HP Envy x360 14 (2024) Review

HP’s Envy family sits on a fine line between mainstream Pavilion and elite Spectre laptops. That balance can be tricky to maintain, but the Envy often shows impressive poise and polish. Take the latest 14-inch Envy x360 convertible (starts at $959; $1,399 as tested). It offers a stylish, slim design that works thoughtfully as both laptop and tablet, and its optional 2,880-by-1,800-pixel OLED display is a stunner. Alas, its lightweight hardware—specifically, a low-wattage U-series Intel processor that delivers no better battery life than rivals’ faster H-series chips—leaves it breathless and behind slimlines like the Acer Swift X 14 and the Lenovo Slim 7i 14 Gen 9.

Design: Feeling a Familiar Envy

This year’s HP Envy 2-in-1 looks much like its predecessors, even going back to the Envy x360 13.3 from 2022. It’s a svelte, smart little laptop, not boldly stylish but well put together. The keyboard deck and display lid are aluminum. The underside is a smooth plastic that feels much like the aluminum elsewhere on the enclosure, and the screen is all glass—no plastic bezels save a small strip at the bottom where the display connects to the 360-degree hinges. The system feels good and sturdy, with only minor flex evident. That’s an important quality for a laptop that’s meant to be twisted all around and used in multiple modes.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The under-$1,000 base configuration combines an Intel Core Ultra 5 125U CPU, 16GB of memory (a welcome plus instead of 8GB), a lower-tier 512GB M.2 solid-state drive, and a basic 1,920-by-1,200-pixel IPS touch screen. Our test unit jumped up to $1,399 thanks to the 2.8K OLED display, a Core Ultra 7 155U processor, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (that feels a little pricey as a $150 upgrade), and a Wi-Fi 7 networking card. A 5-megapixel IR webcam and a rechargeable stylus pen come standard.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

HP has a thin laptop on its hands here at just 0.67 inch, and yet it doesn’t make great sacrifices to get there like the port-starved Spectre model. You’ll find a 3.5mm headset jack on the right side, a USB-A port on either side, and a full-size HDMI port and two USB-C ports on the left. Regrettably, only one of those USB-C ports gets the 40Gbps Thunderbolt 4 treatment while the other is a 10Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 port. On the plus side, both USB-A ports also offer 10Gbps signaling rates. The laptop also is no larger than it needs to be to fit in a 14-inch display, measuring 12.3 inches wide by 8.6 inches deep.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

HP’s white-backlit keyboard offers few frills—no dedicated Page Up and Page Down keys, though you get questionably useful Copilot and emoji keys; no numeric keypad; and the company’s crowed cluster of arrow keys that’s sure to be a pain if you often rely on them. Thankfully, HP at least put the Delete key in the top corner instead of the power button, so touch typists can more easily hit it and not worry about accidentally sending their systems to sleep. A sizable touchpad sits below the keyboard, slightly recessed. Its surface is smooth and depresses slightly for a physical click.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The OLED touch screen has today’s fashionable 16:10 aspect ratio, providing a good deal of vertical screen real estate. It’s rated at a 500-nit peak brightness for highlights and supports a 120Hz refresh rate for smooth motion in videos (not so much in games, since this isn’t a gaming laptop). The webcam just above the display includes a small hardware shutter for privacy. I’m a fan of these but not fond of HP’s implementation here, which uses black-and-white stripes on the shutter that are hard to distinguish from glare on the display glass.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Beneath the laptop are a pair of down-firing speakers. These sit along the front edge of the system. I’m not usually a fan of down-firing speakers, but they make some sense in a convertible, as they bounce sound off your desk in laptop mode, fire toward the screen in tent mode, and still have room to breathe in tablet mode.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The screen hinge is smooth, providing easy transitions between modes. The tent position doesn’t seem too well considered, however, since it lacks any rubber feet for traction in that configuration. The tablet mode actually sees the display snap into place against the base of the laptop, seemingly magnetically, and though the split edges aren’t incredibly comfortable to hold in this position, it does the job.

Using the HP Envy x360 14: Easy on the Eyes & Hands, But Not the Ears

The Envy x360’s keyboard may be basic, but it strikes a great balance that makes it excellent for typing. The keycaps are just about perfectly flat, have a decent gap between them, and offer enough stability and resistance to make for consistent rapid input. It’s not the best laptop board I’ve felt, but I was able to maintain a comfortable typing speed of 119 words per minute in MonkeyType with 96% accuracy.

The rest of the navigation experience is pleasant. The large touchpad is great for mousing around accurately and comfortably. The physical click is a little soft, but effective, and tap-to-click is a handy alternative. The touch screen is also perfectly responsive and combines well with the smooth motion of the 120Hz display.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

HP’s OLED screen is gorgeous and likely a worthy upgrade for this test configuration. I can’t speak to the quality of the other displays HP offers for this model (which may also miss out on the 120Hz refresh rate), but the OLED one is great. At this size, it’s wonderfully sharp. It’s also colorful, bright, and even thoroughly color-accurate. The glossy finish could be problematic in bright conditions, especially as touch-screen use will see it coated in skin oils and fingerprints, but in modest lighting and dark conditions, it excels. It also supports stylus input, and HP includes one standard with retail models, though none was provided with our review unit.

