Computer Section

ASUS EEE PAD SLIDER SL101

Verdict: A high-priced toy that isn’t quite perfect either as an entertainment device or as a productivity machine.

Specifications

Rs 38,999

www.asus.in

CPU: Nvidia Tegra 2, 1 GHz;

RAM: 1 GB;

Storage: 32 GB;

Screen: 10-inch IPS, 1280x800;

Connectivity: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n,

Bluetooth 2.1;

Cameras: 5 megapixel rear, 1.2 megapixel front;

Operating System: Android 3.1 (Honeycomb)

Contact: Asus Technologies

Phone: 022-67668800 

EMAIL: helpline_west@asus.com

 

 The most obvious reason one might buy a netbook instead of a tablet today is that there’s just no substitute for a real keyboard. Accessory makers have been selling Bluetooth keyboards and dock-like contraptions for a while now, but these aren’t the most comfortable or convenient to use. Sensing an opportunity in a market full of similar-looking iPad clones, Asus has developed the first Android tablet with a truly integrated keyboard.

Like with the Eee Pad Transformer before it, Asus seems to have applied some thought to producing tablets which genuinely stand out. Rather than a simple clamshell or docking solution, the Slider looks somewhat like an overgrown smartphone. Unlike most of its competition, the Slider is by no means a sleek device. It’s over twice as thick as an iPad 2 and weighs quite a bit more too, so it isn’t going to win over those who love the idea of travelling only with a single, ultralight gadget. What we have here is a device that’s a step or two down from the average netbook—smaller and lighter, but also a lot less flexible.

 

Hardware

At 0.9 kg, the Eee Pad Slider weighs at least a few hundred grams more than most 10-inch tablets, and is at least twice as thick. It’s also a lot wider, which allows for a decent-sized keyboard, but results in a thick black bezel around the screen. The front camera is positioned along the wide edge, so it’s on top when the Slider is open, but the rear camera is placed on what is effectively the device’s bottom, making it difficult to use and vulnerable to scratches. The sliding mechanism, as well as the arm that holds the two parts together when open, are both reassuringly solid. It doesn’t take much effort to open or close the Slider, but the screen angle is not adjustable at all, which could cause some inconvenience if your overhead lights reflect off the glossy screen too much. The keyboard is of course the Slider’s raison d’être, and it is in fact a lot better than many netbook keyboards. The five full rows of chiclet keys are well spaced, and are a pleasure to type on. Everything is in the right place, most common shortcuts work as expected, and you even have keys mapped to Android’s Home, Back and Search buttons. On the downside, the sliding design leaves a lot less depth than the usual clamshell keyboard, so there’s no wrist rest and your palms will rest a bit uncomfortably against the front edge. There’s also no built-in pointing device, leaving you automatically reaching for a mouse or trackpad, before you remember that you need to jab the screen to select anything. It’s a minor irritant, but it does interrupt workflow, especially considering that there could have at least been a BlackBerry-style nub for scrolling.

Capitalizing on its physical width, the Slider includes a USB host port, mini HDMI video out, and an easily accessible microSD card slot. The USB port can be used to connect a hard drive, pen drive, mouse, or even an external keyboard if you choose to. The only thing missing is an easily accessible rotation lock switch. The stereo speakers are reasonably loud, but strangely located behind the keyboard, which means they’re blocked and muffled whenever the device is closed.

The Slider’s screen is bright and crisp, and the 16:10 aspect ratio ensures enough space both for watching movies and for getting work done. The CPU is a fairly standard 1 GHz Nvidia Tegra 2, which is more than enough for most applications, including gaming. The rear camera takes far too long to autofocus, and images are disappointingly grainy. Then again we can’t imagine holding up a tablet and shooting photos with it very often.

The battery lasted for just over a day of moderate web surfing, video playback and PDF browsing, which is impressive, but the bottom half did get hot enough to become uncomfortable on the lap.

Software and Usability

Our review unit came running Android 3.1, though the official specs list 3.2 as standard. Asus hasn’t carried out much customization, apart from a new default on-screen keyboard that takes up much more screen space, but is easier to use. Noteworthy apps include Amazon Kindle for ebooks; Polaris Office, which can read and edit MS Office formats; augmented reality tool Layar; and MyNet, which lets you browse shared media files over Wi-Fi. The usual suite of Google apps, including Maps, Latitude, Gmail and YouTube are of course available, as is an Nvidia app called TegraZone, which lists a number of games that are available for you to buy. The stock Android experience is comfortable enough, and you can of course load whatever apps you like. Thankfully, you can browse through the files on any storage device plugged into the USB port, although launching movies and music files might be a mixed bag—you’ll need to download your own choice of media player, since the built in options have trouble opening most common video file formats. The camera app is fairly pointless, as the image quality wasn’t especially impressive, and we can’t imagine ever holding the Slider up with two hands to take a photo or video.

