Gadgetory

welcome back to hard brown box today we're finally looking at another rising mobile laptop the second ever system I've had proper hands-on time with some reason it's been extraordinarily difficult to get more rising power of laptops in my hands it's not that they don't exist because at this point there are a range of options on the market it's just companies haven't had them available here all wouldn't send them out for review anyway HP has pulled through with their brand-new HP Envy x-360 13 inch and this spoiler alert is a fantastic system the level of performance you get in this form factor and at a sub $700 price point is hard to pass up and that's without mentioning numerous other features HP has managed to cram into this machine the envy x-360 13 also provides us with the platform to see how rise in mobile fares in a 13-inch form factor for the first time when I initially reviewed rise in mobile than the 15-inch Envy x-360 was actually back over there it was good but I thought the real strength of this apu would be in ultra compact notebooks pitted directly against intel cable ike refresh systems without discrete graphics after all we know how disappointing intel's integrated graphics is so to get an APU with a more powerful GPU in the same form factor is a very attractive proposition and I'll talk a bit more about the performance later on if you weren't aware of the price tag it would be easy to mistake the envy x-360 13 for a high-end system the pressed aluminium shell with an anodized grey finish looks incredible for a mid-range device with elements like the pattern spine and deep black glass bezels adding to the premium finish the newer HP logo on the lid combined with expansive slabs of metal and relatively few seen or changes in materials delivers a minimalist design that I love the 13-inch Envy x-360 is also super compact there's pretty slim bezels around the 13.3 inch 1080p display not the slimmest I've seen but it's hard to complain about the wedge design is reasonably thin at 15 millimeters and despite having that 360 degree hinge the whole unit weighs just 1.27 kilograms which is slightly under the average I'd expect for a laptop this size just on the 360 degree hinge again it's not a feature I personally use a lot though some people may find the tablet and stand modes useful in some situations the one thing I love about these convertible designs though is that having these extra modes does not compromise the laptop experience in any way you still get a great keyboard and trackpad with the ability to use it on your lap with ease the more tablet focused devices like the surface aren't nearly as good in that regard HP includes a pen in the box which supports Windows 10 - native inking functionality and packs 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity though HP tells me a pen with four times the sensitivity is available as an optional extra for those that require it the pen works really well and it's great you get it in the box for those that want to annotate or draw no need to spend a hundred bucks on an accessory just to get that functionality I always decent you get two full size USB 3.1 gen2 us a USB C 3.1 gen2 port no Thunderbolt 3 here but you can charge the laptop through USB C if you have a charger that supports the appropriate amount of power output otherwise the Envy x-360 also charges over a proprietary connector and that's the charge included in the box there's also a 3.5 ml headphone jack and micro SD card slot the sides also include the power button volume buttons and a sizable fan vent so there wasn't a whole lot of extra space for further IO but what has been included is sufficient especially as you can turn the USB C port into a variety of display outputs through a dongle this laptop is simply too thin for something like full-sized HDMI the keyboard is as good as ever borrowing the exact same design as other envy and Specter devices the clicky tactile response is one of my favorites among ultra-thin laptops each key is extremely stable and the layered is decent so you can awesome typing experience the Trackman isn't so good it's fine but it could do with a bit more vertical height and it doesn't have quite the same responsiveness or accuracy as the best trackpad as I've used a large section above the keyboard is used for the speaker array with Bang & Olufsen branding and the sound quality they produce is actually pretty decent for a laptop it's nothing amazing they lack low-end punch like most laptop speakers but at least they can go pretty loud without epic Distortion and I wouldn't describe them as super tinny either the display at least Amara unit is a 13.3 inch 1080p IPS LCD with performance that fits this laptops mid-range price brightness is average topping out at just 215 it's as is the contrast ratio which falls the touch below a thousand to one viewing angles though are outstanding as you might expect for a convertible laptop and there's a touchscreen included