanks for reading so let me say that this is my favorite laptop that HP has released thus far. A lot of folk have been head over heels for some of the other line of devices like the Spectre series but this works well for me I just love nearly everything about this device. The camera, speakers, keyboard & trackpad, screen, I&O and battery life make this a solid product. It certainly will not replace my desktop but this can do almost as much and is compact and is great for almost everyone. :::TL:DR::: If you like big things in little packages then please check this device out. It has the latest offerings and is fast enough to keep up with you and you will not have to be tethered to the will. This HP laptop is truly a small powerhouse.

I thought it might be useful to compare this HP to another similar 2-in-1 that people may also be considering, the Lenovo Yoga 6. I purchased both laptops on sale and paid $674.99 for the HP ENVY x360 2-in-1 as an open box in excellent condition, and $539.99 for the Lenovo Yoga 6. Both come with current-gen processors and integrated graphics, and both come with 8GB RAM. The HP does have a larger SSD, though at 512GB vs 256 for the Yoga 6. The HP x360 is quite a nice little laptop. Compared to the Yoga 6, it’s a little thinner, a little lighter and has an overall slightly smaller footprint. It’s made of metal, its screen is brighter, its audio is better (despite downward-firing speakers), and I like that its keyboard has media controls and buttons to kill the webcam and mike. I also like that it has a micro-USB slot, and Thunderbolt 4. The Yoga six has none of these things. But ultimately, I returned the HP in favor of the Lenovo Yoga 6. The main reason was performance. While the HP x360 uses a 4-core, 8-thread 11th-gen Intel i7 w/the new Xe integrated graphics, the Yoga 6 uses the excellent AMD Ryzen 4650U Pro, a 6-core, 12-thread processor that is simply faster than Intel’s offering overall. And while Intel has been touting their new Xe graphics as going head-to-head with the NVidia MX350, the truth is that in real-world applications, and at lower TDPs than Intel’s 28W reference laptop design, that’s just not true in my testing. Perhaps in time better drivers from Intel will close the gap, but it’s certainly not the case now. In fact, in actual use, the Xe graphics couldn’t even keep up with the Radeon Vega 6 graphics in the Yoga 6. I ran a few benchmarks on these and will show just a couple of results here (see photos). In the photo of the two laptops side by side, you can see the results of a graphics benchmark test using the game Dirt Rally on battery power (since I like to game on the go with small laptops like these, I test on battery as well as plugged in. Settings were identical for each – 1600x900, medium preset, identical options, both laptops set to their performance modes, etc. You can see that the Yoga 6 had an avg of 67.42 FPS with its Radeon Vega 6 graphics, vs 43.88 for the HP x360 with its intel Xe graphics (a 35% difference). Min and max frames were also much higher with the Yoga 6, and you can see from the test summary that over the course of the benchmarking, the HP Envy dropped thousands of frames compared to the Yoga 6. Every gaming benchmark I tested showed the Yoga 6 to consistently beat the HP ENVY x360 in frame rates. The other two photos show results from Novabench on battery. Novabench is a quick and light benchmarking program, and I use it only to get a performance snapshot before doing more in-depth testing. While the HP Envy scored 2057 overall, the Yoga 6 scored 2405 overall, and had higher sub scores for CPU, and Disk. Interestingly, although the Envy did score slightly higher on the GPU and RAM sub scores, this did *not* translate into a real-world performance issue in use. The Yoga 6 was just a little bit faster in daily use, and significantly faster in games. It was also significantly faster to boot up – 6 seconds compared to about 12 seconds. Again, the HP ENVY is a nice little laptop, and some people will have no issue paying more for the slightly smaller metal build, thunderbolt, brighter screen, etc. I don’t think it’s unreasonably priced (especially at the sale price) at all and would recommend it for those who understand what it can do, and what it can't. For my needs, however, I ultimately chose the Yoga 6. Finally, I thought I might try to answer a couple questions I saw that were asked and answered incorrectly here in Best Buy’s Questions. The HP x360 does NOT have Optane memory, CPU-Z reports that the RAM *is* in dual channel mode, and the key to turn the privacy screen off and on is F1, not F2. RAM is soldered, but the SSD is replaceable. I hope people find this information useful/helpful.