All apps that we tried ran smoothly, and we had no problems multitasking even with 5–10 apps open in the background. The Android ecosystem still has a long way to go when it comes to immediate user friendliness, so we hope to see over-the-air upgrades to future versions of the operating system made available by Asus as and when they are released.

The Slider’s battery easily lasted through more than a day of casual use, which included a few hours’ worth of reading documents, surfing the Web over Wi-Fi, and playing music and video. Asus rates its life at 8 hours of continuous 720p video playback, though we didn’t test this formally as our unit shipped with the older Android 3.1.

Value for money

Having a mouse, keyboard and proper file management functionality sets the Slider apart from other tablets. At least in terms of mobile productivity, this puts it head and shoulders above any combination of iPad apps and accessories, and that too at a fairly competitive price. However, you end up with a device that’s still way more expensive than almost any netbook, and is just as heavy and bulky. The Slider won’t give you the benefits of running Windows and all your usual programs on standard PC hardware, but it might offer a better balance of battery life and flexibility between work and play. Asus’ other tablet offering, the Eee Pad Transformer, is also a strong alternative because it lets you ditch the keyboard when it isn’t needed and carry just the tablet around, to save space and reduce weight. Still, at this price, you could get a pretty capable thin-and-light laptop. If you want to step up, Intel-powered ultrabooks have already started hitting the market at around Rs 50,000, and the 11-inch MacBook Air is just a few thousand rupees more than that. The Eee Pad Slider is a unique device that bridges two worlds, but isn’t earth-shatteringly good either as a tool for work or for entertainment. It’s a great device, but it’s hard to see it as the best choice for anyone.   

 

Apple Mac mini (2011)

Price: Rs 44,900

Full Review

The 2011 product line-up from Cupertino seems to be following the formula of replicating the physical appearance of that particular product's earlier iteration's. At the very same time, Apple has been upgrading the hardware section all of its units - namely the iMac 21.5-inch, and MacBook Air units. In this respect, Apple's latest Mac mini is no different. It could quite easily pass of as a modern-art kind of decoration that you could find in someone's living room's shelf.


Design
The current Mac mini comes in a space-saving, elegant, portable, single slab aluminium form factor that its 2010 predecessor came in - the uni-body construction seems to have more or less become Apple's main design mantra, as most recently seen in the Apple MacBook Air unit's design. As it was with the 2010 version, the Mac mini occupies as little space as possible - you can either have the unit rest horizontally on its base or place the unit vertically by resting it on one of its sides. It's 3.6 cm thin, has curved edges, and has a sturdy build quality. The mini sports the black Apple logo on its top section, and the ports, as well as the power button are located at its rear. The black matte rear and the protruding black plastic removable base, provide for an eye pleasing contrast to the greyish-silver finish of the rest of the mini's body.




FeaturesWeighing in at 1.22kg, it is lighter than its 2010 predecessor. A point to keep in mind is that you will have to already own, or consequently purchase, a monitor, keyboard and mouse to be able to use the Mac mini - not to mention, even an external optical drive. The power button is located at the left end, at the rear of the mini. There is an exhaust vent that is located at the lower central section of the Mac mini's rear - place right under the FireWire port. Along with the Mac mini, you also get a HDMI to DVI Adapter and a power cord - the Mac mini features an internal power supply.


HardwareThis unit features an Intel second generation Sandy Bridge Intel Core i5-2520M  processor (2.50 GHz), 4GB DDR3 RAM, a 500B HDD (5400 RPM) and for graphics processing, you have the AMD Radeon HD 6630M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR5 memory (the 2010 model featured Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics). This unit can be configured to feature a 2.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7proc, 8GB RAM, 750GB (7200-rpm) hard drive - or alternatively a 256GB solid-state drive or even have both a 256GB SSD and a 750GB (7200-rpm) hard drive.

In terms of the connectivity options that are available on the Mac mini, Apple, luckily enough, doesn’t replicate its minimalist design policy - in other words, there are a good number and variety of ports. At the rear, starting from the left side, there is a power socket, a Gigabit Ethernet port, a FireWire 800 port, an HDMI port, a Thunderbolt port, 4 USB 2.0 ports, a SDXC card reader,and audio-in and audio-out jacks. The mini also features Wi-Fi 802.11 n and Bluetooth 4.0 wireless connectivity.



