HP Pavilion X2 12″ Budget Laptop Review

Today we are going to review the HP Pavilion X2 12” laptop hybrid. The X2 is a budget notebook that’s light, portable and most importantly affordable.

For a budget laptop, the HP Pavilion X2 looks really good. The exterior looks premium and it’s encased in all metal. It weighs 3.24 pounds and is under one inch thick. Considering it’s using a detachable metal base it’s fairly thin and light.

The X2 can be used in three different positions: notebook mode, which is the most popular and allows you to use the physical keyboard and trackpad to get work done; tablet mode, for reading: stand mode, which HP suggests for gaming and “tent mode” which we really thought was great for watching videos. Four modes for the price of one.

The hinge that opens and closes the notebook is stiff but not too stiff and when you open it all the way, the keyboard raises ever so slightly making it more comfortable to type.

The screen is touch enabled and you can also use the HP pen to write on it.

In terms of ports, on the left side you have an audio jack and one USB 2.0 port. On the right side you have a microSD card slot, a mini HDMI out and one USB type-c port limited to USB 3.0 speeds and also used as a charging port.

There’s only two models to choose from. The cheaper one uses an Intel Atom processor, and eMMC for storage. The higher end model, which is the unit that we are using for this review, comes with a 6th generation dual-core M3-6Y30 processor, 4 MB of RAM, 128 GB SSD and 12” (1920×1280) IPS display that supports touch and HP’s active Pen.

It retails for $499 and includes a full size keyboard.

The display on the X2 is actually quite good considering the price point, the aspect ratio is 3×2 which means it’s better for things like reading books, taking notes and most productivity tasks.
The ratio is closer to resembling a letter A4 piece of paper. The screen does have a cool tone too, the colors are well represented and the viewing angles are great. However I did find the display to be a little bit dark. I think that most people want to keep the brightness setting between 75% and 200% for the best viewing experience.

One of the 4 different uses for the X2.

The bezels are quite thick but it does have dual front facing speakers which is always a bonus. The screen is multi-touch enabled – pinch-to-zoom and scrolling with your fingers all work perfectly. Also, if you need to write on the screen, the display supports HP’s active pen. It’s sold separately but it’s a great way to add more functionality to your notebook. We’ve seen professionals going completely “paperless” by having clients sign contracts directly on their laptop nowadays.

Above the display is a 720p HDTV camera that utilizes HP true vision technology and dual array microphone. It’s good enough for video conferencing and making Skype calls. It doesn’t have a rear-facing camera which is not such a big deal but if you rely on your photos of documents then you might be disappointed.

For a hybrid computer, I commend HP for including a detachable metal keyboard and I love the fact that its full-sized, there’s lots of space to rest your palms, the keys are all well spread out and the arrow keys are not crammed like you’d find on other detachables. The keys feel solid when pressed at a happy travel distance of 1.5 mm. The touchpad is good too, it’s wide enough to reflect the screen size and, even though it’s not made of glass, the cursor accurately reflects your fingers movements.

As we’ve mentioned earlier, the Pavilion X2 has dual facing speakers. Speakers placed on the front is always preferred compared to other laptops that place them on the bottom or side. This way the sound is always facing you. HP has teamed up with Bang & Olufsen, a very repeatable audio company known for making great speakers, and the sound is not bad but it’s not great either. It gets loud enough to fill up a small room or for watching movies and for listening to music it’s totally fine.

This is the perfect laptop for a college student or professional who is starting his own business. It’s not powerful enough to play the latest games or video but it’s perfect to get most productivity tasks done. We were able to multi-task comfortably with 7-8 tabs opened on chrome while playing two fullHD videos at the same time without any lag.

If you use Microsoft Office or Google Docs then you’ll be happy with the performance. If you get the model than with M.2 SATA SSD you’re going to get much better read and write speeds than the entry level model that uses eMMC.

The hard drive inside the X2 is a Samsung MZNLF Drive which averages reach speeds of up to 530 MB/s according to Samsung but we were averaging around 330 with HDTune and 530 with CrystalDiskMark.
The rates speeds were around a 140 Mb/s which is normal for this drive but slow for an SSD.

The battery inside is a 2-cell, 33 Wh Li-ion and HP claims that the battery can last up to eight hours and 15 minutes with normal use. Call us “powerusers”, but we were averaging around six hours with the brightness set to 100%, as we find this to be the best viewing experience.

We are glad that some manufacturers are solely using USB type-c ports to charge laptops. One of the biggest annoyances of owning a laptop is that each laptop has a proprietary charger and adopting the new USB type-c, like HP did, means a lot less cables to carry around.

In conclusion what we really love about the HP Pavilion is the design. The all-metal feels like you’re holding a premium product and it’s extremely portable. It includes a full size keyboard and a beautiful display – perfect for getting work done. We like the versatility of being able to put it into various positions and if you need a pen for signing documents or drawing you can always go out and buy the HP active pen.

Here’s the not so good part: the bezels are quite big and hopefully will be toned down on its successor. I still think there should have been a rear-facing camera – I know some people like to use their tablets to scan or take pictures of documents. And finally having two USB ports is great but I think the USB 2.0 ports should be USB 3.0 instead.

We want to know what you guys think about the X2. Leave your opinion in the comments below. Let us know if this is the kind of laptop you would get, especially if you’re a student.