HP Envy x360 2-in-1 Touch-Screen Laptop REVIEW

6 min readAug 1, 2018

Getting started with the HP Envy is very straightforward just like other HP laptops. It runs Windows 10 so all the startup functions run in the background while you watch a temperature bar fill the screen. After answering a few preference questions, the computer runs its start-up operations. From start to finish — including updates — the HP Envy took approximately 10 minutes to finalize its startup. After that was completed, I noticed one thing right off the bat — the temperature of the computer. I used an Infrared Thermometer to take the surface temperature of the laptop in a few different places. I got readings between 104 and 107 degrees Fahrenheit. I also used an infrared camera (FLIR One) to take a few shots of the heat signature from the top and bottom of the computer. After taking those readings, I did notice that the heat dissipated quickly. After the initial set-up, I began doing my testing.

DETAILS

The HP Envy x360 is a convertible laptop that can be used as either a laptop or tablet. It has a 360-degree hinge that allows the screen to flip all the way around for easy use as a tablet. It has 8GB of memory and an AMD Ryzen 5 processor to keep the machine running smoothly. The screen is made out of Corning Gorilla Glass that keeps the HP Envy’s screen from getting scratched or dinged. The laptop is built for use with Windows Ink. It only weighs 2.87lbs and measures 0.6″ thin for easy portability.

SPECS

AMD Quad-Core Ryzen 5 2500U Accelerated Processor
128GB PCI-e SSD
8192MB on-board DDR4 SDRAM
No Optical Drive
Windows 10
Touchscreen, Multi-touch enabled
13.3” Diagonal Full HD IPS LED Display with 1920 x 1080 resolution
HP IR Camera
WLAN & Bluetooth
Bang & Olufsen speakers
2 — USB-A ports
1 — USB-C port

BASIC COMPUTING SKILLS

One of the main things I use computers (and laptops) for is to type. I do a lot of writing and therefore, how responsive a keyboard is to me and how it feels is very important to my overall experience with a laptop. I enjoy the fact that the screen is touch sensitive. That makes it easy to transition between tablet, phone, and computer. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to touch a screen on a laptop to only be disappointed that the screen isn’t a touchscreen. Given that comfortable typing is a big feature for me, I usually complete an online typing test to see what my speed is like. I then compare that to my speed on my MacBook Pro. In this instance, typing on the HP Envy was much more efficient than it was on my MBP. I had a speed of 70WPM on the Envy and on the MBP, it was 65WPM. The keyboard is quite responsive and the keys have a softer feel to them. It’s very quiet to type on the Envy and the spacing of the keys is comfortable.

CPU/GPU PERFORMANCE

The HP Envy has been running very smoothly. It’s been very responsive and able to handle the tasks I’ve thrown at it. Given that this computer is mainly built for gaming and application performance, those are the main areas that I was testing when I was using the laptop. To measure the performance of the GPU and CPU, I used two benchmarking tools — Geekbench 4 and NovaBench.

Geekbench 4 Results

The HP Envy 360x ended up with a single-core score of 2264 and a multi-core score of 6698. It also returned an OpenCL score of 31731. According to other Geekbench 4 results, the top scoring machine with an AMD Ryzen 5 processor is 4782/17291. In this regard, the HP Envy is performing below the top performing machine. The OpenCL test looks specifically at how well the GPU performs. The HP Envy has an AMD Radeon Vega 8 integrated graphics chipset with shared video memory. It’s designed to provide solid image quality for Internet usage, movies, basic photo editing, and casual gaming. Looking at other AMD Radeon Vega 8 GPUs that have been tested on Geekbench, the average score is 33515. With that in mind, the HP Envy’s GPU is performing a bit below the average. Click here to view the full results of the CPU test and the OpenCL test online.

NovaBench Results

NovaBench does a similar type of testing on your system but provides you with a different set of scores and analysis. The overall score of the HP Envy was 1090 and had a CPU score of 638 and GPU score of 203. I can’t say which test works better — they are just different.

BATTERY PERFORMANCE

According to the specs from HP, this laptop should work up to 10 hours (depending on the display panel that is installed). During my testing of this laptop, I tried to make note of how long the battery was lasting depending on the task being run at the time. When I first pulled the laptop out of its box, I placed it on charge for a big and then unplugged it as I started working with it. Starting with 81% battery, I noted that after about 3 hours, the battery had drained by 71%. At 10%, the computer gives you a warning about a low battery, so I plugged it into AC power at that point. During those 3 hours, I was running the tests I mentioned above and getting the computer set-up. I also began running Windows system updates. With this timing in mind, I think I can estimate an approximate battery life that will last a little over 4 hours if it’s being vigorously used like I was doing.

HARD DRIVE SPEED

Finally, I wanted to test the hard drive’s speed. This model of the HP Envy comes with 128GB PCIe SSD. According to the stress test I used (32GB), the top read/write speed of this SSD is 513/282 MB/s. This was a little disappointing considering that I did a test on a Razer Blade Stealth a few months ago and its read/write speeds with a 16GB stress test was 3153/1113 MB/s. It, too, had a PCI-e SSD.

ENTERTAINMENT EXPERIENCE

The last two features I looked at with the HP Envy had to deal with how well the computer handled entertainment like streaming video and gaming. Using Netflix, I watched the introduction to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. The movie opens with a vibrant color palette, extraordinary special effects mixed with human actors, and an eclectic music soundtrack. This combination of elements makes it an awesome test for both the display and speaker set for the HP Envy. I was very impressed by how good the picture looked on the screen. It was immaculate. The audio was well-amplified and easy to understand so I would rate the speakers at ‘above average’ for a laptop. In addition to the video trial, I also downloaded and played a few rounds of Sonic Dash. The game graphics held up very well and the gameplay was smooth. Since this game is very fast-paced, I would expect that the HP Envy would hold up well with other types of gameplay, too.

CONCLUSION

The HP Envy is a wonderful multi-purpose laptop. It’s above average for a standard performance laptop, but not up to par with ‘gaming’ laptops or custom builds. I would recommend this for users who are looking for one machine to accomplish many different tasks.

For more information, visit hp.com.
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Originally published at macsources.com on August 1, 2018.