HP Pavilion x360 14 Convertible 2-in-1 Laptop, 14” Full HD Touchscreen Display, Intel Core i5, 8 GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD…

I bought this laptop for college, being a freshman I was looking for something affordable that would last. I got the core i5 10th gen and I am absolutely happy with my purchase. I had thought about getting a mac but price wise it was out of range. The pavilion is very smooth and crisp in a way. I use it for online class and I have to run some programs for my science classes. It has NOT let me down. I’ve been using it for about a month now and it still works like new. The setup took me like 15 minutes when I first got it. The only things that I believe could be a con for some is that the battery will not last a whole day. I start class at around 8:20 am and around 12 pm the battery is dead, there is a battery saver button tho and it usually let’s my battery last an extra hour or so. Tablet mode is fun, I don’t usually use it so I have no comment on that. Regardless, very good product for the price. Would 100% recommend for college students. I don’t think this would be a good choice for gaming tho. (sorry for the stickers!)

After two weeks of use, I like the feel and action of the keyboard and that it is lighted. Everyday light computing will not tax this machine but I am not sure how it would be for gaming or intensive graphic manipulation. Battery life is less than 3-4 hours of light computing. I’m not sure I’ll keep this machine, mostly because of the battery life and feeling unsure of whether it truly has DDR 4 ram.

The first one I received quickly locked up and prevented downloading items from Microsoft store or even windows updates. No matter what I tried, it would not work right. During discussions with Amazon to return item, It was recommended that I try another one. I did and that one has worked really, really well. The start up time is pronominal, everything seems to work very well except for the battery life. It goes quickly. However, I am so happy with the rest of the laptop that I have chosen to ignore the number of times I have to hook up to charge. Overall, it’s a very good laptop which I did not think I would say based on the first one I got. I gave it four stars because of all the problems with the first laptop.

HP Pavilion x360 14-inch 2-in-1 Convertible Laptop, Intel Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD Storage, Intel UHD Graphics, Windows 10 Home, Amazon Alexa Voice Compatible (14-dh2011nr, Natural Silver)Look and FeelWith the exception of the hinges, the laptop shell is entirely made of plastic. The finish on the top (opposite the screen) is painted to mimic the look of brushed aluminum. It looks pretty convincing whilst it’s new but I expect that as it gets scratched over the course of its lifetime it will be very obvious even from a distance that it’s just painted plastic.The hinge is very nicely designed, moves smoothly and holds sturdily. There’s no wiggle or play, it’s just very solid.The whole thing weighs in at 3 lb 9 oz. not counting the power adapter.KeyboardThe keyboard layout is comfortable and doesn’t have any unusual key placement or size. This may not seem noteworthy if you’ve never used a laptop that did something strange with the keyboard (I’m looking at you Lenovo), but trust me, it matters.Another nice thing about a fairly standardized keyboard layout is the ready availability of keyboard covers. Although this model is not specifically listed as compatible, this cover fits perfectly: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B076KKYXXR. I’ve had more than one device saved by silicone keyboard covers like this and I strongly recommend them for anyone buying one of these. (I’m not recommending any cover specifically, merely providing an example of one that perfectly fits. This way you can take the model numbers from that listing and look for others if you like)The keys themselves are well-designed low-profile keys. They’re quiet and responsive. I don’t have any problems with bounce and the (mostly) full-width keys are still comfortable under my large hands.The keyboard backlight is very well designed. Each of the keys including its alternate function (punction etc…) are illuminated cleanly. There are three backlight levels, though I find the lower intensity unnecessary as the default setting is bright enough to see in a brightly lit room and not overpowering in a dark room.TouchpadThe touchpad is basically standard fare. It’s designed well enough that I didn’t find myself accidentally moving the mouse pointer while typing. Though I still prefer a USB mouse, the touchpad is very serviceable.DisplayThe screen is extremely glossy and will reflect absolute anything remotely bright behind you. It’s not terribly noticeable when you’re working with bright/white content on the screen – such as in a word processor or reading most web pages, but when there is darker content on the screen as often happens when watching videos it’s surface becomes like a mirror. That didn’t seem like a good design choice to me but maybe having a mirror finish is necessary because it’s a