HP Envy X2 review

The HP Envy X2 is a Windows 8 tablet that comes with an accompanying keyboard dock that turns it into a miniature laptop. Unlike other Windows 8 tablets we’ve seen, it only runs the 32-bit version of the operating system rather than the full 64-bit version, but this isn’t really an issue with the Envy X2 as it has only 2GB of RAM.

Detaching the screen is as simple as flipping the switch on top of the keyboard tray and pulling it apart. It can be a little stiff at times and it often required a firm push to connect it back into the keyboard, but it’s kept in place by a combination of magnetic connectors and a sturdy latch.

As a tablet, the Envy X2 looks stunning. Made from brushed aluminium, it’s very thin and weighs little more than an iPad. The keyboard dock almost doubles the weight of the tablet, but it still weighs just 1.4kg altogether, making either form very easy to slip into a bag.

It has a bright 11.6in IPS display and a 1,366×768 resolution, but its overall image quality was quite average compared to other tablets we’ve seen. Our reds, greens and blues were reasonably rich, but blacks and whites were quite grey and our high contrast images all lacked a certain level of detail. Darker scenes were particularly difficult to look at due to its reflective glossy finish, but its wide viewing angles went some way in making up for this.

A rear-facing 8-megapixel camera rounds off the Envy X2’s main tablet features. Our outdoor shots were a bit on the dreary side, but there was a good level of detail in all of our photos and only a very minimal amount of noise in large expanses of cloud. It couldn’t cope with lower lighting conditions, though, and our indoor shots were packed full of noise and inaccurate colours. Capturing video was even worse as colour accuracy was constantly changing even while we’d left a few lights on. It wasn’t able to hold its focus when more than one light source was introduced either, and turning all our main lights off looked like there was a swarm of flies in front of the camera.

The sides of the tablet are too thin to hold any connectors, but there’s a combined headphone and microphone jack and microSD card slot on the base that docks into the keyboard. This will be vital in expanding the Envy X2’s total storage, as it only comes with a 64GB SSD, which doesn’t leave a huge amount of room for anyone with a large media collection.

A pair of Beats Audio speakers are located just underneath its bezel, but these were quite disappointing. Our test tracks not only sounded very tinny with hardly any bass, but their location near the bottom of the tablet means that most of the sound gets obscured when it’s attached to the keyboard dock. They’re all right for the odd YouTube clip, but you’ll definitely want to connect a pair of headphones for listening to music.

The NFC-enabled keyboard dock expands the Envy X2’s connectivity options further with an HDMI output for connecting it to a second screen, two USB ports, a full-sized SD card reader and another combined headphone and microphone jack. It also contains one of the Envy X2’s two batteries, and we managed an impressive 13h 5m in our light use battery test with the screen set to half brightness. Without the keyboard battery, the tablet lasted 7h 17m under the same conditions. This is good, but it’s still a way off from the ten hours you’d get from an iPad.

Typing was a little more problematic. The keys were well-spaced and gave plenty of tactile feedback, but we noticed it had a tendency to register some keys twice, which led to a lot of mistakes while we were typing. The worst culprit was the space bar, which constantly registered two spaces instead of one, and we’d occasionally get extra letters cropping up after the end of a word as well.

Its touchpad was much better. We were able to use multi-touch gestures like two-finger scrolling and pinch-zooming without any problem, and Windows 8 shortcuts like bringing up the Charms bar worked every time. It also had a good amount of click despite not having any physical buttons, and it centralised position meant we never accidentally brushed out hand over it while typing.

More frustrating, though, was its lack of processing power. It has a 1.8GHz Intel Atom Z2760 processor, which is one of Intel’s mobile processors for tablets and smartphones, but as you might expect, this means it’s significantly less powerful than a mobile laptop processor and it showed in our multimedia benchmarks. It scored just 10 overall, which is one of the slowest scores we’ve seen. It’s still just about fast enough for simple tasks like word processing and browsing the web, but it struggled in each area of the test, particularly when it came to multi-tasking.

This makes the Envy X2 a rather divisive device, as a large part of its appeal will depend on what you plan to use it for. As a laptop, its performance just can’t match other similarly priced Ultrabook convertibles, and its graphics capabilities were similarly underwhelming. Unsurprisingly, its Intel HD Graphics chip failed out Dirt Showdown test at High Quality settings at a 720p resolution, and our attempts to play other less demanding games were similarly thwarted. It wasn’t able to load the Chrome version of Bastion, and even 2D Flash games like Jetpack Joyride caused it to stutter occasionally both in-game and in its menu settings.

CONCLUSION

When it launched our main gripe with the Envy X2 was its price. At a whopping £699 it was neither a good laptop nor a good tablet. Annoyingly despite being released way back in June 2013 it is still nearly as expensive. You can pick one up from Argos for a penny shy of £650, which is hardly earth shattering.

The HP Envy X2 suffers from the same malady that has affected so many Windows 8 devices – it doesn’t know what it wants to be. As a result it is both a poor tablet and a poor laptop. If you’ve got your heart set on a Windows 8 tablet then the Microsoft Surface Pro is an excellent bet. You can now pick up a Surface Pro 2 for £439, which is decent value.

If you’re after a great, high-performance tablet then it is hard to look beyond the Apple iPad. The excellent iPad 4 (also known as the iPad with Retina display) is now back on sale and costs just £329. Windows 8 has its critics and there is no denying that iOS is – for the time being – a superior tablet operating system.

The HP Envy X2 is one of many poorly designed and poorly thought out Windows 8 tablet/laptop hybrids. We would have hoped it would come down more in price since it launched, but at £650 it is still difficult to recommend.