I like this thing a lot with a few caveats. It could benefit from a better hinge that eliminates the detachability of the system from its keyboard. HP is a little late in discovering that the tablet fad is dying in favor of phone and laptop dominance, but maybe in a generation or two they'll come around. Microsoft is already leading that charge by converting their Surface to conventional, and inarguably far better, notebook computers. Anyway, dumping the silly tablet functionality would make the whole system more durable for corporate/business use and more practical for the intended audience. They could shed the kickstand arrangement if they did that and move the systems nicely specced innards down to the keyboard base to give it better balance when being used on surfaces that aren't as solid as say a desk or table. Passive cooling would be nice, but I get it that there's going to be a trade-off between performance and cooling capacity so you really can't ding HP too much for that. Good effort from HP and in another generation, we'll likely see those sorts of improvements.
There is almost infinite variety of laptops on the market for those who prefer them. I see very little harm in having couple of half-decent tablet-y convertibles for those who actually want to have the stylus functionalities etc.
Oh there's absolutely no harm at all in catering to that market. It's just that it's not a growth segment at this point and sales will likely reflect the broad lack of interest in tablet hardware. In a lot of ways late, post-growth products in the tablet market sort of mirror the VR hardware trend we're seeing where headsets like Facebook's Rift that only arrived on the coattails of 3D TV, but disappointingly long after the 3D fad had died on the vine. The proverbial iron is no longer hot so striking now is sort of a moot point.
not saying laptops will die... it's just computing is proliferating... and in the case of laptops finally actually replacing paper. however it's true that's only really the case in rich communities, as those powerful, light windows 10 tablets (surface, surface book, ...) are really expensive.
This comment is completely bizarre. This Tesla is great and all, but it'd be better if they redesigned it to be a pickup truck, as sales of pickup trucks are much better than electric cars.
HP already has a thousand laptops that aren't tablets. If you want a laptop from them, just go buy an x360 or an Elitebook.
@BrokenCanyons: you are dreaming if you believe that Microsoft will abandon the tablet / detachable market. By the way, the upgrade of the SP4 already leaked and could be announced next week. Also, if you would have dare checking your claims, you would have realized that only detachable / hybrid are growing whereas pure laptop are decreasing.
Interestingly, for some reason nobody makes laptops I and my friends want. You know, grownups who know their stuff. Everything they make is incredible, intolerable sht, at any price (including Apple).
How about you start from bezel-less 17" (so the total size would be 15"-like). At reasonable resolution and aspect ratio, 1920x1200 is MORE than enough at laptop working distance, and more resolution means wasted time and power. Matte OF COURSE (what morons are even attracted to these shiny things)!
Good fanless CPU with built-in GPU (MORE than enough for non-kiddies), 15W TDP Koby Lakes (like i7-7660U) can be made fanless with proper thermal engineering in the 15"-sized body.
2 M.2 slots for SSDs (2nd optional), 1TB each for now, PCIe NVMe of course, both user-replaceable. 16-32GB DDR4 if Koby Lake does not support LPDDR4x yet (what a shame Intel!). Keep it within 4 lb/2kg, use carbon fiber if needed.
Also I would not mind multitouch panel over B&W (not grey) eInk display instead of mechanical keyboard and a regular touchpad - just draw keyboards as necessary, switch images with Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Caps-lock or language change, draw commands of a current app over F-keys (just read current accel/menu tables).
Why these corporations employ product managers without any common sense or imagination at all?
Camera should be on the BOTTOM, when you are typing, you look down, not up. 2 cameras are better for 3D face recognition login (2D face recognition is easily fooled by a photo). Speakers (at least tweeters) should be also there on the display, at extremes sides for stereo separation, looking forward at you, not up. Subwoofer (well, hard to call it that) can be in the main body if the main speakers are not full range (and they cannot be in the thin screen panel).
And what is that with soldiered in SSDs, as tiny as 256GB? And upgrades at insane prices? Intel 600p M.2 SSD, 4x PCIe 3.0 and all, is $345 on newegg, I am sure laptop manufacturers can by them in bulk much cheaper. 17" 1280x1024 monitors are $110 on newegg. $999 laptop can easily have i7-7600U, 1TB M.2 SSD, 16GB RAM and the 17" screen with 1mm metal bezels. $1500 can have 1920x1200 with touch, 32GB RAM, i7-7660U and 2TB SSD.
Are you seriously saying they should replace the physical keyboard with a touch screen panel?
