
The wide, buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly and clicks almost silently. Travel is somewhat shallow, but the typing feel is quiet and snappy I was maintaining a good pace with just a little practice. To its credit, there are dedicated Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys so those functions aren't double-teamed on the cursor arrows. The backlit keyboard has one feature I always gnash my teeth over-HP's arrangement of the cursor arrow keys in a row instead of an inverted T, with half-size up and down arrows sandwiched between full-size left and right. It's easy to distinguish overlapping tracks. They're loud enough to fill a midsize room, with no distortion at max volume there's not a lot of bass, but highs aren't rough or buzzy, and music is clear without being hollow or tinny. The sound is above par, too, thanks to four Bang & Olufsen-tuned speakers. It's not a face-recognition camera, but Windows Hello fans can skip passwords using a fingerprint reader on the keyboard deck. The 720p webcam captures above-average images, sharp and well-lit with minimal grain or noise. Most of the Envy's competitors have Thunderbolt 3, whose absence is disappointing in an over-$1,000 laptop. Two obvious omissions are an HDMI port (HP sells a USB Type-C-to-HDMI adapter for $29.99) and a Thunderbolt 3 port.

On the right are another USB 3.1 Type-A port (with device charging), the connector for the AC adapter, a microSD card slot, and a minuscule sliding switch that kills the webcam if you're concerned about online snoops. On the left edge, you'll find an audio jack, a USB 3.1 Type-A port, and a USB 3.1 Type-C port. So svelte is the system that the USB Type-A ports on either side feature drop-down doors or partial covers, like those of some notebooks' Ethernet jacks. Its anodized aluminum chassis in Natural Silver (HP's online configurator lets you choose Pale Gold for an extra $10) features a cantilevered rear hinge that props the keyboard at a slight typing angle when opened.Īt 0.58 by 12.1 by 8.3 inches, it's a match for the Stealth but a fraction lighter (2.82 versus 3.04 pounds). The Envy 13 is a handsome, sleek machine, with the company's stylized logo centered in the lid. My $1,199.99 test unit (model 13-aq0044nr) had the same CPU but 16GB of memory, a 512GB SSD, and a 4K (3,840-by-2,160-pixel) touch screen backed by Nvidia's 2GB GeForce MX250 graphics. The $749.99 Envy 13 combines an Intel Core i7-8565U processor with integrated graphics, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB NVMe solid-state drive, and a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) non-touch display.

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