What needs work
Making a machine for business is always going to result in a machine made very differently than one for the needs of consumers, and there’s a lot that HP gets right, but where it gets things wrong aren’t so much on the hardware side, but more on the software side.
You see, every so often when Windows wants to do one of its many patches — and Microsoft is making sure Windows 10 is frequently attended to, so there come thick and fast compare to previous generations — HP’s software tends to get in the way.
In fact, you may even encounter errors like this one:
That’ll pop up if you try to update Windows with HP’s software on-board, and it really gets in the way. There’s something about HP’s support software which just doesn’t like Windows 10, and the two butt heads on a regular basis.
We found the best way was just to uninstall the HP stuff and let Microsoft get on with it, though this can have the additional annoyance that is drivers go missing and don’t update properly.
Like the HP support software issue from before, we found some of HP’s updates just wouldn’t load into place, and you even get two pieces of software to deal with drivers and software a business machine needs.
On the one hand, there’s the pleasing-to-the-eye HP Support Assistant which almost never works properly and tends to crash out when you’re trying to install drivers. But on the other, there’s HP SoftPaq, a driver and download manager that actually does seem to work, though looks like it’s the sort of thing an IT admin would use because of how granular and administrative the whole thing looks.
And that’s where you start to see the HP Elite x2 win and lose votes, because while it’s a great piece of hardware with a lot of serviceability for high-end types who need that sort of thing, regular people will at one point have to deal with a level of software that even the geekiest of folk will find annoying.
This journalist is a geeky type who generally has no problem with getting his hands dirty installing drivers and sorting things out, but even this machine had him scratching his head on why there were so many layers when something needed a change or an update.
It boggles the mind, and makes you wonder if aspects of this machine were built for IT managers so they would always have a degree of control.
Perhaps we’re just looking too far into it, and that these driver issues and support problems and software frustrations would be ironed out by someone not the end-user by the time it reaches them, but we have our doubts.
And those doubts arise simply because if you bought this because you wanted a better built Spectre x2, you’d get it, but you’d also get these software issues, and computers shouldn’t ship with software issues like them.
It’s not a Windows issue, either. Rather, it’s an HP issue, because with so much extra stuff sitting on top, the complexity is increased.
Take the web camera, for instance, which works and was even picked up by the Windows Hello system initially, but wouldn’t allow us to file our image as part of Windows Hello. After an update, Windows Hello now won’t even talk to the camera, saying it can’t turn on the camera when it does, in fact, work.
So you go to one of the support systems in place to fix it, only to find that there is more than one support system, and neither really work the way you expect them to, crashing or failing to update anything.
In a workforce, an IT department can deal with this, and will probably even stop updates before they’re rolled out, but if you don’t have that, the HP Elite x2 can just end up confusing, which is a real shame given the promise of the hardware here.
If HP can iron out its software concerns, the Elite x2 could be a tremendous business-friendly Surface competitor, though its design needs one more thing: more resistance to scratches.
We’re delighted that more companies are embracing high quality materials such as aluminium and magnesium, but why do so many scratch?
Microsoft’s Surface Pro and Surface Book machines all pick up scratches remarkably easily, and so too does HP’s Elite x2, even though it relies on aluminium instead of the magnesium used by Microsoft.
Apple uses aluminium too, but its computers don’t scratch easily. In fact, they barely scratch at all, and you need to bring in some serious nails and scraping to get the Apple machines to pick up on cosmetic damage.
But here on the HP Elite x2, we found scratches after carrying in our backpack. Our backpack, for crying out loud. There might have been a USB key or the HP stylus in there at the same time, and we got scratches.
That’s just mad, and a little maddening at that.
Conclusion
There are many things HP has managed to get right with the Elite x2, and they’re all respectable: it comes from a solid base of the Spectre x2, which we liked tremendously, and it has improved on that design with more durability in the hinge, a more usable array of ports even if only one has changed, and all of that serviceability.
It’s clear: the HP Elite x2 is a tablet laptop hybrid made for business, and made for businesses that demand long term computers, not just ones that will work for the next few months.
But while the hardware is mostly great, HP’s software can get in the way of this experience, especially since this business-centric model can almost be too finicky, and a little fussier than you might expect.
Is is the better half of an already excellent Spectre laptop?
Absolutely, and people keen on owning a computer with flexibility in customisation and an ability to replace a component if it does break will applaud it, but we’d just like to see some of that excessive business software pulled back if desired, because not everyone has an IT department waiting in the wings.
