HP Pavilion X360: Flippin' Great

dhruvtalksstech
Feb 25, 2023
5 min read

I bought the HP Pavilion X360 in August 2018. I needed a new laptop since my old one was getting pretty old and all of my school classes and coaching were taking place online like hundreds of millions of other kids. I am not a power laptop user. I don't edit videos, make thousands of lines of code, use a logic pro, or do any of the stuff that you typically see these really famous YouTubers do. I just run a Tech Blog. I have written all of my blogs on this machine and it has handled all tasks with absolute ease. Naturally, I use the physical keyboard for typing as the on-screen keyboard does not vibrate. I like to use keyboards that have clicky keys and adequate travel. I loved Mac's butterfly keyboard because of its feeling but it has since been discontinued citing jamming issues. We are back to the scissor keys!!!!

Let's start with some specs first. 14 inch (this is the max size that suits me and won't go any higher ever), touchscreen, rotatable, i3 10th gen, 1T Hard drive, 256GB SSD, out-of-the-box with Windows 10, and now upgradable to Windows 11, 8GB RAM, 1920X1080 pixel resolution, stylus support, and backlit keyboard. These are pretty great if you think about it. I got the laptop for about 60K and is the most expensive laptop I or my siblings have ever owned. It is definitely overkill in many areas; I will talk about those later.

The laptop is light enough. You can even carry it using one hand only. It is not so large that you would require a laptop bag the size of a whale to carry it. I really like the build quality: the chassis, the hinges, the metal, and the grills. The use of an all-metal enclosure (except for the bottom) makes it a premium and elevating experience. It is an absolute joy to open the lid in winter when it is cold to the touch. However, you cannot open with the lid using one hand, you've got to use the other after opening it halfway through which typically insinuates that the hinges are not top-notch but I am really nitpicking.

The laptop is also slim enough despite its power and storage capacity. It feels rigid, tough, and built to last. I would have appreciated a metal bottom but that would have just added costs and we've got to remember that the quality of HP laptops can't match or surpass those of Apple. There are enough ports on the device. A couple of USB-A, a USB-C, a separate sharing port, an SD card reader, etc. You will be able to charge and plug in enough different devices for data transfer, that's not a problem. The display is very different from conventional ones. You would immediately notice that firstly, it is actual glass and not a mixture of glass and plastic. It also sits flush with the borders and is at the same level as them, unlike other laptops that use LCD displays which are placed behind the borders and are not at the level.

This is mainly because the screen is a touchscreen and requires input by hand. It has been engineered the same as our smartphone display, just enlarged by 2.5X. But the screen is a fingerprint magnet and you would need to constantly wipe it off after every use if you are a cleanliness freak like me. It looks particularly gross when you slide your fingers across the display to navigate. That leaves greasy fingerprints which require some effort and a lens-cleaning cloth to wipe off. I like to use the stylus occasionally. I usually use the stylus when I am using the laptop in tablet mode or when I rotate the keyboard to the other end to make it like an iPad. A stylus comes in handy as the keyboard gets disabled when the laptop is in tablet mode.

I did not expect to be using the stylus and touchscreen as much as I do. I thought these were gimmicks that I would get over a few months later. The touchscreen is particularly useful for navigating, closing tabs and windows, opening files, and scrolling. It is also a lot more convenient since our mind is accustomed to navigating through touch and not so much by trackpad. The trackpad is not as great. There isn't much feedback or physical vibration or sound. The same goes for the keyboard which does matter a lot to me since I hope you know I type my blogs on my personal laptop. I hope it had a better keyboard, there's more than enough travel in the keys but they lack that reassuring feeling that I hoped I would get. They make a whole world of difference and make typing these blogs an enjoyable experience.

I went too far ahead on the storage. I have barely used 200GB of the SSD and the 1TB hard drive is completely empty. I hope to fill up all of it when I am off to college. I mean you can't possibly grow wrong with surplus storage. The stylus is really smooth and works flawlessly. It isn't as good as the Apple Pencil but I am not really ranting as it came free in the box. Battery life is a little worse than decent. I would get about 4.5-5 hours of class watch time when the laptop was new and this has obviously reduced since then because of battery aging and deterioration. The webcam works but isn't 1080P as it should be in 2023. I prefer Windows 11 over any other version of Windows that has ever come out. It is a lot cleaner and more sophisticated. The ability to customize themes and color palleted to my taste is very much like One UI 4 and I deeply appreciate it.

The laptop only spins up its fans over a prolonged period of usage or when you are using it while it is plugged in. But I will say that a lot of things are just luxuries and I could have done my daily tasks from a laptop that was much cheaper too. Touchscreen and the rotatable display may be cool but they significantly add up to the cost and are rarely used by people after the initial few months. Instead of going for a laptop that has a cool factor, spend those few extra bucks on a faster processor because that's going to keep your laptop running for a longer duration.