The design is simplistic, and given the contemporary gray touch, it will surely fit in most home decors. Looking in the back blow the display, and you’ll find another unique form factor-a cone-shaped display that houses the speakers, processor, hard drive, and RAM wrapped in a modern and straightforward fabric design like a Google Nest device. I feel the portrait mode will most likely be used as a secondary display rather than a primary one, but still handy. The 16:9 landscape but becomes awkwardly tall and long in portrait mode. Additionally, the microphone does enable Google Assistant. It’s handy for a device that will likely be used for video calls regularly, which I tested out and the amount of sound and clarity with the speakers and microphone was clear. HP fits a 5-megapixel in its narrow bezel along with a slider that disables camera output and microphone or both. HP has put much thought into the design to stand out with its unique features compared to their competitors like Acer and Lenovo, and it has set itself apart in its feature set. The solid and colorful display, along with the adjustable Y-axis from the pivoting hinge, gave this device a multi-function to keep things easy on not just my neck but the ability to move it around and use additional monitors along with it. I understand that most consumers and enterprise users will rarely use this device apart from their keyboard and mouse, but an option for tablet mode would have been a game-changer.
It still acted as a desktop in any position it was in, giving it more of a giant phone feel when playing android games on the device, but it wasn’t enough for me to stray away from it.
The ability to move from landscape to a portrait with such ease was indeed a great feature by HP, but unfortunately, I was hoping the company would have implemented a ‘tablet mode’ despite it being a desktop monitor or at least given the option.