HP produces a wide range of thin and light notebooks, but the HP Envy X360 13 combines great design with processing power and decent pricing, making it our best business model on test.

If you’re looking for a laptop that feels as small and as thick as an A4 writing pad, then this is the closest you’ll get below R30 000. But, while it slips easily into bags and backpacks, there is still some heft to it. It weighs 1.27 kg (a fair bit heavier than the lightest laptops on the market) but it doesn’t look as heavy as it really is, thanks to the aluminium chassis and all-metal skin, which also give it reassuring rigidity and toughness. If you’re coming from a full-size laptop, be prepared to change your habits. The keyboard and trackpad are much more compact than you’re probably used to, and that’s after you’ve adjusted to the 13-inch screen. The screen quality is well above average and easy on the eyes with a lot of contrast, a glossy finish, and rich colours.

Its low price is ascribed to using a more affordable processor made by AMD, and not Intel. AMD, dwarfed by its rival Intel, has still managed to consistently produce some of the fastest chips around (it makes all the chips that power the PlayStation and Xbox, for example) and is often ahead in both price and the all-important area of power consumption. The X360 uses AMD’s powerful Ryzen 7 with its built-in Radeon RX Vega 10 graphics processor. You won’t want for power here.

However, we’re not big fans of convertible laptops such as the X360. Sure, you can flip the screen all the way around to use it like a tablet, but we’ve yet to see anyone do that in real life. It’s too heavy to hold in one hand, and the keyboard side always feels vulnerable pressed on to a table top.

13.3” screen, Ryzen 7 CPU, 8 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD storage, 1× USB, 1× USB-C, 1.3 kg, R17 000