Storage, Battery Life, Swell Buy

Moving on from discussing Ryzen Mobile, let's look at storage performance. Inside the HP Envy x360 is a Samsung PM961 PCIe NVMe SSD, and it provides really solid performance across sequential and random transfer tests. It'south not every bit fast as the very latest Samsung SSDs, but it withal performs very well, certainly outperforming SATA SSDs you often see in mid-tier products.

Inside the Envy x360 is a 53 Wh battery, which is a typical size for a thirteen-inch ultraportable and delivers decent battery life. You aren't going to get blown away past what this organization offers – systems with larger batteries like the LG Gram and Dell XPS 13 yet outperform the Envy x360 in our tests – merely for a laptop with a more powerful APU and a touchscreen, I'one thousand happy with the bombardment results.

All upward, the Envy x360 xiii is a highly impressive device, particularly when y'all factor in the price. I'thousand actually a petty amazed that for just $700 you can this great metal chassis with a 360-degree swivel, an acceptable 1080p touch on display with a pen in the box, and nearly importantly, the power of the Ryzen 5 2500U complemented past 8GB of RAM and 256GB of fast SSD storage.

This device could genuinely be a flagship product, yet HP is perfectly content to sell it in the mid-range with a very bonny toll. Those that are performance junkies in particular will love this device, every bit the Ryzen 5 2500U provides CPU operation around the mark of the Core i5-8250U in most benchmarks, still information technology absolutely smashes the Intel offering in GPU functioning with a much faster integrated Vega GPU. This makes it a great system for those that want to smash out some documents or photograph editing, and then play a fleck of Fortnite on the side.

This isn't to say the device is perfect, because no laptop is perfect. Battery life could be a bit amend, though information technology's fine for most users; the fan does get quite loud nether load; and at that place are still a few oddities with Ryzen Mobile similar the lack of driver updates and the odd app that is incompatible or performs unusually poorly.

But we recall when you can get what the Envy x360 13 inch provides for $700 (there'due south besides a Ryzen iii $599 configuration available on HP.com at the moment), y'all'll be hard pressed to discover a more attractive organisation on the market. I'd easily recommend this for students, or really for anyone that wants a bang-for-your-cadet ultraportable. It's a far improve system than the 15-inch Envy x360 we looked at earlier in the year, likewise, which came as a pleasant surprise.

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  • HP Envy x360 13 on HP.com

Pros: Excellent operation from a thirteen-inch ultraportable laptop. Outstanding value for money. Metal build is on-par with flagship devices. Dandy keyboard and I/O options.

Cons: Battery life could be better. Runs a bit loud.