As I have mentioned in my other Apple 2011 product reviews, including a Thunderbolt port is a very future proof attribute, but at as of now, there are not too many vendors who sell peripherals that utilize its high-speed general purpose I/O interface - the Thunderbolt port provides support for both video and data connections.

My only complaint on the hardware configuration front is that Apple did away with the Slot loading optical drive that was present in the 2010 iteration of the mini. Couldn't Apple have just included that feature - given that the dimensions of the mini's body have not really changed that much, it just makes this particular choice, of omitting an optical drive, even more baffling. Apple could have also done with one or more USB 3.0 ports.

The Mac mini line-up features 3 models - the cheapest unit, featuring a 2.3GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, 500GB of storage, Intel HD graphics 3000 and 2GB of memory, comes for Rs. 33,900; a similarly spec'd model (relative to the previously mentioned version) features a  2.5GHz dual-core Intel Core i5, AMD Radeon HD 6630M, 4GB of RAM and comes for Rs.44,900; and also a Mac mini, with Lion server, that comes for Rs.54,900 and features a 2.0GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 and Dual 500GB 7200-rpm hard drives.

More details can be seen on this review's "Specification" page.


SoftwareApples' Mac Mini comes pre-installed with Mac OS X Lion (10.7). The software featured Mail, Address Book, iCal, the Mac App Store, iTunes, Safari, Time Machine, FaceTime, Photo Booth, Mission Control, Launchpad, AirDrop, Resume, Auto Save, Versions, Quick Look, Spotlight, QuickTime and the iLife suite.

If you have a partiality to Windows, you can always install a Windows OS using Apple's Boot Camp feature.


Performance:-We installed Windows 7 and ran our various benchmarks on the Mac mini. The Apple unit recorded a very good score of 117 on the Worldbench 6 benchmark. This is indeed quite an improvement over the 2010 Mac mini's score of 91 in the same benchmark - not as great a jump as seen between the scores notched by MacBook Air units from 2010 and 2011. This Worldbench statistic means that the Mac mini should be able to deal with most memory and processor intensive tasks, let alone your daily chores like Web browsing and listening to music, in a comfortable manner - you can even play games at lower, yet respectable, levels. During synthetic testing, the Apple unit's hard disk recorded an average read speed of 57.1 MB/s and the laptop recorded a PC Mark Vantage score of 7021.

When connected to an appropriate display unit, via HDMI, the Mac mini shouldn't really have any problems handling 720p and 1080p videos. As I previously mentioned, you can game on this system at respectable levels. When I benchmarked FarCry 2 at 1024x768, DirectX 10 mode, AA 2x, and 'Ultra High' settings, the average frame rate recorded was around 24.26 fps. Similarly, for Metro 2033, when benchmarked at 1366x768, DirectX 11, Very High Quality, AAA, AF 4X, and all settings maxed out, the average registered was 6.67 fps. Now with these kinds of scores, a casual gamer should be able to enjoy gaming at lower resolution and settings.

Generally, under normal usage, the Apple Mac mini did a good job of keeping itself cool. However during higher workloads, the unit, especially towards the rear, does become quite warm to the touch. The unit also gives a good account of itself in the system noise levels area - it was barely audible during operation.

UpgradabilityThe task of opening up this Apple unit was one of the easiest 'lid-removal' jobs I have yet undertaken. The removable base lid just needs to be turned around slightly in a counter-clockwise direction for the inner components to be accessed - no-screws is always good news. Once you open the base out, the RAM modules are about the only easily accessible components in the inner side, and that's about it. Having to upgrade any other components, such as the hard drive would require you to explore much deeper, and this is not an approach that I would suggest for regular users.

Bottom Line

As it is with most Apple products, this is not one that will appeal to everyone's tastes and likes. While this might be Apple's answer to folks looking for an 'Apple HTPC', the fact that an optical slot drive that was featured in the 2010 version is not included in the current model might weigh heavily on those prospective consumers who will use a lot of CD's and DVD's. Say what you may about the optical drive, it has not yet gone the way of the floppy drive - the operative word here being 'yet'.

The Mac mini is a good performer, and its hardware upgrade does give it a good boost over its 2010 predecessor. So if you are an owner of an older Mac and already have a mouse, keyboard, monitor, not to mention an external optical drive, that are just waiting to be connected to a new media centre unit, then the Mac mini won't disappoint.

