HP Envy x360 16-ad0756ng review

Why

That's kinda important, tbh. It all started with me getting a convertible 14" ThinkPad used for 140€ about 2-3 months ago because I just thought that this form factor could be pretty great. I got it, was relatively happy with it until the mainboard just died beyond repair. but I had another laptop still lying around: A 3 year old Lenovo IdeaPad. The only positive thing I can say about it is the processor. That's it. It feels cheep, has a bad keyboard, bad screen but, as I've already said, the processor is a Ryzen 5 5xxx which is good enough for some gaming. Then I had 2 options: Getting a new, powerful 2 in 1 or getting another ThinkPad X370/X380. I settled on getting a new one.

The selection

That was pretty simple. I just went onto Geizhals (a platform where you can compare different products and find the cheapest retailer) and filtered for 2-in-1 and sorted by cheapest. There were some Chromebooks, some older ones with Intel 13th and 14th Gen, and some more with Ryzen 7th Gen (not really 7th Gen, but you know what I mean). In between for 700€ was a Lenovo IdeaPad with the relatively new Ryzen 5 8640HS. I bought it thinking "it can't be horrible for this price". The only thing I checked before was that it has a keyboard backlight. It has. I bought it and on the next day, I discovered an offer via mydealz from HP. They had a 16" convertible with the exact Ryzen 5 8640HS on offer for 630€. I immediately jumped on it after reading that it even has an aluminum body, though I was a bit worried 16" would be too big.

Purchasing the Laptop

I've never had a worse shopping experience than what I experienced in the HP store. It started with long loading times. I applied the coupon in the cart and it loaded for at least a minute after succeeding. I was already worried, but as HP is a reputable brand, I thought that this may just be an error in the matrix. I went through the purchasing process and paid. It redirected me back onto the "buy now" page. The exact same page I saw before paying! I already got pretty pissed, but clicking the "buy now" button again and waiting for another minute, it told me it had succeeded. What an experience until here already. But the quirkyness of the HP store doesn't end here. As days passed by, I wanted to check in my order. It doesn't work with the account. It shows an error telling you that you've entered the wrong employee id. Luckily, you can still check your order online without an account which I did. After some days, they finally shipped (was around 5-6 days). I got it shipped to a parcel locker where I picked it up. I felt quite uncomfortable walking home with this box under my arm showing what it contains: An expensive looking laptop. Now box around the normal retail box. I mean, okay, but I still found that quite irritating.

Unboxing

I got it out of the box and was quite impressed: It felt really expensive and well built. So far, I was quite impressed. I continued with setting up Windows 11 and after I had to agree not only to Microsoft's Terms of Service, but also to HP's ones and the being greeted on the desktop with McAffe, I already though about reinstalling Windows cleanly. This became more apparent as I wanted to do a BIOS update. I clicked through the 5 HP applications that were preinstalled, but none were for updating drivers or the BIOS. That was everything I needed to know that a fresh install of Windows was inevitable. So I updated the BIOS, created a Windows 11 usb stick and erased the complete SSD. I also had to allow the setup without wifi, because Windows doesn't have preinstalled drivers for the MediaTek WiFi card. Nothing a USB stick and another PC can't fix, so I got the drivers installed.

Drivers

After being online, I checked the device manager and I felt like Windows XP times: 6 devices unknown. I already prepared myself for installing them all by hand, but luckily, Windows found all the drivers. It wanted 4 reboots and took at least 45 minutes, but it managed it in the end, though I installed AMD's official drivers, just to be on the safe side.

Linux

After having Windows working, it came time to install Linux. What can I say, it went flawlessly. Everything was supported out of the box, but some issues still appeared. There were 3 and 2 unfixable issues. Let's start with the fixable one:

• The face unlock: There's Howdy out there which works okay(ish) as a replacement for Windows Hello

Now, the unfixable ones (for now)

• Tablet mode detection: In theory, linux should know when the device is folded over and thus in tablet mode. It simply doesn't and I really don't know why.
• Sound: The sound is bugged af: It mostly works in the beginning, but then, it either stops working completely after pausing and resuming playback or it is only playing on one speaker. One or two restarts mostly fix it, but it's really annoying.

Quirks

Well there are 2 really interesting ones. Firstly, the camera privacy cover. You can slide a plastic part physically in front of the webcam. But the infrared camera is still uncovered. I mean, the IR camera can't see color, but it can still be used to spy on you, so it's quite ridiculous putting this privacy cover in front of the color webcam. It just gets turned off in software. The second one is the keyboad, or to be more precise, the layout. At first, I'm so glad, it has the copilot key. It's even more useless than Scroll Lock. The other thing: <, > an | are all behind the Fn key on L. So you'd have to press Fn, Alt Gr and L to get the | character. What a mess! But luckily, I can map that to the Copilot key!

Pen support

That's pretty much one of the main features of such a convertible. Turns out, HP released their compatible pen ~3 months after release one one month after me buying the laptop. It's out for... 100€. 100€ for a pen that doesn't even have bluetooth nor any other groundbreaking feature! The predecessor "only" cost 60€, but taking 100€ for a pen that doesn't have any new features is outrageous. Really! If the pen won't be cheaper on Black Friday, I'll buy the predecessor for 40€, but it doesn't support tilt detection. This is a good moment for Fck you, HP!

Repairability

I didn't open it up. Firstly, there are four visible screw on the bottom cover, all with a special star bit needed (The iFixIt mako kit luckily has them). Even though I removed all of them, the bottom cover didn't even move a millimeter, so I guess there are more screws under the rubber feet I don't want to destroy for now. This is again soo stupid! I appreciate having visible screws for the ease of repairability! That said, in theory, one can replace the 512GB Samsung DRAM-less SSD and the MediaTek Wifi 6E card.

Thermals and battery

Firstly thermals: This thing runs really quiet and cool. I'm freaking impressed by the efficiency of the CPU! In a stress test, the fan turns on after 2 minutes (okay, the CPU gets up to 90°C until the fan kicks in), but that's still quite impressive and during normal use, the fan is pretty much always off. Web browsing, coding, whatever, the fan doesn't turn on. Only when gaming when it gets audible, but it luckily isn't high pitched at all. Just the sound of air moving, so that's pretty good. But the laptop has some coil whine which is audible when you put your ear above the keyboard, but not when you're sitting in front of it like a normal person would do.

Now, let's talk battery life: Man, this is impressive! This laptop only sips power! I get 10 hours of programming with JS and Svelte and listening to music. This is really impressive and translates to even more when only browsing the web. I mostly charge it off of my phone's charger as it delivers the 20v via USB PD the laptop needs to charge, but the charger only delivers 20W, so it charges slowly, but also doesn't heat up at all. If you'd be in a hurry, 65W charging via USB-C PD is the go-to with the included high quality charger! Cheers about an included charger If you're charging, it luckily doesn't matter which USB-C port you use: Both accept power.

Conclusion

I like it. Well built, awesome AMD CPU (take that Intel, you've lost), awesome battery life, kinda bad screen, good keyboard, good cooling, strange keyboard layout. Let's do a quick table: