Configure Your Hp Envy X360 Laptop 15t Touch Review

If you're shopping for a xv.vi-inch convertible laptop, HP is determined to shut the sale. You say the premium Spectre x360 15 is too expensive? Expect! There's the under-$800 Pavilion x360 xv. Really, were you thinking of something between those extremes? Then perhaps the Envy x360 fifteen (starts at $699.99; $999.99 as tested) will hit the sweet spot. It's heavy and unwieldy in tablet way, only neither HP nor any of its competitors has been able to make a big-screen 2-in-1 that isn't, and its AMD Ryzen 7 processor serves up lively multi-threaded performance. We adopt our convertibles a flake smaller and more manageable, but the Envy is a handsome choice if you like your convertible super-sized.

Flexible Swivel, Flexible Configurations

Also filling the gap between the flagship Spectre and thrifty Pavilion series, HP says its Green-eyed characterization targets creative users. You can choice an Envy x360 fifteen with either Intel or AMD under the hood, but simply Cadre i7-1165G7 models (starting at $1,009.99) are available with discrete Nvidia GeForce MX450 instead of integrated graphics and a 4K AMOLED screen in place of a i,920-past-1,080-pixel panel.

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Sticking with the AMD versions hither, the $699.99 base model combines a Ryzen five 5500U flake with 8GB of retention, a 256GB solid-state bulldoze, and a rather dim 250-nit touch screen. Our $999.99 test unit steps up to the eight-core, 1.8GHz (4.3GHz turbo) Ryzen 7 5700U, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB NVMe SSD, and a brighter 400-nit IPS bear upon brandish with the same full HD resolution backed by AMD Radeon integrated graphics. Custom configurations on HP.com are bundled with a rechargeable stylus, but our model 15-eu0097nr had no pen.

The webcam lacks back up for face recognition, only at that place'southward a Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint reader so you needn't type passwords. The bezels around the Gorilla Glass screen are slim. (HP claims an 89% screen-to-body ratio.) The usual two hinges let you flip and fold the display from laptop to tray-table tent fashion, presentation- or kiosk-friendly easel mode, or tablet mode with the screen and keyboard back to back.

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Clad in Nightfall Black aluminum, the Envy measures 0.72 by 14.1 past ix inches, negligibly smaller than two other 15.6-inch convertibles, the Lenovo Yoga C740 (0.72 by fourteen.1 by 9.iii inches) and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 ii-in-ane (0.71 past 14 by 9.iv inches). It weighs 4.xi pounds to their 4.2 apiece, only you tin can't tell the difference without a butcher'due south calibration.

The laptop has iii USB 3.ii Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports—a Type-A port on either side (the one on the left always on for charging a smartphone) and a Type-C port on the left. The left edge also holds an HDMI video output and an sound jack, while an SD carte slot and the Air-conditioning adapter connector decorate the correct.

Brightly Backlit

I've never written an HP laptop review without complaining about the cursor pointer keys, and I'm not about to start here—they're arranged in an bad-mannered row instead of the proper inverted T, with hard-to-striking, half-size up and down arrows stacked between full-size left and right. Apart from that recurring quibble, the backlit keyboard is pleasant to use, with a snappy typing feel and dedicated Domicile, End, Page Upwardly, and Page Downward keys. The large, buttonless touchpad glides and taps easily, with a slightly strong click.

The keyboard includes buttons to mute the microphone and disable the webcam, as well as the fingerprint reader (replacing the correct Control central) and a special fundamental to launch the HP Command Eye software, which lets you prioritize favorite apps' network bandwidth; activate a Focus Mode that dims the display except for the active window; and choose balanced, quiet, or operation modes depending on your tolerance for cooling-fan noise. (I ran our benchmark tests in functioning mode, except for the battery test in balanced mode.)

Information technology's a shame that AMD customers can't get an Envy x360 with 4K display resolution equally their Intel friends can, but the 1080p screen isn't bad at all—reasonably vivid, with good contrast and wide viewing angles. Fine details and the edges of letters are sharp instead of pixelated. White backgrounds aren't dazzling, simply they are satisfactorily white instead of dingy, and colors are vivid and well saturated fifty-fifty if they don't pop similar poster paints. HP Brandish Control software applies subtle changes between default (vibrant), native, and photo- and video-optimized color palettes.

The 720p webcam, typical of its kind, captures relatively well-lit and colorful images with simply a bit of noise or static. Of annotation: An unusual add-on, the HP Enhanced Lighting utility, puts white borders around the screen to help illuminate your selfies taken with the webcam. Speakers on either side of the keyboard pump out moderately loud, only slightly hollow or booming, audio. The bass response is missing in action, only you can make out overlapping tracks well plenty. Bang & Olufsen audio software lets you choose music, movie, or voice presets or try an blaster to tweak the soundscape.