Lenovo IdeaCentre A320

Price: Rs 50,990

Full Review 

 

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A320 is a good looking all-in-one Desktop with a sleek space saving design that is targeted at the style conscious user. The Lenovo's A320's aesthetic reminds one of Apple's minimalistic design approach - although a major difference is that the internal components of the A320 are located in the base rather than in the case behind the screen, as is the case with Apple's iMac and most other all-in-one desktops. We have conducted our tests on this unit -which comes with a 3-year warranty period, and let's see whether it comes up to par on the performance meter as it does on the style quotient.

Design
The IdeaCentre A320 has a glossy all white finish (other models reportedly appear in a black and grey double tone) with chrome trims that run around the screen and base's edge - the same style formula, with the chrome trims bordering the overall white finish, is applied to the accompanying wireless keyboard and mouse as well. The slim asymmetrical design (with the chrome-finish stand, that supports the monitor, placed towards the top right part of  the base) should not lead you into thinking that this unit is anything but well balanced - the unit as a whole has a good build quality. The base, which holds the screen, has all the hardware components stored within it. The stand holding the monitor provides for a limited swivel and tilt movement.




Features
The Lenovo A320's slim design favours its placement in comparatively restrictive spaces. The speakers are located at the front bottom of the A320's base - a placement which seems appropriate given the speaker grill's distinct eye catching orange finish. Interestingly, the Lenovo All-in-one desktop comes with a power adapter, of the kind generally seen with laptops. All the connectors and ports are located at the left and back edges of the base. The A320 comes with an external optical drive as the base's compact nature prevents it from enclosing any further hardware. There is a webcam located at the top section of the screens bezel.


Monitor
The IdeaCentre A320 features a bright 21.5-inch glossy full-HD display, bordered by a black bezel, with an edge to edge glass screen in front of it. As it is with all glossy screens, its reflective nature does become distracting at times. The screen has at its bottom left corner three white LED indicators for hard disk utilization, and Bluetooth and wireless internet connectivity. While the screen itself does not support touch functionality as such, the screen controls for managing various display properties like brightness and contrast were touch sensitive  - a nice, albeit cosmetic, addition. While viewing the screen from both horizontal angles and the top vertical angle is ok - except at an agle of 170+ degrees where you start to notice a slight colour distortion, with the bottom vertical view giving a darkish hue to the picture. The screen does a very good job of displaying colours and this comes across when viewing images, videos and text.




Keyboard & Mouse Usability
The keyboard has a good build quality and features a laptop keyboard layout, with 86 keys. The keys provided a good tactile response and while not a chiclet keyboard, the keys were sufficiently well spaced and so you shouldn't face any problems typing on it. The following observation is just my personal opinion and not a downside: the choice of placing the Fn key at the extreme left bottom of the keyboard does tend to be an irritant for me - you are generally used to having the Ctrl key at that position, and consequently you unsuccessfully press the Fn key for actions such as copy and paste. I guess at the end of the day it just takes getting used to it. The keyboards has 3 quick access buttons located at its top right corner for accessing Lenovo Vantage Technology, Internet explorer and Windows media player.



The Lenovo 2-button scroll mouse works well and bears the same white and chrome-bordered finish of the A-320 chassis.

It has to be pointed out that I noticed a slight response delay in the keyboard, and to a much lesser extent in the mouse, when connecting to the system through Bluetooth. You especially notice this when the system boots up or when accessing the system after its wakes from sleep mode - it takes some time for the keys you pressed on the keyboard to be registered by the system.


Hardware
The IdeaCentre A320 features a Intel second generation 2.10 Ghz Intel Core i3-2310M (Sandy Bridge) processor(doesn’t support Intel’s Turbo Boost technology), 3GB DDR3 RAM, Intel HD graphics and a 750GB (5400 RPM) hard drive.  As mentioned earlier this unit comes with an external optical drive.

Given the A320's compact nature the number of ports available are limited. However, having said that, the connectors that are provided are very handy. At the back of the base, it has 2 USB 2.0 ports, HDMI-in and HDMI-out ports, Gigabit Ethernet port, power connector, and the TV tuner connector, not to mention the availability of wireless internet 802.11n connectivity. At the left side of the base you will find 2 USB 3.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks, and a multi-card reader.

The HDMI-in and HDMI-out ports are a very handy feature. The HDMI-in port allows you to connect other devices such as game consoles and digital media drives to this monitor. This basically means that even after you stop using the PC, you can still utilize the monitor as a standalone TV/monitor. The HDMI-out port on the other hand allows you to connect the Lenovo A320 to an extra monitor or even a TV.

While we did mention that there are 4 USB ports, both the external DVD drive and the remote control receiver for the TV tuner take up 3 USB ports, leaving just one USB port free. This is not a downside per se, but just a point to keep in mind if you plant to connect multiple USB devices.

