Gadgetory

welcome back to hardware I'm box today's video is a bit of a follow-up to the coverage we did a couple of weeks ago on the first windows on arm devices in that video which you should definitely check out we benchmark the snapdragon 835 running windows in both emulated x86 apps and native uwp apps comparing it to a range of other processes in this video we'll be revisiting some of those benchmarks but we'll be mostly looking more closely at the first snapdragon 835 device running Windows the HP Envy x2 having now used this tablet for a couple of weeks there's a lot of things HP did well to make this a hardware experience to rival the surface and then on the other hand they probably were a bit let down by the performance of x86 emulation on ARM processors so the key piece of hardware in the enve x2 is the snapdragon 835 however HP has packed in several other decent components the display is a twelve point three inch 1920 by 1200 IPS LCD there's a decent 41.6 watt hour battery and you'll get either four gigabytes of RAM and 128 gigabytes of storage or eight gig of ram and 256 gig of storage depending on the configuration and region in the United States the four gigabyte model is what you'll get while here in Australia we have the 8 gig very unlike with basically every Windows tablet except the surface both the keyboard cover and stylus are included in the box for no additional charge for some reason Microsoft is still able to charge nearly $200 extra for these accessories which just blows my mind HP's Windows on um device is the most premium of the devices and now so far while the seuss and lenovo targeted more mid-range offerings the nvx to screams in at the top with a full metal construction and an eye-watering $1,000 price tag the pricing of this tablet will be examined fully a bit later on so for now let's discuss the design and construction of this tablet according to Qualcomm both HP and Lenovo opted to use several elements of Qualcomm z-- windows on RF it's designed for their devices despite this the final build of the Envy x2 is fantastic it looks excellent with metal on all sides and Gorilla Glass protecting the display and the nice seamless construction gives it that premium touch you'd expect from a top-end tablet the Envy x2 is also quite thin and light for a Windows device it's just 7.7 millimeters thick and a touch under 700 grams heavy however that's perhaps not as impressive when you realize the surface pro is 8.5 mm thick and around 770 grams heavy yet it also integrates a kickstand into the body it features a fully fledged intel core processor and you get a slightly larger battery still the Envy x2 feels great to hold and the silver metal design is of a similar quality to HP's flagship laptops like the spectre x360 there's enough bezel around the display to make the tablet usable in a handheld fashion without absolutely overwhelming the screen with bezel and the twelve point three inch display feels like a suitable size for this sort of tablet and I like the 16:10 aspect ratio the IO selection on this tablet is pretty slim at just one USB 3.1 type C port and a headphone jack it's nice than charges via USB C but if you want to charge it and use a peripheral at the same time you'll have to buy a dongle luckily HP does include a USB c2a dongle for just basic peripheral use but again you know if you want to actually charge and use a device you'll have to purchase something separately while you don't get many USB ports on this tablet you do get both a micro SD card slot and a nano SIM slot thanks to the Snapdragon 835 you'll get an integrated Snapdragon x16 LTE modem in the enve x2 so you can chuck in a sim and enjoy the internet wherever you go I'd really do wish more laptops had integrated LTE support and with Windows on arm you can guarantee you're getting that feature in pretty much all the devices we'll see the keyboard cover attaches to the nvx to using magnets and pins so nothing too unusual however as the stand is integrated into the cover rather than the tablet itself there are a couple more steps to get the tablet set up in the cover then with the simplest surface style kickstand design the way The Stand folds back over itself is a unique take and does allow a wide range of angles there for a standard laptop style ankle it's not as quick and easy to use as with the surface having the stand attached to the keyboard also means you can't prop up just the tablet alone if the stand was integrated into the tablet body the nvx two strengths is a media consumption device could be made even stronger you know prop up the tablet watch a video and enjoy outstanding battery life but as you'll need to bring along the keyboard to use the stand this sort of experience is a bit diminished the good news is the keyboard itself is excellent it has a great tactile clicky response the keys are a decent size for typing and there's not a significant amount of flex in their cover while smashing out a word document it's very similar to the keyboards on HP's fully fledged laptops in this regard and the track that is also quite good and works well considering the limited space allocated to it HP has also done quite well with the display the twelve point three inch 1920 by 1200 LCD isn't anything special from a spec perspective but its performance exceeded my expectations it's capable of a high level of brightness around 500 nits plus it features a decent contrast ratio of 1415 to 1 and great viewing angles as well it does have a content-aware automatic brightness feature though it's not too aggressive and helps conserve energy where possible the key aspect that impressed me is its calibration Delta easing the 2.4 to 2.8 range aren't quiet in the realm of very accurate however it is much better than a lot of other Windows laptops and should suffice for those that want to do some light content creation or more likely on this sort of device view photos