2020 HP Envy x360 13 Convertible 2-in-1 Review: Ryzen 5 Beats a Core i7

[Redaktion]

The latest mid-range 13.3-inch convertible from HP could easily pass as a flagship Spectre offering. It does almost everything right to be a worthwhile sub-$1000 laptop worth considering with only a handful of annoyances to keep in mind.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/2020-HP-Envy-x360-13-Convertible-2-in-1-Review-Ryzen-5-Beats-a-Core-i7.477589.0.html

[Padmakara]

Great convertible with great screen, but those memory timings 22 are very slow, probably it translates in min 10% loss of fps in games

[neblogai]

When writing about the Freesync, could you show it's range? It is shown when putting mouse over the Freesync tab. Knowing the range is quite important, as the range has to be similar to the capability of the iGPU.

[el3m]

When writing about the Freesync, could you show it's range? It is shown when putting mouse over the Freesync tab. Knowing the range is quite important, as the range has to be similar to the capability of the iGPU.

The range is 40-60 (at least in one Youtube review they showed the Radeon screen). Looking at games this could be very useful in some games, where this laptop is averaging 45 fps. For example GTAV you could potentially run with 1080p and medium settings, at least with 4700u SKU

[Gump]

Your runtime seems really long according to my experience with the 4700U unit (300 nits and realtek WiFi card).

Dunno if it's due to me using Firefox and keeping Discord on but various web usage would get me to 7h while web video will not go further than 9h

[Joschn]

Thanks for the thorough review! (Maybe some tests with the other HP profiles, pretty please? ;) )

I think you still let off HP too easy for their habit of making stupid layout choices with otherwise perfectly servicable keyboards (Elitebook 820 G5 with your Skype buttons, I'm looking at you!) :)

The reason: The bigger consequence for the missing right CTRL key manifests in international layouts (at least QWERTZ/AZERTY). Those standards have one additional key compared to QWERTY and had the right CTRL repurposed for that use case (for <>|) on the Envys.

Even by itself a suboptimal choice, but from what I've read (IIRC in an amazon review, wasn't able to find a picture yet) they are now FN-mapped to the L key...seriously, HP, all that for the fingerprint reader!?

[IonBlade]

Thanks for the excellent review!

Couple of questions that I may have missed the answer to in the article:

1) How is the battery life when gaming?  I see the load test shows 116 minutes, but is that a purely CPU load, or CPU + GPU?  (Power draw numbers weren't listed for Witcher 3, so I believe that load test may just be CPU load).  I'm hoping the machine can get 90-120 minutes while running a modern game at moderate brightness.

2) Does the machine throttle under CPU + graphics load, like playing games, when it's fully folded over into tablet mode with the back of the screen up against the back of the base? 

I have a use case where I'd like to use one of these in tablet mode propped up on a treadmill to play games.  The exhaust would be facing up, so that should be fine, but I am concerned the screen being folded over might not allow the intake to get enough air and the machine could throttle.  Would really love to get confirmation that the machine doesn't throttle in that configuration while running games for a period of time!

[mv255]

The 1000 nits brightness is a marketing move. It is used only for the privacy filter, so that only the user is able to see what is on the screen. But the screen does not actually get that bright.

[Notedbuch]

What about the sound?
It has a Bang Olufsen sound system but how good it is?the DAC is superior? Does it allow optical output?
The speakers are good or you better use earphones?

[Padmakara]

The 15.6 model with same specs as the reviewed one is selling for 600$ on Walmart and 660$ on Amazon.
For this price is best bang for the buck!

[_MT_]

1) How is the battery life when gaming?  I see the load test shows 116 minutes, but is that a purely CPU load, or CPU + GPU?  (Power draw numbers weren't listed for Witcher 3, so I believe that load test may just be CPU load).  I'm hoping the machine can get 90-120 minutes while running a modern game at moderate brightness.

Do realize that the power draw numbers are at the wall. Meaning while plugged-in. At least I believe so. Once you unplug a laptop, things can significantly change. When laptops have a relative long run time under load, it tends to be because they significantly restrict performance. With a 51 Wh battery, your average draw is going to be about 25 W, not 40 W. There is no way you can draw an average of 40 W for almost two hours from a 51 Wh battery. Which is, obviously, going to impact frame rates. Something to bear in mind.

[Michael K]

Can this be bought in Europe ?

[IonBlade]

1) How is the battery life when gaming?  I see the load test shows 116 minutes, but is that a purely CPU load, or CPU + GPU?  (Power draw numbers weren't listed for Witcher 3, so I believe that load test may just be CPU load).  I'm hoping the machine can get 90-120 minutes while running a modern game at moderate brightness.

Do realize that the power draw numbers are at the wall. Meaning while plugged-in. At least I believe so. Once you unplug a laptop, things can significantly change. When laptops have a relative long run time under load, it tends to be because they significantly restrict performance. With a 51 Wh battery, your average draw is going to be about 25 W, not 40 W. There is no way you can draw an average of 40 W for almost two hours from a 51 Wh battery. Which is, obviously, going to impact frame rates. Something to bear in mind.

That makes a lot of sense; I hadn't considered that.

I wouldn't even mind it lasting just an hour as long as I could set the various control panels to a "max performance / minimum battery" setting to get the same performance as the 4500U benchmark videos I've seen on Youtube for dozens of games, but I'm not even sure that the various power options give that level of control to make battery performance equal to wall performance.

In short, I haven't seen anything that says "This is the kind of performance you should expect to be able to get on battery specifically (as opposed to all the videos that show gaming performance is tweakable to 30+ FPS powered by the wall), and here is the battery life we got when set to whatever res / detail settings / power management options in the HP management tool and / or AMD control panel were needed to hit 30FPS in modern games."

It's also possible that what I'm looking for doesn't even exist yet.  Right now, I have to use a Surface Go with LTE to stream games from my gaming desktop for treadmill use, but that leaves me with periods where 4G is congested and suddenly mid walk I have no entertainment, or where I hit my data cap.  Was really hoping Ryzen 4000 has finally enabled a 2-in-one or tablet that is a few lb, fits on the tablet lip of a treadmill, can get 1.5 - 2 hours running modern games at at least 30 FPS, is 10 inches or more so I can actually make out what's happening while my head is bouncing around walking, and doesn't throttle when in tablet mode.

[kek]

So far, this is as close as premium AMD has gotten on laptops, and yet, no thunderbolt on it practically kills this device future proof. At least, it is not expensive, so even without thunderbolt, it could be useful for some light office work

[Bruce W]

Who cares about thunderbolt? If you want to use GPU, build a proper desktop.