More details can be seen on this review's "Specifications" page.


Software
The Lenovo IdeaCentre A320 comes pre-installed with Windows 7 Home Premium, and luckily not too much of bloatware. The IdeaCentre desktop comes with the following software: McAfee Antivirus Plus trial version; SRS Premium sound - which in my view, when activated, seemed to merely increase the volume of the system; Cyberlink YouCam. Among Lenovo's own software set, is the Lenovo Dynamic brightness System which is supposed to auto detect the ambient brightness and accordingly adjust the screen's display brightness - in my view this particular feature didn’t seem to make much of a difference. Another Lenovo contraption was the Lenovo Vantage Technology Start Centre which serves as an easy access tab to various apps such as the handy OneKey recovery.  Then there is there is the Lenovo Eye Distance software which is supposed to check, through the web cam, and inform the user whether he/she is sitting too close to the screen. It might be an issue with the particular review unit we received, but I never got any such notification even when I had my face right next to the web cam.

Also included in the pre-installed software list is the Microsoft Office Starter 2010 edition, InterVideo WinDVD, Roxio Creator Business edition and Cyberlink Power2Go.


Performance The Lenovo IdeaCentre A320 notched a score of 97 on the Worldbench 6 benchmark - which for sake of comparison purposes is also the score achieved by the Lenovo IdeaPad Z570. This is understandable given that the the A320 has laptop hardware to allow for the slim form factor. The score shows that the IdeaCentre should have no problem getting through daily tasks such as browsing the internet, listening to music, watching movies and other productivity apps and handle most processor and memory intensive tasks. During synthetic testing, the desktop's hard disk recorded an average read speed of around 75 MB/s and recorded a PC Mark Vantage score of 5216.

As far as gaming goes, the scores for Far Cry 2 (run at maxed out settings and at 1024x768 resolution) speak for itself: 9.30 FPS. If you are going to game, playing relatively older gen games would be advisable. Playing the more contemporary games, if that is possible, should be done at the lower resolutions and settings.

The A320 does a good job of playing both 720p and 1080p HD videos. The A320 comes with inbuilt speakers which provide for an audio level that is apt for a small-medium sized room. The audio is clear enough, although as with most built in speakers, the bass is rather lacking.


Upgradeability
The Lenovo IdeaCentre A320 is not meant to be upgradeable. So say you want to get extra memory, you might as well as get the additional RAM from Lenovo when buying the A320.

Bottom Line

The Lenovo IdeaCentre A320 is a stylish All-in-one desktop that will catch nearly everyone's fancy. Having handy features such as an HDMI-in connector, that allows you to use the screen as a standalone unit without having to switch on the PC component, adds to the A320's plus factor ,not to mention adding to the longevity of its use. Given it's hardware configuration, the A320 does a good enough showing on the performance meter. This all-in-one desktop is one we would recommend to lifestyle centric users who wouldn't mind spending money for buying a stylish desktop with a higher priority given to the PC's aesthetic appeal than to the performance aspect.

HP ENVY x2 Review

Pros

• Excellent battery life of 11+ hours in laptop mode
• Great tablet experience with excellent docking mechanism
• Fully fledged Windows 8, no watered down Windows RT
• Great brushed aluminum design and solid build quality

Cons

• Limited storage space and SSD relatively slow
• Intel Atom processor is slow
• Low screen resolution and no pen input
• Keyboard and touchpad are so-so

Quick Take:

The HP ENVY x2 is an attractive laptop/tablet hybrid with Windows 8 and great battery but limited performance.

Overview
There has recently been a slew of notebook to tablet convertibles hitting the market since the release of Windows 8, and though late, HP has entered the fray with their ENVY x2 model.  The ENVY x2, is as its "x2" name tries to convey, a 2-in-1 type of device.  You get the easy to carry and read benefits of a slate tablet and more functional for work purposes laptop form factor rolled into one purchase.  While some manufacturers have come up with clever screen hinges to allow for the acrobatics of laying a screen flat into tablet mode, HP has gone one step further by making the tablet portion screen detachable.  The keyboard itself is really just a glorified dock with some extra ports and a battery.  The ENVY x2 uses a rather ingenious magnetic connector that firmly holds the screen in place, to remove the screen you simply slide a latch and out it pops.  Needless to say, the gee whiz factor is high with the x2, but what are the trade-offs and how does it stack up when compared to other competing notebook convertibles?  Read on to find out!