No, just, no.
Typing on a touch keyboard for a PRO laptop would be abysmal at best and horrendous at worst.
You would have to constantly watch your hands as you have no tactile feel of where your fingers are and what key they are landing on.
Any professional that knows how to type without looking at their hands (ie. Adults) would abhore this.
I can see this being useful for certain applications, but what you have describe is a tablet with a virtual keyboard, and those are just terrible to type in for any extended period of time.
"Are you seriously saying they should replace the physical keyboard with a touch screen panel?"
As an option of course. It is much more expensive to make. It has its disadvantages, but it has its advantages too. Long list, I am sure you can imagine them all yourself.
"Typing on a touch keyboard for a PRO laptop would be abysmal at best and horrendous at worst."
And yet most communications today are sent from touchscreen phones, not Blackberries.
"You would have to constantly watch your hands as you have no tactile feel of where your fingers are and what key they are landing on."
Yes, you would. As most people do already. Vibrations (different for correct press vs press between "keys") and visual indicators of button presses help.
There are disadvantages. There are advantages, not just changing keys according to modalities of work but using the panel as drawing pad for example. Or panel for reading outdoors - after all it is eInk. They should at least explore this option. OPTION.
Those ideals are just for kiddies. Matte displays are nice for outdoors but glass is just fine for those rooms without windows. If a Bezel-less were easy, they have done already besides business users want long battery lives on their laptops. Passive cooling requires more metal, more expensive and heavier. Business users wouldn't care much for disk space or dual m.2 slots. Carbon fiber is nice but doesn't dissipate heat as well as aluminum aside from being more expensive.
Business users are keyboard warriors for email and documents. You will never convince them using a flat surface for typing.
I'm with you most of the way. Give me ~16-17", small/no bezel, 4:3 or 3:2 ratio IPS screen that's not so high of a resoution that will kill battery life (something like 1920x1440, or 2160x1440). One user accesible 2.5" drive bay, one user accesible M.2 NVMe; two user accesible RAM slots. Intel i5 2-core/4-threaded 15 W TDP base CPU, with option up to 4 core 35W TDP CPU. Two USB-C 3.1/TB for power, data, displays; two normal USB 3.0; one full-sized HDMI, one full sized GB ethernet port. 10 hour battery life, under normal/mixed-load operation. Good keyboard. Whatever size/weight it ends up, so be it, but I don't think 3.5 lbs would be unreasonable. An extra isn't going to hurt anyone, but gimping on ports, user accesibility, screen size will.
Hard to imagine there wouldn't be a market for something like, seems that you can start something like this at ~$1200 for an i5-7200U / 8GB / 128GB M.2 SSD / 500GB 2.5" HDD, ranging up to ~$2,500 for quad-core / 32 GB / 1 TB M.2 / 1 TB 2.5" HDD
Agreed, it's pretty strange seeing a table comparing this detachable tablet to a bunch of laptops. Not a single computer there has the same form factor.
Why, for the love of god, have they not put in a SKU with an Iris GPU?! They went to all the trouble to house a 15W SoC, but are not offering the high-end SKU...
Heat is a serious problem, ad I learned in a 2-week ownership. There is no liquid-based cooling, causing extreme heat and noise from a crazy-went fan whenever you use the X2 in AC or docking station mode. Just plug the Thunderbolt connector in and "enjoy" the heat. I went crazy with that thing and was very happy the dealer took it back. Never more an HP computer, I am healed...
