Review: HP’s Elite x2 is a Surface clone you can actually upgrade

Just as high-end, thin-and-light PCs from the last five or six years have mostly been cast in the mold of Apple’s MacBook Air, convertible PCs from the last year or two have been redefined by Microsoft’s Surface. After a few less-than-satisfying versions of the idea, Microsoft found an acceptable balance between tablet and laptop with the Surface Pro 3, and it carried that design forward into the Surface 3 and Surface Pro 4 with few fundamental changes. Since then, the Surface division has consistently been a small, but bright, spot in Microsoft’s earnings reports, helping to offset the near-complete collapse of Windows Phone (or Windows Mobile or whatever we’re calling it this year).

As a result of the Surface success story, most of the PC OEMs have delivered some riff on the tablet in the last year or so. Dell has the XPS 12 and the Latitude 12 7000. HP has the Spectre x2, and Samsung has the Galaxy TabPro S. Apple’s iPad was around for years before the Surface, but the iPad Pro is clearly following Microsoft’s lead. Even Lenovo, whose Yoga lineup is also widely imitated, has hopped aboard the Surface train with its ThinkPad X1 tablet.

Most of these devices are attempting to fill gaps and address needs that the Surface lineup doesn’t, which brings us to the HP Elite x2. This is a business-focused Surface clone that can’t match the Surface Pro 4 spec-to-spec, but it does offer users something that the Surface doesn’t: you can actually open it up and repair or replace parts without much effort as long as you have the right tools. It makes other tradeoffs, of course, but if you’ve been waiting for a Surface that you can actually upgrade and fix, this might be the tablet for you.

Where it’s less than the Surface

Let’s get all of the negative stuff out of the way first. In some important ways, the Elite x2 isn’t as good of a computer as a Surface Pro 4 or even a Surface Pro 3. And pretty much everything you give up, you’re giving up specifically because of the compromises needed to build a repairable tablet.

It starts with the display. At 12 inches, it’s the same size as that of the Surface Pro 3 and a little smaller than the Surface Pro 4's, but the 1080p resolution is lower than both. The bezel around that display is considerably larger than either Surface, which means that the height and width of the Elite x2 is larger than the Surface Pro overall.

HP’s tablet isn’t going to match the Surface’s performance, either, at least not in the high end. All Elite x2 models include some kind of Skylake-based Core M processor, which let HP design the X2 without a fan, heatsink, or air vents, saving space. The low-end model of the Surface Pro 4 uses a Core m3 and doesn’t have a fan, but the space for the fan is still there, so the Surface can provide much better performance when bumped up to a Core i7 CPU and an Iris GPU.

As you can see from the charts, there aren’t many surprises here. Skylake’s Core M-series CPUs and the HD 515 GPU are known quantities at this point. Performance is solid, but throttling means it can be somewhat inconsistent; the Core i5 and i7 processors in the Surface and many other Ultrabooks have more thermal headroom to flex their figurative muscles.

The Elite x2’s SSDs are more conservative, too—it uses standard M.2 SSDs in most models, though HP says it offers a 256GB PCI Express update like in the EliteBook Folio G1. PCI Express SSDs are typically at least twice as fast as SATA III drives, the drives themselves are readily available, and chipset support is a given in 2016. It’s time to start making them standard, especially in machines that start at just under $1,000.

And the Elite x2’s port layout is a mixed blessing. It has a single USB 3.0 Type-A port and a Thunderbolt 3 port that is also used to charge the tablet—if you want to drive an external display while charging the device, you’ll want to invest in one of HP’s docks (it offers both USB-C and Thunderbolt variants depending on what you want). A monitor with USB Type-C and USB Power Delivery compatibility might work, but like HP's other systems, the Elite x2 doesn't play well with non-HP chargers. On the other hand, a combo Thunderbolt 3/USB-C port gives you more bandwidth and more flexibility and opens the door to more versatile accessories later on as Thunderbolt adoption grows.

Lastly, HP includes much more bloatware than Microsoft does on the Surfaces or on Microsoft Signature Edition PCs (unlike many convertibles, the Elite x2 doesn't come in Signature Editions, which tend to be targeted at consumers), although it's mostly HP business software and it's mostly easily uninstalled. The largish recovery partition can be offloaded to an external USB drive if you want to free up the 15-or-so GB that it eats up.