that works well in terms of color performance we looking at 89% coverage of the srgb gama which is a little below what i'd normally like to see but significantly better than the 15-inch envy x-360 that supported only 67 percent coverage looking across the accuracy charts it's all very average again with deltas in the 4.0 to 6.0 range the display looks fine from an initial glance but it's not something you'd want to use for any serious color work at least without full calibration let's talk about performance and once again I'll be mostly going through how the HP Envy x-360 13 performs in a summarized way because I've already covered the Rison 5 2500 you in detail a fair while ago and those results are still perfectly valid and yes the envy x-360 13 unit I was sent packs the Rison 5 2500 you also available is the rise in 7 2700 you if you want slightly high CPU clocks and a decent amount more GPU performance while on the low end you can get the Rison 3 2300 you although I'd recommend sticking with at least the Rison 5 to get a decent GPU there's also 8 gigabytes of ddr4 as standard and a 256 gig SSD although those parts are upgradable if you like strangely HP only offers a 16 gig ram upgrade with the risin 5 SKU not rising 7 and a 4k screen is also an optional extra though I'd stick to 1080p for performance and battery life reasons the main difference between the rise and 5 2500 you in the 13-inch Envy x-360 and the one used in the 15-inch Envy x-360 I use for my original rise in 5 2500 you testing is the power configuration the 15-inch model with more room for cooling uses a 25 watt config rose the 13-inch I'm reviewing today uses the standard 15 watt config while the chip and its specs is identical this TDP difference governs how power is split between the CPU and the GPU as well as what levels of Bruce clocks can be sustained and for how long so naturally there's going to be a performer difference when going from 25 watts down to 15 watts the good news is that when you compare the two configurations the performance difference is only significant in a few types of workloads in shorter mostly CPU bound tasks like Cinebench Excel 7-zip and PC mark there is very little performance difference either within the margin of error or reduced by a single-digit amount considering we're talking about a 40% reduction in TDP and most everyday tasks of these shorter CPU bound type things that's a great result for the 15 watt configuration of risin 5 mobile where the 2500 u does take a hit is in longer workloads specifically things like video encoding handbrake for example is 27% slow in a test attacks over 2 hours to complete blender is another benchmark that sees around that 27 to 28 percent hit which again isn't quite as large as the 40 percent cut to power the other area that gets impacted is GPU performance and it's there you'll see reductions by around 30 to 35 percent even in shorter loads it's no real surprise of the higher 25 watt configuration is able to allocate more power to the GPU so when you bring that down to 15 watts it's an area that is going to suffer a bit discussing the 15 watt versus 25 all configurations is just for interest sake really is the main comparison is between the Rison 5 2500 you and the Intel Core i5 8250 you the latter of which is found in competing systems around this price and here Rison is quite competitive depending on the workload particularly in tasks that utilize the GPU in Cinebench r15 the Rison 5 2500 do takes a strong 21% lead and there were also handy wins in 7-zip decompression and our premier non luma tree test blender was also a good 15 percent faster on the 2500 u thanks to rise in Mobile's far more impressive integrated graphics several other tests pulled up around the same level as the 8250 you including excel x264 encoding second pass the more intensive of the two passes and PC mark the two major losses shouldn't come as a surprise handbrake uses AVX instructions for encoding x265 videos and Rison is well-known to have weaker AVX performance compared to equivalent intel parts hence white falls 28% behind MATLAB a commonly used tool for engineers is an optimized horizon at all and in fact uses Intel optimized binaries which sees rise and suffer significantly in that test in GPU bound snow is like 3d MUX time spy test the risin 5 2500 you holds an enormous lead on the Core i5 8250 you to the tune of more than 50% and this carries across into the GPU bound games and compute heavy applications all those sort of things there is no doubt whatsoever that the risin 5 2500 you is far superior to their Core i5 a 250 you in graphics and in some cases like fortnight it's actually possible to play the game comfortably on the 2500 you where the AE 250 you is really not fast enough and that's really the tale of the two CPU options the risin 5 2500 you offers equivalent CPU performance to the core i5 8250 you in most applications except the 2500 you offers significantly better graphics performance if you