HP Envy X2 owners' discussion

So what with HP and Samsung being the only vendors to get their hybrid Intel device onto the (UK) market for Xmas I was a bit surprised not to find active discussion about the Envy X2 on here. I saw in another thread an X2 owner being told to create an owner's thread - he didn't, so I will in the absence of a dedicated forum.

Let me get the ball rolling by saying if your thing is pen based input the X2 is not for you - yet. My use case is simpler. Hybrids appeal to me because I've always wanted the elusive "one device to rule them all". The Asus Transformer Prime, physically, was perfect but Android is laughable for genuine productivity apps, plus I also do Java dev work. I want to be able to attach or flip out a keyboard to do work, then hoick the keyboard off and kick back with a video or some mindless Web browsing.

So for my use case, the X2 is perfect. I briefly had a Samsung Ativ 700T with an i5. Battery life was pitiful, the thing was built like a brick with air vents you could use to dry your hands on, the keyboard dock had no battery, and the whole ensemble felt cheap. Even the extra power of the i5 didn't really do me any favours. There doesn't seem to be any real noticeable difference when building my app, and the X2 happily runs a Tomcat or Glassfish server without undue distress.

I even find myself quite liking Windows 8. It fits my use case, with distinct modes for what I call "work" and "play" - ie desktop and Metro.

So, overall - very happy, although I appreciate that others' needs may be very different from mine.

 

Congratulations on your new machine. If you find time, head to the Benchmark thread and run both WPrime and WEI on you new X2. Make sure to read the guidelines first (to ensure your scores come out accurate).

 

The X2 is not stated as having any sort of "gorilla" type glass, whereas the Asus does. If a pen eventually (?) becomes available for the X2 does anyone think the lack of scratch proof glass will be a problem ie scratching the screen. I am completely new to touchscreens.

 

I have the Samsung Ativ Smart PC 500T. And I'm thinking about switching to the HP Envy X2. The primary reason I don't like my Samsung is the plastic back gets slippery, I have no idea what Samsung was thinking. The Envy X2 is made of aluminum, so I hope it doesn't have the slipping issue.

What I worry the most about switching from the Samsung to HP is the keyboard. I really love the keyboard on the 500T. Can anyone that has used both (I assume the 700T keyboard is similar to the 500T too) make a comment on how they compare? I find typing on the 500T a pleasure and hope the Envy has a nice feeling keyboard as well.

 

Well, I've described the Envy X2 as "a MacBook Air with a detachable screen". The keyboard feels pretty similar to the Air to me - apart from various OS-specific changes in moving from OS X to Window 8 I've made the transition pretty transparently. Everyone seems to squee over the MacBook Air so I think this is a pretty good benchmark.

In terms of a direct comparison between the 700T and the Envy, truth be told I can't say I had the 700T long enough to really give the keyboard a good hammering. If I were forced to express an opinion I think I'd say that there might be a tiny bit more travel on the Samsung. I've also seen one review that absolutely trashed the X2's keyboard, but it seems pretty identical in feel to the Air's to me.

If your main reason for switching is the feel of the Sammy's back, though, I'd suggest you try the keyboard on the X2 first, especially if the keyboard is attached more often than not. Switch for the build quality, switch for the battery in the keyboard base, but unless you're going to get a full refund it seems a bit of a waste to switch for the feel of the back!

 

I'm sure the glass will be chemically strengthened. The Slate 500 and the Slate 2 had tempered glass on the display that was plenty strong. I have had my Slate 500 for over 2 years, did not cover the display and did not baby it. The scratches have been minimal.

 

The Envy X2 doesn't appear to have an SD slot, micro or full size. Can this be true? No way to add memory?

Thanks, Jim

 

I believe there's a microSD slot on the bottom of the tablet itself, and a SD card slot on the keyboard dock, so you are all set for the storage expansion.
just waiting for any review on the stylus, holding the purchase for now.

 

Hello everyone, new here. Was googling the envy x2 and found this forum, so I joined up. I am surprised that there are not more discussions out there about this product. I received mine the week before Christmas and I absolutely love it, for the most part. There are some issues I'm trying to figure out though. I don't know if it is a hardware thing or if it is Windows 8 issues, but when I let my Envy go into sleep mode, either on purpose by pressing power, or letting it sit there, at least half the time when I come back to it it will not respond to touch input at all. I am forced to shut it down by holding the power button and reboot which is increasingly annoying. Any ideas? Other issues I have are with the touchpad, I feel it is very poorly designed on this machine. I like it theoretically but mine is really sloppy. It frequently clicks itself when moving my finger on it and gets stuck as if I was doing a long click to drag and drop something. If anyone is experiencing similar issues lemme know what, if anything has worked for you, Thanks!

 

@ rhettmania:

It seems that not many people own the X2 yet (maybe due to slow shipments), so that probably has an impact on the amount of discussion going on here....