touch-screen?The edge-lit IPS does offer a bright and clear image, though it’s not as bright as I would like. Since I don’t have a reliable method for measuring nits my evaluation of its brightness is going to be subjective. In summer noontime daylight it’s noticeably dimmer than other 300 nit screens I have tested, though it is still somewhat readable if you stay in the shade so I would guestimate it’s brightness between 230 and 250 nits. I would consider this screen as being mostly for indoor use though, as I said, it is marginally usable outdoors on a sunny day provided you have ample shade. If used in a darker environment the screen is bright but does suffer from typical LCD uniformity problems (see the image of a blank screen attached to this review).The refresh rate of the display seems to be locked at 59Hz. Being an IPS screen it has very fast switching so it passed the blur-busters tests just fine – motion blur is all but non-existent making it great for watching video.The capacitive touch screen is very responsive and feels accurate even with my giant fingers. I don’t have a stylus to test so I can’t comment on compatibility or accuracy of that.Real-Life Windows 10 (Not S Mode!)A lot of this 2-in-1 style of laptop come with an operating system called “Windows 10 Home in S Mode”. “S Mode” is a highly limited implementation of Windows 10 that only allows you to use the Edge browser and only allows you to run software from the Microsoft App Store. The inclusion of “S Mode” rather than a real-life Windows 10 is usually an indication that the vendor was not confident that the hardware provided would actually be able to run Windows 10. Thankfully this laptop comes with a fully enabled implementation of Windows 10 Home and in my testing it performed just fine.Included SoftwareWhat would setting up a new machine be without going through and removing all of the pre-loaded garbage vendors always like to cram in? This machine comes with a pretty standard complement of bloatware, “free trial” and offer software. In case those terms don’t mean anything to you, it basically referrs to apps that are more about getting you on the hook for paying fees for services than they are about increasing your productivity.Some of the trialware/offerware is built in to Windows 10 itself, some of it comes from HP. I can’t really provide a comprehensive list of what I think you should immediately remove from this laptop upon powering it up, but I will recommend two that you should immediately get rid of. First is McAfee LiveSafe which is a waste of space that will soak up resources without actually protecting your computer then expire in a year or six months or whenever and beg for more money. Just uninstall it and reboot – your machine will automatically switch to the built-in Windows Defender anti-malware which is free with Windows, won’t kill your battery and actually does a much better job stopping and cleaning malware. The second thing I recommend you immediately get rid of is “WildTangent Games”. You’ll need to remove both the “App” and the installed program to get rid of it entirely. I’m deeply disappointed that HP thinks so little of its customers that it would ship this machine with WildTangent Games pre-installed. During my days as a PC tech WildTangent Games were a universally despised vehicle for spyware.There were quite a few other things I removed right away like Express VPN, Dropbox Offer, Microsoft Office etc… If you don’t remove these they will periodically pop up and annoy you by either trying to talk you or scare you into signing up for new services. If you want cloud-based backup signing up for a Microsoft Account gets you some free “OneDrive” space and if you need more it’s worth paying for it – you don’t need both Dropbox and OneDrive. The Microsoft Office stuff gives you minimal access to Microsoft Word and tries to get you to sign up for paid services to get the rest. I switched to OpenOffice years ago and have never looked back. If you need a VPN service and don’t already have one, I suggest you shop around a little rather than just go for Express VPN. But I digress. I strongly recommend you go through the installed “Apps” and remove anything that says “Offer” next to it.Convertible / 2-in-1 featuresThe ability to use the “convertible” features was the thing that most attracted me to this machine. I enjoy watching movies without having to be tethered to any particular room (and when traveling)Laptop ModeIn laptop mode this is just like any other slim-line laptop. This configuration offers the best/clearest sound as the speakers fire up from the far side of the keyboard, and the best overall ergonomics.Tent ModeIn Tent Mode the laptop is folded into an upside-down V shape and propped up on a surface. This is by far my favorite mode for watching movies and TV with this machine, but it does come with extra considerations. In this mode the speakers are pointed away from you, though in my testing I was still able to hear things just fine. It would have been nice if they had included some silicone or rubber bumpers on the edge to keep the laptop from slipping or to keep rough surfaces from