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32 Comments
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Gunbuster - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
"the Elite x2 can be equipped with a selection of wireless controllers" - Microsoft are you reading this? Your terrible WiFi has to go!zepi - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
So a 4:3 aspect ratio surface clone that looks pretty solid and has TB3? Doesn't look bad to me.skavi - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
*3:2ragenalien - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Why are we still using DDR3?Rampart19 - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
LPDDR4 isn't available yet. The laptops that use DDR4 are using regular voltage DDR4.trivik12 - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Why is that. We have phones with LPDDR4 and even LPDDR4x?Eden-K121D - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
Intel CPUs memory controllers don't support LPDDR4 yetBrokenCrayons - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
I like this thing a lot with a few caveats. It could benefit from a better hinge that eliminates the detachability of the system from its keyboard. HP is a little late in discovering that the tablet fad is dying in favor of phone and laptop dominance, but maybe in a generation or two they'll come around. Microsoft is already leading that charge by converting their Surface to conventional, and inarguably far better, notebook computers. Anyway, dumping the silly tablet functionality would make the whole system more durable for corporate/business use and more practical for the intended audience. They could shed the kickstand arrangement if they did that and move the systems nicely specced innards down to the keyboard base to give it better balance when being used on surfaces that aren't as solid as say a desk or table. Passive cooling would be nice, but I get it that there's going to be a trade-off between performance and cooling capacity so you really can't ding HP too much for that. Good effort from HP and in another generation, we'll likely see those sorts of improvements.zepi - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
There is almost infinite variety of laptops on the market for those who prefer them. I see very little harm in having couple of half-decent tablet-y convertibles for those who actually want to have the stylus functionalities etc.BrokenCrayons - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Oh there's absolutely no harm at all in catering to that market. It's just that it's not a growth segment at this point and sales will likely reflect the broad lack of interest in tablet hardware. In a lot of ways late, post-growth products in the tablet market sort of mirror the VR hardware trend we're seeing where headsets like Facebook's Rift that only arrived on the coattails of 3D TV, but disappointingly long after the 3D fad had died on the vine. The proverbial iron is no longer hot so striking now is sort of a moot point.bernstein - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
ha, "tablet fad"... "vr fad"... how funny!!not saying laptops will die... it's just computing is proliferating... and in the case of laptops finally actually replacing paper. however it's true that's only really the case in rich communities, as those powerful, light windows 10 tablets (surface, surface book, ...) are really expensive.
Samus - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
If you want something like this with a hinge, look at the HP Revolve Tablet. It is much thicker, however.The Saint - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
This comment is completely bizarre. This Tesla is great and all, but it'd be better if they redesigned it to be a pickup truck, as sales of pickup trucks are much better than electric cars.HP already has a thousand laptops that aren't tablets. If you want a laptop from them, just go buy an x360 or an Elitebook.
jlabelle2 - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
@BrokenCanyons: you are dreaming if you believe that Microsoft will abandon the tablet / detachable market. By the way, the upgrade of the SP4 already leaked and could be announced next week.Also, if you would have dare checking your claims, you would have realized that only detachable / hybrid are growing whereas pure laptop are decreasing.
damianrobertjones - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
" HP is a little late in discovering that the tablet fad is dying in favor of phone and laptop"But this is a laptop as well a tablet?
nicolaim - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Several errors in the table...peevee - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Interestingly, for some reason nobody makes laptops I and my friends want. You know, grownups who know their stuff. Everything they make is incredible, intolerable sht, at any price (including Apple).How about you start from bezel-less 17" (so the total size would be 15"-like). At reasonable resolution and aspect ratio, 1920x1200 is MORE than enough at laptop working distance, and more resolution means wasted time and power. Matte OF COURSE (what morons are even attracted to these shiny things)!
Good fanless CPU with built-in GPU (MORE than enough for non-kiddies), 15W TDP Koby Lakes (like i7-7660U) can be made fanless with proper thermal engineering in the 15"-sized body.
2 M.2 slots for SSDs (2nd optional), 1TB each for now, PCIe NVMe of course, both user-replaceable. 16-32GB DDR4 if Koby Lake does not support LPDDR4x yet (what a shame Intel!). Keep it within 4 lb/2kg, use carbon fiber if needed.
Also I would not mind multitouch panel over B&W (not grey) eInk display instead of mechanical keyboard and a regular touchpad - just draw keyboards as necessary, switch images with Shift/Ctrl/Alt/Caps-lock or language change, draw commands of a current app over F-keys (just read current accel/menu tables).
Why these corporations employ product managers without any common sense or imagination at all?
Kill16by9TN - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
I sooo second that! There is so much garbage on the shelves.peevee - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Camera should be on the BOTTOM, when you are typing, you look down, not up. 2 cameras are better for 3D face recognition login (2D face recognition is easily fooled by a photo). Speakers (at least tweeters) should be also there on the display, at extremes sides for stereo separation, looking forward at you, not up. Subwoofer (well, hard to call it that) can be in the main body if the main speakers are not full range (and they cannot be in the thin screen panel).And what is that with soldiered in SSDs, as tiny as 256GB? And upgrades at insane prices? Intel 600p M.2 SSD, 4x PCIe 3.0 and all, is $345 on newegg, I am sure laptop manufacturers can by them in bulk much cheaper. 17" 1280x1024 monitors are $110 on newegg. $999 laptop can easily have i7-7600U, 1TB M.2 SSD, 16GB RAM and the 17" screen with 1mm metal bezels. $1500 can have 1920x1200 with touch, 32GB RAM, i7-7660U and 2TB SSD.
acparker18 - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Are you seriously saying they should replace the physical keyboard with a touch screen panel?No, just, no.