The HP - ENVY x360 2-in-1 13.3" Touchscreen Laptop - Intel Evo Platform - Intel Core i7 - 8GB Memory - 512GB SSD - Pale Gold is a joy to use. The build quality is excellent, and it feels very premium similar to the MacBook Pro. The 13.3 inch 1080p screen is bright and beautiful. The slim bezel design really fits a lot of screen into a small package! I didn't find myself straining to see details on the screen with Windows 10 scale set to 125% recommended. The case feels very solid and the all aluminum design gives it just enough weight that it doesn't feel like it's going to slide off the working surface if bumped. The rubber strips that run the entirety of the base one in the front and one in the back also provide a lot of stability from movement. The 360 hinge is very solid and holds the screen right where you put it. I found it does take 2 hands to open the laptop from closed. The hinge tension is just enough that the base starts to lift off the working surface if trying to open with one hand. I actually prefer a more solid feeling hinge, so not a problem. The 11th generation Intel i7 is very fast and everything loads quickly with the SSD drive! Although the 3D graphics on this machine are not discrete, but the new Iris Xe graphics, you can do some 1080p gaming on this with decent FPS with the settings turned down a bit. I played Borderlands 2, World of Warcraft, Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition and they looked great and played smooth. The smaller screen lets you get away with turning down some higher end graphics options and still feel like you're not sacrificing a huge amount. So, definitely happy that I can feel like I can take this super portable laptop with me as my primary machine and still do some gaming. Battery life is solid. I was able to get about 8 hours of video with the performance set at the Better batery setting. Using Battery saver and reducing the screen brightness a tad would most likely grab a couple more hours of playtime. The battery recharges quite fast to 80% battery saver setting to help keep your battery in better shape for longer. The power brick is really small, which is nice! One thing I love about this 360 is the fingerprint reader. It's in a key space on the keyboard just to the right of the spacebar and alt key, and it's so convenient! Unlocking the laptop is so easy when coming back to the computer. No more typing in passcodes every time! A couple other things I really love are the keys for muting the microphone and disabling the camera. They have little orange LED's that light up when they are disabled. The speakers are decent. It's a small laptop so I wasn't expecting thumping bass, but they were quite clear and excellent highs. Volume level is plenty for listening to music or watching movies. The touchscreen is responsive, and works great with my Surface Pen. The 360 design makes this super versatile! The keyboard has a really nice feel to it with a good amount of resistance. It also has 2 levels of backlight intensity with a white light, which is a must have for me. The trackpad is smooth and responsive. Plenty of space for gestures. There are plenty of ports for a small laptop like this one. The micro SD is quite handy, and it has an audio jack for headphones. 1 USB-C / Thunderbolt port and 2 high speed normal sized USB ports. The laptop has a dedicated charging port, which I was a little surprised it didn't use USB-C based on it's size. Overall, I'm really impressed with this 360 laptop. I think it's my new goto machine for taking everywhere! Exquisite design and feel, awesome screen, fast as I'll ever need, excellent battery life, decent audio, AND I can do some light 3D gaming on it without feeling like I'm in a fps nightmare :) The 8 GB of ram does great for most tasks. I think 16 would really put this machine over the top, and would allow for a bit more gaming. Would definitely recommend this machine to anyone! Price is quite reasonable too for a laptop that does this much and feels and looks this nice.

