HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) review – AMD power with a twist

Recently, Envy has been the most interesting brand in HP’s portfolio. It offers sleek notebooks that boast high quality and in some cases – exceptional performance. In a world, where most manufacturers create whole brands dedicated to content creators, HP has just repurposed the one, that was closest to this ideology.

Today, we have one such notebook in the form of the Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000). It is a lightweight convertible that packs quite the punch thanks to the use of Ryzen 5000U processors. It is good to know that HP didn’t cheap out, as they bring the Zen 3 models that are part of this lineup, and namely – the Ryzen 5 5600U, and Ryzen 7 5800U.

Even though we’ve already tested these CPUs, we just can’t emphasize the performance they bring to a thin and light notebook. Especially when it comes to creative work like photo and video editing, and 3D manipulating.

Also, you get a neat option, usable by a very narrow segment of the market. We are talking about the Sure View system for blocking unwanted eyes by reducing the width of the viewing angles of the display. Well, the downside of this is that the visual experience takes a hit as well. Nevertheless, let’s pay some attention to the design before we start with the tests, shall we?

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-envy-x360-13-13-ay1000/

Contents


Specs Sheet

HP ENVY X360 13 (13-ay1000) - Specs

  • IVO M133NVFC R6 (IVO857E)
  • Color accuracy  4.1  1.6
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD
  • RAM
  • up to 16GB
  • OS
  • Windows 11 Home, Windows 11 Pro, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 51Wh, 3-cell
  • Body material
  • Aluminum
  • Dimensions
  • 306.57 x 194.56 x 16.51 mm (12.07" x 7.66" x 0.65")
  • Weight
  • 1.30 kg (2.9 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 1x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), Sleep and Charge
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps), Power Delivery (PD), DisplayPort, Sleep and Charge
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ax
  • Bluetooth
  • 5.2
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5mm Combo Jack
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Dual Array Digital Microphones
  • Speakers
  • 2x Speakers, Bang & Olufsen
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

All HP ENVY X360 13 (13-ay1000) configurations

#CommissionsEarned

What’s in the box?

This laptop comes in a pretty well-designed package. Inside, you will find the mandatory paperwork, as well as a 65W charger.


Design and construction

Right of the bat, we can see that this device looks stunning. Especially, when it’s dressed in white. This feeling is further enhanced by the 16.5mm profile and the weight of 1.30 kg. Quite unfortunately, HP hasn’t done a great job in supporting the notebook’s structure, as it is very prone to flex. Although it’s made out of aluminum, the sheets seem to be pretty thin.

Thankfully, the lid here can be opened with a single hand. There, we see thin bezels all around with an HD Web camera that has a key-activated privacy shutter. Here, we also see that the display is being protected by a glass sheet above it.

Then there is the keyboard. It has decent key travel, clicky feedback, and really large keycaps. This bodes well with the size of the laptop and essentially results in an end-to-end keyboard. Also, you get a backlight. You can set it up through BIOS to stay on for 30 seconds or 3 minutes after a click or to never turn off until you do so. And on top of that, the right Control key is swapped for a fingerprint reader.

Below the Space bar, there is the touchpad. It is not too large, but is super responsive, and has a glass surface, which offers a smooth gliding experience.

Lastly, turn the laptop upside down to see the speaker cutouts and the ventilation grill. On the other hand, the heat is being blown away from the chassis through a slot in the back of the machine.

Ports

On the left side, there is an audio jack, a jaw-styled USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 2) port. Switch sides, and you will see the power plug, another jaw-styled USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, and a MicroSD card slot.


Disassembly, upgrade options and maintenance

To take this laptop apart. You need to remove the back rubber foot. It hides three Phillips-head screws. After you undo them and the two Torx-head ones, you need to pry the bottom panel with a plastic tool.

There is a 51Wh battery inside of the machine. If you need to change the battery down the line, you have to remove 6 Phillips-head screws. Then, unplug the connector, and you will be able to remove the battery from the laptop.

Unfortunately, the memory here is soldered to the motherboard. It comes in configurations of up to 16GB of RAM, working in dual-channel mode. Storage-wise, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot.

In terms of cooling, there is one heat pipe, a heat sink, and a pretty large fan, considering the size of the notebook.


Display quality

HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) is equipped with a Full HD IPS touchscreen panel, IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E). Its diagonal is 13.3-inch (33.8 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 166 ppi, their pitch – 0.15 х 0.15 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 50 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels). One important feature of this device is its Sure View technology. Its purpose is to block unwanted viewers from seeing the content of your screen. A key role in that place is the backlight and an additional light directing layer.

We apply these photos to evaluate the viewing angles. The 45-degree photos are taken with a longer exposure than the front-facing one.

Also, here is a video with a locked focus and exposure.

The maximum measured brightness is excellent – 772 nits in the middle of the screen and 792 nits average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 15% (887 nits (cd/m2) in the top left corner). The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6160K – slightly warmer than the standard 6500K temperature for sRGB.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 18% Brightness (White level = 142 cd/m2, Black level = 0.05 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is excellent – 2800:1.

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people on HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.

The yellow dotted line shows HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers 96% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.

Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.

Below you can compare the scores of HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale, and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.

Response time (Gaming capabilities)

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 31 ms.

After that, we test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “Gray-to-Gray” method from 50% White to 80% White and vice versa between 10% and 90% of the amplitude.


Health impact – PWM / Blue Light

PWM (Screen flickering)

Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000)’s backlight does not use PWM only at maximum brightness and disabled Sure View system. When the brightness is set at comfortable for office work levels, the pulsations have a low fill coefficient and high luminance (especially when Sure View is disabled), while the frequency is relatively low. In our opinion, this might have a negative impact on your eyesight. Our Health-Guard profile deals with this issue.