Typing on a touch keyboard for a PRO laptop would be abysmal at best and horrendous at worst.
You would have to constantly watch your hands as you have no tactile feel of where your fingers are and what key they are landing on.
Any professional that knows how to type without looking at their hands (ie. Adults) would abhore this.
I can see this being useful for certain applications, but what you have describe is a tablet with a virtual keyboard, and those are just terrible to type in for any extended period of time.
fanofanand - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
I concur. The rest of what he said makes sense, but what you just pointed out, I absolutely agree with.peevee - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
"Are you seriously saying they should replace the physical keyboard with a touch screen panel?"As an option of course. It is much more expensive to make.
It has its disadvantages, but it has its advantages too. Long list, I am sure you can imagine them all yourself.
peevee - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
"Typing on a touch keyboard for a PRO laptop would be abysmal at best and horrendous at worst."And yet most communications today are sent from touchscreen phones, not Blackberries.
"You would have to constantly watch your hands as you have no tactile feel of where your fingers are and what key they are landing on."
Yes, you would. As most people do already. Vibrations (different for correct press vs press between "keys") and visual indicators of button presses help.
There are disadvantages. There are advantages, not just changing keys according to modalities of work but using the panel as drawing pad for example. Or panel for reading outdoors - after all it is eInk. They should at least explore this option. OPTION.
zodiacfml - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Those ideals are just for kiddies. Matte displays are nice for outdoors but glass is just fine for those rooms without windows.If a Bezel-less were easy, they have done already besides business users want long battery lives on their laptops. Passive cooling requires more metal, more expensive and heavier. Business users wouldn't care much for disk space or dual m.2 slots. Carbon fiber is nice but doesn't dissipate heat as well as aluminum aside from being more expensive.
Business users are keyboard warriors for email and documents. You will never convince them using a flat surface for typing.
jaydee - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
I'm with you most of the way. Give me ~16-17", small/no bezel, 4:3 or 3:2 ratio IPS screen that's not so high of a resoution that will kill battery life (something like 1920x1440, or 2160x1440). One user accesible 2.5" drive bay, one user accesible M.2 NVMe; two user accesible RAM slots. Intel i5 2-core/4-threaded 15 W TDP base CPU, with option up to 4 core 35W TDP CPU. Two USB-C 3.1/TB for power, data, displays; two normal USB 3.0; one full-sized HDMI, one full sized GB ethernet port. 10 hour battery life, under normal/mixed-load operation. Good keyboard. Whatever size/weight it ends up, so be it, but I don't think 3.5 lbs would be unreasonable. An extra isn't going to hurt anyone, but gimping on ports, user accesibility, screen size will.Hard to imagine there wouldn't be a market for something like, seems that you can start something like this at ~$1200 for an i5-7200U / 8GB / 128GB M.2 SSD / 500GB 2.5" HDD, ranging up to ~$2,500 for quad-core / 32 GB / 1 TB M.2 / 1 TB 2.5" HDD
geniekid - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
I'm surprised the comparison table doesn't include the Surface.The Saint - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Agreed, it's pretty strange seeing a table comparing this detachable tablet to a bunch of laptops. Not a single computer there has the same form factor.Ogewo - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Or the Acer Switch Alpha 12. I've been using one for a year and like it a lot. Fanlessness is very nice.yhselp - Friday, May 19, 2017 - link
Why, for the love of god, have they not put in a SKU with an Iris GPU?! They went to all the trouble to house a 15W SoC, but are not offering the high-end SKU...vladx - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
I assume with an Iris heat would become a problem for such a thin device and the target for this kind of product don't care about the IGP inside.JoSa - Tuesday, September 5, 2017 - link
Heat is a serious problem, ad I learned in a 2-week ownership. There is no liquid-based cooling, causing extreme heat and noise from a crazy-went fan whenever you use the X2 in AC or docking station mode. Just plug the Thunderbolt connector in and "enjoy" the heat. I went crazy with that thing and was very happy the dealer took it back. Never more an HP computer, I am healed...Lolimaster - Saturday, May 20, 2017 - link
Wait for AMD Zen APU, same product with less heat and -$150.