HP Envy x360
The HP Envy x360 is the latest revision that combines a solid metal construction with a touchscreen display. The display of this laptop can be rotated through 360-degrees. It is a moderate priced 15-inch convertible laptop. It’s a high-resolution touchscreen laptop.
This 2-in-1 laptop is typically bulky that weighs 2 kg and so can be easily carried in a bag. The sturdy hinges help you use it as a standard laptop. The lid can be folded back and the keyboard can be placed facing down. You can even fold the display back completely onto the back of the keyboard to create a thick and bulky tablet.
Design and Features:
The HP Envy x360 consists of a USB Type-C port, two USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI connector, an SD card reader and a 3.5mm headset jack. The power and volume buttons are located on the left of the device. This makes them easy to use in tablet mode. Its design looks slightly more than its price. It’s designed with a decent-looking brushed aluminum coating and adds angular features. The metal shell is free from flex, and the rubber pads on the base prevent the Envy from moving around when placed on a solid surface.
The pair of hinges that rotate nearly 360 degrees enables the x360 to be used as a tablet or hybrid laptop. The issue here is that the hinge can’t support the weight of that large screen particularly 15.6-inch well. So the display can flop down into a lowered position when moved around.
In addition, the screen tends to stagger when pressing on the touchscreen. This becomes a problem for a device that places the screen front and center.
Keyboard And Touchpad:
The keyboard should be decent, presenting large, chiclet-style keys that are easy to find. They’re backlit, too, which makes finding the key you’re after much easier in low light. The travel distance on each key is satisfactory. But unfortunately, there isn’t much tactile “feel” to them.
The new control zone touchpad offers mechanical features and is, of course, touch sensitive. The touchpad is large and more spaced to navigate the screen.
Display:
The large 15-inch display supports both touchscreen and mechanical. The resolution of the display is 1920 x 1080 which is said to be high and multitouch display. It is packed with a full HD IPS display that is more than its price. The display with 1080p resolution offers decent contrast and is sharp enough.
Processor And Memory:
The hybrid laptop works with a dual-core 2.9GHz AMD A9 9410 processor, Intel Core i5 processors. The dual core processor is fastest by a large margin, and the resulting performance leaves the laptop lacking. It’s also equipped with a 500GB hard drive that spins at 5400 rpm. There are other configurations available. They include Intel Core i7 U-suffix processors, a higher capacity hard disk and Ultra HD screens.
The memory of this device is 6GB and includes an additional 2GB of RAM. So the memory brings the total to 8GB of RAM for the device. It supports 256GB of SSD.
Ports:
The Envy x360 consists of two USB 3.0, one USB Type-C port, an SD card reader, HDMI, and a 3.5mm headset jack.
Performance:
The Envy x360 is available in a range of specifications. The baseline model comes equipped with an AMD A9 APU. This dual-core processor isn’t just fast by a large margin but the resulting performance leaves the laptop lacking.
This makes it too slower than the significantly cheaper HP Pavilion x360 when multi-tasking. The Intel Core i3-6100U is significantly cheaper and has Intel Hyper-Threading. This device speeds up multi-tasking performance. This makes choosing the AMD A9-powered edition of the Envy x360 a little puzzling.
The high-speed M.2 SSD running in the device achieves a read speed of 810MB/sec in the AS SSD benchmark and 136MB/sec write speeds. The write speed is not significantly more but the system performance is decided by the read speed. However, the read speed is high for this Envy x360.
There is a problem while triggering the hybrid laptop to a tablet mode. Since it is equipped with the Windows 10’s Continuum feature to switch modes, it doesn’t always recognize the switch. The x360’s design also incorporates an active fan-based cooling system. This becomes audible at medium to high loads.
Battery Life:
The battery life is very respectable for a laptop of this size and price, and it shouldn’t be an issue for all but the heaviest of users. While testing the devices, the laptop lasted its battery for 8hours and 13minutes. The test involves 10 minutes of web browsing and 5 minutes of video. The brightness was then set to 50% and key backlighting kept switched off. In a real-world scenario, the HP Envy x360 managed around five hours of screen-on time, which is fine.
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