If you’re shopping for a 15.6-inch convertible laptop, HP is determined to close the sale. You say the premium Spectre x360 15 is too expensive? Look! There’s the under-$800 Pavilion x360 15. Actually, were you thinking of something between those extremes? Then perhaps the Envy x360 15 (starts at $699.99; $999.99 as tested) will hit the sweet spot. It’s heavy and unwieldy in tablet mode, but 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 prefer our convertibles a bit smaller and more manageable, but the Envy is a handsome choice if you like your convertible super-sized.
Flexible Hinge, Flexible Configurations
Besides filling the gap between the flagship Spectre and thrifty Pavilion series, HP says its Envy label targets creative users. You can pick an Envy x360 15 with either Intel or AMD under the hood, but only Core 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 1,920-by-1,080-pixel panel.
Sticking with the AMD versions here, the $699.99 base model combines a Ryzen 5 5500U chip with 8GB of memory, a 256GB solid-state drive, 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 touch display 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 support for face recognition, but there’s 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 mode, presentation- or kiosk-friendly easel mode, or tablet mode with the screen and keyboard back to back.
Clad in Nightfall Black aluminum, the Envy measures 0.72 by 14.1 by 9 inches, negligibly smaller than two other 15.6-inch convertibles, the Lenovo Yoga C740 (0.72 by 14.1 by 9.3 inches) and Dell Inspiron 15 7000 2-in-1 (0.71 by 14 by 9.4 inches). It weighs 4.11 pounds to their 4.2 apiece, but you can’t tell the difference without a butcher’s scale.
The laptop has three USB 3.2 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 audio jack, while an SD card slot and the AC adapter connector decorate the right.
Brightly Backlit
I’ve never written an HP laptop review without complaining about the cursor arrow keys, and I’m not about to start here—they’re arranged in an awkward row instead of the proper inverted T, with hard-to-hit, 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 Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys. The large, buttonless touchpad glides and taps easily, with a slightly stiff click.
The keyboard includes buttons to mute the microphone and disable the webcam, as well as the fingerprint reader (replacing the right Control key) and a special key to launch the HP Command Center 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 performance modes depending on your tolerance for cooling-fan noise. (I ran our benchmark tests in performance mode, except for the battery test in balanced mode.)
It’s a shame that AMD customers can’t get an Envy x360 with 4K display resolution as their Intel friends can, but the 1080p screen isn’t bad at all—reasonably bright, with good contrast and wide viewing angles. Fine details and the edges of letters are sharp instead of pixelated. White backgrounds aren’t dazzling, but they are satisfactorily white instead of dingy, and colors are vivid and well saturated even if they don’t pop like poster paints. HP Display 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 just a bit of noise or static. Of note: 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, but slightly hollow or booming, sound. The bass response is missing in action, but you can make out overlapping tracks well enough. Bang & Olufsen audio software lets you choose music, movie, or voice presets or try an equalizer to tweak the soundscape.
Other software (besides Windows 10 Home) 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 one-year warranty.
Performance Testing: This Big Flip-Top Shows Some Get-Up-and-Go
For our benchmark charts, I matched the Envy x360 15 against its abovementioned 15.6-inch convertible competitors from Lenovo and Dell, as well as HP’s more upscale Spectre x360 15. That left one slot, which I filled with a slightly smaller 2-in-1, the Asus VivoBook Flip 14. That one features a previous-generation (4000 Series) Ryzen processor. (See more about how we test laptops.)
Productivity and Media Tests
PCMark 10 and 8 are holistic performance suites developed by the PC benchmark specialists at UL (formerly Futuremark). The PCMark 10 test we run simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess 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’s boot drive. Both yield a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
All five convertibles easily cleared the 4,000-point score that indicates excellent productivity in PCMark 10, with the Envy well out in front thanks to its eight-core muscle. Microsoft Office and Google Docs are as easy for these machines as PCMark 8’s storage test was for their swift SSDs.
Next is Maxon’s CPU-crunching Cinebench R15 test, which is fully threaded to make use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image. The result is a proprietary score indicating a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads.
Cinebench is often a good predictor of our Handbrake video editing benchmark, in which we put a stopwatch on systems as they transcode a brief movie from 4K resolution down to 1080p. It, too, is a tough test for multi-core, multi-threaded CPUs; lower times are better.
The Envy’s eight-core Ryzen 7 ran away with both of our CPU benchmarks, showing near-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 Core i7 trailing even the 11th Gen Core i5 of the Dell.
We also run a custom Adobe Photoshop image-editing benchmark. Using an early 2018 release of the Creative Cloud version of Photoshop, we apply a series of 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG test image. We time each operation and add up the total (lower times are better). The Photoshop test stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can also take advantage of most GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters.
The tables were turned here as the Lenovo won handily, with the Envy turning in a decent but unexciting time. It’s fine for image touch-ups and managing a photo collection, though serious content creators will probably want a 4K display.
Graphics Tests
We test Windows systems’ relative graphics muscle 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-end gaming rigs respectively. The second uses the Unigine engine to render and pan through a detailed 3D scene at two resolution and image quality settings with results measured in frames per second (fps); 30fps is usually considered a fair target for smooth animation while avid gamers prefer 60fps or higher.
The Spectre is the only entrant here with a discrete GPU instead of humble integrated graphics, and it showed—even though its GeForce GTX 1650 Ti is nowhere near the top of Nvidia’s ladder, it’s the only one worth considering if you intend to play games. The other four systems are strictly for casual or browser-based gaming.
Battery Rundown Test
After fully recharging the laptop, we set up the machine in power-save mode (as opposed to balanced or high-performance mode) where available and make a few other battery-conserving tweaks in preparation for our unplugged video rundown test. (We also 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 SteelTears of Steel—with screen brightness set at 50% and volume at 100% until the system quits.
The Yoga and Envy finished first and second, landing on either side of the 13-hour mark. That’s impressive stamina for a desktop replacement (even the last-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 Charge
Our recent review found the HP Pavilion x360 15 a solid value, but the Envy x360 15 is a substantially nicer system 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 like a fingerprint reader and a camera-shutter key.
It’s unfortunate that our test unit didn’t come with a pen and we would have liked to see a 4K screen, but if you’re in the market for a presentation-friendly desktop replacement and can’t afford the Editors’ Choice-award-winning Spectre x360 15, the Envy is a first-class choice.