scuffing up the edge of laptop itself.Tablet ModeTablet mode is a bit of a mixed bag. Essentially you fold the laptop closed backwards with the keyboard and screen on the outside. The keyboard is disabled in this mode. While you can use this laptop sort of like you would a tablet, its extra bulk is a definite factor. The larger difficulty I had, however, was in holding it in a way that did not result in accidentally activating some control or scrolling to the bottom of a page because my fingers tickled the edge of the touch screen. Switching to “Tablet Mode” in Windows 10 did very little to alleviate this. Also in tablet mode it’s difficult to adjust the screen brightness or volume. I think this mode would be much better if they would provide volume and brightness controls on the edge of the machine and some software adjustment to move controls away from the edges where you’re likely to accidently activate them while just trying to hold the “tablet” in place.SpeakersMuch is made of the “Audio by Bang and Olufsen”. For such small speakers they do sound remarkably clear and present a wider dynamic range than I would expect, but that being said don’t expect miracles. I had to max out the volume in a couple of instances while watching shows in tent mode and even then it did not sound particularly loud.Battery LifeWithout trying to apply any scientific process to judge battery life, I noted while using it that I was able to get about 4-5 hours out of a charge when just browsing the web, watching the occasional YouTube video and writing in a word processor. It was only about 2.5 to 3 hours while watching Netflix or other videos at full brightness. At 3470mAh the capacity isn’t terribly impressive, but for such a lightweight system it seems just right.WiFi speedThe multi-function Wi-Fi and Bluetooth in one chip provided with this laptop provides thoroughly average performance. In practice I was able to get transfer speeds of almost 10MB/s (Bytes not bits), which is more than enough for most day-to day activities, but doesn’t come close to the performance tuned chips in some of the other laptops I’ve reviewed, some of which were able to more than double that throughput. Again, I don’t consider this a drawback because it provides perfectly adequate performance for general purpose computing.Webcam / MicrophoneThe built in webcam is very generic with a 720×1280 sensor. Like most generic webcams, it has a very low ISO sensitivity and therefore requires a decent amount of ambient light to show a clear picture. In a darker environment the image becomes grainy and video smears as the camera tries to compensate for low light. I wouldn’t try to record for YouTube on it, but it’s perfectly serviceable for web conferencing as long as you’re in a well-lit room.The built-in microphone on the other hand actually sounds pretty good, picking up voice clean and clear. The documentation doesn’t say for sure, but it’s possible the mic was also designed by B&O. In any case I think they did a terrific job for a built-in mic.StorageOne of the things I look for in a laptop is the ability to upgrade the primary storage. In general if you see “eMMC” listed on the description it means that the primary storage (i.e. hard drive) is soldered in and is generally more trouble than it’s worth to swap out. I’m happy to report that this laptop actually has full M.2 NVMe SSD which can, if the need arises, be replaced with a larger capacity drive, though the 512GB drive it ships with is plenty big for my needs. This laptop was clearly not designed to be upgraded or serviced by end users as evidenced by how annoying they made it to take apart, but once I had the back off it looks like it was designed to incorporate a full SATA SSD as well with a spot carved out under the right palm rest and an unpopulated ribbon socket labeled “HDD1”. I could not find any documentation on this (as of the time of this review), so I’m not sure if it’s an either-or where you have to pick one or the other or if you can use both a SATA and M.2 drive at the same time. I was unable to test this because I don’t have the proprietary adapter to connect the drive to the board.The supplied 512GB NVMe drive perfomed adequately but maxed out at ~1GB/s writes and ~1.5GB/s reads. This is somewhat normal for a budget drive but about half the potential of the NVMe spec. As it would have involved re-installing Windows 10, I did not wish to try out a faster NVMe drive to see if the limitation lies with the drive itself or the controller. Since you’re not going to be gaming on this laptop, the drive speeds are absolutely fine.CPU/GPU Performance / ThrottlingSo does this laptop throttle the CPU? While my default is to assume that it throttles the CPU/GPU until proven otherwise, most of my attempts to verify one way or the other have been stymied by the unavailability of system hooks used by the Intel XTU (which flat out refuses to install) or MSI Afterburner (installs but can’t actually see anything). With a base frequency of 1GHz the machine runs pretty cool most of the time. The fan isn’t really capable of moving much heat so I seriously doubt that you will