and an average temperature of 7,000 K isn't surprising but it's not terrible either the main downside to the Envy x2 is undoubtedly the performance as I mentioned in my previous coverage of the Snapdragon 835 running Windows at best you'll get an entry-level experience and at worst you'll be struggling through downright terrible performance in emulated x86 apps the Snapdragon 835 is a low-power processor with weak single core performance so this level of performance isn't all that surprising looking at our benchmark results in native apps like edge you can expect performance above an atom based Celeron processor from Intel but below most of Intel's Core processors from the past three to four years you're just not going to get Core i5 performance Intel provides that a 5 to 15 watt envelope in a sub 3 watt TDP the ability to emulate x86 apps on an ARM architecture is certainly impressive especially at this TDP but it's not something that actually recommend users do the Celeron n 3451 of intel slowest x86 processes is significantly faster in most x86 workloads while the low-power core i7 7 y7 v absolutely obliterates it and apps just feel sluggish to use which isn't what you'd want from a premium tablet on top of this you're faced with many limitations the Snapdragon 835 can't run 64-bit x86 apps it doesn't support x86 drivers it doesn't support OpenGL newer than 1.1 and apps that customize windows may not work at all it's still very early days for x86 emulation on arm but for most use cases it really is a break glass in case of emergency sort of thing right now being limited to Windows Store you WP apps for decent enough native performance will be fine for a small handful of users that like using edges of browser or want to watch videos and are fine with other basic apps and games but if you're used to using Chrome or want to use productivity apps like Microsoft Office Adobe Photoshop or really anything else built for Windows desktops emulated x86 performance isn't going to cut it especially when there are so many productivity tablets out there that use Intel processors that run x86 apps just fine the nvx to storage performance isn't particularly amazing either the SATA SSD isn't going to break any speed records and while that's fine considering the rest of the device's performance something a bit faster would have been nice in a high-end tablet there is good news though while performance is limited battery life is excellent from this tablet whether you're using native arm apps or emulated x86 apps the battery capacity is just 41 watt hours which is mid-range for a tablet of this size but the efficiency of the Snapdragon 835 allows it to beat almost every device in our patch tests in our web-browsing test the nvx - dominates most other devices with outstanding battery life even while using chrome switch to edge which is a more sensible option as it runs natively and the nvx - pulls even further ahead than other devices running chrome natively either way you look at it that's a great result for this device video playback is another strong area for their Envy x2 though other devices are a bit more competitive here is 1080p playback these days is a bit limited by the efficiency of the display still getting 14 and a half hours of playback at quite high levels of brightness is very good turn down the brightness and you should be able to hit HP stated 19 our figure I also tested a PC mark battery life which again is excellent though naturally most other devices in this chart perform a lot of better in terms of the cpu performance the Snapdragon 835 does consume less power but it also is a fair bit slower in the process we know some devices do have a few other battery related advantages standby battery life is excellent with very little battery drain while in sleep mode and wake times in the instant we know as hello performance is also much quicker than Intel laptops I've tested which did surprise me a little bit and you'll also get reasonably fast charging with the Envy x2 however despite a great battery life it's difficult to recommend the Envy x2 for a number of reasons the key factor in all of them is the price a thousand US dollars is just too much to pay for this tablet HP is effectively going head-to-head with similar products like the Microsoft Surface pro and the Eevee which offer full Intel Core processors and consequently provide much better performance in an equivalent form factor I think HP made a mistake in developing a high-end tablet body to go with the entry-level performance of the Snapdragon a 35 the design is beautiful in the Envy x2 packs a lot of decent features but it doesn't make a lot of sense to pair this metal design with a weak processor and charge top-end pricing for the package because as it stands there really is no way I'd recommend the Envy x2 over similarly priced surface pro that offers five times the performance in x86 apps unfortunately the Snapdragon 835 only makes sense entry-level products priced below $500 I can't see the Envy x2 getting a 50% price cut anytime soon but that's what it would take to be a solid buy it's a shame too because if HP had chucked an Intel Y Series CPU in this chassis suddenly you'd have a really compelling product while this first Snapdragon 835 Windows Device isn't all that impressive I don't think the entire platform is dead after one wave of releases if Qualcomm and mercs off work on removing some of the platform limitations allow the use of newest Snapdragon processors and encourage companies to make entry level devices price more appropriately Intel and AMD could have a serious competitor in the sub $500 budget market but right now Windows on arm really won't succeed as a high-end product that's it for this review of the HP Envy x2 don't forget to subscribe for more reviews like this one consider supporting us on patreon links to that in the description below and I'll catch you next time