HP PAVILION 11T TOUCH X360 SERIES:-
The HP Pavilion 11t-n000 x360 ($409.99, as tested) is a convertible hybrid laptop that flips its touch screen around. Thanks to a budget-friendly, quad-core Intel Pentium processor and its use of a hard drive instead of a pricier solid-state drive (SSD), the Pavilion x360$413.80 at Amazon, is a lot less expensive than the $1,000 convertible hybrid laptops we've seen over the past couple of years. Despite its budget price, the system is more than competent, and is a good starting point for the Windows 8 novice.
Design and Features:-
Like a flashy convertible automobile, the system grabs your attention with its all-red chassis and shiny, chrome-colored HP logo on the lid. Like the Lenovo Yoga 2 11$679.00 at Lenovo, the Pavilion x360 flips its screen around the center hinge's axis, so you can use the system in four modes. Notebook mode is the standard clamshell-laptop orientation. Stand mode puts the keyboard facedown on the table, so you can use the screen to watch videos with the rest of laptop body out of the way. Tent mode flips the laptop over so the central hinge is facing the sky; this makes the touch screen more stable for extended touch sessions, like when playing a game (more on that below). Last, but not least, Tablet mode lets you use the Pavilion x360 as a (somewhat heavy) slate tablet. Detachable hybrid systems like the Asus Transformer Book T100TA£199.00 at Amazon are lighter in Tablet mode, though there's always the danger that you'll accidentally leave the Asus T100TA's keyboard
behind.
HP PAVILION 15Z:-
After bemoaning the lack of laptops at any price with both a touch screen and discrete graphics, my attention was caught by something from HP. The $649.99 HP Pavilion Touch Smart 15z-b000 Sleek book is slim, especially for a 15-inch midsize laptop, and certainly one of the sharper-looking Windows 8 laptops I've seen in this lower-end price range. The kicker is its included AMD Radeon 7600G GPU.Despite the slim profile, the price is so reasonable because this is not exactly an ultrabook -- instead it belongs to Hewlett-Packard's proprietary Sleekbook line, which is a similar-sounding category HP invented to promote laptops that are similar to ultrabooks, but don't meet the official Intel requirements (Ultrabook is a trademarked Intel marketing term).
It's pretty clear why this isn't an Intel-approved ultrabook -- the CPU is actually a quad-core AMD A8-4555M. AMD calls its product an APU for "accelerated processing unit" rather than a CPU, because it combines a CPU and discrete-level graphics into a single package. In this case, the graphics chip is the previously mentioned AMD Radeon 7600G, which isn't a gamer-level part, but should outperform Intel's integrated HD 4000 graphics (at least on paper).
For $649, don't expect the HP Pavilion TouchSmart 15z-b000 Sleekbook to outperform Lenovo's recent 15-inch gaming laptop, the excellent IdeaPad Y500 (which can be found for under $900), or even any standard Core i5 ultrabook. It's not going to be your main gaming rig, but it can handle most current games at lower settings, especially as the screen resolution will be capped at a low 1,366x768 pixels.
I'm always a fan of laptops that look like they cost more than they actually do. While the 15z-b000's appearance is not going to convince anyone that this is a $1,000-plus high-end machine, it feels like it offers excellent bang for the buck. Just be warned, one of the reasons you don't see more AMD laptops is that they can't touch Intel on battery life, and this highly portable system ran for less than 3.5 hours in our tests.