ever see a “burst” to 3.6GHz, but again unless you’re trying to game on this machine that’s largely immaterial.In my testing what games I was able to get running ran reasonably well at medium to high settings – older games ran fine at high settings, newer ones needed to be dialed back. Even though this isn’t a gaming machine it’s a good indication of what its capable of.I had no trouble editing large images with GIMP, including computationally complex operations such as perspective shift and de-noise algorithms.The full-sized HDMI port makes it easy to connect a second monitor up to 4k@60 (it will default to 4k@30, but can be switched to 60Hz and in my testing works without any issues). Likewise it was able to render web pages and video in 4K just as smoothly as it did in 1080p.GamingThis isn’t a gaming laptop – which is probably obvious to anyone reading this, but even the most businesslike user may be tempted to dabble now and again. I had considerable trouble getting games to run reliably on this. Most titles crashed to desktop after one to five minutes without so much as a helpful error message. What I did have some luck with were older titles like BioShock, Deus Ex Human Revolution etc…Watching VideoFor video playback I tested a variety of scenarios. Playback of H265 10-bit 4K (HDMI Outputs 4K) content was basically smooth and flawless as was Blu-ray playback via VLC and libaacs. Both YouTube and Netflix had occasional stuttering on 1080p content but I’m being very nit-picky. If I was not paying specific attention to how smooth playback was I would probably not have noticed.Miscellaneous- Unfortunately the 14-dh2011nr doesn’t support Power Delivery which means that it can’t be charged via the USB-C port like some of the higher-end x360’s can. In my opinion this is a huge missed opportunity as the ability to charge via USB-C makes it easier to purchase extra power adapters (one for home one for the office, etc…) and opens up the possibility of extending runtime while traveling by using a large power bank that supports PD.- Had to use compatibility mode to get certain apps (OpenOffice) to properly scale fonts etc… This is generally caused by the display drivers not being full featured enough to support the DPI mode being set from the app.- Like most laptop power adapters, there is no obvious way to wrap the cord to minimize the space it takes up inside your bag.- The USB ports had no trouble delivering enough power to power external spinning hard drives and optical drives without needing to use a second power source. This also means that if you use this laptop’s ports to charge other devices over USB they may charge faster if the device is designed to take advantage of higher-amperage power sources.Conclusion:The 14-dh2011nr isn’t the most powerful, doesn’t have the brightest screen, isn’t the fastest, but it has all around great features and performance for this price range. It’s perfect for surfing the web, web conferencing, editing photos, and watching movies or shows. It’s one of the best priced 2-in-1 laptops I’ve seen that’s capable of running full-blown Windows 10 Home and doesn’t feel sluggish in the slightest. It’s quiet, has good battery life, lightweight and an all around pleasure to use. In short it’s exactly what I was looking for.Pros:- Lightweight and thin- Full-sized standard keyboard (compatible with available keyboard covers)- Full-sized HDMI socket – supports 4K@60 just fine- Full Windows 10 Home (NOT “S Mode”)- Good battery life- Convertable has great options for watching video or working without a keyboard- Quiet fan – even going full blast it’s barely above a whisper- Decent amount of storage – 512GB- Legit M.2 drive (so it’s upgradeable)- Great built-in mic- The full-sized USB 3.0 ports deliver enough amperage to support power-hungry devices like external hard drives and external DVD/Blu-ray drivesCons:- Shiny reflective screen surface can be really distracting (mostly during dark scenes in videos)- No “bumpers” or rubber feet to protect the edge and stop slipping in Tent Mode- Screen is only around ~240 nits makes it only marginally usable in daylight – this is really an indoor screen- Pre-loaded with bloatware/nagware software including the spyware “WildTangent Games”Neutral Observations:- Can’t really game on it (newer titles seem to run okay but almost all of them crash out in the first minute)- Tablet mode is novel but difficult to use because controls are on the edge where you’re holding your fingers- The GPU is extremely basic and lacks any options for monitoring- The CPU lacks the normal system hooks for monitoring

Many things I love about this laptop. Great battery life, it is lightweight it is touchscreen and has tablet mode. I picked it because it had a backlit keyboard in the specs but it does not (but not bugged enough to send it back). I am annoyed at the placement of the power button it is on the side where you grab the laptop to move it and I keep bumping it and turning off the computer. Getting knocked out of Zoom meetings is really annoying. Again I will deal with it but will definitely think about his when I am looking for a new computer.