HP Envy x2

A QUALCOMM-BASED TABLET THAT WON’T INSPIRE MUCH ENVY.

THE GAP BETWEEN Intel’s efficient mobile processors and the most powerful tablet processors from Qualcomm have been converging over the last few years, and HP’s Envy x2 is one of the first devices to bridge this gap with a Windows tablet running off a Qualcomm chip. The 10nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 uses an eight-core ARMbased CPU arrangement that, according to Qualcomm, is a third smaller and 25% more efficient than its previous chips. ARM processors are built from a simpler structure that makes them more efficient, but notably less powerful and HP is hoping to use this feature set to create a long-lasting Windows tablet for less demanding tasks.

While the HP Envy x2 we tested was running on a 64-bit version of Windows 10 Pro, the device is sold locally with Windows 10 S, Microsoft’s locked-down Windows Store-only operating system. While we’d generally throw up some objections to limiting a device to the parameters of Windows 10 S, it’s actually an ideal environment for the underpowered Qualcomm chip to cut its teeth, since we had apps as simple as Chrome crashing when running Windows 10 Pro.

You’ll want to be sure you don’t need to do any challenging computing as the device is too underpowered to even attempt the majority of PC benchmarks. The ones it can run, the HP Envy x2 scores below low-specced Windows tablets from 2014. The upside of this is an 11-hour movie playback battery life (potentially more using the efficient Windows 10 S), but this really isn’t enough of a drawcard to balance the lack of power.