HP Envy 13 (2021)

HP Envy 13 (2021)

If you want a slim, light, good-looking laptop that feels upscale without a sky-high price, the HP Envy 13 fits the bill. It looks a lot like a MacBook Air, but it runs Windows. One thing I'm not happy about is the plastic touchpad. HP may have done that to save on cost, or to keep some distance from the more expensive Spectre line.

Minimalist design

The HP Envy 13 is a portable, mid-range laptop. Its exterior isn't as flashy as the Spectre line, and its hinge can't rotate 360 degrees like the Envy x360. Even so, the HP Envy 13 is still a great laptop to use.

The entire body is made of silver aluminum, which looks more upscale than laptops built from magnesium alloy that cost even more. As far as I know, magnesium alloy reduces a laptop's weight, but that isn't a worthwhile trade-off for everyone.

The HP Envy 13 isn't too heavy, weighing just 1.3kg, and it has thin screen bezels. It also has more ports than a MacBook: a USB-C port, another USB-C port, a combo headphone and microphone jack, and a microSD card slot. The laptop also has a DisplayPort 1.4 output, which lets you connect a 4K 120Hz display or two 4K displays at a 60Hz refresh rate.

The keyboard has good key travel and feels solid and firm. The responsive keys let you type as fast as you can. I really like the HP Envy 13's keyboard. I could comfortably type a long essay on this laptop, far more comfortably than on many other, more expensive models.

The HP Envy 13's keyboard also has an LED backlight with 2 brightness levels, which you can switch on when working in a dimly lit room. The laptop also has a fingerprint scanner button, though it's a bit small. I don't rate the touchpad highly, as it feels flimsy. It's made of plastic, so the surface doesn't glide smoothly.

The laptop is equipped with two Bang & Olufsen speakers. They deliver fairly good stereo sound and a rich midrange, but the bass is a little weak.

Sharp display

At a mid-range price, you can't demand too much from the display. The laptop has a 13.3-inch screen with Full HD 1080p resolution. A laptop with a 4K display would look sharper, but it isn't necessary, since a higher resolution also hurts battery life. The recently released MacBook Air has a resolution of only 1600p, too.

For color gamut, the 2021 HP Envy 13 covers 100% of sRGB and 79.3% of DCI P3, with 74.7% of Adobe RGB. That means the HP Envy reproduces colors fairly accurately, so you can use it for graphic design or content creation. sRGB is the color standard for traditional laptops. DCI P3 is the standard for high-end phones, laptops, and tablets, because its colors are deeper, richer, and sharper.

If you want 100% DCI P3, you may have to pay more. Even the MacBook Air doesn't reach that level. Personally, I think the HP Envy 13's 100% sRGB is good enough. On top of that, it's backed by a very good contrast ratio (for an IPS display) of 1675:1.

Outstanding performance

The unit I used has an 11th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. Its Core i5 is slower than the Core i7 in the Dell XPS 13, as well as the Ryzen 7 CPU in the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7. If you only do basic, simple tasks, though, there isn't much difference.

The 2021 HP Envy 13 offers an Nvidia MX450 graphics card option. In the 3DMark Time Spy test, the Nvidia MX450 scored 66% higher than Intel Xe. With this graphics card, you can confidently play some games that demand high graphics performance. When you're editing documents or browsing the web, the HP laptop makes no noise at all. But when it runs at full power, the fan spins up harder and pushes out airflow, and the noise sounds like a plane preparing to take off.

The SSD has moderate read and write speeds: 1708MB/s read and 967MB/s write.

Up to 12 hours of battery life

The HP Envy 13 has a 51Wh battery, similar in capacity to the Dell XPS 13 (52Wh). HP rates battery life at roughly 10 hours to 16 hours 45 minutes of online video playback. In my real-world use, I got 12 hours 15 minutes of streaming video on YouTube. Battery life will also depend on your screen brightness setting.

Conclusion

It's fair to say the HP Envy 13 - 2021 is a laptop that costs much less than the Dell XPS 13 and Apple MacBook, yet delivers fairly solid performance and comes with a discrete graphics card. The one main issue is that the Lenovo Yoga Slim 7 (part of the Lenovo Yoga & IdeaPad line) is similarly priced but offers better CPU performance and battery life than the HP Envy 13. In return, the HP Envy 13 has a discrete GPU option.