I got the HP Envy x360 as a “backup” laptop since my wife’s meetings are all online and kids classes and groups are meeting online (thanks a lot COVID) so my main laptop is almost always being borrowed for something or another. I wasn’t looking for a fancy gaming laptop or something that would be able to handle 3D modeling, just something I could browse the internet with or do some work in spreadsheets or word processing. This computer ticks all those basic checkboxes. Right out of the box you get a tiny laptop, a power cord, and that’s all. When I say small I don’t mean a tablet size, but only barely! Its a 13 inch touchscreen and worked with my previous laptops pen/stylus, it comes with 8gigs of RAM, an 11th gen i7, and a 500 gig hard drive (476 available) wrapped in a silvery gold body that folds backwards on itself to go into tablet mode. The screen is very bright straight on by default, I turned mine down, but its also listed on the feature sticker as having built in privacy screen. To me I found it a little annoying as the screen was hard to see without bending the screen far back while typing at the table and I had to really get pretty straight on with it to avoid the weird kind of flickering half fade on the edge. The keyboard is backlit so you can see where to place your fingers in the dark, which is a great feature not available in enough laptops. Battery life seems to be at least 8hrs of off and on use but I didn’t work on it enough to kill the battery from a full overnight charge. Performance wise I tried to run Ghostbusters: The Game Remastered in an attempt to see how far I could push the laptop. While the game ran the sound was out of sync and the frame rate was choppy, still better than I expected though. More in the line of expectations was being able to video conference and the built in webcam is pretty basic running video at 720p 60Hz or taking pictures in 16:9 (1280x720). I was able to get it done but the lighting, which seemed normal to me, was not enough for the camera and there was noticeable grain. Still, as a backup meeting laptop this works well enough. I would recommend this as a light, portable, and sleek laptop to get your productivity tasks done but this will be more or less barebones for some people’s needs. Battery is really good though, which can’t be said about a lot of other laptops and the touchscreen convertible feature is going to be great for someone who likes to do digital drawing. If you travel and work on the road the privacy screen may be a selling feature to avoid plane seat neighbors reading out of the corner of their eye.

HP - ENVY x360 2-in-1 13.3" Touchscreen Laptop This is a very nice looking and well made convertible Windows laptop. The box included the laptop and the power adapter. Physical setup was pretty easy. Cortana prompted me through it all. The volume was initially a bit loud. I had to turn it down. The touchpad is logically divided with the left side being a left-click and the right side being the right-click. I have a Microsoft account and use Office 365 so it was easy to connect to OneDrive and office apps. I was hoping to use Windows Face Hello, but it appears to not support that. I went in to Settings and it said the laptop didn’t have the right camera to support this, so I setup Windows Hello Fingerprint and PIN. I always register multiple fingers on both hands to allow for bandaids and other recognition issues Setup seemed to really want me to sign in to Dropbox. I have a Dropbox account, so I did that. The laptop comes with a 30 day trial for McAfee, but I use BitDefender, so I made that switch. After the initial setup, I installed a few apps that I use on my Windows PCs. One is the Axis Camera Companion V4. For some reason, I had a lot of trouble getting that app to work on this laptop. I tried to run the HP Support Assistant to make sure I had all of the latest drivers, but that also would not run. I followed the instructions to restart my PC and ultimately to in-install and re-install Support Assistant. That fixed the SA problem. After that I ran SA and found three drivers that required updates. I updated the WLAN driver, Intel HD Graphics Driver and Realtek CardReader Driver. I was eventually able to get the application running. I really like the buttons (function keys) for controlling the microphone and camera. Just like the speakers, I can turn them off with the touch of a button. The HD display is very crisp and clear. Audio has nice fidelity, but lacks bass, most likely due to limitations in the size of the laptop enclosure. However, I did find both audio and video provided for a very nice streaming experience for me. Video was very pleasant to watch and hear. Though I likely won’t use this as a tablet very often, the mechanics for converting to a tablet work very well and are very smooth. It is trivial to flip the display and start using it as a tablet. The display changes to “auto-rotate” automatically. The laptop doesn’t ship with a pen, so I don’t know how well that works. Overall, I’d say this is another quality laptop from HP and I would recommend it to others looking for a product like this. If I could withhold a half a star for shipping with some out of date software directly from China to me, I would do that, but for purposes of this review I’ll assume that is an early release issue and I’ll round up to 5 stars for a highly portable convertible laptop with nice features and attributes.