By the way, could you run the WPrime and WEI benchmarks on your X2 and tell us the scores? You can post them here or at the Benchmark thread. Be sure to read the guidelines (posted on the aforementioned thread) before running the benchmarks.

 

OK, so I'm not one who usually puts much stock in benchmarks, but to give you as complete a dataset as possible:

wPrime - 32M - 58.674 sec (1800 MHz * 1 - has that *1 recognised the processor cores?)

WEI:
Processor - 3.4
Memory - 4.7
Graphics - 3.7
Gaming - 3.3
HD - 5.8
Overall - 3.3

This was on the one and only available "balanced" power profile. I did hunt around to see if I could set a power profile that would run the thing at max CPU throughout, but the power options only gave me trivial things that wouldn't impact a benchmark (i.e. screen brightness/timeout etc).

Let me know if there's something else I should have done.

 

They are widely available now in the UK - PC World and Currys are pushing them bigtime on TV. Makes a change actually for something to be around over here and not readily available across the pond. I was actually holding out for the Acer W510 but that's not going to be available over here until the end of January. Other than the Envy the only other Intel Win8 devices that have made it to the UK market are the Samsung 500T and 700T. Seems bizarre to me that they wouldn't have flooded the market before Christmas.

 

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When WPrime is run with Admin privileges, it gains the ability to detect your hardware and configure itself automatically (like CPUz, SIW and other hardware detection utilities). On the other hand, when it's executed as a Standard User, it cannot detect the computer's hardware, so it makes a guess and the user might be forced to configure the option Set Thread Count manually. This is the only difference between running WPrime as Admin and Standard User! But given that your unit scored similarly to other Clover Trail machines, the WPrime settings were correct.

Thanks, for your submission! I'll update the Benchmark thread later today.



Owners of the Lenovo Twist and Yoga, please feel free to contribute with your scores.

 

How do you think the sound is on the X2 though the speakers, I had a freind with it and I found that sound was bad.


Any chance to install other sound drivers, I think it has realtek drivers when I checked on the enhancement tab and it does nto have ONE, so now Loudness Equalization or Decible or bass adjustments and no Graphic Equalizer, watching youtube video the sound was so low, hardly could hear anything, and no way to make it louder.

Wont be buying one of those, unless the sound drivers fix it.

 

Well the speaker is not awesome. I rarely use my tablets (or laptops) for any audio intensive task without headphones, so it's not a big deal to me. After your post I looked on the HP website and there was a new Realtek driver, but it didn't seem to do much. Looking in the Realtek directory it seems as if it's to do with the Beats Audio cruft. I turned off the 'surround sound' option on the speaker, which helped a touch.

Mind you, the speaker on the X2 knocks spots off of the Nexus 7 I've got. I suppose it's a matter of apples and oranges - are we comparing tablet speakers or laptop speakers?

 

An update - the Realtek driver ate my audio. Ended up having to do a system restore to get it back. Harumph.
Sent from my Windows 8 device using Board Express

 

I wish they Put the Realtek HD Audio the X2, I have No idea why not well I do, probably cheaper and everyone an HP said no one wants good sound out of the speaker s screw it, they PU HD Audio in all their other Notebooks and this is what this is Mostly, was so looking forward to buying this and now it's a pile of crap.

I looked into it and All of them so far use the same chipset for sound, so I guess I wont be buying one, until the new ones come out with the NEW atom and probably not then as they probably also will have crap sound.

I live in hope that someone will release one with decent audio, that's all I want DECENT, a little bass and loudness that's all, just listenable.

Thanks for listening to my rant.

 

I don't think any OEM puts much thought on speakers quality. I can't remember seeing a laptop whose speakers were good enough to listen to music. Only recently the speakers shipped on desktop computers became worth of music. To find a Tablet PC whose configuration and price meets your requirements and whose speakers happen to be decent will be, to put it mildly, a "quest".

 

I have owned the 500t, 700t, Envy X2 and ASUS Vivi tab 810. The keyboards are the best on the Samsungs (more trackpad gestures as well), followed closely by the ASUS (trackpad driver issues) and last the Envy (not much key travel, trackpad glitches and keys not registering). The HP and ASUS have all aluminum build quality which seems better than the plasticky on he Samsungs, but for typing experience the Envy loses. If you will use the tablet most of the time you could get by.

The other issue is that both the ASUS and Envy have driver issues with Windows 8 and the keyboard/trackpad not working on resume from sleep. Hopefully new drivers will be released by the respective manufacturers soon. Samsung has released new BIOS and drivers already that fixed the problem for me.

 

Well, this is disappointing information. I really wanted a tablet that I could use as a laptop to get some work done in my last semester of grad school. I haven't gotten my x2 yet, it should arrive tomorrow or the next day. I'll have to put it through some testing to figure out if I should keep it or not. It's too much money to settle for something that isn't good for typing. Who knows? Maybe it will be the same typing experience as my old Dell 1440. That is not as comfortable for typing as my home keyboard either, but is good enough for me.