The speakers offer a modest peak volume level, but they resonate inside the laptop unpleasantly at even medium volume. Max out the volume, and the effect grows more intense and is a constant distraction.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The system comes with a bit of extra software, most of which is HP’s own first-party apps and system utilities. Oddly, HP Omen Gaming Hub is among them when this laptop is far from a gaming machine, lacking even Intel Arc-level graphics.

Testing the HP Envy x360 14: Sacrificing Speed for Slimness

The Envy 2-in-1 is a slick laptop, but its price and size put it into close competition with some serious threats. At a hair over three pounds, it can’t avoid other 14-inch clamshell systems under four pounds, some of which pack considerably more heat. The Lenovo Slim 7i 14 Gen 9 ($1,240 as tested) is more affordable, but upgrades both the CPU and GPU. The Dell XPS 14 ($2,099 as tested) boasts discrete graphics. The Acer Swift X 14 offers upgrades across the board, as does the gaming-oriented HP Omen Transcend 14 ($1,699 as tested). The HP convertible falls on the more affordable side of this bunch and is the lightest, but its internals are considerably lower-power.

Productivity & Content Creation Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

The next few such benchmarks stress the CPU, using all available cores and threads to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. All of these tests are also cross-platform, working comparatively across x86, Arm64, and Mac M-series processors. Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses the company’s Redshift engine to render a complex image using the CPU or GPU. We run the multi-core CPU benchmark that works across all of a processor’s cores and threads—the more powerful the chip, the higher the score—and its single-core variant.

Geekbench 6.3 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We record its Multi-Core and Single-Core scores; higher numbers are better. Our last CPU stress test is the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.8, which converts a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution; lower times are better.

Next, we run one cross-platform content creation benchmark on all systems: Adobe Photoshop 2024 using the 1.2.20 version of PugetBench for Creators by Puget Systems. This test rates a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

The Envy hurdles the 5,000-point line in PCMark 10 that we look for to indicate good performance for everyday apps like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, but that’s about the only bar that it clears. Next to the competition here, it’s a laggard, with its Core Ultra 7 155U processor falling far behind the 155H found in all the other systems. The HP convertible at least has a speedy SSD that can help with creative workloads by providing fast access to files and program launches, but it’s simply not ready for very heavy loads. You’re paying a price for the convertible functionality and lower-power CPU here.

Graphics Tests

We test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with four cross-platform gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark: Steel Nomad and its Light variant; and Wild Life and its Extreme variant.

The Steel Nomad tests use the DirectX 12, Vulkan, or Metal graphics APIs, depending on the processor in play. Both are non-ray-traced benchmarks. Steel Nomad is built for high-end gaming systems and runs at 4K resolution, while the Light version runs at 1440p with less detail. Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme, more relevant to the Envy here, are less demanding than Steel Nomad, though the two run at 1440p and 4K resolution, respectively. This test aims to compare midrange Windows and macOS systems.

The Envy x360’s low-tier Intel integrated graphics are a far cry from even the Intel Arc silicon in the Lenovo Slim 7i 14, and (as expected) struggle to provide one-third to one-fifth the performance of the Nvidia GeForce discrete GPUs in the Acer, Dell, and Omen. It would be one thing if the 2-in-1 were a fraction of its rivals’ weight or cost, but it’s too close to these competitors to fall so far behind.

Battery & Display Tests

We test each laptop’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.

Additionally, we use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the panel can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).

This 2-in-1 does deliver satisfactory energy efficiency, lasting almost 15 and a half hours in our video rundown. That said, none of the other systems is a slouch, either; the Omen Transcend 14 and Slim 7i 14 offer competitive runtimes with more CPU horsepower available.

As for the panel quality, the Envy’s OLED display proved predictably excellent in color and contrast and can automatically switch between 120Hz and 60Hz refresh for energy savings. But the Lenovo and Omen are brighter and exhibited better Adobe RGB coverage.

Verdict: Almost Everything You Want in a 2-in-1…But Muscle

The Envy x360 14 is a good-looking machine both from a design standpoint and in terms of its display, and physically, it’s a pleasure to use. But it’s simply underpowered for a system costing a decent chunk over $1,000, and only fractionally lighter than rivals that offer greatly improved performance and competitive battery life. 

About Mark Knapp

Contributing Writer

I’ve covered the technology field for a decade, beginning a freelance career in 2017 and working with numerous publications, including PCMag since 2021, IGN, CNN Underscored, Reviewed, Forbes Vetted, TechRadar, Tom’s Guide, T3, PC Gamer, PCWorld, and more. I have reviewed hundreds of products with a particular emphasis on computers and the broad field of peripherals, especially audio gear. At PCMag, I contribute fully tested laptop reviews focused on Windows systems and audio device reviews of products like headphones and speakers.

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