Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hardware unboxed laptop fans and AMD fans and rising fans and I guess HP fans as well all got excited about the new envy x-360 that launched late last year it's a good reason to because this beast is the first laptop to hit the market with an AMD rise and apu inside this is the very laptop I use for our first rise in mobile benchmark video you probably saw a couple of weeks ago pitting it against Intel's 8th gen cabe you like refresh CPUs now while of course rice and mobile is super interesting the envy x-360 is worth talking about in its own right especially as a be enthused it's or really anyone looking for decent laptop graphics might be interested in buying one of these systems it's also available in an Intel version but Rison really is the star of the show here so we'll be ignoring the Intel model for most of this review so the envy x-360 is HP's mid-tier 15-inch convertible laptop which sits below the spectre x360 that's available in 15 and 13 inch sizes as it's a convertible it has a 360 degree hinge that allows you to use it in a various modes like a tablet a tent a stand or just a standard laptop it's sometimes handy to have convertible functionality though at this size using the system as a tablet is a bit difficult so you'll probably stick to the laptop mode I guess for the most part the display is a typical 15.6 inch 1080p IPS LCD touchscreen and there's a standard range of configurable hardware at gig up to 16 gig of ddr4 ram 256 gig through to one terabyte SSDs plus one terabyte hard drives and a rather small 55.8 watt hour battery more on that later and the processor in the AMD model at least is arisin 520 500 you without additional discrete graphics if you opt in the Intel variant you'll have the choice between a Core i5 8250 U or Core i7 8550 you either with or without discreet nvidia geforce MX 150 graphics this is a typical hardware combination for 15-inch laptops and will continue to be the main competitor for rising mobile with its powerful integrated graphics in this form factor and a quick note on price the base Intel model is currently available for $700 while the rise of mobile very--it cost 750 dollars if you're after the Intel + MX 150 combo that'll set you back 800 us for otherwise equivalent hardware which makes rising mobile that little bit cheaper while the envy x-360 isn't a top-tier laptop price-wise the build quality is really nice in many ways it rivals the specter which is HP's super slim 13-inch notebook which I really liked back when I reviewed it a while back HP has used a combination of metal on most surfaces with a subtle brown tinge along with the glossy glass protecting the display and gray toned keyboard and track that when paired with minimalist branding like the new HP logo or I reckon looks fantastic and some subtle Envy text this laptop looks great and it also feels quite sturdy despite the size and weight of the display assembly the 360 hinge is strong and allows fluid movement I love deliciously slim bezels on laptops but HP hasn't quite nailed it on the envy x-360 like they did with this Spectre x-360 it feels like there's a bit of wasted space see although I guess HP has to offer a few sweet bonuses those that fork out more cash for that Spectre x-360 one thing HP does fit in the bezels is a windows hello camera for quick facial recognition which is a quick aside seems to be getting it quicker each time I use it an even more accurate on each new device which is always nice to see so let's talk ports the most boring but one of the most crucial aspects to a laptop the envy x-360 does reasonably well here two USB 3.1 genuine type-a ports on each side along with a USB 3.1 gen2 on type C port this isn't a Thunderbolt 3 Porter's rise of mobile doesn't support Thunderbolt not that it matters too much I guess is the Intel variant of this laptop also doesn't include Thunderbolt 3 other ports include a 3.5 mm headphone jack full-sized HDMI 2.0 B an SD card slot and disappointingly I guess of proprietary charging port it would have been neat if you charged over USB C but it can't the Envy x-360 does include Bang & Olufsen speakers like many other HP laptops banging olsen are known for making a high-end speaker system so it always strikes me as a bit strange that they put their brand on crappy laptop speakers like this seriously these speakers are no good and they sound even worse if that's possible when you disable the Bang & Olufsen experience of software setting but on a completely different note the keyboard on this laptop is very similar to the spectres keyboard in other words it's excellent with a solid clicky response rarely seen on slim ultra portable keyboards travel distance is great it's a 15-inch laptop so you also get a numpad and the layout is generally good my only real complaint here are the half-height arrow keys surprisingly though the trackpad on this laptop isn't that good I'd probably say it's below average for this class previous HP laptops I've used to have included a decent trackpad hence the surprise here though I wouldn't say it's unusable or anything moving on to the display and it really isn't good news for HP here the specter line uses high quality panels but it's clear there with the envy x-360 the display is one area where cuts have been made for starters there's nothing inherently wrong about the tech used here I've seen plenty of 15.6 inch 1080p IPS LCD s that perform well this panel has good viewing angles and a decent enough resolution so I guess that's something unfortunately though brightness is very weak with a peak output of just 217 nits well below standard for this sort of laptop contrast is good at 1500 to one but that's not worth much when the display itself can't get that bright as for color performance the envy x-360 does a reasonable job in greyscale with a respectable color temperature just below what is accurate and okay they're