Build and Design

The ENVY x2 looks more like HP's EliteBook business lineup than it does its other consumer models.  This is a good thing, like the EliteBook the ENVY x2 exudes a sense of premium design with its brush metal silver finish and attractively emblazoned HP logo on the lid.  The silver color finish is carried throughout the design body and is somewhat offset by the black bezel around the screen (or tablet if you will) and black keys of the keyboard.  The overall look is simple and clean, there's not much to complain about here.
The most interesting thing we can talk about in regards to the build quality of the ENVY x2 is the docking connector mechanism for the tablet.  When the screen is in place it truly looks like any other laptop, if you didn't know otherwise you'd guess it's just a pure laptop device.  The hinge and docking mechanism are both firm and secure, the tablet is held so tightly in place that it's hard to even forcibly generate screen wobble, you will not have any screen shake problems on a bumpy plane or train ride.

Here's the kicker though, the tablet is actually very easy to remove by simply sliding the latch at the top center of the keyboard and then lifting with one hand.  Reseating the tablet to the keyboard dock is just as simple, just center up the Windows logo with the latch and gently slide it onto the magnetic guided docking connectors and it'll go on smooth and easy.  There's some seriously good mechanical engineering at work here with the Envy x2, we take our hats of to the designers of this latch and connector mechanism.

When the occasion calls for a tablet to be used, the 11.6-inch screen ENVY x2 won't weigh you down much.  It tips the scales at 1.5lbs, which is comparable to the current Apple iPad that weighs 1.44lbs but has a smaller 9.7" screen.  Add in the keyboard dock and the total weight only goes up to 3.1lbs and it stays a thin 0.76" thick so this is definitely an Ultrabook style of device.

Ports and Features

Given that the Envy x2 is an Ultrabook, you're probably expecting it has a limited number of ports, and you'd be right.  HP can't defy physics, there's only so much space on a super thin design and so compromises on what ports make the cut have to be made.  On the keyboard dock area left side there are two USB 2.0 ports, a full size HDMI port and a headphone jack.  On the right side there's a full sized SD card reader, USB 2.0 port and the power connector.  Unfortunately there is no USB 3.0 port or other type of fast transfer option.
The tablet itself has a couple of ports, on the bottom you'll find a micro-SD card slot, headphone jack and then the three docking connector jacks.

Left: HDMI, USB 2.0, headset jack

Right: SD card slot, USB 2.0 port, AC power jack

The tablet portion of the ENVY x2 has both a front facing and rear facing camera.  The front camera can go up to 2.1MP max resolution and the rear camera has a much higher 8MP.  The rear camera is of better quality, it offers not only higher resolution but also better low light performance and more accurate colors.  Check out the picture of our (handy at the time of writing this review) coffee mug taken with each camera:


Screen
The display on the ENVY x2 doubles as a tablet, it's easily removable by simply sliding the latch release to the left.  Putting the tablet back on the dock is simple, it does not require dexterity, the magnets really help to guide the display back into position and no force is needed.  I cannot emphasize enough how well the docking solution has been designed, it's stunningly easy and smooth to use.
The display size is 11.6-inch diagonal and it sports a 1366 x 768 resolution.  Other Windows 8 hybrid laptops such as the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 and Dell XPS 12 offer a 1600 x 900 HD+ and 1920 x 1080 Full HD resolution respectively so it's a little disappointing to be stuck with the lower resolution HD screen on the Envy x2.  That said, the detachable screen and Intel Atom processor make the x2 a somewhat different beast.




One thing to be praised is the fact HP went with an IPS screen, meaning viewing angles are very wide and you see the same color no matter how you tilt the screen.  The colors are very rich and accurate, which is again typical of an IPS display.  The brightness level is so-so, you certainly won't be able to use this outdoors in the full sun, the screen just isn't bright enough for that.  The screen is however bright enough for any type of indoor usage.  Like every other tablet, the display also has a glossy finish, this helps to make colors pop more that are on the screen but it has the side affect of picking up fingerprints easily and reflecting any strong light coming from behind  you.
Not to be overlooked is the fact the screen acts as a touchscreen still when you're in laptop mode.  This makes gestures such as scrolling, zooming, rotating and pinch to zoom easy to do just by touching the screen.  The screen can detect multiple fingers, not just two, so you can go crazy in art applications such as Microsoft Paint and let your creativity free.  From a more practical standpoint, I found myself scrolling through documents and app screens by using the touchscreen rather than the mouse or touchpad, it's really a nice bonus.

