HP Envy x360 16 Review: Midrange Convertible With Premium OLED Display

Pros

• Big, beautiful and accurate OLED display
• Strong performance for the price
• Long runtime for big-screen OLED laptop
• Lightweight for its size

Cons

• So-so dual speakers
• Slow USB-C ports
• A bit big for regular tablet use

Most 16-inch laptops are pricey affairs whose roomy screens are backed by powerful graphics meant for content creation or gaming. The HP Envy x360 16 falls into neither category. Instead, it starts at less than $1,000 and is geared toward productivity, while also featuring a convertible design that lets it rotate between laptop and tablet modes. It's based on AMD Ryzen 8040 series processors with integrated AMD Radeon graphics and doesn't offer any GPU upgrades, diminishing its potential for serious graphics work or 3D gaming. Like most modern CPUs, its Ryzen chip features an NPU to give the Envy x360 16 the ability to process AI workloads locally without consuming CPU or GPU resources.

The Envy x360 16 delivers excellent bang for your buck in terms of application performance, and it supplies a stellar display that's usually found only on pricier laptops. It's an OLED HDR panel that's roomy, with excellent detail and smooth motion. It's a great display for work and entertainment, even if I wish the accompanying audio was better. The well-rounded and versatile Envy x360 16 we tested is a good deal at its full price of $1,300, and it becomes an even better buy when you can find it on sale for only $1,000.

The HP Envy x360 16 starts at $860 for a configuration with an AMD Ryzen 5 8640HS processor, 8GB of RAM, AMD Radeon graphics, a 256GB SSD and a 16-inch IPS display with a 1,920x1,080-pixel resolution. There's also an Intel version of the Envy x360 16 with a Core Ultra 5 125U at Best Buy for $900 and a loaded Core Ultra 7 model at Best Buy for $1,350.

Our test system (model 16-ad0097nr) costs $1,300 and features a Ryzen 7 8840HS CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 16-inch OLED display with a 2,880x1800-pixel resolution. At the time of this review, it was discounted at HP.com by $300, selling for $1,000. 

The HP Envy x360 16 starts at £819 in the UK. Intel versions of the Envy x360 16 are available starting at AU$2,299 in Australia.

The Ryzen 7 8840HS from AMD's Hawk Point Ryzen 8040 series isn't the most recent AI chip you can find in a laptop. That title belongs to Qualcomm with its Snapdragon processors powering Copilot Plus PCs, but it does feature an NPU for on-device AI acceleration. Its NPU is capable of 16 TOPS, with the CPU maxing out at 38 TOPS in total, which is just shy of Microsoft's minimum 40-TOPS threshold for its Copilot Plus PC platform. (See our TOPS explainer for more information about this metric for measuring AI performance.)

The Envy x360 16 offers some of the AI features you'll find on a Copilot Plus PC but lacks others. You get the Windows Studio Effects of blurred backgrounds and automatic framing when using the webcam, for example, but not the portrait light effect or creative filters. It uses the Image Creator tool in Paint but not the Photos app for generating images with text prompts. It also has the Live Captions feature for real-time captions and English translations of the audio playing on the laptop.

The Envy x360 16 performed well in lab testing. Its single-core performance on Geekbench was closer to that of the Intel Core Ultra 9-based Lenovo Yoga Pro 9i than the Core Ultra 7-based HP Spectre x360 16. Those two Intel models had better multicore scores but weren't too far ahead of the more affordable Envy x360 16. The Envy x360 16 also outperformed the pricier Spectre x360 16 on our PCMark 10 and Cinebench tests, proving its performance punches above its price. Its score on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme Unlimited was predictably mediocre, given it relies on an integrated GPU.

The lack of a high-powered graphics processor helps in one regard: battery life. The Envy x360 16 lasted for more than 11 hours on our online streaming battery drain test, an impressive result for a laptop with a large and relatively high-resolution OLED display.

Solid design, spectacular display

The Envy x360 16 offers a straightforward design whose chief attraction is the spacious OLED display. The chassis features none of the plastic you might get from a laptop in HP's step-down Pavilion line, but it's not as sleek, rigid or cool-looking as the matte-black Spectre x360 16. The Envy x360 16 features a dull gray chassis that feels sturdy, but it has a bit more flex to it than the rock-solid Spectre x360 16.

It might not be as stunning as the Spectre, but it is appreciably lighter. The Envy x360 16 weighs 3.9 pounds, and the Spectre x360 16 is 4.3 pounds. It's also nearly a pound lighter than the 4.8-pound Apple MacBook Pro 16.

One design element that carries over from the Spectre to the Envy that I was happy to see is the display's edge-to-edge glass. It really adds to the Envy x360 16's overall look and, combined with its thin bezels, the Envy appears like a premium laptop when it costs hundreds less. Thankfully, HP keeps the clunky plastic display bezels restricted to its Pavilion series.

The 2.8K-resolution OLED display feels like a luxury on the midrange Envy x360 16. Images looked sharp and text appeared crisp, and the contrast was excellent with effectively perfect black levels. Colors looked vibrant, and color accuracy was strong, with 100% coverage of the sRGB and P3 spaces and 94% of AdobeRGB. I also measured a peak brightness of 415 nits, which should suffice for nearly any lighting scenario, with the exception of direct sunlight, even if it falls short of its 500-nit rating. With the panel's dynamic refresh rate, you can get smoother movement at 120Hz and better battery life at 60Hz. All in all, it's an excellent panel for the price.

Like any large, 16-inch convertible, the Envy x360 16 feels a bit unwieldy in tablet mode, but its sub-4-pound weight makes it a bit easier to maneuver than other two-in-ones its size. Basically, plan to use it on your lap or a desk and not handheld. The system offers pen support, but you'll need to purchase the HP Rechargeable MPP 2.0 Tilt Pen separately. It costs $77 but was on sale for $60 when I last looked.

One item missing from the Envy that I really enjoyed getting with the Spectre is a haptic touchpad. The Envy x360 16 features a large mechanical touchpad that suffers from the diving-board effect of the click response with too much travel near its bottom edge and not enough near the top.

The Envy also offers only half the number of speakers as the Spectre, and the resulting audio output is noticeably not nearly as full. The dual speakers emit meager stereo sound, which is disappointing since the large OLED display provides an excellent screen for watching shows and movies. The speakers have enough power that voices sound clear, but if you like action movies, you'll find that explosions, gunfire and other loud effects lack punch. The speakers' lack of bass means you'll be reaching for a Bluetooth speaker or headphones for music playback.

Another missing item from the Envy is speedy USB connectivity. There's no Thunderbolt 4 because of the AMD processor (it's a licensing issue), but you also don't get USB4; either would give you fast 40Gbps transfer speeds. Instead, you get a pair of 10Gbps USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports. The Envy x360 16 does have two USB-A ports at least, so you don't need to carry around a USB adapter. 

When it's discounted to $1,000, which is with great frequency, the HP Envy x360 16 is a steal, providing a much better display than most laptops at that price. With its strong performance for general use and a long-lasting battery, this convertible is easy to recommend for home use or remote work. It's probably only two speakers away from earning an Editors' Choice award. With fuller audio output, the Envy x360 16 would be about the perfect $1,000 home entertainment convertible.