not terrible Delta a values however the display can only output 67 of the sRGB spectrum which is very poor and leads to muted under saturated colors hitting a hundred percent srgb is standard these days and all but the cheapest of panels and without this feature there is no way any creator or really anyone that likes a good display would consider using it you might have guessed already but the lack of proper srgb reproduction leads to terrible delta-e averages in saturation and color checker tests and unfortunately as the issues are largely down to the srgb coverage it's not something that can be addressed through calibration as I've covered the performance of the risin 5 2500 you extensively in a separate video I'm not going to go into detail about the performance of this laptop if you're interested in a ton of benchmarks this apu in this very laptop check out my review of the risin 5 2500 you or check my previous coverage of intel's 8th gen cpus if you're thinking of picking up and intel variant what i will give you guys here is a brief highlights package of how the envy x-360 with its risin 5 2500 you performs when looking at cpu workloads the risin 5 2500 you is behind intel's 8th gen kb lake refresh cpus but only marginally in some cases typical results either core i7 85 50 you pull ahead by 10 to 25% that this margin is slimmed when comparing the risin 5 apu to a Core i5 and if you're coming from literally any other older 15 watt CPU generation you'll see gains of more than 50% which is particularly handy for intensive tasks like video editing on the GPU side if you're comparing the risin 5 2500 you to a straight 8th gen CPU with integrated graphics it's a big win for risin the Vega a GPU is more than twice as fast as the UHD 620 graphics in the eye 78550 you in GPU heavy workloads like gaming which in some situations allows games to become playable where an Intel systems they are not if you introduce an NVIDIA GeForce MX 150 into the mix which is available in some envy x-360 models it's a bit of a different playing field the apex 150 is faster than Vega 8 in the range of 30 to 60 percent judging on most data I've seen so considering only cost an extra $50 or so to upgrade to this discrete GPU that will be well worth it for most people like many other laptops on the market the envy x-360 makes use of Samsung's pm9 61 for its solid-state storage the PM 961 is a PCIe nvme SSD equivalent to the 960 pro so it's decently fast good for well over 1 gigabyte sequential reads and writes on with respectable random performance surprisingly this isn't one of the area's HP skim done maybe they should have gone with a slightly slower and cheaper SSD and use the leftover cash to improve the display battery life is one of the more interesting aspects the envy x-360 as it's the first time i've been able to examine how the Rison v 2500 u performs in this regard of course you know comparing laptops to other laptops isn't an apples to apples comparison and it can be quite hard to uncover just how a CPU or APU itself can affect that tree life but I've tried to dig into the data I have so far the main thing to note here is the envy x-360 actually has quite a small battery for a 15-inch laptop at just 55 point 8 watt hours typically we see at least 70 watt hours in a machine of this size if not up to the 100 watt hour range but around 56 watt hours is more like what we see in 13-inch notebooks so this already puts the envy x-360 at a disadvantage up against its competitors it therefore shouldn't come as a surprise that the battery life produced by this laptop isn't fantastic in fact it's quite poor and from reading other reviews it seems like this is the case whether you purchased the Rison mobile model or the intel model if the battery was more in line with the display size something around 75 watt hours for example battery life would be acceptable and in line with other decent enough laptops I've reviewed the HP Envy x-360 ends up as a laptop that does a couple of things really well while letting you down big time in a few other areas while we are looking at a cheaper and lower tier product than HP's flagship Spectre line I feel a more balanced approach we've led to a better final product here where the envy x-360 succeeds now it's undoubtedly in its May hardware most configuration options leave you with either a risin 5 2500 you or an 8th gen core CPU paired with MX 150 graphics you'll be getting plenty of CPU and GPU horsepower here with the Intel Nvidia combination giving you the best bang for your buck considering the discrete GPU is more powerful than aimed ease integrated Vega 8 GPU in a rice and mobile and only cost slightly more for that configuration the design is also great from both a visual and construction standpoint with nice bonuses such as a Windows hello camera but the real deal breakers here are the display and battery life the display isn't capable of full srgb coverage so it looks dull and undersaturated plus it lacks top-end brightness and the battery capacity is simply too small for a 15-inch laptop falling more in the 13-inch category which leads to poor battery life when you know you can move up to that larger display and by the time you configure the envy x-360 to something worth using the $700 base model doesn't include SSD storage for example you'll find yourself spending around a thousand US dollars which simply isn't worth it the competing Lenovo yoga 720 starts at 950 dollars and for that price you get a much faster CPU and GPU along with basics like an SSD and a suitably large battery it mans up as a bit of a shame that the first rise in mobile laptop isn't actually that good but I hope we have a few more options to look at as the year progresses maybe Acer will send over their Swift 3 with Rison inside maybe please I guess if you listening a so hit me up and I'll happily take a swift three off your hands but apart from that I'll catch you next time