HP Envy x360 13.3 AMD Ryzen 4500u Touchscreen 2 in 1 Laptop + Stylus $874.99 New And $769.99 Open Box

AnujS699 wrote: ↑ Isn't the Lenovo Flex 5 2 in 1 laptop with AMD Ryzen 4700u at Costco with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd on sale for 899 in store a better deal?

AnujS699 wrote: ↑ Isn't the Lenovo Flex 5 2 in 1 laptop with AMD Ryzen 4700u at Costco with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd on sale for 899 in store a better deal?

AnujS699 wrote: ↑ Isn't the Lenovo Flex 5 2 in 1 laptop with AMD Ryzen 4700u at Costco with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd on sale for 899 in store a better deal?

AnujS699 wrote: ↑ Isn't the Lenovo Flex 5 2 in 1 laptop with AMD Ryzen 4700u at Costco with 16gb ram and 512gb ssd on sale for 899 in store a better deal?

squint72 wrote: ↑ Bought this for $899 (less 7% ebates) a couple of months ago. Build quality is very good for this price point. My knocks are 300 nits display is just ok, 400 would be better as I have to have it at 90% brightness and that hurts battery life of course. Bilingual keyboard I’m not a fan of but I knew that before buying. I have a weird issue that I gave up on and that is on zoom and Google meet calls, if I touch the touch pad while I’m talking it will randomly mute myself. I spent hours updating drivers, bios, chipset, reinstalling windows, etc, etc and finally gave up and went back to using iPad. It’s a known issue and I think has something to do with the amd graphics drivers? Anyway, I would have returned it if I could have but didn’t discover the issue until after the 30 day return window. If anyone has the same issue and has figured out what the fix is please let me know. Thanks in advance.

Sushi Roll wrote: ↑ That's the main competition and the answer is... it depends. If 16GB ram is a deal breaker, the costo one wins. If bilingual keyboard is a deal breaker, this HP envy wins (this has the flat return key and normal size keys versus the J shaped return key and squished shift keys on the Costco model).

If you look at the linked old thread, you'll see some people returned the Lenovo and got this HP Envy instead and liked it better when they owned both.

Now just to give it a fair fight, I tried the AMERICAN version of the Lenovo Flex 5 14 with the normal, non-bilingual keyboard, 16 gigs ram, etc. I tried it for a few MONTHS off and on against this Envy. In the end I didn't notice the difference between 16 and 8 gigs of ram. The SSD is so fast even when it swaps to ram I don't notice any slowdown on the Envy.

I found a few things that were worse with the Lenovo. First is the screen. Colors were off (especially reds looked orange) compared to the Envy. Brightness had to be set higher compared to the Envy so it used more power. There was much more pronounced backlight bleed on black screens on the Lenovo, especially during boot up. On the Envy, the screen looks quite black on boot up with very even backlighting.

Lenovo also took longer to boot and longer to wake up from hibernation. It also stayed in sleep mode for less time and would end up hibernating to disk earlier than the Envy. So most times, you open the Envy and you're instantly up and ready to go. Most times you open the Lenovo you end up waiting for it to reboot and restore from hibernation.

Lenovo also had a much uglier boot graphic. HP is a really nice one and matches the deep blacks. It's the little details like this that are hard to tell from a spec sheet.

Lenovo had a stickier touchpad when fingertips got sweaty. Envy allows for a smoother glide when your hands start to sweat.

Keyboard on Envy is a bit more "clackey" for lack of a better word. Lenovo keyboard was fine but it was more spongey.

USB3 power adapter I thought would be a win for the Lenovo but it ended up fitting much more loosely in the port and had a bit of wiggle. Just didn't feel secure or snug in the port. Also took up a USB3 port to charge. Envy has the barrel charger and it is snug and tight while charging and leaves the USB3 port for display. Lenovo doesn't have a USB3 with display out capability.

Lenovo I couldn't get the touchpad to work in Ubuntu, Manjaro, Arch, and even Pop OS. It seems there are multiple touchpad manufacturers and I was unlucky and got the one with no Linux support. On the Envy it works pretty much straight out of the box with any Linux distro. However on both the fingerprint reader, autorotation tablet mode, and suspend doesn't work on Linux. As a workaround I can only get hibernate to work on Linux but it boots even faster than Windows so it's actually pretty sweet.

The Envy keyboard backlight seems to stay on longer after typing than the Lenovo. This is a matter of preference but I like it better on the Envy.

Both had surprisingly little bloatware from the factory, and basically after uninstalling things like McAffee Antivirus I haven't found a need to clean install either machine.

Sound also was better on the Envy. Fan also turned on less often on the Envy, but this is really nitpicking as both were pretty much silent with no fan on normal web browsing.

Then other little details like the Envy has a dedicated key to adjust the keyboard backlight while the Lenovo does not - you need to press Fn + Spacebar (not obvious really... and why those keys?)

Then there is the slightly bulkier size and weight that made the Lenovo just less fun to carry around.

I'm trying to think of one thing I liked better on the Lenovo and I can't think of anything. Usually it would be the bigger ram but like I said before, I didn't notice the difference.

So in the end I'm certain I made the right decision with the Envy. Yes, I would have loved to have the 16gb of ram, but that version is $1399 on amazon so it isn't worth it.

But I'm the type of person who will probably buy the 8gb version of the Macbook Air M1 over the 16gb one just because again, I won't notice the difference.

I'd rather spend less now and save that money to buy a better machine in the future (Apple M2 or when Zen 4 stuff comes out, etc).

Just my $0.02