The HP Pavilion x360 14 (2021) is a laptop that can be used in different ways. It has a 360-degree hinge and can be set up in different ways. Its plastic body feels solid and well-made, and it’s easy to bring with you because it’s small and light.
Overall, the user experience is pretty good, thanks to the touchpad’s smoothness, the keyboard’s size, and the speakers’ loudness and neutral sound. There are a lot of ports, including a dedicated HDMI port and a single USB-C port that supports both display out and USB Power Delivery. The battery doesn’t last for an entire 8-hour workday, so you’ll have to plug it in at some point.
Even though its IPS screen has good viewing angles overall, it looks dull and doesn’t get bright enough to beat glare. The microphone picks up voices loudly and clearly, but the webcam is very grainy and misses out on fine details. It has no versions with a dedicated GPU, so it’s not good for AAA games.
We tested the HP Pavilion x360 14 with a 1080p IPS display, an Intel Core i3-1125G4 with built-in Intel UHD Graphics G4, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. It has a quad-core CPU and a good amount of RAM, so it can handle light to medium multitasking. Its 3D rendering performance is good enough for hobbyists who want to start, but not for professionals.
If you tend to have a lot of apps and browser tabs open at once, we recommend getting a model with 16GB of RAM to avoid slowdowns and stutters. The dual-core Pentium Gold 7505 CPU in the lowest-end options will be more than enough for light web browsing or video playback. The Intel Core i7-1165G7 CPU in the highest-end options will give heavy multitaskers a smooth experience and give enough power to people who need to run CPU-heavy applications.
Typing on the Pavilion x360’s keyboard is immensely satisfying. The keys aren’t snappy, but they feel smooth and require a decent amount of force and travel before they hit the bottom. Armed with an Intel Core i5-8265U processor and 8GB of RAM, the Pavilion x360 juggled 30 Google Chrome tabs and four 1080p YouTube videos simultaneously without a sweat.
The 43Wh battery in the Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 is small for a laptop its size, which hurts it here. Back 18 months ago, it might have been normal for a laptop to have a life of seven or more hours, but now, many laptops easily last 10 hours or more.