Battery Life

There is good news, though. While performance is limited, battery life is excellent from this tablet whether you're using native ARM apps or emulated x86 apps. The battery capacity is just 41 Wh, which is mid-range for a tablet of this size, but the efficiency of the Snapdragon 835 allows it to beat almost every device in our battery tests.

In our web browsing test, the Envy x2 dominates most other devices with outstanding battery life, even while using Chrome. Switch to Edge, which is a more sensible option as it runs natively, and the Envy x2 pulls even further ahead than other devices running Chrome natively. Either way you look at it, that's a great result for this device.

Video playback is another strong area for the Envy x2, though other devices are a bit more competitive here as 1080p playback these days is a bit limited by the efficiency of the display. Still, getting 14 and a half hours of playback at quite a high level of brightness is very good; turn down the brightness and you should be able to hit HP's stated 19 hour figure.

I also tested PCMark battery life, which again is excellent though naturally most other devices in this chart perform a lot better in terms of CPU performance. The Snapdragon 835 does consume less power, but it's also a fair bit slower in the process.

Windows on ARM devices do have a few other battery-related advantages. Standby battery life is excellent, with very little battery drain while in sleep mode, and wake times are near instant. Windows Hello performance is also much quicker than Intel laptops I've tested, which surprised me. You'll also get reasonably fast charging with the Envy x2.