7 Day Review of the HP ENVY x360 15-bq213cl

[gr8gatzby]

One week one of living with the system and I give it a strong 2 thumbs up.

I bought this system (HP ENVY x360 15-bq213cl) from Costco for $699 on the day I shipped out my $1799 Yoga for warranty repair due to constant instability, and after 3 factory restores since August, I had enough of the pain.

SPEED: Though ringing in at half the cost of my Yoga 920 with Intel i7 8550 and double the memory(16gb), this AMD powered HP Envy is oddly and surprisingly faster in every task. Perhaps this is attributed to the AMD rocking 2 more cores than the Intel i7 from which I've come, and less invasive preloaded HP bloatware software. 

BUILD QUALITY: Though not quite on the level of Apple or the Thinkpad series, you'll get no better build in this price range.

KEYBOARD: Excellent flex and feel. Backlit like a boss. Full size numberpad is something I've missed greatly. Unlike Lenovo, you can turn the the F-Keys on by default through the BIOS. Lenovo now has this managed by their Vantage bloatware software, which is a great idea...if it worked. The F-keys on my Yoga would randomly and intermittently revert back to media key status on their own, and setting it back wouldn't be such a big deal if the Lenovo bloatware software didn't crash on me half of the time before allowing me to navigate to the F-Key toggle setting.

SOUND: Killer sound from the B&O branded speakers.

UPGRADABILITY: I bumped her up to 16gb RAM in 5 minutes. AND THERE'S AN EFFIN EMPTY DRIVE BAY IN THERE YAY!!! The stock m.2 256GB SSD is depleting quickly(thanks to Adobe Creative Suite and a host of VMs I use). With an HDD cage and SATA cable from eBay($20) I'll be dropping in a 512GB SSD as a secondary.

SCREEN: HOLY SMOKES this has got to be the best display in the sub-$1000 range. It is gorgeous. It is touchscreen. It is a 360 tablet. The HP pen by itself (included) is $100. They say it's only 1920x1080 but they lie!!! It's more better! You can go up to 3840x2160 on this gal! Full UHD man! What!? (picture attached).

SECURITY - No fingerprint reader(meh), though the face unlock feature works like a champ!

SOFTWARE - HP bloatware software seems to be well built and non-intrusive enough. More so than what I am accustomed to from Lenovo. If purchased from Costco, you'll get a 1yr subscription to McAfee Security. Adobe Photoshop runs nice and snappy, especially upon upgrading to 16gb.

HOT OR NOT - I recommend it, and I don't do that often. My bar is set pretty high, many tell me - unreasonably high. For $699 this is the best bargain on the market at the moment. A powerhouse for paltry pennies. If you want to max it out in the RAM and HDD/SDD departments you're looking at another $200 investment if you do the work yourself (easy!) For an $899 total outlay you will then have a $1500-ish system. If you purchase from Costco, you get an extra year of warranty and phone support included at no additional cost, and a 90 day return window.

I had planned to give it to my kid when the Yoga comes back from warranty repair but HECK NO. I'm keeping this, and selling the Yoga.

To qualify myself: I am an IT veteran of 20 years. Those that profess that AMD makes an inferior product to Intel need to educate themselves. AMD procs and video products are better and more affordable than their Intel equivalents. There are bad apples with either brand that should be avoided, but this is not one of them. Do your research.

[soumensam]

Hi There,

Did you able to upgrade with a 2.5 SSD or HDD? Have you managed to get right SATA cable for this model? Because I tried a lot but the system not recognized the HDD. Thanks