Other software (also Windows 10 Habitation) includes HP QuickDrop (for sharing files with your smartphone), Amazon Alexa, and trials for Adobe, Dropbox, ExpressVPN, LastPass, and McAfee programs and utilities. HP backs the Envy with a 1-year warranty.

Performance Testing: This Big Flip-Summit Shows Some Get-Upwardly-and-Go

For our benchmark charts, I matched the Envy x360 fifteen against its abovementioned 15.6-inch convertible competitors from Lenovo and Dell, every bit well every bit HP'south more than upscale Spectre x360 15. That left one slot, which I filled with a slightly smaller two-in-1, the Asus VivoBook Flip 14. That one features a previous-generation (4000 Series) Ryzen processor. (See more most how we exam laptops.)

Productivity and Media Tests

PCMark x and eight are holistic operation suites developed by the PC criterion specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark x test we run simulates dissimilar real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. Nosotros use it to appraise overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system'southward boot bulldoze. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.

All 5 convertibles easily cleared the 4,000-point score that indicates excellent productivity in PCMark 10, with the Envy well out in front end thanks to its 8-core muscle. Microsoft Office and Google Docs are as piece of cake for these machines every bit PCMark 8'southward storage examination was for their swift SSDs.

Next is Maxon'due south CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make utilize of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex prototype. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC'south suitability for processor-intensive workloads.

Cinebench is frequently a skillful predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief motion picture from 4K resolution downwards to 1080p. It, also, is a tough examination for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.

The Envy's eight-cadre Ryzen 7 ran away with both of our CPU benchmarks, showing nigh-workstation levels of processing performance for programs that are designed to leverage all available cores and threads. The Yoga C740 finished far behind, its 10th Generation Cadre i7 trailing even the 11th Gen Cadre i5 of the Dell.

We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop prototype-editing benchmark. Using an early on 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we employ a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG exam image. We time each functioning and add together upwards the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, only information technology can besides take advantage of most GPUs to speed upwardly the process of applying filters.

The tables were turned here every bit the Lenovo won handily, with the Envy turning in a decent but unexciting fourth dimension. It'southward fine for paradigm touch-ups and managing a photo drove, though serious content creators will probably want a 4K display.

Graphics Tests

We test Windows systems' relative graphics musculus with two gaming simulations, 3DMark and Superposition. The first has two DirectX 11 subtests, Sky Diver and Fire Strike, suitable for mainstream PCs with integrated graphics and higher-stop gaming rigs respectively. The 2d uses the Unigine engine to render and pan through a detailed 3D scene at two resolution and prototype quality settings with results measured in frames per second (fps); 30fps is normally considered a fair target for smooth animation while avid gamers prefer 60fps or higher.

The Spectre is the but aspirant here with a detached GPU instead of humble integrated graphics, and it showed—even though its GeForce GTX 1650 Ti is nowhere nigh the height of Nvidia's ladder, it's the only one worth because if you intend to play games. The other 4 systems are strictly for casual or browser-based gaming.

Battery Rundown Test

After fully recharging the laptop, nosotros ready up the car in power-salvage mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance fashion) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown exam. (We besides turn Wi-Fi off, putting the laptop into airplane mode.) In this test, we loop a video—a locally stored 720p file of the Blender Foundation short film Tears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50% and volume at 100% until the organisation quits.

The Yoga and Envy finished get-go and second, landing on either side of the 13-hr mark. That's impressive stamina for a desktop replacement (even the final-place Spectre did fairly well, though its 4K screen is a battery drain). Getting through a full day of work or school will be no problem.

Large and in Accuse

Our recent review found the HP Pavilion x360 xv a solid value, just the Envy x360 15 is a substantially nicer organization for only $230 more. Its AMD Ryzen processor goes beyond peppy to downright brisk, its screen is brighter and more colorful, and it offers conveniences similar a fingerprint reader and a photographic camera-shutter key.

Information technology's unfortunate that our examination unit of measurement didn't come with a pen and we would take liked to see a 4K screen, but if you're in the market for a presentation-friendly desktop replacement and tin't afford the Editors' Choice-laurels-winning Spectre x360 fifteen, the Envy is a starting time-form choice.

HP Envy x360 15 (2021)

Cons

The Bottom Line

If you crave an affordable large-screen convertible, HP's Ryzen-based Green-eyed x360 15 is a fast and correct-priced option, as long as you're satisfied with the full-Hd display (instead of a 4K one) in its AMD incarnation.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/hp-envy-x360-15-2021

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