The HP Envy X360 is an impressively powerful, and highly portable 2-in-1 laptop. This system can meet nearly anyone’s computing needs for office automation, gaming, to video editing. The review will be done in 3 parts – Features, usage impressions, and Pros/Cons. Features The features of this laptop are superb and include the following items – an 11th Generation Core i7-1165G7 Processor @ 2.8 GHz, 8 GB onboard DDR4 SDRAM, Integrated Iris XE Graphics, and a KIOXIA 512 GB NvMe SSD. The Screen has a recommended resolution of 1920x1080 and is a micro-edge touchscreen with multitouch enabled and is an IPS panel, rated at 1000 nits of brightness. The audio system is a Bang & Olufsen system that sounds incredible. The system also comes with a fingerprint reader for added security. The system includes a dual-band AX Wi-Fi system and Bluetooth technology. The system layout is straight forward with the left side having USB-C, USB, and headset jacks. The right side has microSD, USB, and power connector. The regular USB ports are “Drop Jaw” ports that open to full size when being used, helping the system be as thin as possible. The right-side port is also is marked as being as standby power and thus can be used for charging when the system is off. The fingerprint reader is on the lower right of the keyboard near the arrow keys. There are no ports on the rear since the system is a 2-in-1 and can covert to full tablet mode by folding over the screen. Additionally, it can support Tent and Display modes for different use cases. The USB-C port can transmit both audio and video giving one the option for an external monitor when working in an office. It also supports DisplayPort MST mode over the USB-C port and is able to not only display the main laptops screen but also my 3 24” ASUS 1920x1080 P monitors with an MST Adapter I own. The Function Keys on the keyboard have a dual purpose with Brightness, volume, Microphone, audio controls, and settings being able to be controlled from them. The keyboard also has a camera on-off button and the F1 key can enable a “privacy screen” mode on the laptop screen, to help limit shoulder surfers. Usage Impressions This laptop is an impressive system. It has a high-quality touchscreen and excellent battery life with the built-in 51 Wh battery. The nice touches of this laptop include the keyboard backlighting, with an on-off key, the camera and microphone buttons let you know if you are on air or not and the Camera off button allows you to be more secure when you are not video conferencing. The versatility of the USB-C connector is such that this system makes for an excellent travel system that can be used, with the right cables/adapters to use a hotel room TV as a second monitor. My wife has spent a bit of time with this device and she asked me to make sure that I noted her two favorite items. She states “… the battery life is AWESOME and it's a fast processor when working off the battery only! OMG, I don't even notice a difference in speed between on battery vs on electricity! OMG! SO FAST... and second is the screen. I mean it is so crisp and clear! It is better than my monitors! LOL! If you do graphics on your laptop this one is worth a look at! Graphics plus speed plus battery life! OMG! THANK YOU, HP! and it's affordable!!!!!!!! YES! I LOVE IT!” She has also traveled with the laptop and says “Battery life was perfect (though I did plug in at night) and it weighs maybe 3 pounds. So not clumsy to pull out of a backpack and not weighty either. AND ITS A TABLET TOO! This really is an exceptional product! I can see many happy people getting this for the upcoming holidays!!” The display is crisp, and the colors are bright. The screen is easy on the eyes, even after hours of working on it. While the additional keyboard keys do have a small learning curve one you have learned them, they are extremely useful – especially the security of knowing the mic and camera is on or not! The keyboard keys are comfortable and have just enough "give" to them so you know you are typing and yet they are so low that it does not take much finger strength or work to type. The weight and size are perfect. Pros: Performance, Battery life, Audio Quality, flexibility Cons: None observed.