Speakers

HP labels the speakers on the ENVY x2 as being "Beats Audio".  You have to be a little skeptical when a manufacturer claims to have superior audio in an Ultrabook or tablet.  While there's no extra bass via a subwoofer that you get on the likes of the ENVY dv6t and ENVY dv7t laptops, the audio is serviceable and does sound better than what you get with other slate tablets.  The speakers themselves are in the tablet portion, the dock does not offer any extra speaker output.  The sound emanates from the recessed dock connectors.  The audio, as you would expect, sounds somewhat like it's being transmitted via a tin can and has little bass.  It does get up to a loud enough volume to fill a small room, but the louder it gets the more exaggerated the tininess will be so it's highly recommended that you switch to headphones if you want to crank the volume up.  Speaking of cranking the volume up, the volume control rocker is located on the back of the tablet portion of the Envy x2, which is not exactly the most obvious place.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard on the ENVY x2 only works when you have the screen docked and attached, it does not work via wireless communication or provide the ability to type with the screen detached.  The typing experience is pretty typical of Ultrabooks, the key travel distance is very shallow, meaning the key soon hits the "bottom" and registers a keystroke with just a slight touch.  For those that are accurate and fast typists with a light touch, you'll adjust to this keyboard just fine and may even like it.  For this reviewer, used to a ThinkPad keyboard with stiff keys and long travel distance, it really takes some adjusting to.  With practice I was able to get up to 63 wpm typing on the ENVY x2, but the flat keys and short travel didn't provide a very pleasing typing experience.  Another disappointment with the keyboard is a lack of having a backlight for work in dimly lit rooms.
The touchpad is nicely recessed and has a width of 3.5" and is 2.5" deep. It's technically a clickpad, meaning you can push down anywhere to register a left click but you have to push down on the lower right side for a right click.  It's more intuitive to use the screen for things such as scrolling and zooming, but the Synaptics powered touchpad still offers these multi-touch gesture features of course.  You can easily enable or disable the various touchpad gestures using the Synaptics driver software provided.  The physical touchpad itself is rather slippery, which makes it easy to glide your finger across but doesn't offer as much control accuracy as a more textured touchpad.  We also found the touchpad to be intermittently unresponsive, with the cursor either jumping unexpectedly or not reacting at all when touched.  A couple of times after docking the ENVY x2 the touchpad failed to work at all and a reboot was necessary.

Performance and Benchmarks


The HP ENVY x2 comes with an Intel Atom Z2760 1.80GHz processor, 2GB of RAM and a 64GB SSD.  At the time of this writing there are no upgrade options available, just one fixed configuration with the following specs:

• Windows 8 (32-bit)
• 11.6-inch glossy HD display with touchscreen capability (1366 x 768)
• Intel Atom Z2760 (1.80GHz)
• 2GB 533MHz LPDDR2 SDRAM
• 64GB SSD
• 802.11 b/g/n WLAN
• Internal Bluetooth v. 4.0
• Integrated 2.1MP front facing camera and 8.0MP rear facing camera
• 2-cell Li-Ion battery
• Weight: 3.1lbs (1.5lbs for tablet, 1.6lbs for keyboard dock)
• Dimensions: 11.93 x 8.12 x 0.76 inches (width x depth x thickness)
• MSRP as configured: $849.99
• 1-year limited hardware warranty and support

Essentially what you get with the Envy x2 is netbook like performance, the Cedar Trail family Atom processor from Intel is new but rather unexciting performance wise -- though it does do well on the power consumption front (see the battery life section).  When playing a YouTube 1080p video of Michelle Obama reading "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" the processor utilization was up near 100% with just a couple of other idling applications open.  Video stuttering occurred that was unrelated to bandwidth issues and that is frankly unacceptable for a modern tablet or PC. You can see the screenshot below for evidence of the high CPU utilization:

YouTube 1080p video can be more demanding as the processor has to work with the wireless card to receive data and then decode and playback the video.  Still, if you were planning on being able to play 1080p video on a larger screen Full HD monitor attached via HDMI you might take pause for concern.  The same 1080p YouTube video being played on my Intel Core i5-3210m equipped ThinkPad X230 took up only about 40% processor utilization with no stutter.  In another comparison to the Intel Core i5-3210m, the Atom Z2760 was almost three times slower when running the wPrime benchmark to 32 million.  It took the Intel Core i5-3210m 21.5 seconds to do this math while it took the Atom Z2760 61.4 seconds.

