Following the Spectre lineup, the Envy family houses some of HP’s best laptops, with the 2022 edition of the Envy x360 13 being a prime example. HP brought some of the premium features from the Spectre series to the Envy, including a work-friendly 16:10 display and a 5MP webcam.
The company also included a larger battery and low-power processors, resulting in decent battery life while remaining a relatively lightweight laptop. The HP Envy x360 13 does have Intel’s 9W processors, but this is the first time I’ve used one where I didn’t feel like I was sacrificing essential performance. I could complete all of my work with this laptop, so it’s a great option if you need a machine you can take anywhere for various day-to-day tasks.
HP Envy x360 13: Pricing and availability
- The HP Envy x360 13 (2022) is available now from HP and other retailers, such as Best Buy.
- The laptop starts at $899.99, but our configuration is slightly more expensive.
HP released the 2022 Envy models in the year’s first half, and the Envy x360 13 is now available. You can get it from HP’s website, where you can customize specifications such as the processor, RAM, storage, and display. It is also available from retailers such as Best Buy, though not all configuration options are available.
The HP Envy x360 13 is officially priced at $899.99 for a model with an Intel Core i5-1230U, 8GB of RAM, and 512GB of storage. Our review unit has an Intel Core i7-1250U processor but is identical to the base model, costing $1,049.99. Depending on how much you’re willing to spend, you can also go further with more RAM, storage, and an upgraded display.
Design and Ports
The Envy x360 13 is primarily made of aluminum and comes in Natural Silver. Despite the small chassis, it manages to include a few ports.
The HP Envy x360 13 is a premium laptop that feels like one. With an almost entirely aluminum chassis, it feels premium and reassuringly sturdy the moment you pick it up. It’s not too heavy, weighing under 3 pounds, which is quite light for an aluminum convertible. It makes this a very portable machine that you can take anywhere, and while magnesium could do the same thing, it wouldn’t feel as premium.
In typical HP fashion, the main color is Natural Silver, which the company claims are the most popular. The Envy x360 is also supposed to be available in a Space Blue colorway, which I would have preferred, but it isn’t yet.
See Also; New HP Spectre x360 Laptops Include Options with Intel Arc
This is also a convertible laptop, which means the hinge can rotate 360 degrees, allowing you to use it as a tablet or in other modes. Convertibles typically require more weight and thickness, which is why the sub-3-pound weight is so impressive. It is also very nice that it is only 16mm thick.
Despite its thin chassis, HP packs a lot of ports into the Envy x360 13. There are two Thunderbolt 4 ports and one USB Type-A port on the right side. Another USB Type-A port, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader can be found on the left. These are ideal for a laptop of this size, and it is much easier to plug in all your peripherals when you don’t need adapters.
Keyboard and Touchpad
The typing experience on the HP Envy x360 13 has been smooth, as with most HP laptops. Of course, because it’s a 13-inch laptop, there’s no number pad, but that’s fine if you don’t need to do a lot of math. Most importantly, it’s a comfortable keyboard with a good amount of key travel for a satisfying typing experience. It’s also not harsh when you bottom out the keys, so it’s not painful or tiring to use.
The backlight and keycap color are two potentially strange issues with the keyboard. The keys are color-matched to the laptop’s chassis, a plus in aesthetics. However, silver keys clash with the white backlight, making it difficult to see some key labels in daylight. To improve things, you can always turn off the keyboard backlight. Still, some laptops have an ambient light sensor that determines when the keyboard light should be turned on, and I believe it would have made a lot of sense in this case.
Display:
HP prioritized the display as one of the major areas for improvement in this iteration of the Envy x360 13. Previous models maintained the 16:9 aspect ratio that has been standard for many years. Taller screens were first introduced by Microsoft’s Surface family and Apple’s MacBooks, and HP began using them in the Spectre lineup. It has now filtered down to the Envy family, which is good. Taller screens are great for productivity and feel much larger than their size would suggest.