I’ve had this computer for just this week, and already have had such a great experience with it. I come from mostly the Apple iOS world, but I use a Chromebook for general everyday use because it is inexpensive. So I’m not a Windows expert or tech guru. There is a ton of spec information already listed on the Best Buy page, I want to talk about the things that stand out to me as an average consumer. Right off the bat, this pale gold computer is so beautiful and modern. It looks fabulous with the optional backlit silver keyboard, which I do prefer as backlit, but it can easily be changed with a touch of the f4 button. Speaking of the keyboard, I love the many functions offered here. There are many well thought out features; a button to close the camera off, a button to turn off the microphone, and buttons on the right side of the keyboard to send you to home, page up, page down, and end. There is also a fingerprint reader so you can feel good about your computer security, as every time the screen sleeps, you use your fingerprint to get it working again. I also love the f1 privacy screen button, I can see using that when things get more normal and I get to fly again. That button is also good for making the screen darker in those instances like using the computer in a darkened room and don’t want the screen to be very bright. This is a touchscreen computer, but it doesn’t come with a stylus, which would be nice. I have been using a rubber ended pen, which is like an extended finger, but without the fingerprints. The screen itself is whoa, amazing. It is seamlessly beautiful, like looking at a tv. There aren’t any seemingly visible pixels, like on my Chromebook The colors displayed are so vibrant, it is easy to say that resolution is similar to a new tv set. The 360 degree hinge is what sets this computer apart from other regular computers, it can be used as a tablet when you need to, which is so versatile. When watching Netflix you can just prop it up like a little tv as the screen flips to be upright in any position. Pretty neat! I didn’t yet mention that the sound on this computer is also amazing, with dual Bang & Olufsen speakers built in. Using this computer is pretty easy. Out of the box, just charge it up and you’re all set. I like that there is an orange light to show the battery is charging, and a white light to show that it is fully charged. I was easily able to hook up my two printers, which is something that can be a huge stress factor in getting a new computer. But I was able to do it easily, and got my test print jobs without any issue, whew. All in all, a really nice computer in a beautiful package.

This laptop is loaded with so many wonderful features. For me, it's the perfect size and the build quality is more than adequate. Set-up was a breeze and I was able to hit the ground running in no time. I have had zero issues with noise or heating up. I am pleased with the full size keyboard and I have always liked HP's touchpads. I downloaded this little program from userbenchmark.com that allows you to run a series of tests to see how your exact system performs and how it compares to other systems. Overall, I was very pleased with the results and the system performed as well as advertised. I would recommend to everyone to download that program and see how your system performs. My favorite thing about this laptop is the screen. Wow is the best word that I can use to describe it. It is fantastic. I did not expect it to be this good. I owned a Dell 13.3" with a 4K screen just before I bought this laptop. I also compared this screen, side by side, to a 4K screen on a HP Spectre. This screen simply just flat our looked better to me. I learned that I will never pay the $300 or whatever it is for a upcharge to a 4K screen when this 1920 x 1080 screen is available with BrightView and 1000 nits. Say 1000 nits out loud, that's incredibly impressive and I had not even heard of that being available on any laptop. Now, to the "complaint" department. Keep in mind I knew these things beforehand and I still purchased this laptop and I am very glad that I did. Also, getting this for $750 allowed me to overlook some of the things I would have rather had. I am not sure that I would have paid $1000 for it. My issue with the system is the lack of the ability to upgrade the RAM. I understand that for most people, 8GB of RAM is enough. This system is equipped with a superfast, high tech 11th gen CPU with all the latest bells and whistles and built on the Evo platform that advertises speed and efficiency. With the restriction of only 8 GB of RAM, it doesn't really allow the end user to fully utilize this laptop to its full potential. It's almost like buying a Corvette with a V6 engine. To me, it's a shame to solder the RAM on this model and feels a little petty of HP to do that. Lenovo is famous for that garbage and that's why I will never purchase one of their products. I really appreciate and like the fact that the HP team members take time to jump in and answer some of the questions that potential customers have about a product. A couple of weeks ago, a HP team member answered a question about Intel Optane Memory and said this laptop does have it. This laptop does not have that feature. It would have been awesome to have it. I don't understand how they could have gotten an important feature like that wrong. The Hello Windows with the fingerprint works great. Just "program" more than one finger. I really really liked the Windows Hello with the facial recognition. It cracked me up every time I used it and I really wished this had the IR camera so facial recognition was possible. One thing I really like about Best Buy and it really keeps my business is their customer friendly no hassle return policy. I give Best Buy 5 stars for that! I mention this because this is my 3rd laptop in 6 weeks trying to find what laptop suits me the best. I can tell you this is my last laptop till I wear it out or decide to upgrade. I simply love it and I am glad I bought it, especially for $750! Even with having a few things that I would have liked to see different, I still gave it 5 stars. You have to take the good with the bad and this laptop is an absolute tremendous value.