HP Pavilion x360 14
A stylish convertible that falls just short of the award winners
SCORE★★★★☆ PRICE £482 (£578 inc VAT) from amazon.co.uk
The stylish Pavilion x360 14 comes in a choice of champagne gold and silver finishes, although the materials are plastic rather than brushed aluminium. HP’s tried-and-tested hinge design allows you to fold the screen back flat against the base for use as an oversized tablet, or in a tent configuration for watching video. At 1.63kg, it won’t replace your iPad, but by 14in laptop standards it’s very manageable indeed.
In fact, a 14in screen is a good option for a 2-in-1 convertible, giving you a bigger, more comfortable display than a 13.3in model without the added bulk of a 15.6in laptop. The Full HD screen itself, sadly, isn’t much of a highlight. Brightness levels max out at an underwhelming 242cd/m2 and while colour accuracy isn’t awful, with an average Delta E of 5.26, it covers just 58.3% of the SRGB gamut.
The keyboard is excellent, with large, flat-topped keys that have a light but positive feel. The touchpad is smooth and flawlessly responsive, and the same goes for the touchscreen. This supports an active stylus, but HP doesn’t provide one or even recommend which one to buy.
Nearly all the connectivity is on the right-hand side, bar the power socket and 3.5mm audio jack, with two USB 3.1 ports, a single USB-C port and an HDMI video output. As well as a webcam, HP supplies the depthsensing camera required for facial recognition using Windows Hello.
There are variants of the Pavilion x360 with more powerful chips, but we tested a model with a Core i3-7100U and 8GB of DDR4 RAM. You’ll want extra horsepower for high-end video-editing applications, but there’s enough performance for a mix of web browsing, entertainment and Office use. Given the form factor, battery life is a little disappointing. We got more than six hours of video playback from the Pavilion x360, but when rivals exceed ten hours, this isn’t so impressive.
The HP is a fine convertible and could have been an awards contender, but when rivals beat it on the spec, screen and battery life, it just falls short of the mark.