Blue light emissions

Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) configurations with 13.3″ IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office Work

Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.

Design and Gaming

This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000)’s speakers produce a dynamic sound with not very loud volume. Thankfully, its low, mid, and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All of the drivers and utilities for this notebook can be found here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-envy-13-ay1000-x360-convertible-pc/2100744992

Battery

Now, we conduct the battery tests with Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with. This device’s 51Wh battery lasts for 11 hours and 18 minutes of Web browsing, or 9 hours and 20 minutes of video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

The AMD version of this laptop is powered by either a Ryzen 5 5600U or a Ryzen 7 5800U.


GPU options

And for graphics, you get the integrated solution inside of one of the aforementioned processors.


Gaming tests

cs-go-benchmarks

CS:GOHD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings)HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings)
Average FPS131 fps82 fps57 fps

DOTA 2HD 1080p, Low (Check settings)HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings)HD 1080p, High (Check settings)
Average FPS125 fps80 fps45 fps

Temperatures and comfort

Max CPU load

In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.

Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800U (15W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000)2.44 GHz (B+28%) @ 83°C2.47 GHz (B+30%) @ 79°C2.44 GHz (B+28%) @ 89°C
HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) with cooling pad2.62 GHz (B+38%) @ 60°C2.46 GHz (B+29%) @ 66°C2.49 GHz (B+31%) @ 74°C
Acer Swift X (SFX14-41G)3.09 GHz (B+63%) @ 73°C2.99 GHz (B+57%) @ 75°C2.73 GHz (B+44%) @ 75°C
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (14″)2.31 GHz (B+22%) @ 55°C2.32 GHz (B+22%) @ 59°C2.41 GHz (B+27%) @ 66°C

Here we have a pretty interesting result. The cooling solution of the Envy x360 13 seems to be suffocating. As you can see, it is the warmest Ryzen 7 5800U device we’ve tested. However, once we slap it over a cooling pad, the fan is free to breathe, and the temperatures get significantly lower. On the other hand, the performance output didn’t really improve, as HP obviously prefers low ambient noise over high clocks.

Comfort during full load

As on the inside, the laptop was pretty warm on the outside. Moreover, the heat is isolated in the top right part of the keyboard, where you generally rest your left hand.


Verdict

If you need a touch-capable 13-inches with good specs and decent battery life, the Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) may be the device for you. However, there are a few things you need to know before making a purchase choice.

First, there is the build quality. Although it looks stunning, the chassis of the device is not very stable. Moreover, it registers ghost clicks when you twist the lid.

Then come the upgrade options. Or the lack thereof. Here, the memory is soldered to the motherboard, and we currently have information only about configurations of up to 16GB, which may be a limiting factor, should you work mainly on videos.

On the other hand, HP Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000)’s touchscreen IPS panel has an exceptionally high maximum brightness, an excellent contrast ratio, and a pretty high color coverage (96% of sRGB). Ultimately, the high maximum brightness is ideal for outdoor use, however, because of the Sure View technology, the viewing angles are not great. Even when the setting is disabled. Moreover, the panel uses aggressive PWM for brightness adjustment. This means it is not really made for indoor use. However, our Health-Guard profile fixes the negative impact of PWM, and after all – Sure View is designed to protect your privacy by reducing the viewing angles.

On the bright side, this machine has very good input devices, with a comfortable keyboard and a smooth and responsive touchpad. Plus, you get a fingerprint reader with its own place on the keyboard deck. Not to mention the shortcut keys for the camera privacy shutter, and the HP Command Center. The latter allows you to choose between four performance presets. Interestingly, it shows some washed-up data like “fan speed” and “surface temperature”. Instead of actual numbers though, you get two sliders.

To HP’s horror, we were able to monitor the temps of the processor and the outside, and it appeared that the cooling system was suffocating. The reason for that is the super slim rubber feet. Once we put the laptop on a cooling pad, the CPU package temperature dropped by 15°C. However, the performance didn’t increase whatsoever.

At the end of the day, the Envy x360 13 (13-ay1000) is not a bad laptop. In fact, it is good at a lot of things, including being super responsive with Windows 11 installed. And the presence of two USB Type-A ports is refreshing at this thickness. Ultimately, HP has some work to do to improve the next generation, but there are clearly a lot of things that may and should remain the same.

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/hp-envy-x360-13-13-ay1000/

Pros

  • Sleek aluminum design with a great feel
  • Covers 96% of sRGB colors (IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E))
  • Good battery life
  • Fingerprint reader and camera privacy shutter
  • Monstrous performance from the ULV chips
  • MicroSD card slot
  • Sure View (IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E))


Cons

  • Flexy body
  • Uses aggressive PWM, which is fixed by our Health-Guard profile (IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E))
  • Not the best viewing angles (IVO M133NVFC-R6 (IVO857E))
  • Memory is soldered to the motherboard

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astarvp
astarvp
4 months ago

Tengo este equipo, y estoy encantadísimo. Veo que ahora la versión de Envy es de 15”, y creo que añadir medio kilo a un equipo como éste, por tener una pantalla mayor, es un gran error. Sólo haría un par de sugerecias: que el botón de encendido/apagado y el lector de huellas estén en un lateral (o en el panel frontal como los móviles), porque al dejarlo en modo tablet, se deshabilita el teclado, y se pierde su utilidad. Y mi otra sugerencia es que la pantalla tenga más visión lateral, porque aunque se pierde intimidad, al usarla también modo… Read more »

Last edited 4 months ago by astarvp