Intel Atom Z2760 WPrime score:

Intel Core i5-3210m WPrime score:

The bottom line here is that the Intel Atom processor in the ENVY x2 will not allow you do multi-tasking with several heavy duty applications running at once and for any processor intensive tasks such as encoding video or crunching several million numbers you're going to have to wait and watch.  If you're just doing one thing at a time and are only interested in basic computing tasks then the Atom will be just fine.

wPrime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

Overall system performance is best measured using FutureMark's PCMark 7 benchmark that stresses out all performance related components of a notebook.  Running this benchmark on the ENVY x2 yielded a score of 1,432.  Compare that to the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 PCMark 7 score of 4,274 and Dell XPS 12 score of 4,711 and you can really see why the HP ENVY x2 is in a lower league of performance due to its more tablet oriented design and component architecture.
PCMark 7 is a newer benchmark that measures overall system performance in Windows 7(higher scores mean better performance):


One saving grace for performance might have been a fast SSD, but instead with the ENVY x2 you get not a true SSD but rather eMMC flash memory inside.  The read and write performance of the flash memory inside was far slower than a high quality mini SSD such as the Crucial m4.  Worse still is the fact the capacity is only 64GB and 10GB of that is already taken up as a recovery partition.  After discounting for the OS and other installed programs you only have about 40GB of capacity remaining out of the box.  To get an idea of how the flash memory storage inside the ENVY x2 stacks up to the Crucial m4 mSSD we ran the CrystalDisk benchmark, clearly the eMMC style flash storage isn't in the same performance league as a true SSD:

HP ENVY x2 64GB "SSD":

Crucial m4 mSSD:

For those interested in further disk analysis we also ran the Atto benchmark to get an idea of read/write speeds for the storage built into the ENVY x2:


Heat and Noise
Temperature management is where the ENVY x2 really stands out, it's very cool running and due to its fanless design (by necessity) and the non mechanical SSD is of course quiet.  There is no CPU whine or otherwise unexpected component noise.  The Intel Atom Z2760 has a rather astounding 1.7 Watt total TDP (Thermal Power Design) so while we knocked it for unimpressive performance, it's extremely efficient and has a low power draw and thereby low heat generation.

Battery Life

If you're looking for long lasting battery life you've come to the right place.  The ENVY x2 actually has two batteries, one inside the tablet (screen) and another inside the keyboard dock.  This means when you are in laptop mode you get longer battery life due to the additional battery there.  We ran FutureMark's PowerMark benchmark that tests battery run down by placing the screen at medium brightness and then looping through video, opening browser windows, opening office documents and typing -- in other words, real world usage.  Under this realistic scenario the HP ENVY x2 in laptop mode provided an astounding 11 hours and 30 minutes of battery life.
Powermark battery life test results (higher scores mean better battery life):


If you're more conservative with your usage, you can get much longer battery life.  When idling the ENVY x2 in laptop mode with the screen brightness at half, the machine stayed on for over 15 hours and still showed 10% battery life left.
The larger battery is found inside the tablet, so when in tablet mode you still can get decent battery life.  While the Intel Atom failed to impress much with performance, it did impress us with its incredibly low power draw and ability to extend battery life.

Software

One important item of note is that the Windows 8 you get with the ENVY x2 is the real deal, no Windows RT in which you can only run Windows apps.  You're able to run any Windows program you can run on a desktop PC and of course have multiple programs and windows open at the same time.  This is an important factor when you compare the ENVY x2 to devices such as the Apple iPad, Microsoft Surface or any Android tablet.  While the ENVY x2 may cost more, it's more functional and flexible in terms of OS and software.  The Windows 8 version you get is just the 32-bit version, that means the max memory the system could support is 4GB of RAM -- but since it's non-upgradeable that's a moot point anyway.
HP does provide a few pre-loaded software applications outside of the standard Windows 8 apps.  The Fresh Paint app from Microsoft is definitely worth checking out.  HP MyRoom offers video conferencing, but given the myriad of other choices such as Skype, Google Hangout, Facebook Video Calling or FaceTime over on the Mac OS you'll probably already have your own favorite video chat service.  HP also provides a Netflix app, eBay app and iHeartRadio pre-installed.  Obviously they're getting a kickback from those companies to install the software, but if you happen to use those services it might be handy to have it pre-loaded.  One useful thing HP provides is a Getting Started Windows 8 tutorial.  This is a tutorial HP put together themselves, not Microsoft, and it's actually a great intro to Windows 8 offering lessons on how to use the Start Screen, Charms menu and how to get around the UI.
Mentioned before is the fact you get a limited amount of space to install programs and applications.  The initial SSD space provided is 64GB, and then you back out the 10GB used for a recovery partition and factor in the size of the OS and other pre-installed software and you're down to just 40GB or so of space for files and other programs.  You can somewhat get around this by using the micro SD slot for a 64GB micro SD card and even larger 128GB SD card in the full sized slot on the keyboard as a means of storage.