HP 360 X360 G6 Review

HP EliteBook x360 830 G6 review: Compact and solid, with good security and battery life
HP's EliteBook range of professional laptops keeps growing, the latest addition being the 13.3-inch EliteBook x360 830 G6, a 360-degree rotating, ultraportable 2-in-1 convertible. 1000-nit touch screen, a stylus and HP's excellent Sure View screen security system and comes with HPs Sure Sense anti-malware security software and Wi-Fi 6.
HP's EliteBook laptops have a sleek but solid industrial design, and the 830 G6's aluminium chassis provides plenty of protection for the innards, and the lid is among the toughest I've seen: I could not bend or bow it at all in my hands.
Open and you'll find the distinctive stippled speaker grille sitting above the keyboard, with Bang & Olufsen branding below it on the right-hand side in a discreet grey.
The 360-degree rotating hinge means you can use the laptop in tablet mode and all points in between. The hinge is well made -- easy to move around, yet rigid when the laptop is in the position you need. Which must have been the best features for me, as I enjoy working from home and having the pleasure of doing so on my couch. With just a complete 360-degree rotation am in tablet mode.
The stylus is magnetic and will cling to the right edge of the chassis and to the wrist rest. In the former location it obscures many of the ports and connectors, while the latter is impractical if you want to type. There's no housing on the chassis to accommodate the stylus, and its battery must be charged independently. However very convenient to access, and you sure will not lose it.
This laptop's thin edges taper ever so slightly towards the front, and the whole thing measures a very portable 306mm wide by 21mm deep by 16.9mm thick. My everyday 15-inch handbag had no trouble accommodating it. However, that strong and tough chassis means this isn't the lightest of compact laptops, with a starting weight 1.35kg.
The screen sits inside narrow short-edge bezels and much deeper long-edge bezels. Narrow bezels are great for reducing a laptop's overall size, and for delivering a compelling viewing experience -- especially for video watching as am a sucker for Netflix. But deeper bezels are better at preventing accidental screen presses when you're working in tablet mode. Deeper bezels on the long edges, as found on this laptop, make for a good tablet-mode experience if you stick to portrait orientation, which seems like a good compromise.
Touch was responsive and brightness perfectly good enough for working outdoors -- although my testing was during dull winter days rather than full summer sun. The screen has a matte finish, which will be welcome if you find reflective screens challenging. However, viewing angles are limited on both the vertical and horizontal planes. It's rare these days to see a laptop with such poor viewing angles and sharing information with someone sitting next to you may be a challenge.
On that front, our review sample of the EliteBook x360 830 G6 comes with Sure View, which is a very effective security feature that makes it difficult for anyone on either side to view the screen. Indeed, I'd go further. Turn Sure View on by tapping the F2 key and someone sitting next to you will have to crane their neck to see what you are doing -- in fact, they'd almost need to bump heads with you to see. The downside is that you might have trouble seeing what you're doing too, as Sure View significantly dims the screen to achieve its goal which can be slightly frustrating for a person like myself with poor vision.
The speakers are great, a good base in terms of sound. As I always enjoy streaming on YouTube music as I work.
The keyboard is a pleasure to use. The keys are well weighted, and bouncy, springing back after being pressed. The keys are quite clacky and typing generates a fair amount of noise, so this may not be the ideal laptop for ultra-quiet working environments. The backlight comes on automatically as you start to type and can be cycled through two brightness levels via a Fn key. The cursor keys are well thought-out, with left/home and right/end both full-size keys, while the up and down keys are half height and about 1.5x standard width.
The Enter key is double width and single height, but I didn't find this problematical. Considering this laptop's compactness, it was extremely comfortable to work with.
There is a fingerprint scanner in the wrist rest, and the EliteBook x360 830 G6 supports Windows Hello via its webcam. HP Sure Sense is also included among the security features. This anti malware software is, says HP, more sophisticated than other services. It incorporates deep learning to help it gauge files as 'OK' or 'suspect', and like other tools, relies on off-device systems to keep itself up to date.
HP has done a good job in this respect in the battery life department. I let the laptop set screen brightness to its recommended level for working on battery, which was a shade below 50%. However, I do prefer the 100% shade for many of the tasks that I performed, although the 50% shade worked perfectly fine for an office setup.
In a three-hour period of continuous working the 50Wh battery depleted by 27%. This suggests that all-day working should be entirely possible without access to mains power, provided you are disciplined about charging.
HP has brought the EliteBook x360 830 G6 bang up to date with Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) support. My review unit had an Intel Core i5-8365U processor, 8GB of RAM, graphics courtesy of Intel's integrated UHD Graphics 620 GPU and 256GB of SSD storage. The OS was Windows 10 Pro.
The left edge has the power connector and a USB 3.1 port, plus a USB slot. There's also a volume rocker here, which comes in handy when working in tablet mode.
Most of the connectivity is on the right edge, where, as noted earlier, the stylus can get in the way if you use its magnetic attachment system. Here you'll find another USB 3.1 port, two USB-C ports with Thunderbolt, a full-size HDMI port and a 3.5mm headset jack, plus an oval-pin charge connector.
Conclusion
HP's EliteBook x360 830 G6 isn't the lightest 13.3-inch laptop around, but it's among the most solidly built. The screen's 360-degree rotation is based on a strong and secure hinge, and the many security features -- including Sure View and Sure Sense -- are compelling. Battery life is impressive too.
A definite must have, I would highly recommend. I personally loved the overall feel and functionality of the laptop, and stylish too.
DEVICE SPECIFICATIONS
Device name DESKTOP-UNJ5KQF
Processor Intel(R) Core (TM) i5-8365U CPU @ 1.60GHz 1.90 GHz
Installed RAM 8,00 GB (7,82 GB usable)
Device ID 250F5F2F-B387-4B83-879E-A4310C4B0886
Product ID 00330-52120-37574-AAOEM
System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor
Pen and touch Pen and touch support with 10 touch points
WINDOWS SPECIFICATIONS
Edition Windows 10 Pro
Version 20H2
Installed on 2021/07/02
OS build 19042.1110
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 120.2212.3530.0
Design |
★★★ |
Build Quality |
★★★★ |
Display |
★★★ |
Performance |
★★★★ |
Connectivity |
★★★ |
Software Experience |
★★★★ |
Battery |
★★ |