The base model has a Full HD+ resolution of 1920 x 1200 and a brightness of 400 nits by default, making this a great display right out of the box. There are also upgrade options, such as a sharper Quad HD+ model or a 2.8K OLED panel, which means true blacks and even more vibrant colors. Still, the base panel isn’t bad and gets fairly bright, though the display’s reflective coating can make it difficult to see in direct sunlight.
While HP claims up to 400 nits of brightness, our tests revealed that the Envy x360 could reach 465 nits. The brightness appears to be unevenly distributed across the different brightness levels. Still, the contrast was always good, and the white point was always close to neutral, so using it at lower brightness levels (I usually kept it set to 40%) was never uncomfortable.
Read more; HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook: Price and Release Date
Performance: power-efficient package
The HP Envy x360 13 is a different story entirely. We’re using 12th-generation processors with 10 cores and 12 threads this time, and I specifically requested the Core i7 model, which can boost to 4.7GHz. It excels at almost every task I could reasonably expect it to handle. Working on the web runs smoothly, and I rarely feel like it slows me down. Even with two external displays connected via Thunderbolt, everything worked flawlessly. I felt more constrained by the 8GB of RAM because I frequently have multiple browser tabs open. I discovered that they had to reload if they were inactive for an extended period.
However, editing RAW photos in Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop took a long time, especially when switching between the two apps. It also took a little longer to export the edited photos. Nonetheless, I shot nearly 40 photos for this review and edited them all on this laptop, which performed admirably for the most part. It’s adequate if you only edit photos on occasion, but not if you do it frequently.
| HP Envy x360 13 (2022) Intel Core i7-1250U | Surface Laptop 5 Intel Core i7-1255U | Dell XPS 13 (2022) Intel Core i5-1230U (12W) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| PCMark 10 | 5,183 | 5,287 | 4,846 |
| 3DMark Time Spy | 1,484 | 1,772 | 1,027 |
| Geekbench 5 | 1,655 / 7,425 | 1,662 / 8,711 | 1,573 / 7,073 |
| Cinebench R23 | 1,671 / 7,931 | 1,576 / 8,214 | 1,510 / 6,145 |
In benchmark tests, the HP Envy x360 13 compares favorably to other high-end laptops, even when compared to more power-hungry chips like the 15W processors found in the Surface Laptop 5. The graphics performance is where it falls short the most. It’s also worth noting that Intel’s 9W processors have much lower GPU clock speeds (950Mhz) than the 15W models (clocked at 1.25GHz).
Comparing it to the Dell XPS 13 Core i5 model may not be fair, but Dell claims to have boosted its processors to use 12W consistently, so they have more power. The Envy x360 wins, particularly in longer and more demanding workloads like Cinebench.
Along with the processor change, HP completely redesigned the interior of the Envy x360, making room for a much larger and improved 66.5Wh battery. I put the battery to the test in two ways. First, I played a 720p YouTube video with the laptop brightness and volume set to 50% until it died. I got 15 hours, 8 minutes, and 53 seconds, the longest time I’ve ever seen on a laptop.
Should you buy the HP Envy x360 13?
You should buy the HP Envy x360 13 if you:
- Want the versatility of a convertible in a small, light package?
- Work primarily on standard office productivity tasks, such as documents
- Want a good webcam for meetings and video calls
- Don’t want to use a lot of adapters for your peripherals
You shouldn’t buy the HP Envy x360 13 if you:
- Need strong performance for photo or video editing?
- Spend the entire day away from an outlet working.
Overall, the HP Envy x360 is a fantastic laptop for almost anyone looking for a highly portable and versatile machine that can handle productivity. Even with its 9W processor, this is a surprisingly capable laptop for writing documents, working on spreadsheets, or doing other office work. The battery life is also quite good, making this a great machine for users on the go, especially given the thin and light design.
The only things missing are the expected ones. It lacks top-tier performance for creative workloads such as advanced photo and video editing. That is simply the nature of most devices this thin and light. Battery life could be improved, but it should be adequate if you only use the keyboard backlight when necessary. Of course, that assumes you get the Full HD+ display, which is more than adequate for a device this size. At the end of the day, there doesn’t appear to be a significant disadvantage to purchasing the HP Envy x360 13.
