HP Chromebook x2 11

Magnetic personality

- CHRISTIAN GUYTON

‘CHROMEBOOK’ HAS become an increasingly nebulous term as of late. Where it once simply referred to a cheap, basic laptop running ChromeOS, the definition now encompasses a broad variety of more powerful productivity laptops, tablets, and 2-in-1s. The x2 11 from HP occupies the latter category, a laptop alternative that leverages a detachable keyboard to serve as the perfect hybrid platform.

The first thing we noticed about the x2 11 is its display; this dinky hybrid tablet boasts an 11-inch 1440p LED screen with a maximum of 400 nits of brightness and 100 percent sRGB color reproduction. It’s bright and vibrant, comfortably beating the 1080p displays of other Chromebooks despite its smaller size. It’s an edge-to edge glass panel, but it sits just inside the metal frame of the tablet and so it shouldn’t shatter if you drop the x2 on its edge.

Behind that display is where the magic happens, as the x2 11 is powered by Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon 7c CPU, an octa-core processor designed for low-power operation in ChromeOS devices. The 7c is optimized for maximizing battery life, and also packs Qualcomm’s Adreno 618 integrated graphics, which are able to handle some light app-based gaming.