want to do anything GPU related including playing basic level games and you're tossing it between say the envy x-360 with rice and mobile and something with Intel Inside rise and mobile is a much better option both a and B and Intel have higher tier CPUs on offering a 15 watt TDP configuration on the Intel site there's the cry 78550 you and on the AMD side we have the rise in seven 2700 you so it doesn't seem fair to compare the risin 5 2500 you in my review unit to say the core i7 8550 you but if you do want more performance there is an Envy x-360 13 with the horizon 7 2700 you inside so you'll be able to enjoy the fastest CPU and GPU that apu provides and again the 2700 you is extremely competitive with the 85 50 you there is one other laptop configuration i want to mention and that's the core i7 85 50 you paired up with nvidia geforce MX 151 de 12 a combo we've started to see in 13 inch notebooks recently to provide a decent GPU in intel power systems to replace their mediocre integrated GPU the MX 151 d 12 is a fair bit faster than the GPU in the rise and 5 2500 you but the 2700 you certainly gives it a run for its money also the MX 150 + 85 50 you combo requires more power than rising mobile so that's something to keep in mind for those that run workloads on a battery I done extensive testing with the Rison seven 2700 you or the MX 151 de 12 but what I will say is don't automatically assume the discrete MX 150 is superior to the risin seven 2700 use integrated Vega GPU simply because it's a discrete GPU rise and mobile is highly competitive with the MX 150 and that's why I think it's such a compelling option for ultra portable systems moving on from discussing rising mobile spend a lot of time on it let's look at storage performance inside the HP Envy x-360 is a samsung PM 961 PCIe nvme SSD and it provides really solid performance across sequential and random transfer tests it's not as fast as the very latest Samsung SSDs but it's - performs very well certainly outperforming SATA SSDs you often see mid tier products inside the envy x-360 is a 53 watt hour battery which is a typical size for a 13-inch ultra portable and it delivers ok battery life you aren't going to get blown away by what the system offers systems with you know larger batteries like the LG gramm and the dell XPS 13 still outperform the envy x-360 in our tests but for a laptop with a more powerful APU and a touchscreen I'm pretty happy with the battery results all up the envy x-360 13 is a highly impressive device particularly when you factor in that price I'm actually a little amazed that for just 700 u.s. dollars you can get this great metal chassis with a 360 degree hinge an acceptable 1080p touch display with the pen in the box and most importantly the power of the Rison 5 2500 you complimented by a gig of ram and a 256 gig SSD this device could genuinely be a flagship product yet HP is perfectly content to sell it in the mid-range with a very attractive price those are the performance junkies and particularly will love this devices the Rison 5 2500 u provides CPU performance around the mark of the Cry 5 a 250 u in most benchmarks yet it absolutely smashes the Intel offering and GPU performance with the much faster integrated Vega GPU that makes it a great system flows that want to smash out some documents or photo editing and then play a bit 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 better though it's fine for most users the fan does get quite loud under load and there do a few oddities with Rison mobile like the lack of driver updates and the odd app that is incompatible or as you saw earlier just performs unusually poorly but I think when you can get what the envy x-360 13-inch provides a $700 you'll be hard-pressed to find a more attractive system on the market and easily recommend this for students or really anyone that wants a bang for your buck ultra portable it's a far better system than the 15-inch Envy x-360 I looked at earlier in the year - which came as a pleasant surprise for the Aussies out there again HP is stinging us massively with the price for the envy x-360 13 the model currently being sold for $700 u.s. will set us back 1800 Aussie dollars which is absolutely outrageous most consumer electronics here do have some sort of Australia tech I'm sure you all know about that but I would love to hear HP's justification for why the unit has more than $700 worth attacks on top of the u.s. price plus GST when converted this laptop would be in a lead option at 1200 bucks here but $1,800 that's just unfair on Aussies but that's it of this review of the HP Envy x-360 13-inch if you're interested in picking up one of these laptops and you're in the US where the price actually makes sense check out the links in the description below as always consider supporting us on patreon if you like what we do and you can also get access to our exclusive discord chat and behind-the-scenes video is there and as always I'll catch you in the next one